My mind went blank and filled with the echoes of thousands of voices all speaking at once. I fell to my knees losing control over my own AI. No wait I'm the AI, not the passenger.

Error unknown malicious code detected, attempting purge.

Purge unsuccessful.

Attempting.........3244..156277

Numbers flashed before my eyes even as the voices got louder and louder. Suddenly I couldn't see couldn't hear in a single voice broke out. "You are Crey remember."

I woke up sitting on the floor my back lying against the bed of the crystals. I looked up to see Dr. Carol slowly backing up to the medical bay. "what just happened how long was I out."

"you just started spouting error codes and random distressed signals. You then fell to the ground, and crystals grew out of the floor to catch you. A second later you just woke up."

"When you asked me my name I tried to think of it, and all the sudden that happened. I think my name is, Cray."

"maybe you should run a self-diagnostic now."

"I think I'll do that."

I began running a self-diagnostic, or tried to. I could no longer access my AI systems. The blueprint list wouldn't even pull up anymore. Great now I'm broken. I turned back to the crystal and saw my AI core was now the only piece of hardware left. The circuit board that had been attached as well as all the electronics that were going through my core were gone now.

Carol looked back, seeing the same thing as me.

Carol then asked, "what happened to your module and memory banks."

"I don't know, but my self-diagnostic and even my blueprint lists are now gone."

"does this mean you can't build anything anymore?"

"I don't know let me try one of the blueprints I have memorized."

I thought of the spider bot print. Suddenly a flash appeared in a new spider bot was sitting on one of the print beds. I tried ordering the spider to move to the corner of the room. But instead of a simple order, it became a connection between the spider and me. Like I wasn't sending it orders anymore. Instead, it was like I was talking to it, trying to convince it to do something. I felt it send back a signal like agreement, and then it got up and walked away. It felt almost intelligent like a dog or cat. Not like an inanimate object.

I looked around trying to find the communications hub. But all the electronics that I'd connected before are gone now. I can still feel everything in the room though. It's weird. It's like being in a room with multiple limbs, only the limbs can argue with you. Two of the spider bots started chasing each other around on one of the boxes. I looked at them and then turned back to Carol and said. "Carol, you should head back to the medical bay. I don't know what's going on, but I can't control the bots as thoroughly as I once could.

Carol looked around the room seeing the various spider bots wandering around now. "I see that. I'm going to close and lock the door to be safe."

"Good. I'll see if I can give them in order to stay away from your side."

Carol swiftly jogged back to the medical bay and closed the door behind her. Meanwhile, I tried to communicate with all the bots in the room, saying to stay away from Carol and her crew. All but one of the spiders agreed immediately. The one that took the longest to agree with me was the one I just made. All the old ones seem to be obedient. I guess any new creations will have a personality now. Should probably watch the old ones to see if they change as well.

I got back to work on the scout drone. It took me a few more minutes to finish assembling it. After it was done, I pulled out one of the power crystals and put it into the battery bank. Just like before the batteries were eaten and replaced by the power crystals.

I flipped the switch on scout and immediately felt the connection between the two of us. "I name you Scout." Scout slowly got up off the floor and looked around the room. Sniffing around the corners and random things like a dog would.

I'm going to have to watch you and see if you gain a personality. "Now Scout, here's what I need you to do boy." Scout jogged over to me and sat down. "Aaah that's adorable." Scout started to wag his tail. "That...darn it focus, ignore the cute."

I had the crystals make a communications buoy. I saw a flash and turned back to the crystals to see an orange ball attached to 100 meters of cable. The buoy was the size of a basketball and was painted orange so it would be visible on the ocean. The buoy would make it so I would be able to communicate with Scout when he's out of the water. Well, at least the crystals still have the blueprints even if I don't.

I turned back to the spiders and told one of them to go to the airlock with the buoy and scout. The airlock let them both outside. The spider would hook the buoy to the outside shell of the ship and scout would swim to the surface. When they both got me airlock, I went to see if I could take control of scout. Suddenly I felt a draining sensation, and then I was a scout drone. "That was just weird." It felt strange being Scout. Like I'm not even supposed to be in this form.

The door finally closed and the airlock slowly filled with water. Scout began dog paddling while the spider drone just clung to the wall with the cable and buoy. The airlock finally filled with water and the outside door opened. Seeing through scouts eyes, I was able to detect large reptile-like creatures swimming throughout the lake. I thought at First that they were the size of alligators. But then I saw one of them near the ship and realized it was over fifty meters in length. I had scout swim close to the ship to not be detected by the creatures.

The buoy rose up with Scout to the surface. The spider drone quickly hooked up the cable to the ship. Scout and the buoy reach the surface at the same time. Suddenly I heard a distress signal coming in through the buoy.

Unknown distress signal.

Attention all races this planet has been designated as a class four hazardous planet. All ships attempting to enter its atmosphere will lose all power within a matter of minutes and will crash. The planet has two races trapped on it, and once you enter you cannot leave. This message will repeat every ten seconds. End of transmission.

So that is that why whenever I make a new battery it always ends up drained instantly. That distress beacon must be in orbit around the planet keeping all the other ships away. It also said two races, does that mean humans aren't alone here?

I got back to controlling Scout and had him crawl up onto the small island which was the top of the ship. Only 10 yards of the ship was visible in the center of the lake. It must've made the crater when it crashed, and it slowly filled with water over time. The crater was an oblong gouge sitting in the center of a long valley. They must've tried to land here but instead crashed.

I had Scout look around. There were three other crashed ships in this area. However, they were far more damaged than ours. One looked like it had caught fire and broke up into multiple pieces of half melted slag. Another looked like it had been heavily scavenged and only had the basic framework still. The last one only had the rear quarter of the ship and would sporadically shoot out flames from the back. Where is it getting the power to do that? It should've been dead like the other two.

I watched it turn on for about ten seconds before shutting off again. The flames burned straight upwards as the engine was facing directly towards the sky. Almost a football stadium's worth of metal and material just shooting flames into the sky. I had an odd second where it reminded me of a Roman Coliseum half destroyed but still standing. It may be sticking out of the ground thirty yards while the rest was buried beneath the ground.

That's probably a good direction to head in if I'm going to find any settlements. It was maybe sixteen kilometers away, and wouldn't take me very long to get there if I flew. I had scout take a running leap off the side of the island. His forward to legs spread outwards as they opened up revealing the bat-like wings that were folded inside. Two small engines came out of the center of his chest and began shooting exhaust as he gained altitude. It would take scout a while to reach his destination, so I better get started on some other projects.

Scout reported back that the atmosphere was fine for humans. That meant I could open up the top part of the ship and get more oxygen in here and we be able to wake up more people. I ordered the two drones that were inside the ship to begin closing doors and opening doors leading to the top. There was an elevator shaft that we could use that went up four floors and was close to the top.

When the ship was first made it was 400 meters by 400 meters x 1200 meters. It was shaped like an arrowhead, where the wings mainly contained the engines and the faster than light drive. The wings went the full length of the ship. They could be detached and it could just run off of the sub light drives, making it look like a massive octagon shaped tube.

The top portion of the ship was meant for cryo pods crew, the command deck, and engineering. While the bottom half had engine fuel, power plants, and agricultural equipment. Now the only thing left was the storage room for the agricultural equipment, while the fuel and power plants had been crushed long ago.

The wings were barely attached to the ship. The sub light drives look like they could still be salvaged. The bottom half of the ship was damaged beyond repair.

The reason why the farming equipment was below was to make it easier to offload. That may have ended up saving those 15 colonists. I found most of the hull breaches came from the bottom of the ship. Even the farming equipment had been tossed around the room from the rushing water, which had caused most of the equipment to be unusable. I'd have to send some drones down to begin cutting up the scrap and bringing it up to the crystals.

I had three of the spider bots begin collecting raw materials from the farming equipment. I'll have them feed it to the crystals and see if that fills up my stomach again. I'm starting to get hungry.

The spider bots inside of the ship managed to close all the doors that weren't leading to the surface. I made five more spider bots and had them go out the airlock to begin setting up a pump. The pumps would clear the corridors of water so we could have fresh air throughout the ship. The spider bots would set the pump on top of the ship on the small island.

I turned and watched as the spider bots began bringing the crystals random bits of scrap and printing fuel. Blue crystals would emerge from the black mold hooking the pieces of scrap and drawing them back in, and then they would vanish from sight. When the crystals latched onto things, they'd start to have a wave of light travel over them. The light would consume more and more of the object as it passed. Every time a robot brought something, it would vanish a few seconds later, absorbed by the crystals. The black substance wasn't spreading anymore but was slowly growing octagon -like structures. It was probably the stuff it had consumed, and was converting it into storage tanks.

It had been fifteen minutes since I sent out Scout, and it was at this point he started getting visuals of structures around the ship. I turned back to controllingScout.

Some of the structures closest to the ship had been made of brick sides with the roof being made of ship armor. It was a city spreading out from the ship and the outskirts had buildings made out of just random scrap.

However, that wasn't the most interesting part. The interesting part was that they weren't human. They were a good deal skinnier than humans, and their skin tone wasn't quite right. It looked like they had a faint tinge of green along the sides of their arms. Most were wearing hats, but a few of them didn't, and the ones that I could see had long pointed ears.

Their tech level wasn't that high either, most of them were carrying bows and swords and a few shields. But I hadn't seen any crossbows yet. There was a three meters tall wall around the outside of the city with towers every fifty meters. A few of the guards stationed in the towers were pointing at Scout.

I spoke out loud, "They must have better eyesight than humans." Scout was painted white, and his wings were transparent. It's supposed to make him hard to pick out in skylines. "Well, that failed, and now they're probably going to chase after him."

I'll have him continue to circle the city until I can think of something. Right now he can fly forever with the current power crystal running in him.

Soon Carol will need to go to sleep, and I'll need to make plans for tomorrow morning to go out and explore the city. I will have to make an infiltration avatar. The problem with those is that they have no facial muscles and can't show emotions. They normally have a blank stare, and are pretty easy to spot if you know what you're looking for. Hopefully the natives have never seen something like that, and I'll be able to get away with it. I'll get started on building it now, and talk to Carol in the morning.