If I was actually hoping to get something done within four hours in the middle of literal nowhere, I’d need something more than an old spacesuit and my two hands.
Fortunately, the two storage lockers in this room were hardly secured, and it took me less than a minute to crank open their latches. The first one had… a pizza stuck to its ceiling? But the second one had a piece of loot that almost brought tears to my eyes:
A complete starship maintenance kit, stored in a toolbox with the shape and size of a minifridge. It came with a roll of strong security wire about ten meters long, which I could hook to my suit to keep it from floating away into infinity.
It may have been cheap and outdated, but in my eyes, it might as well have been made of gold.
“To think that the Practical Starship Maintenance elective would end up being useful…”
I sighed, then grinned from ear to ear as I held the plasma soldering iron in my fist. With its battery indicator flashing green, I felt like I could put back together the two halves of a broken world.
“Here’s hoping the distress beacon hasn’t flown too far.” Chances were it was blown to dust by whatever left the transport ship like this. But, if this compartment had survived well enough to keep me alive, perhaps the cockpit was floating away, intact enough for me to salvage the beacon from it.
I checked a second time for any other useful things in the airlock room. There was a spare EVA suit I could use if something happened to this one… But I didn’t think I’d be able to return here and put it on before the vacuum filled my lungs if came to that.
“Well then, might as well…” I prepared myself to escape.
The airlock terminal did not allow me to open it normally without authorization from the ship’s captain. However, in the same crash course I learned how to put on a spacesuit, I was taught these always have some sort of emergency release — one that is obviously loud and obnoxious to utilize, to reduce the chances of dangerous people doing it with bad intentions.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
I had to put both of my legs against the ship’s walls and pull a lever with the strength of my entire body, but the airlock eventually gave in and began pumping out what was left of this room’s air.
Well, it tried to. Considering the state of this ship, it’d be a miracle if anything was left of the ventilation system. So, taking a dangerously deep breath, I stood flat against the wall and squeezed the switch to open the hatch. A powerful breeze shook the airlock room, and a gate to the void was opened.
An eerie feeling washed over me as I pondered how dangerous it’d have been if I had opened it without doing that. Shaking my head, I climbed outside, and latched my suit to the ship’s EVA security reel. Nervous, I turned around to drink in the view of sea of stars outside.
To my surprise, I didn’t find myself looking for the bigger bits of debris sprawled around an immense night… Instead, I found myself staring at something that I couldn’t quite accept on the first try.
One… No, probably several dozens of starships. Maybe a hundred. Powered off and broken, some apparently intact, some ripped in two like a sword the size of a skyscraper had torn them apart.
I stood there, mouth agape. A part of me was busy comparing my meagre life savings to the cataclysmic financial loss before my eyes. But another part of me was screaming! Begging to know how in the world I ended up in a situation like this. A battlefield? A xeno junkyard for sunk starships? Or somehow, even worse?
I took a deep breath. Then a second one, and the HUD warned me again. I held back what were almost tears, and I gulped down with every particle of courage within me.
“No, no, this is good. With this many ships, at least one is bound to have a working distress beacon. Or…”
The chances of a starship coming by this place in four hours weren’t infinitesimally slim, but they weren’t great either. My skin was still shivering as I steered my thoughts to consider this, but, if any of these fallen starships had working life support, I may be able to survive just slightly longer than four hours.
“I just hope that…” The question in the corner of my mind came to the surface. “… Whatever sort of battle took place here isn’t about to have a rematch.”