Teige, Comms Room.
The moment the humans arrived at the loading bay with their rescue in tow, Teige moved back deep into the ship, specifically the Comms Room.
Teige pressed a button on the Comms Console and the screen turned on. White noise was all that could be seen until she punched in a series of numbers - 273602. Then the white noise suffered a distortion, and after some seconds, the screen turned black. A single message appeared:'Could not connect.'
Teige swore under her breath, balled up her fists and input the number again. This time the screen fizzled and a face appeared. Another Foreas. This one had a dark green skin tone and short, fleshy leaves. "Tans'kun na Bioy," he said with a salute, "Exploronaut 360, Teige, you're alive?"
"I am, have a hundred years really passed?" Teige asked.
"Yes, Teige. The Priests declared you dead to the whole Institution, you'll have to visit them sometime soon to clear that up."
"That's the least of my worries right now, Waige."
"Why did you cut comms for a hundred years? Other Exploronauts tried to find you and communicate with you, but the ship was untrackeable and nobody ever accepted the hails." Waige asked, raising his right eyebrow and frowning. He seemed worried, but also curious.
"I don't know, really. Some kind of human super soldier woke us up from cryosleep a few hours ago, I'd never seen a human like that. She said there were fifty other super soldiers and that Humanity was going extinct. Is this last bit true, Waige?"
"We haven't had much communication with the humans since you went missing --The Priests believed their government did something to you-- but we did keep tabs on them. Sometime in the last few decades, their population started dramatically decreasing," Waige hesitated, a gesture that Teige noticed, "Many species have started to take over abandoned human colonies by now--Free buildings and colonization efforts, after all."
"Did we take over any of the colonies?"
"... Not entirely," Waige said, "but an Exploronaut task team recently entered human space, they are to settle down on one of the empty colonies to research the possible extinction of Humanity."
"Could you patch them through to me, Waige?"
"Of course, Teige. Hold on for a second." Teige gave him a big smile, and he returned one in kind. After a moment, the chat with Waige cut off and the screen changed to show the face of a female Foreas. Brown skin and long, thin leaves.
"Tans'kun na Bioy," the foreas saluted, "Exploronaut 367, Roi. Everyone thought you were dead, 360. We're glad you're still with us."
Teige saluted back, "Tans'kun na Bioy. I'm glad you people are glad, and you can call me Teige. I'm calling you because I heard you were in human space as of now. Is that right, Roi?"
"It is, we are near one of the remaining population centers. They're not letting us land, though."
"Well, in that case," Teige started pressing buttons on the console and soon she had sent a message to Roi, "I just sent you my coordinates. Come pick me up, I've got a human super soldier here who seems to know what's up. After we interview her, I'm sure we can group up. We get our research and they get to find out more about their extinction."
Roi thought about it for a moment. She seemed hesitant, even to the point that she brought a finger up to her lips, frown clear on her face. She turned around and called for someone not seen in the transmission, "What do you think, Koi?"
"Um... Sure. We're not making much progress here either way." the unseen foreas said, and with that Roi turned to Teige and nodded.
"We'll pick you up," Roi reviewed the coordinates, "it'll take us a few hours to get there, you're not that far from us."
"Great, Roi. Thank you for picking me up." Teige smiled and winked at her, then cut off the transmission with her, which brought her back to Waige's. "Thanks for the help, Waige. You're a good operator." She said.
Waige grinned and rubbed his neck, "I'm glad you're still with us, Teige."
Teige smiled and formed a heart with her hands, then cut off the comms and erased her ID from the comms' history.