A few minutes for the frontline soldiers to catch their breath had gone by with the snap of a finger, and eventually the group began to rise from the ground.
"Vice commander sir, they are in perfect condition except for being exhausted, of course," Aleah said to Ridge after she had checked everyone for injuries.
Hearing this, Ridge was glad. "Okay, good, I'm impressed you guys managed to come out of that fight unscathed," he said while smiling.
Falley, being the quieter one, didn't really reply except for smiling slightly and nodding, but the other two, George and Sonny, smiled widely and let out a couple of laughs; it was mostly George, though.
"Seeing as you can laugh and smile, we should be good. Let's go and find out how many of us are left," Ridge said, which of course prompted the others to become a bit more solemn. After all, the crewmates, while not buddy-buddy with every person on the ship, were still basically a family living under one roof. It was already saddening to have to kill the infected ones, but if there was a visual presentation of how many were left and it wasn't many, it would only lead to a more gloomy and dark mood.
With everything gathered up and now full of energy, Ridge walked ahead to the door. There weren't any cameras, which meant if there were people inside, it meant they were going to be caught unaware no matter what. Thinking for a little bit while standing outside the door, he contemplated how to open it. Rather, to be more exact, he was trying to anticipate the reactions of those on the inside. It would be very bad luck after all if they had managed to fight their way through all those zombies just to hurt each other when the time came.
Fortunately for Ridge, the door abruptly opened on its own, leaving him without a choice in the matter.
Startled, the others and he abruptly held up their weapons; the view they were met with was another group of humans, the same as themselves, startled and holding up their own makeshift weapons.
"Vice commander?" A man of small stature came out from the crowd and smiled. Recognizing the crowd as his own, Ridge let out a sigh and smiled, gesturing for the others to put their weapons down while nodding to the smaller man.
"Come in quick; it's a relief that you're okay at least," The small man let out a heavy breath that seemed as if he had been released from some kind of pressure.
As soon as the others all moved to the bridge, they began crowding around Ridge and asked one question after another.
"Sir, do you know what happened," "What do we do now sir?" "Will everything be alright?"
Question after question sounded out and Ridge was slightly overwhelmed. "Enough!" he shouted out while raising his hand to hush the crowd.
Hearing this, the others quickly quieted. Ridge, seeing this, nodded. "Back to your spots. Does anyone know what happened to the commander?"
The crowd moved back to sitting and making space for everyone else to move into the bridge. Luckily, it was a relatively large space, so it was just able to comfortably fit the number of people that were present.
The small man quickly came up to Ridge once again, "Sir the commander ended up dying from one of the infected. He was outside with the group of infected that you killed."
Startled he felt a slight sadness in his chest; Commander Arthur was one of his closest friends. "Your name was Berkay, right? The junior navigator?" Ridge asked while making sure to mask his emotions and move on from the abrupt news.
"Yes sir," Berkay responded.
"Understood, your job is to find out where we are, I don't see any planets in sight from this window so we must have gone off course," Ridge ordered after organizing his thoughts. The colony planet they were assigned to go to, while still far, wasn't very far when he had returned to his own quarters to watch shows. In fact, the planet itself, while still a small dot from their own views, was at the very least visible to the naked eye.
Their ship, while slightly bulky in appearance, was actually rather fast in speed when using its full power from the compact fusion-fission hybrid reactor scaled down from the colossal ship in the Federation that can carry a crew of around 10,000. Meaning it would take less than a month to get from one planet to the others within the Coro System.
"On it sir," Berkay saluted and moved towards one of the navigation tables that held all of their star maps.
"You, you're Yahya right?" Ridge said while pointing out another member.
"Yes, I am," Yahya quickly responded after being pointed out, "Good, I remember you were the recruiter, I want you to quickly make a list of everyone here and our numbers. this will help our plans once everything is settled," Ridge ordered.
Before he could issue another order, Yahya quickly called out to him, "I already have the list you want in my mind, at least, including your group. There are approximately fifty-five of us left, of course, accounting for the fact that there are no other survivors; this should be all of us. Twenty-four are soldiers, from what I remember looking at your group that came here there are five plus four, so nine engineers in total including caroline, and of course the navigator and I the recruiter, as well as you the vice commander, now commander since the previous one died, leaves a total of about nineteen people left that are used primarily for labor or transporting cargo, oh minus three medical staff/scientist, so sixteen laborers. I'll make sure to actually get it written out and sent to you, of course."
"Excellent Job, then; just make sure it gets to me," Ridge responded with a hint of surprise written on his face.
"It's my job, sir; I wouldn't be here if I wasn't good at it," Yayha smiled. With everything much more organized Ridge quickly came up with a plan.
"Okay, listen up everyone," After shouting and making sure everyone was paying attention he began, "To be frank, I don't know where we are." The crowd of people immediately began to murmur, but before they could fall into a panic, Ridge once again raised his hand. "But that doesn't mean we won't be fine. The ship has enough supplies to last at least a month, and the engine room has been, for the most part, repaired and inspected before we came here, so barring any actual attack on it, that can last ten to twenty years. I am not sure where we are exactly, but the navigator is taking care of that. What I want the rest of you to do including soldiers and engineers is spread throughout the ship and begin cleaning up.
You can move plenty of the debris into the cargo rooms as they have space even with the rooms being full of minerals and whatnot. A clean ship will lead to a much better evaluation of what needs fixing and also gives you a task to clear your mind. I won't speak here and spout motivation, especially since I am not good at that, but I want to be realistic here, so until we can find out where we are let's make sure we don't die from the ship being mismanaged first."
Ridge spoke for a long while and after making sure that he got his point across, he looked into the eyes of everyone looking up at him from the commander's platform.
"Move out and get to work, also if you find anything make sure to let us know," before the crowd could get up fully he remembered something and let out a quick shout, "Speaking of which make sure to remove the infected bodies and put them into an escape pod to blow up, were not sure what these things are so I would rather have them off the ship. Also, make sure to wear gloves just in case."
The crowd began moving out, although they weren't particularly happy and motivated by Ridge's speech it at least stabilized them and they began to make an effort to clean and repair the ship. A monotone task like this was bound to calm them.
Sitting down in the commander's seat Ridge let out a sigh and rubbed his forehead. Coming up to him Caroline patted his shoulder. "At least everything is stabilizing. Once we find out where we are, people will be much happier," she said.
"Of course they will, but we still lost plenty of crew members so there's not much to be happy about," Ridge responded. "Anyways, there's no use thinking about these things. We need to make sure everything is being taken care of," he said while getting up.
Caroline seeing him get up nodded, "Indeed." Following behind him, the pair walked towards the navigator, who was hard at work on the right side of the bridge where a holographic table was placed, the table itself displaying many maps that were recorded in the database of the H.C Heart Battleship.