Chapter 11:

Drifting through space with the Athena ship not too far behind them, they swiftly directed their way over to the last known places that the Polaris crew were. According to Adrian, he had last been in contact with the Polaris crew just over a week ago - around the same time that Chronos appeared on the Janus ship - and they had spoken about heading towards the Blugem System. Since it has been a while since they last were in contact, they took into account that the crew could've moved on to the next nearest system - the Anume System - so the Janus crew along with Chronos would be scoping out the planets there.

"This is the Blugem System," Adrian called towards the Janus crew as Luciel allowed the voice to cross through the speakers, "we'll split off here."

Without waiting for a response, the Athena crew heading into the atmosphere of one of the closer planets belonging to the Blugem System. Leaving towards the next system - the Anume System - Ren and his friends focused on locating anything that could help point them to where the Polaris crew is. They didn't know what to expect when they find the crew, especially Chronos, who hadn't even met the four.

Despite the thick atmosphere lingering within the bridge of the ship, there was also a hint of excitement within each crew member. This got Chronos curious as to who they were meeting, or at least, trying to find. He had heard about the Polaris crew when he was back on Earth, an amazing group of young people that excelled in their respected fields of work, but that was all he knew of them.

"Hey," he called, catching the attention of the rest of the crew, "about the Polaris crew..." He trailed off for a moment before asking, "who are they?"

The instant his question left his lips, the crew leapt up in excitement as they simultaneously expressed their compliments about the Polaris crew. With each person speaking at the same time, Chronos hardly got any information out of them, until Luciel loudly interrupted so he could speak his opinions on the crew.

"The Polaris crew is made up of the top members from the academy." He explained, "they're admired by every single person who dreamt about being able to go to space and widely known to be excellent in their fields."

"Oh yeah, I heard about all that," Chronos responded, "it just seems... I don't know like you guys are especially close to that crew."

"Oh yeah!" Luciel gained a large smile across his face as if he was about to express the greatest news in a long time, "my older sister belongs to that ship so I've always been close to the guys there."

"And Adrian and I were often with Luca Ethens of the Polaris crew," Ren exclaimed, a little pride hidden behind his eyes as he followed with, "he taught us quite a bit before he departed with his crew."

"Ah, so you guys were quite close," Chronos added, just before the crew had to focus on orbiting the closer planet, Nipalle.

Their main objective wasn't to land on the planets and wander around in hopes to find a lost ship, instead, they planned on orbiting the planets and seeing whether they could pick up a distress signal or find a connection to the ship. Despite the lack of evidence as to whether they were there or not, the crew still hoped and kept their positivity high.

Floating around the green planet, half of which appeared to be full of water and life, the crew separated slightly across the ship. With Luciel and Kennie at communications and Marcus at the bridge trying to see if he could locate a ship on the ground. Ren, however, remained seated as he waited for the instant that someone exclaimed that they've reached contact with the missing ship. Chronos, though, didn't really know what he was supposed to do. He wasn't advanced enough to take over any of the controls or really help out anyone else as he didn't want to get in the way. So in the end, he remained seated and quiet, however, his mind wandered miles as he thought about the Polaris crew and where they could be.

A few Earth hours had passed and the crew moved onto the next planet, after having no luck with planet Nipalle. Moving over to the neighbouring rocky blue planet - it reminded the crew of Mars but blue - they swiftly entered orbit. As they floated around the small planet, having, once again, no luck in gaining any sort of response or connection to the Polaris ship, they almost abandoned that planet to move onto the next one. The only thing that held them back was the sudden static interference that Luciel heard over communications.

Instantly, Ren leapt out of his seat and rushed down to communications as Marcus and Chronos hastily followed behind him. The moment they reached the small communications room, Kennie was able to gain audio through, which seemed pretty dated to just over a week ago.

"What's it saying?" Ren swirly asked as Luciel lifted a finger in his face for a moment.

After a long pause, Luciel's expression dropped. His previously excited face rapidly turned upside down as his mind seemed to be racing with assumptions over what he had just heard. No one else knew what the audio said, and it seemed like Luciel was too absent-minded to do anything. With that issue arising, Ren decided to lift the small guy out of the chair and take a seat himself, listening to the audio for a couple of seconds before his face dropped as quickly as Luciel's did.

Apparently, the rest of the crew caught onto it again and hastily asked what the audio actually said. Fortunately, Ren was still in a state of consciousness and levelheadedness to explain what he vaguely heard.

"It's- I- There-" it took him a few tries before he was able to finally explain the audio, "there's barely anyone talking in it, only a quiet voice that I think belonged to Sofia."

"What'd she say?" Marcus asked, "are they in danger?"

His eyes flickered over to Luciel, who still was frozen on the floor over what he heard. It seemed like Ren contemplated what to say and how Luciel may react by hearing it again. After a couple more seconds of thinking, he decided to let each person listen to it themselves, especially as it would explain more than him trying to reword it all.

Chronos waited until last to listen to the audio, mainly because he thought he wouldn't really understand it as much as the rest of the crew. After Marcus and Kennie listened to it and their expressions dropping just like Ren's and Luciel's did, Chronos stepped up to the computers and put the black headphones over his ears and carefully listened to the words spoken.

It was incredibly hard to hear things; it seemed like the person speaking was whispering. He could hear some words and sometimes connect them together to form sentences he believed the person on the other end was saying. As he listened tentatively, he suddenly heard some disturbing background noises, something that he hadn't heard in quite a long time.

"That's a fight..." He whispered, only for Ren - the only one paying attention to him - to nod in response.

As he listened even closer and started to make out exactly what the woman was saying, he began to realise exactly what had happened and why the crew reacted the way they did. The audio only lasted for a couple of minutes, and when it finally ended, Chronos partially fell into the same unresponsive presence as the rest of the crew. It was only until Ren shook him a bit that he returned to reality and glanced around to see everyone else.

"Alright," Ren said, directing everyone out of the communications room and over to the bridge, "now we have to think about what we should do next."

"What is there to think about?" Luciel snapped, shocking Chronos as he had never heard him blatantly speak up like that, "it's clear what we should do. My sister and her crew are in danger and we need to help them before it's too late."

His voice grew louder and louder, emotions rushed through his words as he was unable to contain himself.

"Luciel, I get where you're coming from but we should think this through," Marcus said, calmly and sympathetically as he didn't want to enrage Luciel further.

"No." Ren stood from his seat, "he's right. Luca and Sofia and the others could be in grave danger now so we've got to go down and save them."

"Ren calm down." Kennie stood up to follow him around the room, "you're too worked up now and not thinking straight."

"I am thinking straight!" He snapped as well, "the first thing we need to do is save the Polaris crew!"

"Shouldn't we inform Adrian and the others though?" Chronos asked, only to regret it right afterwards as he was yelled at immediately.

"Shut up! You have no experience here." Ren yelled as he slammed his fist against the controls, "you shouldn't have an input!"

"Ren!" Now Marcus has gotten involved with the yell fest as he chased Ren around, trying to get him to calm down too, "you're not in the best emotional state to say what we should do."

"Get lost! I know what we need to do." He continued yelling as he searched through the planet for the Polaris ship.

Despite his emotional state, he seemed to be very capable of completing what he needed to do, even if Marcus was trying to push him away and restrain him. On the other hand, Luciel kept quite silent, but it was clear that his mind was in a turmoil of rage and desperation as he swiftly went to help Ren with searching for the missing ship.

"I don't care about what you're saying, Marcus!" Ren snapped, slamming his hand on the control again, "we are going to find that ship and save the crew, and that's FINAL!"