The forum game of Isolation may be over, but the story is far from finished. Isolation is back by popular demand (1 user, thanks Rowdy) and this time – it's in story mode.
Chapter 1
The newest member of a nine-man rescue team, rifleman Chronos Crest, opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a ceiling; a ceiling of a massive room strangely crisscrossed by cables and pipes. Water drizzled on his face from sprinklers of some kind and then some sort of heavy, grey cloud began spilling over his view. It looked a lot like smoke. Smoke?! Crest hurriedly snapped to a sitting position as quickly as his memory came back. His aching body screamed out in protest of the movement.
Initially, he was blinded; the sharp light of the flames too much for his recently awakened eyes. Crest held a gloved hand up to shield his face, as he tried to take in his situation. He must have been hurled from the shuttle as it crashed into the hangar and had lost consciousness for some amount of time. But how much time? And where were his squadmates? Was he too late to save them?
Crest scrambled to his feet, swaying slightly as he did, and hobbled his way over to the crumbled shuttle, debris crunching underfoot like the autumn leaves of his home planet. Luckily, depending on your perspective, the shuttle was not immersed in flames, which rather rampaged their way around the flammable materials held in the hangar. Hopefully, that meant at least some of his team would still be alive. He tried to prise a slab blocking the shuttle door, but jumped back in surprise; it was red hot!
Of course it was, Crest chastised himself. The whole room was like a sauna! He wasn't thinking straight. The smoke was getting to him, but he had to save his companions. He battled through the unstoppable will to lay down, as his vision began to darken. Lights began to spark in front of him, and he couldn't remember when he hit the floor. But his brain remembered very vividly how they had got in this situation, as it revisited the fateful period during his unconscious state.
Some time earlier... Rifleman Chronos Crest rather nervously entered the main hold of the shuttle. The other marines were already there, suited up in their gear and looking rather formidable. They were sat tightly on the benches of the cramped shuttle. One of them stood up and flashed him an almost toothless grin, gripping his hand tightly. "You must be Crest, right?" He growled. Crest's immediate impression was that this was not antagonistic but that this man could make no noise apart from growls. "That's right, sir," he nodded.
"Welcome aboard. M'name's Captain Caelum Weaver," the man continued. "This 'ere's my second-in-charge, Lieutenant Comet Mooon." He pointed at a taller man, he seemed better groomed than the other. Mooon gave Crest a polite handshake. "Then you have the rest o' the gang: Alex Grey, the doc, Archo Rico, another rifleman, Hank Sanchez, the mechanic, Robert Dec'nsley, the computer expert, Brian Traksa, the demolitionist and George Redman, the submachine gunner." Each of them in turn, gave Crest a curt nod. Weaver indicated for Crest to sit, and he did, between Traksa and Redman.
Before there was any real chance for conversation, the clipped tone of Admiral Pearson crackled in their earpieces. "Marines, do you copy?" barked the voice. "This is Admiral Pearson. There is an unresponsive vessel close to our position; your job is to take this shuttle over there and assess the situation. Meet with the crew, find out what the problem is and sort it out. If you can't sort it, just keep the situation under control and wait for backup to arrive."
"Copy," Weaver responded. There was a brief gap, as muffled conversation could be heard on the Admiral's side. Then the man returned.
"Alright team, some further information has just come through: you are looking at a Colossus-class cargo carrier, travelling from Ryntha to Haldasar. It's well past its schedule and should have docked in Haldasar days ago, which alerted us to this incident. The Colossus-class looks a bit like an old airship, only with four massive rotors on the bottom. Because the power is down we can't access the ship's details, so you'll be going only by the basic schematic, which we will get to you soon.
We don't know what exactly is awaiting you over there as we can't get hold of them. Stay frosty. Good luck!"
The imperious voice of the Admiral disappeared, as the flight preparations continued. The two pilots could be heard muttering to themselves in the Belgiumpit, and machines whirred outside the shuttle. Everything was happening so fast, and before Crest new it, they were preparing for take off. Then hangar doors opened, and then they were off into the unknown.
Across the infinite darkness of space, the miniscule shuttle zoomed towards a hulking, silhouette of a ship, floating lifelessly in the void like a bloated whale corpse. All was silent inside as the marines prepared themselves for the coming mission. Crest gazed out at the stars dotting the abyss, mocking him with their promise of warmth. At least their large parent ship behind them offered a soothing presence.
Suddenly, a voice crackled into life and pierced the silence.
"Marines, do you copy? This is Admiral Pearson. We have picked up a distress call from a large cruise liner. We are the nearest and have to go to their rescue. That means we will be gone a while, so just secure the ship and wait for backup. We will by back before your oxygen runs out. Good luck. Out."
The huge engines of the ship ignited and thundered into action. Then, it powered off into the distance and all of a sudden, the shuttle was left alone with the dark ship. Isolated in deep space.
The shuttle was now approaching the hangar of the target ship, but another voice crackled over the radio. The pilots. "Uh, Captain, we have a situation."
"What is it?"
"The hangar doors are closing."
"What!?"
"THE HANGAR DOORS ARE CLOSING. OH GOD, WE'RE GONNA DIE!" He started swearing loudly. "OH GOD."
"Pilot!"
"What the hell is-"
"PILOT!" But the pilot seemed to be in shock. "Can't you just turn around?"
"No can do, Captain," came a much calmer voice over the speakers. The copilot. "Our course has been plotted on the computer, we can't change it at such short notice. Just prepare for the worst. It's gonna be-" But his sentence was cut off by a huge crunch. As the shuttle had passed into the hangar, the doors had come down and crushed the shuttle, particularly the Belgiumpit. There was a huge grating noise as the shuttle slid across the floor and crashed into a wall. For a moment, Crest thought he heard a roar from below, but it must have been the shuttle crashing. Then all was silent again as the shuttle came to a stop.