Itxaro had been playing detective.

Well, warp detective anyways. She was scrambling around the ship like mad, interviewing key crew, running diagnostics on ship systems, and begrudgingly consulting the ship's AI to piece together what exactly had gone wrong with the Jo when they left Norwegian airspace. Her task was made even more difficult by constant power fluctuations and her unfamiliarity with the drive. It boiled down to this: alien and human tech don't play well with eachother. 

The doctor was now discussing her findings with wounded lead engineer Zhao Jiayin, the two women lounging at the Jo's docking rampway as they waited for the foreign sun to rise and their shifts to begin. They'd tried smoking in the open air of the new planet but quickly discovered their cigarettes ignited into flames, rather than gently smoldered. "I've been looking for reasons to quit anyways," Itxaro said as she flicked the burning butt to the dirt, where it reduced to cinders and blew away in the ashen soil.

The conversation, carried out in Mandarin, had wandered from the Jo's warp drive to home, perhaps inspired by the Earth-like landscape that stretched before them. In truth, there wasn't much like the untouched marshland on Earth now; most of it had been stripped for resources or polluted beyond repair. Almost all "natural" spaces back home were in fact manmade ecosystems, attempts to repair the damage done by decades of abuse. It was fitting that mankind's first step on a habitable alien world resulted in several hundred acres going up in flames. Judging from her calculations, Itharo determined that the planet had gotten off easy, too. Exiting warp in atmosphere meant a good chance there would be super-relativistic displacement of volumes of space, which could have a catastrophic, atomic-scale impact on any matter that got in the shield's way. Either the warp bubble had degraded slowly enough, or the Yenge's drive had some sort of fail-safe to prevent them from destroying every planet they exited warp next to. They'd been lucky.

The pair of engineers discussed the planet's similarities to their home countries; Zhao pointed out the wetlands that were reminiscent of the Zoigê Marsh, while Ibarra spotted trees in the mountains not unlike the Caribbean pine. Their ecological study was cut short when Itxaro caught sight of a smoldering mass floating through the sky. At first, she assumed it was some burning detritus floating in the breeze, but the shape moved slowly, and with too much purpose. A drone. Itxaro and Zhao exchanged a look of pure disbelief before they scrambled into the metal hull of the Jo.

As if on cue, Commander Kadıoğlu's voice came through their comms systems. Itxaro didn't need to be told twice. Somehow, whoever had attacked the ship in Norway had followed them, and were here to finish the job. None of it made sense, but with adrenaline filling her system, Itxaro didn't have much use for sense. She dashed for the armory and briefly eyed the racks of heavy weaponry before grabbing a wheel gun and cramming some spare speedloaders into her overall pockets. Revolvers were easy to use, and the large caliber meant you probably wouldn't need to hit your target twice. Plus, it made you feel cool. 

"Oh, why not?" 

She also picked up a light carbine and two spare magazines, feeling like some supersoldier loaded up for a last stand. If she thought hard enough, she could just recall the single firearms lesson she'd received in school where they loaded and shot an ancient, wood-furnished gun. The sleek rifle in her hands now was a far cry from that derelict AK though. She jammed a magazine inside and hoped for the best, ready enough to confront whatever danger was outside.

A new voice hissed over her comms. "Shuttle bay, shuttle bay!" the woman whispered. [i]Vigdis.[/i] 

Itxaro dashed from the armory and around the corner, almost running into a large man already peering into the shuttle bay. She recognized him as Jack Mallory, the ship's X.O. "Jesus, Mallory, am I happy to see you," Itxaro said, immediately shoving the carbine into his hands. She remembered from his dossier that he had served in the military, so he was much better off with it than her. [i]Why the hell did I grab that in the first place? Stupid![/i]

"What's the plan Mallory? Are they in the shuttle bay? Is Vigdis OK? We gonna plug these fuckers? Can you believe these [i]pendejos[/i] followed us all this way?" She fired off a flurry of questions, running a hand through her white hair as she drew the revolver from her overalls. Her body was pressed against the bulkhead, not peering through the airlock for fear of getting shot in the face. She knew Vigdis was in the shuttle bay, but she couldn't hear any guns going off. Itxaro ventured a peak through the window and slammed back against the bulkhead as if shots had whizzed by.

"Oh."