Isolated (Red vs Blue)

2: Don't Say A Word

2: Don't Say A Word

Present Day: Somewhere on the Edge of Colonized Space

It'd been almost a week since the crash. At least, that was Carolina's best guess. After the ship had gone down, the days started to blur together. It was the same routine everyday — wake up, train, help train the Blues, try to help Washington with the comm tower, train again, go to sleep. Sure there were breaks for meals, and she had some down time at different points during the day. But it was essentially always the same. Compared to what she'd been used to, it was a pretty calm routine. It felt strange.

It wasn't necessarily strange in a bad way, though. With a less strict regiment, it gave Carolina more time to try and focus on other things. She'd been working on trying to figure out where they were. After stopping to drop Donut, Doc, and Lopez off at Valhalla, the ship was supposed to be headed for Earth. But they'd been pulled way off course; so far that her helmet's navigation system was having troubles trying to pinpoint exactly where they were. Even with Epsilon's help it was proving to be difficult. The A.I. was even starting to complain about it — he insisted that it was giving him a headache. Carolina didn't think it was physically possible for computer programs to get headaches, but Epsilon had been saying otherwise.

There was another thing that bothered Carolina about the whole situation. The ship crashing under mysterious circumstances raised a lot of questions, but it didn't necessarily mean there was any foul play. Engines malfunctioned, navigation systems failed — sometimes it just happened. But other than her own navigation system not working properly, the fact that the long range for the radios didn't work was very odd. The ship crashing shouldn't have effected that in any way. Yet anytime one of them tried to radio for help, all they got was static. It didn't make sense.

"Give it a rest, C," Epsilon said, interrupting the freelancer's most recent attempt at making a mayday call. "Long range doesn't work. No one's gonna hear us. And you're gonna lose your voice if you keep up like this."

Carolina sighed and looked at the A.I. "I just don't get it. The likelihood of ending up stranded and also not having a way to contact someone for help are very slim with the kind of technology we have. We were on a state of the art military transport vessel. Tell me where anything that's happened makes sense."

The hologram crossed his arms. "Look, I'm not saying it isn't weird. Trust me, this has been bugging the shit out of me. But you've been at it for two hours already. Give yourself a break."

"I don't need a break," she protested. "The longer we go without being able to make contact, we increase the chances of someone less desirable finding us first. I'm not exactly looking to end up in the middle of another fight right now."

"If you're looking to have a period of down time, you are with the wrong group of people," he informed her. "Adventures just seem to kinda fall into our laps. It's always been that way. The words 'peace' and 'quiet' aren't exactly in our vocabulary."

"That I've noticed. Though compared to what I was involved with during Project Freelancer, this does seem like a down period. But that's not the point. We don't know who or what else lives on this planet. We might end up against something that we can't beat."

"Yeah, I know. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about that, too. But at the same time, if there was anyone even remotely close to us on whatever planet this is, don't you think they would've found us already? Maybe tried to make contact in some way?"

"Possibly. Unless they're just biding their time. It's hard to tell. There's too many unknown variables right now. I'd just feel a little better if we could figure out where we are."