Marooned, Dance Dance Evolution, Middle School, DD Evolution part 2

Marooned
Taking turns on the CO2 scrubbers as there were about 30 of us left alive. The ship had come down on a nearly desolate world. The sun was a distant red blob and the sky was deep blue, some of the brighter stars remaining visible even in the daytime. The atmosphere was thick enough, but mostly contained Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide and Argon. There was enough oxygen to allow you to suffocate only slowly, but the CO2 levels were high enough to make sure you were gasping the whole time. We had to keep in our suits the whole time, only taking them off when we took shifts at the galley and shower. We managed to hook up the ships CO2 scrubbers in a way that would allow us to recharge our air tanks in just a few hours, still, only a third of us could be active at any given time, the rest either out of suits eating or in suits sleeping while connected to the scrubbers. I'd been elected governor, and we'd had a small naming ceremony on the surface of the planet. In exploring I'd found a couple of yellow sparking creatures that seemed to be friendly. I'd also found that I could unload our colony's construction dome. If I could get that set up we'd be able to bring in the ships engines for repair, though I doubted that we'd be able to lift off the world. The static creature followed me into the ship, hitchiking on my life support pack. It seemed attracted to the vibrations of the electric motor. Once inside it raced around the cabin, checking everything electronic out, finally settling on the computer speakers. It made a connection with the ships wireless network connection.

Dance dance evolution
The AI made contact with a native life form, a static filled plasma creature that likes Boom diddy diddy boom music. Sparky starts dancing on the console until it undergoes mitosis and then there are two of them. They like us a lot, especially when we are playing music and dancing with them. The computer begins running a simulation set to disco music that sees biotic forms evolving and changing "They're dancing even before they're born?" the computer comments. I look into the simulation chamber. there are cartoon ameabae jiggling and vibrating to the music. Every so often one of them grows some limbs or flagella and swims off to explore new rhythms. The creatures join me in watching the display. It takes a day or two for the computer to figure out how to communicate with them. They are slightly intelligent, and have only recently acquired the concept of living beings other than themselves. It seems this world is a popular crash landing site. There are others they are helping. They live along huge quartz deposits where there is plenty of static electricity. The planet is geologically active but on a very subtle level. Our atmosphere doesn't seem to bother them, and there seems to be plenty of energy for them to use.

Middle school interlude. Noisy Chatty girl on a cell phone. Finally have to walk her up to the office to get her to be quiets. I notice there is a woman in a wheelchair out by the bus pickup lane and she had dumped her self over trying to get up the curve. I leave the child as her mother it yelling at her for not doing as she was told by me earlier. I manage to pull the woman up out of the road, but fall with her on top of my chest. I am struggling to get back on the sidewalk as a bus pulls in barely missing my head. Phone girl finally sees what is going on and runs out to help pull the woman back up into her wheelchair, though leaves me in the road to dodge another bus.

Back to the planet, the static plasma life forms have evolved to the point that they can scrub CO2 for us and we are able to move about the planet surface freely. We are working on converting our ships stores into a dome until the planet can be terraformed. The team has given up on rebuilding our engines, they are just too shot. We would need to revive our engineers to accomplish that task. We didn't have enough life support equipment for that yet. The indigenous life forms are not too concerned about the atmosphere, apparently, as long as we leave the peisio electric bearing rock layers alone, and keep playing music for them. I hear a commotion and a flock of 'Statics' come to get me. I run to the dance circle. On the way, there is a large Liger looking creature with an intelligent looking face. It is on all fours but is wearing a harness of some sort with tools in the belt. I can see it's face is framed with a black breathing apparatus which I at first took for its mane and beard. I don't have time to deal with it, so keep running, waving it off, hoping it is smart enough to understand. It also has an entourage of static creatures, shaped very different from my own but obviously related. Our swarms of Statics merge and split up between us. I reach the dance clearing accompanied by both static forms. Another ship has landed and set up an electric containment circle. I rush into the area, demanding to know what is going on. It is another group of humans, they have also been marooned here. "So you were saved by the asgard, too?" I asked in a joking manner.
This was a military group and they didn't see the humor in my question. Finally I come upon the right question to ask "who's in charge here."
A woman introduced herself as captain Black, I said hello and asked why she was detaining my people, they had very important work to do.
"They were dancing around like fruitcakes when we got here."
"That's because that is what we do to charge up the static lifeforms that are helping us weld together our dome." I gestured at the static crowd hovering behind me for safety. "We don't want to be stuck in these rebreathers the rest of our lives, do you?"
"Can you make repairs so we can get off planet?"
I looked at her ship, it was in better shape than ours, and the engines didn't look damaged from the outside. They were mounted high off her vessel and were not smashed when they landed.
"Help up get the dome finished, and we'll revive a couple of engineers to look at your ship." Most of my crew were in hibernation with the colonists, we had felt that was the best solution until the dome was finished. "I'm not waking them until we can either get back on course for our destination, or we can live here without the rebreathers."
Live here.
"Yes, the native intelligences have approved a change, adding 12 percent more to the oxygen levels of the atmosphere, that would make it just livable, in time, For all of us."
The liger people were back, leaping over the rocks running from something. A large dragon like creature. It stopped and I could feel it in my mind, a pressure on the language centers of my brain. It demanded one of us to eat or it would destroy the nearly finished dome and our ships.
Captain Black suggested one of the sleepers. I said no. I took a large wrench with me and walked out to the dragon. It lunged for me and I propped its jaws open with the wrench. I pulled a knife from my boot sheath and wrestled it up under a scale on its throat where I could feel something pulsing below the surface. The dragon got a lot friendlier all of the sudden. Like the Ligors and ourselves, it was apparently marooned here sucked in and damaged by some large spacegoing version of our static friends. It had depleted its food stocks. I promised we would look into finding a way to feed it if it would "just calm down, or we would be finding out what it would taste like." It calmed down. Our dome was flanked by several fruit trees. We'd had to use the grow lights from the colony stocks to supplement the worlds sunlight at first, but they'd adapted nicely and were already producing fruit.
The ligors advanced. It told me they were interested in what we were building. Translation was a good job for this creature. We'd been here half a year making trades with the Ligors, and growing some of their fruit trees as well as our own. Their trees did better, coming from a world closer to this one in nature. They needed slightly less oxygen than we did, so would be willing to help finish construction if they would be allowed to live in part of the dome with us. They had a large vessel with large food stocks, but very little space to move around. Their rebreathers were also powered by the static creatures, and were at just enough efficiency to allow our smaller members to move around quietly. They had extras, having lost several of their crew in their crash landing. They had not been as fortunate as we had been. The military commander tried to remind me that she was in charge because she had the weapons. I reminded her that she'd taken an oath, and I was the duly elected governor of this world. At least the human part of it, and couldn't she see we were outnumbered. I indicated the hills around us, all of them lined with Ligors, like something out of an old wild west movie. "I really don't want to start a war here, I mean, its only been 10 months."