"Do you ever think we spend too much time drinking?" Spud asked, her elbows and chin on the table as she looked at the glass in front of her face in defeat. The data from Eskaar's comm network hadn't been the break that Ali and Wood had initially hoped it might be. After a full day of mining all the data they had, they had eventually given up and headed to the lounge.

Ali laughed. "I do some of my best thinking after a few drinks."

"And that, right there, is why we're doomed," Rila said as she raised her glass.

"I reiterate my point about you lot needing more respect for your captain," Ali tried to scold, but it was difficult when she was smiling.

"You never had any for yours," Grey cut in as he arrived.

"And you don't have any authority over some of us," Wood added with an uncharacteristic grin as he took his own seat.

Ali glared at him to bite down the automatic response that would land her in trouble. Though the innuendo would probably be worth it just to see how much she could make him blush. "But I can ban you from my ship," she said eventually with a too bright smile.

By now Spud had decided that drink was the answer to their collective melancholy, just about managing to giggle around it rather than into it. "He'd just take that as a challenge to break in."

"Like she did, you mean?" Wood asked as he pointed at Ali, who had her most innocent expression on. "I'd get further."

"You assume I was trying."

"I'm going to stop the pair of you right there before you actually start some sort of ongoing bet on who can break into each other's ship most," Grey warned, making them all laugh. Ali was pretty certain he was only putting a stop to it because he knew about their competitive streaks and that one of the ships involved was his own. Surely she couldn't be the only one curious as to who'd actually win?

~-x-~

They hadn't drunk late into the night, so the following morning started as a normal day. Or at least as normal as a day hunting a mercenary group turned terrorist organisation could be.

"Captain, I'm picking up a distress call," Rila reported. "It's the Panjunc, they've intercepted an unauthorised vessel and are under attack." She paused as she tapped away on her console to determine any additional information. "We're a couple of hours away, but we're probably nearest."

Ali nodded. "Ed -"

"On it, skipper," Ed didn't even need to let her finish as Rila passed the coordinates to his console and he entered an intercept course.

"Rila, can you update the Endeavour?"

"They're probably picking up the distress call too, but I'll forward our intent onto them," Rila confirmed.

Ali wasn't surprised that Grey had had the exact same plan that she had and both Faraday and Endeavour were heading towards the Panjunc's last reported location. They must have been travelling less than half an hour when the distress call stopped broadcasting. No one needed to ask why, though they hoped it was simply because their communications array was too badly damaged to continue transmitting. Experience had taught the more senior officers that was not the most likely scenario.

They arrived to find a scene of devastation. The Panjunc had been on the receiving end of a lot of firepower, it's hull pockmarked with explosion and decompression damage. A significant amount of debris was strewn around and Ali was certain that not all of it was bulkheads and engineering components. "Rila, Olkant?" She prompted.

Rila shook her hands horizontally above her console, there was no point her even trying. "The Panjunc is decompressed and I'm not reading any systems online. Their core is offline. I'm not reading any life signs," Olkant reported as he worked away at his station, his two staff forwarding him their own reports. "Without their black box I can't be certain, but the bulk of the damage is focused on their engineering decks."

Ali closed her eyes and counted to ten. The fastest way to destroy a ship was to go straight for the drive core, and it appeared that was what had happened to the Panjunc. It was always her last resort because it was often unnecessary, but not everyone played nice. She opened her eyes again and focused on the task at hand. "Okay, I guess we can at least retrieve their black box and… well, whatever else we can."

Ali and Grey had a quick debate on who should go across to investigate which Ali lost. For the best array of skill sets Ali, Narla, Waarlm and Wood were going - with Claire as shuttle pilot - which meant they all had to suit up. Whilst they explored the ship Grey was going to supervise the external mission to see how much they could recover. No one explicitly said the word bodies, but everyone would want to give as many of the crew a proper burial - or whatever customs their species had - as possible.

They considered using the beamer, but in the end they had decided that it would be safer to take one of the shuttles, and because Claire was their pilot they took one of the Endeavour's. That left Ed with the Faraday's resources. Ali did not envy Claire for having to navigate through the devastation towards what was left of the Panjunc. "Okay, get us in as close to their comms systems as possible," Ali suggested as she patted Claire on the shoulder as they were on their final approach.

"Okay, that's the upper starboard on this class, right?"

"Yes," Waarlm confirmed. USEP ships had an array of standard designs, generally dependent upon which species built it. Ships were given a name from the same species that built it. So both the Endeavour and Faraday had been built by humans and shared their class. The Panjunc was named after an old yertan deity. Though ships were multicultural, traditionally a ship tended to have a captain the same species as it was built by, but not always.

Ali hadn't even realised she was pacing until Wood asked, "are you all right?"

She stopped dead, surprised by her own lack of control. She sat herself down. "Fine," she lied. Wood saw right through that as he gave her a pointed look at her still bouncing knee. Ali sighed. "This'll be the first time I've been in a vacuum for… a long time."

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"You never used to get nervous about decomp," Claire chimed in.

"Yes, none of us are the same people we were," Narla refuted as gently as she could, sparing Ali a sympathetic glance. For once her tentacles were not dancing about her head as they had been gently gathered into the pouch at the back of her spacesuit.

Ali swallowed but managed to give Narla a grateful smile. Claire was right, she hadn't used to get overly nervous about working in a vacuum. She knew their spacesuits were well designed and their full specifications. She knew the safety limits. But that was before she had experienced space without a spacesuit. Her eyes darted around the small shuttle before she eventually dared meet Wood's gaze. He had an apologetic look on his face. He understood. To free her from an enemy brig he had blasted it open so that they could bypass the shields preventing them from beaming her out. It had only been for a few seconds, but it was the kind of thing that left an imprint. Ali offered him a weak smile and shrug. She didn't blame him.

Once Claire had got a seal with the shuttle they set to securing their helmets in place and doing their final checks on their seals and air supplies.

Their first objective was to retrieve the black box. After that they'd do a sweep of the ship to see what else they could salvage and to see if they could find any survivors. They weren't expecting any, but it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that someone had been fortunate enough to be able to get to a suit before their air supply had gone.

As an engineer Waarlm was most familiar with the design and layout of the Panjunc, and he would know where to find the black box. He and Wood led them through the ship with Ali providing back up from the scanners and Narla keeping a look out and using her telepathic senses to compliment Ali's tech. All ships had two black boxes, the main one was kept outside of engineering - usually the main junction for the communications arrays - because the core was the most likely place to explode. A backup was also stored in engineering as that was the other place all the systems met.

It wasn't until Wood chimed in with a series of directions that Ali realised she'd misjudged who knew this ship design best. She switched to a private channel. "Something I should know?"

There was a moment of silence and now she was looking she could see the tension in his body even with a space suit on - and not because of the unusual effort of walking in zero-g in grav-boots. "First ship I served on."

Ali didn't know what to say for a moment as she floated alongside Narla. "I'm sorry," she eventually said. Then paused again before asking, "is that a coincidence?"

"I really hope so," Wood admitted. He had spotted it too. Two old postings being hit could be the start of a pattern. Suddenly he gave a little wry chuckle. "You know, this was probably the last time on my service record things didn't go to hell."

"Wood…"

"I know, I know, don't get distracted. I'll be fine." He closed the channel to prevent her from adding anything else. She made a mental note to keep an eye on him as she used a wall to push herself after him.

They soon arrived at the junctions in question and Waarlm quickly got to work with Ali's assistance. Between them they made quick work of isolating the black box, disconnecting it and removing it from it's holdings. Once they had it they agreed to leave it with Claire in the shuttle where they could start the data downloading whilst they went to sweep the rest of the ship.

They agreed to split up. Ali and Waarlm would head towards engineering, sweeping for survivors before going to analyse and reclaim what they could. Meanwhile Narla and Wood would head towards the bridge with the same mission. That way they could cover twice as much ground in the same time. Claire was monitoring them from the shuttle and giving them regular updates about their air supplies. They had access to the information themselves, but when they got involved in a mission sometimes it would slip their minds to check.

Progress was slow going, their spacesuits were augmented to enable easier movement with the bulk required to protect them from the freezing vacuum, but the Panjunc was in such a state it wasn't as simple as walking down familiar corridors. Even if they chose not to use the grav-boots and just floated their way through the debris and rubble, they often had to stop to move it out of their way.

Eventually Ali and Waarlm reached engineering. They shared an unhappy look after they surveyed the carnage that was left. The decks and bulkheads were blackened from the fires that would have raged before the bulkhead was blasted apart. The hole in the top of the engineering bay was scarily large and rent as if it were made of thin tin and someone had taken a can opener to it - very badly due to the jagged edges - but it was humbling to look upon just how little it would take to break the protective barrier between space and crew.

Waarlm patted Ali's shoulder and indicated to one of the better preserved walkways. She nodded and they carefully made their way towards it, one toe at a time until they were certain it would hold under their weight. Though without the artificial gravity any applied force was just the result of their boots, and with the hole in the roof they were definitely using the grav-boots.

They quickly determined that they couldn't power up any of the systems. So they had to rely on their hand scanners and eyes to determine what was salvageable. In many ways the sheer scale of the damage made their jobs easier, most of the equipment and parts were beyond anything that they could make use of.

As they moved a section of bulkhead that had fallen into their path they uncovered a nasty surprise. Both Ali and Waarlm stopped dead as they took in the blinking lights that despite their small size appeared too bright given the lack of power in their surroundings. "Oh no," Ali breathed.

"What?" Wood asked over the comm. It was standard procedure to leave their comm lines open in decompression situations and keep conversation to a minimum. Unless switching to private channels, but they were to be used sparingly.

Ali swallowed to make her throat work as she debated trying to scan the explosive device in front of her. "I think it's a mine." Ali had to admit that she didn't know the literal definition difference between a bomb and a mine. All she knew was that there was an explosive device in front of them and it was blinking away quite happily to indicate that it was armed.

"We know it's not motion activated," Waarlm corrected and snapped her out of her headspace.

"Unless we activated it by moving the bulkhead."

Waarlm had to give her that. There was a reason that neither of them had moved a muscle since, it wasn't worth the risk. But they had to come up with something resembling a plan. "You could scan it."

"Unless it has anti-scanning tech built into it."

"Guys!" Wood cut in urgently. Out of the group aboard the Panjunc he was the weapons expert. He needed to get them to focus. "What can you see?" Ali flicked the camera in her helmet to broadcast what she was seeing as Waarlm described what they were looking at. His height gave him a better view than Ali. "Okay, I know this design, it's supposed to detonate on impact. Something must be wrong with it's mechanism. It has anti-hacking tech inbuilt but there's nothing to stop you disarming it manually."

"What tools do we need?" Ali asked.

"Something sharp and something to pull circuit modules out with."

Waarlm nodded as he dug through his pockets before handing Ali the requisite tools. "Okay, that anti-hacking tech, will my scanner set it off?" She asked.

"Don't think we should risk it, if you leave your helmet cam on I should be able to talk you through it."

"If you get me blown up -"

"You'll haunt me for eternity, I know," Wood assured her, making her chuckle.

Ali passed her scanner to Waarlm, just in case, and carefully made her way over to the device. Crouching over it as Wood instructed her which panel to remove, what to avoid and what the critical systems she needed to pick apart were. She hadn't realised she was holding her breath until she let it out when the lights blinked off. "We're not done yet," he warned her, before directing her to the override that would kick in to prevent someone doing just what she was doing. "Okay, that's it, you're good."

Ali swore under her breath before thanking him. She definitely owed him a drink. "Let's not push our luck," she decided and Waarlm nodded as he passed her the scanner back. They retrieved the few components they'd already salvaged and rather than continuing their hunt they left engineering to finish up sweeping their half of the ship.