Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega: Part 5: Deck 9: Cargo Deck

Warden's deck 9 is a vast supply station. There is a labyrinth of multi-story warehouses, freestanding shelving, pallets of material and equipment, open staging areas, bulkheads, and vast bulkhead doors. The place is in a perpetual gloom, with only minimal lighting needed in certain sections. All around come the sounds and smells of machinery on the go, with robotic lifts, cargo drones, heavy autonomous tractors, and a myriad of robots and androids going about the ceaseless business of keeping Warden supplied and running.

A number of loading docks and shuttle bays are placed regularly around the outer bulkheads of the deck. Extravehicular drones enter and exit through small portals, tending to the Warden's outer skin and equipment, as well as collecting any and all possible raw material that might be within range. Now that the great ship is within a stellar system, the big, ungainly cargo shuttles have awakened from a long machine slumber to begin gathering vast loads of heavy raw material, from metal ore to helium. Warden's bunkers begin to fill, though the pace has been slow without human supervision.

Within this machine world are havens of organic life. Horticultural stations, hydroponic labs, and zoological cloning samples in cryogenic storage units harbor specimens of plant and animal life essential for human existence. Unlike the vast preserves found on Warden's other decks, these various labs and stations contain specimens that are essentially unchanged by shipboard life. Or they were unchanged; Warden's radiation disaster altered a sizable percentage of the specimens on this deck. Incredibly unfortunate malfunctions allowed many of these strange mutations to be released, where they fled into the deck's shadowed industrial maze.

The most important cargo on this deck is contained in a series of medical stations and labs. Thousands of colonists were placed into suspended animation, and genetic samples of even more potential "colonists" were stored in these laboratory facilities. The radiation also hit these buildings, and many humans, including mutated humans, were somehow revived and released. Over the decades and centuries, strange tribal societies formed, roaming deck 9's dark recesses, battling strange plants and animals as well as each other. Cafeterias and break rooms, once used by the deck's long-gone human crew, became centers of contention, as they were supplied with edibles by food synthesizers and service robots. The chaos of the great mutant revolt only lightly affected this deck, as most sought to leave the deck for more hospitable environs. This left the stone-age society and monstrous inhabitants to war among themselves, with the majority of life here still sleeping dreamlessly in its cryo-pods.

Next: Part 6: Deck 8: Factory Deck