The source of the beeps was an odd device. A small metal platform stood underneath a tall overhang from which several streams of white light were emitted. The beams extended down to the platform and encircled a motionless, hovering figure.
The beeps increased in pitch and then suddenly died. The figure floated to the floor and the light beams vanished. The wall that held up the overhang seemed to release a brief gust of cold smoke into the chamber as the shape landed on the platform, blocking it from view.
Soft breathing seemed to be emitted from the fog as it encircled the figure. The breaths started slow and then picked up in pace to the speed of normal inhaling and exhaling. A long yawn pierced the silence of the room.
A bare human foot with a thick purple band around the ankle stepped down from the platform and out of the fog, soon followed by another one. The smoke began to dissipate as sighs and the creaking of bones were heard. The silhouetted figure's arms rose above its head and then moved in front of it. The two visible legs spread away from each other amidst more groans within the fog.
With one more yawn, a mysterious female voice spoke.
"How long has it been?"
The question didn't seem to be directed at anything in particular.
"I'm so stiff," the voice yawned again. The smoke was rapidly dissipating.
It continued: "Something is not right... it feels like the satellite is no longer moving. It almost feels like... it's landed."
The figure seemed to jump as its eyes adjusted to the sudden lighting given off by the machine it was in.
"In fact... the satellite doesn't look like it's all together anymore either."
The fog cleared and revealed the speaker: a tall young woman with a firm build, long bluish-purple hair and a strange tan outfit. She shook her head as she scanned the wrecked room.
Similar platforms and overhangs littered the chamber. Each was either smashed, empty, active but with some strange corpse inside or functional with an odd-looking creature 'sleeping' within it.
"Why have I been awakened?" the woman pondered aloud. "Have both the ship and its satellites found a home world?"
She stretched her limbs again and began to walk through the chamber to a peculiar metallic doorway. The portal was slightly ajar and somewhat damaged.
Her gentle footsteps made no noise as she strode across the silver metal floor into the next chamber. Inside were a number of motionless mechanical shapes. Some were humanoid, some resembled certain animals and others were totally alien in form. A great percentage of them showed some sign of damage. A few in the far corner seemed to be moving slowly around, waving spark-emitting limbs about in slow arcs.
"There were a lot more cyborgs in here before I went to sleep... if the satellite has indeed crashed, perhaps they were destroyed or scattered by the impact," the woman spoke as she approached the active automatons. Each of them consented peacefully as she deactivated them once again via a set of remote controls embedded in one of the nearby walls.
She walked back to the first room when she noticed that one wall of the cyborg room was completely gone... replaced by the stone projections that seemed to have been broken away from the cave around it.
"Something is definitely not right... the machines were supposed to remain inactive or run out of power if they were left on."
In the room she had awakened in, the woman took a look around the chamber once again to see which organic creatures had survived what apparently WAS a crash on some world. As before, most were either sleeping peacefully or dead in their 'light tubes'. Some showed markings of being stabbed or disturbed in some manner as they floated silently in the devices.
The woman walked toward the machine that she had woken up in and looked at the machinery around the platform. A small dark display read:
CRYOGENIC HIBERNATION: FULLY FUNCTIONAL
CURRENT STATUS: DEACTIVATED
She paced to the front of the platform and noticed a name etched in steel letters upon the base of the platform. It read: GUARDIAN KHALIDAH
The woman recognized the name... her name. Memories of the past seemed to come back into her consciousness as she stood there.
She remembered a horrible black and purple beast... a force of unspeakable darkness... which had possessed her long ago and forced her to do evil acts. She recalled that the enchantment had been lifted when the young royal and his party defeated the creature... but it swore to return.
The female humanoid then remembered the strange mission that she had requested to atone for her possession-induced sins... to sleep in the satellite with all the dangerous organics and cyborgs as a guardian. The most destructive beings on the main ship had been sealed away on the satellite... and she joined them willingly as she WAS one of those such creatures.
She never truly understood just why it was desired that the organics and cyborgs were put into cryogenic sleep and safe deactivation like her. Why didn't the citizens of the main ship just exile them to the satellite and let them peacefully die or run out of power? Her mission was all she had and she couldn't question it, so she accepted it back then.
The woman looked around once again and noticed that all the still sleeping creatures had been disturbed in one way or another. They had either simply been moved about or sported a wound or two upon their bodies.
She took a few more steps and noticed something queer about the metal floor beneath her feet. Layers of dust were there, but they were not very thick (of course, she didn't know how thick they should be since she had no idea of the length of her sleep). In fact, she could make out RECENT footprints, made by boots mostly, amongst the dust and debris.
The woman checked the wounds on the nearest sleeping organic. The blood was not dry... the wound had been inflicted not long ago. It appeared that something had disturbed the cryo-chamber... that was likely the reason that she was awakened... but what could have done it? The cyborgs were inactive and nothing else was on the satellite when it was sealed.
She looked down at her own body for the first time in ages. Her tan outfit appeared to be partially deteriorated from the passage of time and partially shredded (perhaps by whatever disturbed the other organics).
Her shirt-like tunic was somewhat loose. The sleeves of the shirt, once extending to the wrists, now were shredded past her elbows. The shoulder guards of the tunic were gone. The bottom of the shirt had also been 'altered' and hung several inches below her breasts rather than run to the belt of her pants. Her baggy pants had deteriorated into cloth shorts now slightly above her knees. The long tan cape hanging behind her shoulder-length mane of bluish-purple hair was also shredded to half its original length (about equal to elbow length). The only other things she had on were a set of worn purple bands around her wrists and thick purple anklets above her feet.
Surprisingly, she seemed to ignore her dress and moved her hands to the tattered pouch hanging at her side. Its contents were a pair of small vials with unreadable labels. She opened each and sniffed the contents, her stomach rumbling the whole time.
"Dimate and Moon Dew... wonder if they're still good."
The woman replaced them in her pouch and examined the machine she was sleeping in more closely. A metallic box was concealed in the side of the platform that she had floated above. She flipped it open and found a small, worn but preserved note. It read:
Emergency Provisions for Guardian: Trimate, Star Mist, Second Mystery Star (modified)
She reached deeper inside and pulled out four more vials, sniffed the contents and identified them before placing them in her pouch. Her hand then closed around a strange small jewel with four points sticking out of it. A small stud had been attached to one side of it. She pressed the stud and what appeared to be the edges of a slicer stuck out of each point of the jewel. She depressed the button again and saw the blades retract, then placed the jewel in what was left of her belt buckle.
The strange female looked at the control panels of some of the other tubes. Ones with peacefully sleeping organics read functional. Machines with corpses displayed malfunctions.
She then approached a device that was larger than the rest... and noticed the name on its base.
Gnasher.
This tube was empty. She checked the display on its side:
CRYOGENIC HIBERNATION: FULLY FUNCTIONAL
CURRENT STATUS: DEACTIVATED
In horror, she realized what this had meant. The Gnasher, a beast just as dangerous as she (if not worse) had survived the apparent crash AND was disturbed awake. If it wasn't in the satellite (which was in reality now just a set of scattered ruins across Lunar) then one of the most terrifying and destructive beasts on the main ship was now loose on whatever world she was on.
If the satellite had landed on a populated world, it meant that the creature was now free to devastate and consume the inhabitants.
The woman checked around to see that many of the other empty tubes were in the same condition. She realized that whatever had disturbed the sleeping denizens of the satellite must have released both the missing creatures and the absent cyborgs.
She trotted into another organics chamber to see if any more were missing.
The next chamber had a soft, inhuman wail emitted from behind a wrecked tube. She found the source quickly: a humanoid-shaped red skinned creature with an alien head. Its body had apparently been pierced by several blades and it lay moaning on the metal floor.
She approached it slowly to see its wounds. The organic quieted down with a look of fear on its face as it recognized who and what she was. The tall woman gently applied her ancient Dimate medicine to the bleeding openings and tried to comfort the simple creature. Its moaning stopped and it stared at her.
With a quick lift, she placed the healing creature back in its cryo-tube. It seemed almost to smile at her right before she re-engaged the sleeping mechanism.
As she walked into the next room (through a door that had definitely been removed forcefully), the Moos peacefully slept in his light tube.
The following chamber was huge... and halved. The metal floor was replaced by cut stones and boulders at the other end of the room. It looked as if the area underneath this segment of the satellite was some sort of ruin. A little noise diverted her attention to the far end of the cavern-like chamber. Several ropes seemed to lead up into another room... from which a bright light could be seen. The noise she heard was generated by a pair of small moving shapes at the bases of the ropes which were hopping wildly. She dashed over, feeling the change from cold metal to dusty stone in the ground beneath her feet.
The female found two creatures, both only about knee height to her long legs. One resembled a fluffy, yellow bird-like creature with a small beak and a pair of 'antenna' on its head. The other was a blue-skinned rodent-like organic with small horns and arms. Both appeared quite young. The former was chirping wildly as the other tried to bounce up and grab the end of a rope.
She smiled and cleared her throat. The organics turned and looked at her with expressions of puzzlement.
"They appear to be so young that they don't fully know what I am," she murmured and dropped to one knee with her hands in front of her. They slowly approached her outstretched limbs and seemed to relax a bit.
The rodent looked up at the light above.
"Trying to get out? Wouldn't you rather sleep peacefully... or are you just hungry?" the woman asked, her own stomach growling.
She couldn't understand the chirps or squeaks of either of them, but it seemed as if they agreed with the latter.
The woman smiled and stood up. There were several Chirpers and Eindons still in their cryo-tubes... it probably wouldn't hurt to take these two along for something to eat (if she could find anything on a foreign world) while she tried to find out where the missing satellite denizens, particularly the Gnasher, had gone.
She placed the fluffy bird on her shoulder and had the rodent grab onto her belt and cape in the back as she began to climb one of the ropes.