Judas stepped into the equipment locker, his hands running over the racks of spacewalk gear. The air inside the compartment smelled faintly of polymer and metallic grease, a scent he’d come to associate with the uneasy mix of preparation and danger. He pulled down a standard suit, its joints already creaking slightly from overuse, and began suiting up.
“You’re seriously going through with this,” Samson said in his earpiece, more statement than question.
“Yeah,” Judas replied, snapping the helmet into place. The heads-up display flickered to life, painting the interior visor with a soft glow. “If this thing is just here to babysit, it’s one hell of an overreach.”
He grabbed the compressed air jets, checking their seals before securing them to his belt. His magnetic gloves and boots followed, their faint hum kicking in as he powered them up. Lastly, he attached a spool of tether line to his suit, its compact housing clipped securely to his back.
The outer airlock door opened with a hiss, revealing the docking bay. Judas stepped forward, his boots clanking softly against the grated floor, and clipped his tether to a nearby rail.
“Stay close to the station,” Samson advised. “You don’t want to be seen floating free.”
“I don’t plan on being seen at all,” Judas muttered.
----------------------------------------
Outside, the void swallowed everything. Caliban Station’s hull stretched around him like the ribs of a mechanical leviathan, its surface dotted with sensor arrays and docking ports. Above, Pluto loomed in the darkness, a cold and distant giant, chunks of debris drifting out from its surface from the recent impaction. If you squinted, you might be able to see a drone or two. Probably not.
Judas moved carefully, his magnetic boots clicking softly with each step. His compressed air jets hissed faintly as he adjusted his trajectory, propelling himself toward the docking bay adjacent to the lamprey station.
“Alright,” he said quietly, his voice steady despite the rising tension. “Let’s see what this parasite looks like up close.”
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
The lamprey station was even more menacing from the outside. Its dark metal plating absorbed most of the light, leaving it a hulking silhouette against the void, darker than black. Antennae bristled from its surface, twitching faintly as if alive.
Judas stayed just out of reach, his gloves gripping the edge of the station’s hull. He activated his visor’s zoom function, scanning the lamprey’s surface for signs of tampering or concealed systems.
“Anything unusual?” Samson asked.
“Other than the whole thing being a giant middle finger to station autonomy? Not yet,” Judas replied.
He adjusted his position, using the air jets to guide himself toward the edge of the docking bay. As he drifted, something caught his eye—a faint glint of metal further down the station’s hull.
“What the hell…”
Judas narrowed his focus, zooming in on the object. A second lamprey.
Smaller than the primary station, it clung to one of Caliban’s auxiliary docking ports like an oversized tick. Its design was sleeker, more compact, with a single antenna pulsing faintly in rhythm.
“It’s about the size of a cargo pod,” Judas said, his voice tight. “But it’s not on the manifest.”
He shifted his position again, scanning the docking bay. Five more of the smaller stations came into view, each one attached to a different port.
“Samson,” Judas said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We’ve got six more of these things. Smaller. No one’s mentioned them.”
“That’s... alarming,” Samson replied after a pause. “If they’re smaller and scattered, they might be collecting targeted data—or worse, performing maintenance overrides without authorization. They're magnetically active.”
“How long have they been here?” Judas muttered, half to himself. “Someone would've noticed six additional thunks when the big boy docked.”
“No way to tell without inspecting their logs,” Samson said. “And I doubt they’d make it easy for you.”
Judas felt the weight of the void pressing against him, a suffocating silence that made every breath feel heavier. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the station wasn’t just being monitored—it was being dissected.
“Okay,” he said softly. “I’m heading back. This is—”
He froze mid-sentence, his visor’s peripheral sensors lighting up with a proximity light - motion to his left.
Behind him, the airlock to Caliban opened with eerie precision, releasing an NSS Buddy into the void. Its polymer shell gleamed faintly, and its movements were unnervingly smooth as it floated toward him.
Judas’s breath caught as the Buddy’s glowing visor locked onto him.
“Samson,” he whispered, his pulse pounding in his ears.
“Yes?” Samson replied, his tone sharper now.
“I think we’ve got a problem.”