Chapter 7:

"It's the Athena ship!" Ren called out as he instantly connected the line through.

After a couple of seconds of the line crackling, the crew eventually heard the soft voice of a familiar friend. They were all so overjoyed about finding another familiar voice amongst the chaos within being very far from home that they almost forgot about something important. Chronos.

Marcus swiftly hauled Chronos out of the room as Ren began talking to the Athena crew. Chronos was incredibly confused about what was happening until he saw how serious Marcus' eyes looked.

"Stay quiet." He demanded, authoritatively, "and don't do anything unnecessary."

Chronos, puzzled by the sudden demand, asked, "why?"

"Because you are not supposed to be on this ship and these guys..." He trailed off, trying to find the right word to describe the other crew, "they're strict with rules. So you mustn't do anything we don't tell you or else they'll let our superiors know and we'll be in trouble."

A sinking feeling fell into Chronos' heart as he listened to Marcus' words. He simply nodded, understanding the severity of the problem and kept quiet as the two entered the comms room once again. Ren seemed to be having a fun conversation with the other crew, who seemed to have a couple of feminine voices aside from the strong masculine ones leading the conversation. Everything was going well and Chronos wasn't making any noise so the crew thought they could bypass the broken rule easily, well, that was until the Athena crew suggested a meetup across ships.

"Are-are you sure you want to?" Ren stumbled, eyeing towards Chronos and silently thinking on where they could hide him, "we've had a few technical issues so we might not be able to."

After a few seconds of the other crew conversing amongst themselves, a powerful masculine voice came clearly through the speaker, "yeah. It doesn't matter about the issues, if necessary, we could help."

"How about we go to your ship instead?" Kennie quickly suggested as Luciel glanced around the vicinity of the ship in search of a hiding spot for Chronos in case they want to come onto the Janus ship.

"Is everything alright there?" She asked, "you seem awfully reluctant to let is on your ship."

"Yep-wait no!" Ren stuttered, "I mean, everything's fine here we wouldn't want to bother you with coming over."

As the passive argument between Ren and the crew on the other side of the communication line continued, Luciel returned and Chronos abruptly grabbed his arm, pulling him to one side, away from the microphone's voice range. He dragged him out of the room and across the corridor before he started talking.

"What's up with all this?" He asked, "I get why I need to hide, but you could still have that crew come onto the ship."

Shifting his line of sight, Luciel mumbled a reply, "it's just... The leader on that ship, Adrian Honza, is known to be quite a...stickler for following rules. And if he catches even a glimpse of a broken rule, he'll go crazy and demand answers; ones that we don't have."

Chronos thought about it for a second and eventually nodded, "alright. I'll go hide then."

And with that, Chronos disappeared down the maze of corridors and left Luciel puzzled with how he's going to stay out of sight. Without worrying too much - after all, he hid from Marcus and Ren for a while - Luciel returned to his friends and silently nodded. He realised that the decision on which ship they would meet on ended with the Athena crew coming over to the Janus ship and Ren very stressed about the Chronos issue.

The communication line ended and the crew wandered back up to the bridge, ready to prepare for docking. It didn't take long before the Athena ship and the Janus ship connected through the airlock and the Athena crew were at the door, waiting to be let in. Just before Ren opened the airlock, he asked his crew about Chronos.

"I'm not sure." Luciel admitted, "but he seemed to understand it all and went to hide."

Trusting Chronos for the first time in a while, Ren nodded and opened the airlock for the Athena crew. Marcus was over there, ready to greet them and guide them to the bridge. Hearts were pounding against the guys' chests as they anxiously hoped that Chronos wasn't going to be found out. Echoing footsteps grew louder and louder the closer the Athena crew became and soon enough, their voice became audible.

"Ah! Ren!" A fairly tall muscular man appeared through the doorway with his dark chestnut hair flowing back as he moved, "it's been a while."

"Adrian," Ren stood up and greeted the crew, "it really has."

Following Adrian and Marcus was the other members of his crew. Directly behind Adrian was Aria, a strong, strict member of the crew who gained noticeable fame through her medical achievements. Her long, curly hazelnut hair matched neatly with her chocolate eyes as she stared around the ship, trying to find anything that would be against the rules.

"It seems fairly neat in here." She said, her eyes wandering as she spoke, "that's a shock."

"I was expected to see something damaged as you've made it this far in such a short amount of time." A short brunette appeared behind Aria as she popped into view of the Janus crew.

"Why would we end up in any sort of trouble, Skylar?" Marcus lied, leaning back against one of the control boards, "do you not trust us enough?"

Following Marcus', obvious, lie was the last of the Athena crew. The biggest, strongest, smartest person that was sent out into space - Darius Kingston. He was the oldest of all eight of them and previously worked at a successful laboratory that dealt with extraterrestrial objects with a group of his friends. His straight quiffed ginger hair and stumble were more of his more recognisable features.

"Trust isn't apart of this, Marcus." His heavy voice echoed around the room as he slowly paced the shape, "I'm curious as to whether you landed on any potential planets that could substitute for Earth, as that was our main goal."

He frequently liked to torment Marcus, both being well-recognised space physicists back on Earth, and most of the time, Darius would come out on top. A partially shocked look crossed Marcus' face for a second before he regained his composure and proceeded to lie further.

"Of course we have." He said, confidently, "we've been on several."

An eyebrow raised on Darius' face as he asked, "which ones?"

It took a moment but Marcus eventually recalled each one, "from most recent, we landed on Astrea and Kina."

He burst into a fit of laughter at the lack of planets the Janus crew had landed on, despite having been in space for at least a week, "seriously? That's it?"

"It doesn't matter how many planets we land on, as long as we find one with Earth-like properties," Marcus argued, "well then, what about you lot?"

"We landed on twelve by now!" Skylar boasted, her nose right up in the air.

"And we reported eleven of them back to Earth." Darius added, "we lost contact with them not long ago, so we couldn't report back the most recent one."

This piece of news sparked an interest within the Janus crew as Ren perked up and asked, "how long haven't you been able to contact them?"

"Three days," Aria stated, "We originally thought it was our communication system that broke but we were able to contact you so..."

"Do you think we're out of reach?" Luciel asked, "we are still in the Asatina system after all."

Shaking his head, Darius said, "despite the possibility being fairly high, I doubt the distance would be the cause."

As the room grew silent, the Janus crew's thoughts wandered back to Chronos; curious as to whether or not he could be responsible for the lack of communication with Earth. However, despite their thoughts, they remained quiet about it.

"Anyway," Adrian said, bringing everyone's attention back, "we just wanted to see whether your comms haven't been working too and hoped that they did work so we could connect with Earth."

"Unfortunately," Ren began, "ours aren't going through to Earth either," he decided to leave out the fact that they were broken by an unwanted guest aboard the ship, "so we were incredibly glad to have connected through to you lot."

"I see..." Adrian said, trailing off slightly.

After a few more moment of talking between the two crews, they eventually split apart with the Athena crew leaving to find any Earth-like planets on their way back to Earth. As the Janus crew watched them jump into light speed and off into the vast areas of space leading to Earth, they took a moment to relax and be very thankful that they were not found out.

"I honestly can't believe Chronos didn't jump out of anywhere," Kennie said, chuckling a little to himself at the idea of Chronos falling from the vents once again, "though, I am glad he didn't."

"Agreed." They simultaneously replied with Ren continuing afterwards, "but, I do wonder where he is."

And with that, the crew leapt to their feet to, once again, search for Chronos. They glanced into every metallic room from the navigation room near the bridge to the engine room at the back of the ship. Spiralling down the steel stairs, they searched in the cargo bays and then towards where the escape pods were located before double backing on themselves to search in the bottom engine room. Despite going into every room, they couldn't find Chronos anywhere.

"You don't think he's in the vents again," Kennie chuckled, "that'd be so like him, though."

Sighing, Marcus opened up one of the vent's entrances in the engine room and yelled down into it, "Chronos! Where the hell did you go?"

Silence. They were replied with silence. No words echoed back through the vents as each member glanced further into the metal cuboids thay stretched out across the ship.

"Let's try through the speakers," Ren suggested, heading up towards the bridge, "ah, but, Luciel, could you keep an eye on cams in case he wanders out of a room?"

Nodding, Luciel split off away from the rest of the group towards security as everyone reached the bridge. Ren, Marcus and Kennie all arrived at the bridge and swiftly collapsed into their designated seats. Reaching for the speaker, Kennie called out for Chronos, a little laughter lying on the edge of his tongue as he spoke the words.

"Where could he have disappeared to?"