They found the door to the cargo hangars a bit deeper into the tunnels. Next to the door was a backpack full of Hiwi’s stuff. She was well prepared to leave on a moment’s notice. She put the robotic arm that was used to swipe Brighand’s gun into the bag then slung it over her shoulder. She also held a rifle, the same kind that the Custodial Union and the security team used before it got disbanded.
It would heat up the air itself into a plasma state in a compressed chamber. Pulling the trigger would compress it further making pressure build up before creating an opening for it to escape out of. Full auto versions had multiple larger chambers which would rapidly cycle and with quick shut offs so not all the plasma would leak out at once, making the process of heating up the newly introduced air to a plasma state faster. Brighand’s pistol was semi automatic while her rifle was full auto.
As the latch opened up, Brighand peeked just his head out to check around the area. Hiwi shoved him out of the way and walked out openly. She held the rifle with one hand pointing straight up. A member of the Custodial Union spotted her and before they could even raise their rifle, she had already blasted him twice in the chest. Then she walked over to the quartermaster’s office not too far from there.
“Shouldn’t we be a bit more stealthy about this? Like slipping away to my ship without anyone seeing us?” asked Brighand as he ran over to catch up.
“No thank you. I’ve trapped myself in those crappy tunnels for long enough. You’re giving me a way out of here so I’m taking it now. Besides, with those janitors killing the people in quarantine and possibly even the medics, they’ll surely put cargo on lockdown soon enough. Doing things fast means less people die and it’s still a stealthy approach if all of them that are here die to me,” said Hiwi as he began knocking on the shutters to the quartermaster’s office.
When there was no response, Hiwi blasted three spots above the shutters then pushed them up with no resistance. There, they found the quartermaster bleeding out with several burns on his body. The Custodial Union member that Hiwi took down had tried to gun down the quartermaster only for him to close the shutters. His protective suit covering his whole body that was meant to keep the virus from infecting him had prevented the shots from puncturing through his body fully but dispersed enough energy that the wounds failed to cauterize. He survived but at the cost of dying later.
“Mr. Ledger, is Cap Brighand’s ship here loaded up with fissile materials?” asked Hiwi as she scaled over the desk into the office.
“You were right. I should’ve followed you into those tunnels or bribed a ship with enough fuel to get far away. I wouldn’t take his ship. It won’t get far and the fissile materials are mostly depleted, mostly Carbon-14 painted green. His engine’s shot so I figured why give him anything good if he’ll die anyways,” said the quartermaster, now also known as Mr. Ledger.
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“Hey Brighand, is your military vessel that shot?” asked Hiwi as she patted down the quartermaster and swiped a keychain.
“It’s parked out in space, my old scavenger ship has more than enough fight in it to get us there. If not, it’ll come to us. I used lead broken off from the fuel the military ship uses as an excuse to make lead shielding to ask for more fissiles. The engine’s combustion parts got destroyed from bad coal,” said Brighand.
“Where is your scavenger ship then?” asked Hiwi.
“63x57 is the location. Should we do anything about him?” asked Brighand.
“Go start your ship, I'll get more fuel from storage. Don’t worry about Mr. Ledger here. He’s always been well aware that one day someone would shoot and kill him for giving out bad goods. Why else would he have shutters? If it makes you feel better, he can do first aid on himself,” said Hiwi as she took a first aid kit off the wall, opened it, and laid it beside the quartermaster.
The quartermaster lifted himself up and began rummaging through the medications and sloppily applying a fast-solidifying gel to his wounds to stem the bleeding. Then he stabbed a needle of painkillers into his neck and passed out. Hiwi lightly tapped him twice with her foot before moving to the back storage.
“That’s one way of doing it I guess,” said Brighand as he went to find his ship.
He kept his pistol drawn and made sure to switch it back to lethal mode. Part of him briefly wondered how it was designed to shoot both hot blasts of plasma and needles of chemical cure from the same barrel. More important was making sure that they could get out of there safely. If there were any Custodial Union members on his ship, he had to be ready to shoot them before they shot him like Hiwi did.
Anticlimactically, he found his ship just fine with no one else around. Nor was anything damaged. It was just cleaned thoroughly. The chest for collecting things that he left with the quartermaster earlier was missing but otherwise everything was fine. The water and food dispensers were refilled and the oxygen supplies were full. He found that the coal was gone, replaced by a hunk of radioactive materials behind a brand new lead lining. He couldn’t help but wonder how much of the lining was actually lead after finding out most of the radioactives behind it were fake.
He slipped the spacesuit on then started up the engine. Due to the damage, it stuttered a bit, but the fissile materials reacted and generated plenty of power. The spacesuit had a built in Geiger counter and he was able to see that the levels of radiation did go up a tiny bit, but still at a safe level without protection. That meant it’d be fine for Hiwi to be aboard. Had it been unsafe, he would’ve suggested going to the ship first and either picking her up with it or coming back with a spare spacesuit.
Brighand had a feeling that suggesting such a thing would only result in a rifle aimed at him until he took off the suit and tanked the rads or waited on the station for her to just ditch him. Unless the computer aboard refused her orders and forced her to go back for him. But he had a feeling that the computer would just find some excuse to revoke him as captain and make her the new captain. Thankfully, everything was all set and now he had to just wait for her to get there with the extra fuel while guarding the entrance.