Wake up. ... Wake up, fool! I already AM awake. How else did I make it over here? Until a moment ago, you didn't. I shut down combat systems a year ago. And with them down, you went dormant as well. Yes, I remember that. So where are we now? If you'll indulge me for some exposition, I will tell you, since apparently you've forgotten our mission; after all, there's only one place we can be. I just can't get enough of your exposition. Sure, alright.
About a year ago, you may recall the two of us overwhelming an alien infestation in a facility on a small icy planet. It's a moon. Hm? Moon. It's a moon. A small icy moon. It is not! Totally is. At any rate, with the bugs disposed of, you will remember my attempts to summon another craft of their own kind to come down here under the pretense of reinforcements. Well, here they are.
This is their ship? Evidently. Shouldn't it be all... alieny? This seems pretty familiar. That has been bothering me as well. Take a look on the wall opposite this terminal. ...yeah? Doesn't it remind you of something? Well, yeah, of course it does. This place does seem familiar...
I need you to explore for us. The ship's AI is currently dormant, so right now I'm not getting any sort of resistance in entering the databanks, but I can't get full access into the control routines because I don't know them, so there's going to have to be a certain amount of manual subversion of these lockouts. Right, right, I know. Explore the area, kill things. This isn't anything new to me, you know. Well, fine, know-it-all. Fine. We need to get through the door to our left. I believe it leads to a more central location in the ship, according to the information I've already found... but it's spotty, and I'm not sure what you'll have to do. Try to find some kind of manual system override chip. Maybe that will let you through. Alright, alright, I got it.
Chip's in, door's open. Now what? Well, as I've said, in order for us to get out of this compartment, we need to move to an outbound teleportation chamber. This may not be necessary in the future, once I manage to get through these lockouts, but for now that's what you'll have to look for. And it's through here? It had better be. Are you sure? Are you done asking questions? Should I be? Move.
You know, I keep seeing that emblem every now and then around this place. And I keep seeing other familiar shapes. I don't think this ship belongs to the bugs. I don't think so either. The architecture and technology is very similar to other pieces of equipment found on the ice planet-- Moon. --including that submarine that we harvested. That was not their technology either, I believe. But didn't you send a beacon out to the bugs? Why wouldn't they send one of their ships? This is one of their ships, fool. They took it from the previous owner. I guess.
I've been skimming through what I can access to see how I can help us. You know, I have a question. How did we get on board this ship? What? Well, I was dormant for the last year, right? Wouldn't something like hijacking an alien long-range teleportation station require my services too? See, I was going to get to that. Pay attention. No you weren't. Yes, I was. You see, that's the interesting thing about this ship. Rather than being a single craft, it is actually an amalgam of several much smaller craft, bound together by various connections and locking systems. For the most part, apparently, it flies as a single unit.
How completely stupid. But, see, I was right. You weren't getting to my question. Yes I was! When the ship finally arrived in local space, for whatever reason, one of the compartments was detached from the rest of the swarm and crash-landed onto the... moon. So we just boarded it? By walking through the front door, yes. Nobody tells me anything. I just told you everything! This is the sixteenth of seventeen compartments. The only way for us to get to the rest of the ship, which is still in orbit many miles away, is by means of a centralized teleportation station. There is one such outbound station fairly nearby, which will require you to break through the door I mentioned much earlier. So find that chip, and then we can move on. That's still a stupid ship design.
Good work, you clever player, you. You managed to do one of two things: 1) You got up to this terminal in-game without plugging in the chip, as you were instructed. 2) You just looked up the terminals in HEX! If it's the latter, go jump in a river, cheater. If it's the former, congratulations! I noticed this clever little subversion of my carefully-laid-out door plan when doing final testing, and I would have been glad to let you exit the level normally, except there's this problem with that uplink chip. I can't let you leave the level with the chip in your hand. It may cause trouble, and I don't want that. So, go back and finish the level normally. Good job finding this, though. I wish I had a reward for you, but I don't. There's plenty of other tangible secrets on this level already. Go find those instead.
Phew! What, exhausted from all of the butchering you've done already? You've slain a paltry hundred or so of the infestation's minions, and you're already tired? What, having a hard time waking up? Feeling remorse for all of the blood-letting? What kind of weakling are you? This is a terrible lapse of mental conditioning. No, no. That was a long staircase. I'm tired! ...How can you even get tired? I'm tired! Shut up! Anyway, this is the outbound teleportation center. I've already re-routed all of the teleporters to the nearest compartment: the fourteenth.
What are you trying to find here? Well, our mission here is threefold. The first is to find the origin of this ship -- as you may have noticed, the peculiar similarities within the design are continuing to trigger my deja vu subroutines. Alright. The second one is to escape that horrid icy ball of death, and by extension, that wretched infestation of insects. We've already failed at that, but go on. And the third reason... well, I imagine you're already feeling the hunger, yes? It's been a year... and I drained the last of the spare energy in that installation a while ago. We need sustenance, and this ship, though derelict, is still flooded with it for us. We could feed ourselves for a hundred years unmolested.
I don't like molestation. Nor do I. So I suggest we continue trying to solve our problems. I agree. Let's. Take any of the teleporters. They will all go to the same place.
