Calli pressed the control to open the door to the cryo lab. The first thing she noticed was the room was large and full of interesting, alien equipment. The next thing that drew her attention was the alien warrior on the other side of a metal walkway off to the right. He noticed her at the same time. He rushed toward them, shouting in their high chittering language. She had no idea what he was saying but it couldn't be friendly since he was raising his rifle to fire at them. She was quicker.
Elliot came with her to check on the body. She got a good disintegrator and some biogel. She followed the walkway on around to where it ended with a transporter, but it was offline. Since she didn't know where it would go she might have been hesitant to take it anyway.
They went back over the walkway and down the room toward the door at the end which lead into a short hallway. As they came out of the hallway into another room Calli noticed first the guardian robots on either side of the doorway. She hesitated, ready to fire, but they didn't budge. Inspecting them she discovered they weren't activated. She put in an activation code. They now worked for her. They took off down the room toward the door at the end where she could hear the high pitched alien language which quickly changed to high pitched alien screams, the firing of weapons, and the crash of the robots hitting the floor. Apparently they weren't very sturdy.
Calli advanced into the room and peered out the glass wall on one side. A room contained a number of pods. Since the room they were in seemed to be a pod filling station she assumed the pods were occupied by wasteland creatures of one kind or another. She went to the other side of the room and found a similar set up. There were controls readily available and her Pip-boy indicated she could activate them. Doors at the end of the room opened into the pod areas so anything she freed could easily come after them. She decided not to.
They went down the next hall into the next room. Elliot glanced through the glass wall into a side room and let out a scream of outrage.
"That's my men in there", he shouted, running back and forth along the glass enclosure, trying to open one of the doors into the surgery area. Alien scientists were in the process of dissecting the three men laid out on tables in various states of thawing.
Suddenly one of the doors flew open. Elliot stormed into the room firing wildly at the unarmed scientists. Calli followed quickly. By the time she had checked all the men the aliens were all dead.
"I'm sorry, Elliot", she said. "There's nothing we can do for them. They're all dead."
"We can kill every last one of these alien bastards", Elliot snarled. Calli didn't respond to this as she knew just how he felt. "These aren't all of us that were taken", he growled. " Come on, we have to find the others."
Elliot lead the way through the only other door. Since Calli had tried the door they had entered through and found it had locked behind them, this was the only way to go. They passed into a room with storage pods in it. Soldiers occupied the two pods in the room.
"This is the rest of my men. Wait!", Elliot ordered as Calli started to activate a control. "If you release them now they'll die for sure. Let me look at this for a minute."
Calli waited. She wasn't the one in a hurry. Elliot was talking to himself as he moved from one console to the next checking settings and readings.
"They've been injected with a number of substances", he said finally. "I can't save them. What I can do is release them and let them die fighting. Or I can just leave them and these bastards will cut them up, but they'll never know what happened to them. I don't know what to do. If I let them out they're not going to live very long."
"They're soldiers, aren't they?", Calli asked grimly. "Personally I'd rather go down taking out my enemy than let them cut me into pieces."
"You're right", Elliott agreed. "Give me a minute."
He fiddled with some dials and settings. The pods opened and the soldiers stepped out. Elliot filled them in on what had happened to them.
"Come on. We have aliens to kill and a ship to take", he said. The soldiers followed him down the hall to the next room.
The large room was open on both sides with just railings dividing it from the floor below. On either side row upon row of large storage units rose from the floor below to the ceiling above. Stairwells lead down to the bottom floor. The soldiers wasted no time. They stormed down the stairwells to engage the warriors guarding the units. Calli leaned over the rail to study the situation.
She could see two pods on the ground floor on this side. Controls by the stairwell indicated they could open the pods. She went to the other side of the room and stared down. There were two more pods there with the corresponding controls up top. She went back across just in time to join in the battle Elliott was engaged in. There were more warriors on the bottom floor but Calli could see the soldiers lying dead on the stairwell.
She activated the pods. She wasn't even surprised when super mutant overlords stepped out. The alien warriors were though. The high pitched language became shrill screams as they engaged the mutants. Calli hurried over to the other side and activated those.
"Calli!" Elliot's scream had her hastening back. One of the mutants was heading up the stairs.
"Run!", she yelled, indicating the hallway. Elliot ran. Calli followed, pulling out bottle cap mines and hurling them down as she ran. The satisfying explosions were interrupted by the sound of gunfire as Elliot engaged more warriors. Calli hastened forward, jerking out her rifle.
By the time they had cleaned out the remaining warriors they found themselves in the generator room. Elliot stood guard while Calli activated the controls and went around shutting down all the coolant coils. They hurried into the room opposite to avoid the shrapnel from the impending explosion. Once the generator heated sufficiently it blew with an impressive display of power.
Calli looked around. The transport matrix at their feet had come online. Since there was no going back she shrugged at Elliot and stepped into it.
The room phased out around them, then phased back in. Only it wasn't the same room. They were standing on the transportation pad Calli had first noticed when they entered the cryo lab. They had only to go down the short hall back to the engineering core of the ship where the others were waiting.
"Yay! You did it ! Only two more to go", Sally exclaimed in delight. Paulson congratulated them but Somah was less impressed.
"I need to get some rest and something to eat before I take on any more. Somah, you know something about robots and computers. How do you feel about taking on the Robot Assembly area?"
"About the way you feel about it I expect but it's gotta be done. We'll go in together. You don't happen to have any laxatives do you?", Somah asked.
"Uh, no, why?", Calli asked suspiciously.
"Because it'll make it easier when we shit ourselves", Somah answered, laughing as she walked off. Calli stared at the woman. And people thought she was weird.
Calli took Somah when she went into the Robot Assembly area and took Paulson when she took out the generator in the hangar. They proved to be resourceful. Somah especially had knowledge of computers that Calli found exceptionally useful. She had taken a robot control device off one of the warriors in the Robot Assembly area. Calli was going to need it.
With all the generators blown Calli had to go outside the ship to activate the device that would allow them access to the upper levels of the ship. The alien captain had finally figured out something was going on and activated a death ray. Stopping it would be up to Calli since only one space suit was available. She would have to go alone.
It didn't really take that long to find and activate the panels that allowed her to transport to the upper reaches of the ship. Finding and deactivating the death ray required more fire power and resourcefulness to keep from getting killed but was finally accomplished. By the time she reached the bridge Calli was getting exhausted.
She had succeeded in activating the transportation pads and her team quickly joined in the battle on the bridge. Calli was successful in taking the ship but not without cost. Paulson was lost in the final battle. She took his gun and hat as a reminder of him. They would go on her wall with other reminders of those lost in the battle for the wasteland.
The job now was to organize and reprogram. Somah was taking enough of the booty to make her rich and returning to the wasteland. She wasn't planning on staying there. Calli had told her about the richer land to the south and she was going to take her wealth to the southern continents.
Sally was spending a lot of time with the Samurai, teaching him English. He seemed quite taken with the precocious blonde girl. Calli was glad as she had seen him take down half a dozen armed warriors with that sword. She didn't have to worry about Sally getting into trouble quite as much with the Samurai by her side. There were still plenty of the warriors scattered about the ship and she was sure Sally would be eagerly investigating every nook and cranny.
Elliot decided to remain on the ship since it had been 200 years since he had been on the earth. It was totally different and he felt there was nothing there for him now. Calli hoped he would find something here, especially when she started sending intelligent, attractive young women scientists to study the ship. For now Calli would leave him in charge. He agreed to keep the ship for her.
Calli could hardly believe she had been fighting her way through the spaceship for over two weeks. Even with her Pip-boy translation matrix another week was spent in learning the computers and reprogramming the robots and aliens. She was almost surprised when she checked her Pip-boy and realized there were only 4 days left until the festival. She had to find Hawk and go home. She didn't want to disappoint the kids.