The space suit was heated, it had to be for Riley to even have a chance at survival, but the frost build up on the corners of his visor still made him feel cold inside. Weird how the human brain functioned like that. He even had flavoured water that wasn't anything but water with a smell pouch attached to the lip of his canister. He liked them over actual soda these days.. Better savings on his living costs.

He had not much manual labour to do here that could tire him out, living on the absolute outer edge of Titan meant lacklustre gravity, but it also meant near constant work would be the thing tiring him out instead. He was a younger recruit here, having been relocated to the fuel harvest rigs from the Titan station right after he turned 17, so heavier and more diligent natured work was always pressed onto his shoulders instead. He didn't mind though, overtime meant more pay. More pay meant everything, no?

With a grunt, the Saturnine finally managed turning the frozen over valve he had been fussing over for the past half minute. He paused and waited, a hand now leaning against the pipe the valve was set over to feel the steady build up of pressure indicating a shutoff in the line. When he felt confident enough, he moved on, jumping to another set of valves to turn those on instead.

“Uhh- Ian? I switched the channels over, start the removal process.” He spoke into his radio, checking the panel on his forearm after he whipped it clean of the slight frost it had built up as well. Changing the channel to check the readings on the pressure levels he was working with at the moment.

“By Sol, Ril how much longer are you gonna work on this?” Came the familiar voice on the other end of his line, a sigh following after. “I'm going to do this.. And then you’re going to clock out and hit the hay. Got it?”

“Just start the releases, Ian.” he replied in a tone too tired to honestly fight back at the moment. He didn't think he had taken much longer than his average shifts, but then again the sun was hidden behind Saturn at the moment so the concept of night and day were very foreign to him here.

He waited, and he watched his surroundings as he did so. Just a dark room, faded and chipped yellow with shattered windows showing the tang yellow and brown outside air gently drifting inside the once operational deck. He wasn't doing scavenging work, just here to turn off all the machinery still active so the newer rig next door could suck more of Titans methane out.

After the built up resources were done being extracted, (who’d deny free surplus?) Riley, Ian and their crew were to turn off all still functional units of the rig in a final check before the entire place was abandoned completely. But as was custom by this point, the Saturnine had asked for a bonus for recovering units from the old rig that were at least 80% functional. So now a very irritated Ian sat in the main ship and waited for Riley to finish being an overly diligent dick and come back with whatever he salvaged.

And as it would an hour later turn out, it was quite a damn bit. Once the salvage was recovered onboard successfully, Ian went to sleep right in the cockpit while Riley manoeuvred the ship and set off for the hub station for their resource company they all stayed in. His crew had left before them, leaving them with the space equivalent of a pickup truck in the yellow and black colours of construction crews to come back on their own, and that was what Riley had to sit in the cockpit of while setting coordinates for. Not a difficult thing to do, it would be the long fly back itself that would drain him the most.

Seeing the machines quality, protocol dictated they kept their astrosuits the entire time they weren’t in a safe haven like a hub or fully functional mineral rig. The thing stuck to him, the sweat serving as an uncomfortable adhesive, sticking it to him so closely it felt like a second skin. Hadn't even been 4 months since he had first started working here that the permanent scars of the suit were appearing on his body, but it was more a badge of honour around these parts now. Morbid when one thinks too long on it, no?

But Riley didn't have anything else to think about to keep him otherwise occupied. Sitting in that somewhat cramped dome of heavy glass that made up the ships head, the entirety of the cosmos was laid bare to him, his tight seat held up by an arm from the rings set into the wall, to keep both him and his backup operator behind him, Ian, upright should the ship need to for some reason spin. The ship always came to him in the shape of a weird dragonfly, one of those insects native to Earth, with this bulbous glass chamber serving as its eyes and then a long body nothing beyond a platform with 8 sets of elongating arms to grab and strap things to it. The four long wings were even movable, being the main thing Riley had to stay awake for.

They moved, two separate joints letting it fold in different ways so as to avoid getting damaged in any way. Riley had to be awake and keep watch so any stray bodies too small for the scanners to detect didn't fly into the wings and damage it. Such low cost machines rarely ever had shield drives after all.

Hours, just watching that revolving station of long queues built on a giant asteroid in Saturn's outer ring draw closer and closer. It gave a man enough time to think on many things. Riley just spent it going through calculations for his family's budget. They were in the clear, thank Sol they were stable now… but savings. They still needed savings. And he knew damn well there wasn't anyone else to help them with any of that. Deadbeat relatives.. An older brother training for the war. There wasn't much more his father, mother and he could even do but make enough to pass them by safely and put little Charlotte through the academy as well. With a pilot oldest and an officer youngest, perhaps Riley could also get to enjoy this thing called “laziness” everyone keeps chirping about.

His laugh at that thought was cut short when something flashed out the corner of his eye, immediately making him lean forward to see what that was. Rock pieces often caught the light of the ship when they came too close.

Another spark, flickers here and there. It looked like the shorting wires inside a broken box, fizzing and flickering and streaking across the mostly black space around that place. But.. it was so far off, much further away than where even they were heading.

“Where.. Is that? Beyond Saturn even?- no no, that light wouldn’t spark so brightly… past the rings?” The thought worried him, but then again he’d seen them once before too. That time though, the older captain had simply written it off as Pilot exercises near the Saturn Defence Station.

“Maybe Hugh’s flying again..” He thought with a small smile.

It took kicking Ian to get him loose off his seat, the bastard had leaned his chair back enough it wasn't possible to walk out with him in the way like that in a now gravity inducted space. They were both exhausted, and once the ship's controls were handed off to the captain along with a manifest of all salvaged parts, they both dragged themselves through their usual motions of changing, showering and eating near tasteless nourishment before it finally came time to sink themselves into shitty foam beds.

Only.. this time, they never even reached the disposal bins with their trays before something shattered their schedule to smithereens.

The dining halls were massive, being multi storied and open air- as much as you could be in a space station owned by corps- and coloured the vibrant shades of gunmetal grey and gunmetal grey with a darker shade of blue. Multiple canteens for food, all you needed to do was grab a tray and find a seat. Riley was busy reading though, looking up different pages mindlessly as his other hand just poked at the vaguely… greyish, brownish, off white glob of carbohydrate that took up the central spot of his tray. Fresh food was a delicacy eaten maybe once a year for people in his particular societal ranking. And when a corp controlled every measure of your life, even that was usually out of reach.

Still, there were some sources of entertainment for the multicoloured masses of rig operators, maintenance workers and minutemen stationed there. A giant set of monitors covered the opposing walls of the canteen in this case, flashing the logo of their parent company before showing different news reports coming on from across Space Stations. There usually wasn't outside news beyond those from their orbiting planet hubs, and in titans case, that was Saturn station. Every now and then, there also came in news from the Star Consortium or other galactic companies like theirs.

The solid and frozen pentagon symbol for their company, Astral Castle, melted away into a brief news bulletin for things that only made Riley more tired, the sheer amount of work that was being shown was staggering at times for him. It wasn't like he was the only one doing the work, far from it. Titan was one of the actually rich satellites for resource harvest, just the scope of their own mining operations being ample proof of that fact. And though the pay wasn't like the pay for other stations like Europa, every credit counted in their knife's edge living conditions.

But then Ians elbowing snapped him out of his dreamy dozing and into a nightmarish reality.

The screens had cut off their news flashes halfway through, the bulletins having been replaced with a large wall of red with yellow and black stripes running across the top and bottom of the screens. A moment later, the floors vibrated with the slamming noises coming from all around.

“The hell-” Riley said in alarm, locking eyes with a worried looking Ian as they got to their feet, their meals left behind as loud yelling and shouts of alarm echoed out from every hallway coming into and out of the dining hall.

“ATTENTION ALL RESIDENTS- ATTENTION ALL RESIDENTS-” blared the speakers twice, the monitors now flashing to catch peoples eyes before a video- no- a live feed of outer space took over. It took a moment to stabilise, still flickering as everything came into focus. But as a background voice started picking up again, the feed zoomed in as well. It was a feed from one of the outer drone scouts that floated through the astral belt of Saturn, one which had nearly entirely exited the belt to provide a clear view of the Saturn Station itself just peeking out of the shadow of the gas giant.

The station was a giant asteroid once, with its initial architecture being two rings supported by booster jet attached pylons built up on the astral body itself. Now, it was a massively sprawling exo station, covering nearly the entire body with segmented portions and two giant towers like a spear running it through from top to bottom, helping the entire structure spin constantly by the astral core and providing gravity for all residents- nearing a few billion regular people living regular lives in Saturn's orbit.

The place looked fine, the sparkling surface of lights and black now showing a gleaming surface of darker grey intercrossed with rings of silver and larger patches of black. As the people gathered around them looked closely for what had caused such an uproar, the voice on the intercoms chanted away a code 9-A “Yellow” signal. It didn't take long before Riley managed to recall it meant imminent danger preparations. But for what?

And then Ian pointed a shaking finger up to the screen in a tone of disbelief. “Why.. why’s there no ships?”

“What?”

“It's Saturn station- It’s Saturn station damn it where the hell are the massive cargo vessels?!” Ian said more adamantly, now looking around them all in confusion, in search for validation or, hopefully, a reasonable explanation.

“Oh- oh gods..” A voice far behind them caught them all off guard. While some glanced behind, the pair instead caught sight of something else on the feed.

And as the cold sensation of fear and disbelief also ran cold Riley’s entire body, the intercoms chimed up with a confirmation none of them ever wanted hearing.

“Space station Zeta, Saturn station has been attacked- Casualties confirmed. Outers attack confirmed, combat status- unknown-”