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As Fern Hun arrived at the engineering bay, he heard footsteps and small chatter. He had a feeling that in there, there was going to be an ambush. He readied his pistol as he cautiously made his way into the room.

He got in there to find that his crew mates were there, now staring at him. "Oh hello, I'm Fern Hun. Sorry about the gun. I just had the feeling that there this was an ambush." He introduced himself while staring at the robot accompanying them.

HKR's second processor activated a few minutes after its first failed. Redundant systems had saved it before countless times but it had never needed to activate its backup processor before. The experience left it jarred, scrambling to compute this new information. It slowly activated everything and got up. It was on a table. It was still damaged. It was surrounded by people, the Anderson human, the slovenly merc and others it did not recognise. But what immediately grabbed it's attention was the male human standing in the doorway with a gun. In its panicked, damaged and unsure state it fell back onto its primary protocol: terminate all threats to its self. Right there, that human felt like a threat to it. It sprang to its feet and lunged at the human.

Chase had a mini heart attack at seeing Fern jump in with the gun, kinda grabbing at his pounding heart. "Don't ever do that again..." He started having a small panic attack when HKR suddenly reactivated behind him and lunged for Fern Hun. "Drop the gun! Quick!"

Tomalek reacted instinctively at the first movement of HKR, "Computer activate containment fields in Cargo Bay 5."  The fields sprang up almost instantly, sealing off every person in the room, including himself. 

"These should give us some time to defuse this situation.  Put the gun down, Mr. Hun, and HKR-07 please return to your maintenance table."

Aíne Hiwat starts softly singing a calming beautiful prayer song.


Da Sha Janna ha kar. Da Sha Janna me ba. Aimsir be Aín tì

Cara Coel. Carel Coel Da Sha Janna ha kar. (Repeats)

Fern Hun put the gun back to where he kept it and was slightly confused as of what happened. A robot attempted to attack him, that was probably what he sensed, one his crewmates literally leaped at the sight of the gun that every Witchian should have for self-defence, and another crewmate started singing a foreign song at the most random of times. "Can I have some introductions here? I just want to get to know who is who... also who is this HKR-07 robot that lunged at me?" He asked.

HKR lunged and slammed into the containment field. It landed on its feet and looked around. It was trapped now, the only way out was through those on the other side of the field. It slowly backed up to the table, deciding compliance was the only option open to it. It considered what to say, then said "I will comply. What do you want of me?"

"I've got an idea," Chase spoke up. "How about not trying to kill us? I need to repair your systems before you damage them even more by fighting us."

It wanted to fight, wanted to lash out at anything around it. It also knew that if it wanted to survive it needed to be repaired. Best to ingratiate itself with these people. "Apologies. I am not operating at full capacity currently. The weapon started me. I will deactivate to help facilitate repairs." It lay down on the maintenance table.

"Wait a minute, I don't buy it."

Hendrik looked at the AI with admiration, but concern for his own well-being. "If you're an illegally developed AI, you'd likely have behavioural protocols to exterminate any witnesses to your being. How do we know we can ever trust you, and just as importantly, what are you doing on this ship?"

"No such protocols exist within my systems. If I did, I would need to terminate my employers after every contract. To the second query, I do not know how to gain your trust. To the third query, I was hiding. When I left the employment of my creators, I terminated the United Gralend Corporation's board of directors during their annual meeting in the Innsmouth Hotel. Ever since then, they have been hunting me. Recently, they caught up and almost terminated me. After the fight, I needed somewhere to hide and there was a shuttle in view. I hid in it and it took me here." At that point, more warnings reached it. "Apologies, but damages to my systems are at critical levels."

"Very well.  Deactivate and we will allow Chase to repair your critical systems.  That is, assuming the Captain approves repairing you."  Tomalek stated.  "In the meantime—computer, deactivate force fields around all organic life forms in Cargo bay 2.  Maintain the containment field around the primary workstation." 

Alexsandr was watching all these events unfold. The robot was indeed mysterious. However, he knew that they were not the robot's enemy, and that they shouldn't become his enemy. Also, it might be useful to have a sentient robot on their side.

"You may do repairs on the robot. But we must get back to business. We need to elect a Second-In-Command to take charge whatever happens. You guys will elect him/her among yourselves, and tell me the results."

Gunther had thought about the second-in-command issue and realized if he were in charge, then he wouldn't end up having to do anything that he didn't want. He quickly jumped at the opportunity. "Seeing as how I'm the oldest of us, it would just make sense that I'm second in command -- well, besides Tomalek, but he's a Vulcan, so that doesn't really count. Plus, I have plenty of combat experience working in a team. So if you want a strong leader willing to take charge, then I'm your man."

Zerick scoffed at the idea. "I don't know about anyone else, but I for one don't want a mercenary as the captain's first mate. And honestly, y'all shouldn't have an engineer in that position either. Perhaps Tomalek? He's very logical."