Click! Clack! Click! Clack!

The noise of the keyboard became prominent once the room had filled with an atmosphere. The entire facility had not but that was more because there were breaches on multiple decks. He had already sealed those decks and was now making sure everything else was functioning.

He was right about there being automated defenses. Laser turrets to be exact. He was not sure about how good they were but they were good enough for him. Which was why the second thing he did was have the facility recognize the ship that his squad had hobbled together as a friendly ship.

The facility had a primitive artificial intelligence running in the background. It had been dormant for years but now that it was running all of its systems were functioning. He then had to go through everything to make sure nothing in the facility would kill them.

"Can I go explore now?" Shilla asked mostly out of sheer boredom. She had been standing and watching him type for the last hour. She could have stayed but she was asking more because she wanted some form of conflict or interaction at least.

"Sure, in fact go to this hangar and open the door for the others to land the ship. Apparently the hangars are on closed systems as well." Jace explained as he checked the last of the facilities. "Follow the flickering lights." He told her as she walked out of the destroyed door.

He still had to go through and flag a bunch of stuff that he would need to check later. From minor damage to items marked as occupied, filled or other irregularities that the facilities artificial intelligence flagged. "Cain, I am sending Shilla to open a hangar door. I just sent you the hangar door number using the facilities systems. Look for some external indication of the hangar door."

"Understood. Crystal is awake now. But K is still out cold. He wants to move his mech around. Apparently he can tell the enhancements he obtained are very much influential on his mech." Cain explained, "but I wanted to wait until you gave permission."

Jace grunted, "give me a moment." He quickly redirected his attention and added Crystal’s mech to the list of ships that were allowed near the facility. "Okay he is good now, have him scout the nearby area while he is flexing his mech. This facility has jack shit in terms of sensors."

"Understood." Cain answered as the ship moved from its spot before suddenly a mech emerged from a storage container on the side and slipped into space before unfolding completely.

After the mech unfolded it flew away and Jace raised an eyebrow as the windows in the control room shuddered as it flew past. He then shook his head and focused on the console before him. Going back to the sparse bit of information he could figure out from the schematic. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Just like he thought, if there was some form of information or data storage that was not just the basic system, it had been fried. He was even having to populate a map using a schematic to figure out what was in each room. Marking most of them with a question mark.

"Okay! I am here." Shilla declared. "Tell me how to make these ancient computers work." She asked quickly a moment later. Jace had to resist rolling his eyes.

"Well for one, you need to hit the power button to turn them on. It should look like a circle with a line going through the top of it. The one I am looking at here is even a different color." Jace explained as he pulled up the status of the station she was at. It was still showing as off.

Then after a minute the station showed that power was being funneled to it. "Okay, I think I turned it on. Now what."

Jace shook his head as he sent something to the station. He could not influence the station but he could send a message to it. "I just sent you something, open it up. In order to move the cursor-"

"The message is not opening. I am pressing the screen and- oh! I just broke the screen." Shilla admitted and Jace nearly burst into laughter as the power showed the station malfunctioned before power stopped being funneled to it. "Umm..."

Jace took a deep breath. "There is another station. Power that one on and this time, keep in mind that the screens are not touch based. In order to interact with the screen besides typing, you will need to use something called a mouse which directs a cursor that will appear on the screen." Jace explained through breaths as he held back his laughter. "The cursor is shaped like a white arrow."

"Okay. Push the power button." Shilla began narrating herself as power was funneled to the new station. "It is on, moving the cursor. Where am I bringing- woah that is primitive."

Jace quickly sent the message to that station. "I just sent it. There should be a box or rectangle with a ’V’ in it. You will slick that and it will open the message." Jace explained.

"Okay, why is this stuff so..."

"Primative?" Jace asked with a chuckle.

"Well... yeah." Shilla confirmed. "Okay I opened the message. What am I doing with this?"

"Those are directions to open and close the hangars." Jace informed her as he saw that Cain managed to get in position just outside of the hangar.

"We are holding a position just outside the door. There are markings but they are faded." Cain informed him.

"Noted." Jace nodded. "Shilla, the first thing you should do is open the application marked with something that looks like two rectangles."

"Okay... found it. What next?"

"Then you will type in that line labeled step two in the message that I sent." Jace explained as he watched the window with the various rocks floating past.

"I opened it and typed in that code. But nothing is happening."

"Press Enter."

Shilla went quiet and a moment later he could see as power began being moved through the entire hanger. "Oh... now power is running through the hangar. I think I understand now. Next I need to move power using this code and then- success!"

Jace watched as more power was distributed and then as the ship flew into the hangar. "Okay, there are some nearby rooms that I do not know the function of. Do you want to head there?"

"Sure." Shilla answered. "It looks like they are landing. Also was that an atmospheric barrier that appeared?"

"Yup." Jace answered with a chuckle. Looks like this facility developed a version of atmospheric barriers. In fact there might have been a lot more throughout the galaxy but I am sure you already realized..."

"The technology was lost in this galaxy." Shilla snickered. "How does that happen so often with humans?" He saw as power was distributed to an unlabeled room and knew she had entered it. "I mean how many eras of devolution have you had?"

"It is usually because of religion or fear. But you are right, humans have a tendency to fall back because of paranoia or faith." Jace began explaining.

"You are forgetting the other forms of blind belief that humans have developed." A new voice jumped in over the communication channel. "Like just intentional ignorance and overreliance on governmental entities."

"Miss Hex, I will throw you in a metal cell and remove anything you can use." Jace clicked out in annoyance. They were using the facility’s communications making it a lot less difficult to hack into.

"There is no point. But you are right. The humans in this galaxy have been developing and then reverting back for centuries. I have found so much evidence of this that it was disorientating." Catherine explained. "I mean, I have been giving them back the technology they developed for some time now."

"Gladiator, the room I am in now appears to be some type of electrical components storage." Shilla explained, "I am moving to the next room." He watched on monitors as power was switched off from one room and moved to another one.

"Okay it is marked." Jace declared. "Cain once you get the ship locked down feel free to send the others out to explore. But pick two to lock down West and Catherine. We will find a place to keep them locked down." Jace began ordering. "Then I need you at this hangar." He sent a message directly to Cain through a more private channel. "There is a sensor reading that is showing a smaller vessel that we could possibly use to go get more of the stabilization stuff."

"Understood. Make sure you check on Crystal." Cain pointed out as Jace watched the power distribution work.

Jace switched. "Crystal, how are our nearby areas looking?"

"It looks like we have a bunch of rare metals and nothing much else." Crystal answered. "Although it appears as though the nearby mining colony is getting curious."