Chapter Two; The Captain..

Colours of the rainbow surrounding his figure, blending with no limits to the possibilities forming images and crude parts of what would have been charts and graphics, however they changed and altered too quickly to allow anyone to record them or even take note to what they had resulted, but his eyes were tightly closed. His body suspended with nothing but the lack of gravity in the large sphere, his right hand against his face, the index and middle finger pressed against his temple as the other hand was across his chest held up by his arm holding his hand to his face.

His strong bold chisel cut jaw looked like it was airbrushed with small briskets bits of brown dust, his chin consumed with a chin patch of hair that started under the chin and moved towards his lip but stopped just as the chin turned to the front of his face, leaving a small crest moon under his bottom lip. Both lips were average, with the bottom half a fingers thickness and the top half of that. They parted for only a breif moment as small pink tongue slipped out sliding along the bottom lip as he pulled it in with the lip then sighed pushing them tightly together like he was ready to kiss someone, but that was only from the small set of frustration of the current images around him. His figure was narrow, built well toned and medium build, his skin was a soft bronze shade, like warm coffee mixed with several grams of milk, giving it that rich creamy look.

He wore black satin pants, thick with lays of more layers of fabric but it was only the satin on the outside you could see, small pockets filled the empty spaces there were just plain, each one filled with something ideally unimportant at any moment unless that current moment demanded something that would normally be useless. The pants were held tightly around his things but allowed his crotch to breath and stretch when it needed it. Moving towards the knees and down however it loosened up until it found it's way to his choice in footwear, where two lips on either side of his pants slipped under his boots and clicked into place allowing for his pants to stay in place. His choice of shirt was a dull black with light gray stripes moving upwards towards the collar. A large thick black harness was strapped over his shirt all connecting to a two rounded ports, the front one sat over his chest just where his heart was located, the one of the back was spaced on the back, like an mirror sitting right over the back of his heart. The shirt had no sleeves ending with a thin collar just beyond his armpits. His hands hand moved, both now rested on either side of his face, covering in a thin leather glove that had belts strapped around the wrist to keep the gloves from slipping off. His fingers pushed into each temple rubbing clockwise in hopes that this would allow erase the small and quickly growing headache he had gained since being afloat for the pass four hours.

His narrow eyebrows a soft copper colour matching his hair that had been cut short and spiked to point upwards where the sides had been shaved completely off, leaving about an inch of hairless skin, but they weren't completely featureless. Small tribal markings raced from one his sideburns and around his ear to follow the path where he found no hair until they met the other ear and around stopping at the second side burn. With eyes suddenly opening, the dull colours brighten forcing him blink rapidly afew times until they had adjusted to the light, the iris were a soft forest green with small highlights of lime, they contracted and expanded with a second annoyed sigh expelling from his lips.

[How much longer are we going to screw around with my pre-set functions?] he thought, his mind openly addressed the thought too all open systems as they soon, infact instantly found their way into the mind of a young mechanic working on the lower part of the sphere, addressing his focus on the large floor panel that had been removed and replaced with open circuits and pico fibers connected to small processes working at 10x^(375), in simpler turns it would have been able to process data almost 2,500 times faster then computers could have in the last twenty first centuries. This allowed data to be streamed though a large biomatrix computer, since normal non-organic computers would have had trouble processing the data; no doubt they could do it, and maybe in time they could last a while but sooner or later they would crash or form errors in the data, with biomatrix there was a very little chances that errors could aooear. Infact largest details pointed that the rate of an error being processed by a biomatrix, was almost 1/billionx10x^(1002), ofcourse there was a chance but that was enough proof that all new ships would soon allowed to start with the new biomatrix computers, until then the Arc would be the only one in the system that would 'officially' have it.

"Sorry Captain, but we need to make sure that the system is running at 100% stress and still last a duration of 5 hours, if she can handle that, then we can finish this sooner, but she can't then we gotta go ov-" his old grumbling voice sounded like shards of rough glass stabbing into his ears with each word he spat out into his mic that unfortunately for the Captain was like someone yelling into his ears, except he could hear it within the core of his mind.

[Go over the whole systems, I know but when are you going to start stressing her data flow?].

"Sorry?" the old man said, standing up as both his brows cocked up, almost like he was shocked. His hand gripped the small reading instrument tightly that just hung by his hip before he pulled it up to his sight taking another look at the reading.

"Ah crud, the meter is broken.." he said, smacking it once over like as if the magicaly touch of his anger and his brute force would make the meter read the actual readings that the Captain was seeing, and for a moment it was as the numbers that had been displaying dropped from ninety nine point eight to a pathetic zero point zero zero one, clearly the meter was broken as it then displayed a set of words saying;

-[SYSTEM ERROR]-
-[RECONFIG ME PLEASE]-

His fingers pulled the meter free for the large bundle of cables dropping it on one of the cover panels looking up towards the Captain. At now he hadn't noticed how high the Captain actually was, it forced his head to tilt further back, the floating man, painlessly bored was floating several floors off the center , placing himself dead center of the sphere from all angels.

"I need to get another meter from my kit, I'm going to connected the system to a tester until I get back okay, it'll control the flow of data and test it on different levels while testing your functions and connection power to the ship, so if you feel like your going to be sick, just throw up, the controlled will shut down, okay?" his hand dropped the worthless meter, it's bright yellow cover maybe it alluring to watch it just for entertainment, but it as useless to use and something that was bright and broken was not something the old man wanted to have.

[Yeah sure, just hurry up, we were meant to be done an hour ago..] his thoughts pushed into the mans headset, but the man was already out of his and heading down the long narrow catwalk towards the large twin doors, slid open with the cold deadly silence of an assassin, opening faster then you could see before he walked passed and the doors closed tightly again.

The controlled went active and began feeding the systems with millions and millions of instant images and lines of repeating data, testing it on different levels, first it was a simple testing the systems controls and surrounding sensors then it expanded to long range sensors and probes until it reached it's limit and that's where the troubles began.

His hands clutched his hand tightly, his legs pulled up into his chest as if moving into a fetal position where his back arched forward, his teeth grinding hard with his eyes tightly closed. His mind was racing at the speed of light, what was just afew seconds felt like years to him, information of the ship, the people working around it, the weapons, the systems, the backup systems, the sub systems, the internal and external systems caused a sickening butterfly sensation in his gut, like each butterfly was vomiting acid while acting like suicide bombers and ramping themselves into the walls of his stomach. Slowly his body stretched out, his hands clenched tightly into a pair of heavy fists with his back arching his chest forward, until a long painful scream tore from his lunges, filling the room with red flashing lights and blinking images of the words;

-[WARNING]-

-[WARNING]-

-[WARNING]-

Over and over they flashed until it suddenly went limb, the controlled turned off as the doors slid open with a group of engineers and medics raced out, his body began to lower, floating towards the floor once more, his mind was empty now, the system had forced his mind close off even from his body, his heart didn't beat, not did his lunges breath, everything in his body just shut down, and when the medics got him, they quickly went to work reviving his lifeless corpse, small blue markers rested over his chest one in the middle, the other on his side as the sudden burst of electricity rushed through his chest forcing his heart to beat two before it did nothing, several more shots caused his heart to bet in a smooth slow pace, and just as it did his eyes tore open with his breath returning with a long hard gasp.

Sitting up his left hand gripped his chest, panting and gasping for air as he found himself in utter darkness until the flickering neon lights flashed on finally illuminating the room with a soft reddish tint and it wasn't long until that faded to a light white shine. Sweat forced it's air down his face and chest, drowning the sheets and pillow with his sweat, leaving nothing unchanged by his restless nightmare.

"Good morning Captain Tobias, the current time is five forty-two am, MCT (Mars Central Time), would you like come coffee?" he did nothing but fall back in bed with a soft sigh. The heavy robotic voice left him in peace, but only once against asked if he wanted Coffee. [Wake me in two hours, and I don't drink coffee you stupid gint..] turning himself further into the bed and pulling the thick fabric over his shoulders, pulling his legs into his chest and into a fetal position, he hoped he could fall asleep soon once more..

Morning, as it was called here on Mars, wasn't the same like it was on Earth. Earth mornings were so much more calm, much more softer and gentle. You'd wake up to the sight of the dawn gently glowing through the window with the sweet chirps of birds making their morning routine for the day. However Mars wasn't the same, infact comparing them was like trying to convince yourself a brick was like Jupiter.. it just wasn't possible.

Mornings however, as it was called here on Mars, was nothing but violent awakenings. The bright flashing from the high over hanging lights, flickering on and off in fast succession that he'd had awoken once more in a drug filled, wasteland of a nightclub. That was until the light flickered on and stayed on, forming a bright burning seal over his face and figure. His hands resting to his sides were now over his face covering his eye lids that did little to stop the lighting. His bare chest could already feel the warmth they brought to his body, having been UV lights and not standard lights, they worked just like the sun did on any sunny day on Earth. However this wasn't Earth and to be honest, no one liked them. Luckily due to complaints and constant nagging from those part of the [b]CUS[/b], the Cancer Under Scopes, all UV lights have had installed a small thin layer of some weird long named complex gel that acted against the UV rays, but it only halted a small 40% it was enough for the [b]CUS[/b], to get back on their asses and return to finding a cure for the damn virus.

Next along the long line of morning actives that were systematically activating one by one was the music, however if Noah had taken the time before going to bed to reset the radio he'd not have been scared half to death by the loud thundering bass that beams from each speaker and into his direction. Forcing him to quickly disembark from his bed and almost leap at the wall, where the radio's control panel had been placed, across the room and directly infront of the large opening curtain that exposed himself and [i]more[/i] to the poor and unlucky, or lucky, souls passing by his window. If the loud thundering music didn't catch the attention of the public, the nude man standing on the other side of the large glass would have.

His hands dropped below, quickly groping and grabbing a heavy hold of his.. bolt and nuts, before dropping to his knees where the window was not longer in view of his privates. He took that to each the panel and push the small pressure sensitive button marked with two arrows pointing inwards that signaled the curtains to close, pressing it several times forced the curtains to close instantly. Allowing him a short moment to regain his bearings before falling back. His skin touching the cold tiles hadn't effected his feet with his race across the room to turn off the radio and covering himself from the public eye, he gave himself a moment before his arms rose up into the air. From which he did a single sit up, holding himself there until his arms dropped behind him supporting his upper torso, for now he sat there, resting and trying to work out what was about toady that seemed like everything was going to go wrong...

Something told him it was going to get worse, alot worse..