Have you ever woken up from a deep neurolink dive in the middle of an explosion, well here’s a free tip, don’t, 0/10 would not recommend. One second there I was minding my own business, getting outta the systems carefully, making sure not to do any damage, next second BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM, and I mean big Badda boom. Mercifully it was bad enough that my systems shut down to preserve my mind, sadly that also meant about a third of the data I just hauled out got corrupted due to interruption mid-save and judging from the situation I’d say the computer was unlikely to still be intact enough to attempt a second time.

I was just glad I wouldn’t feel any of what was coming, as no doubt my body was not having a fun time of it, pretty sure I was going to be feeling all this for a while once I had my faculties back.

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as the charges ignited Nara realised that in her panic maybe, just maybe, she’d gotten the mix a little too strong, as the explosive took out the door, and quite probably a hell of a lot more, and tossed them about like ragdolls. She bounced a couple of times and slid a-ways before coming to a stop against a wall, for once glad of her heavy-grav genes. The girls would be OK, she hoped. Once the smoke started to clear she got to her feet with a groan and started looking for the others.

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*error, system overload....... safety shutdown initiated.... loading....loading.....sensory input back within survivable levels, beginning restart procedure....... WARNING recent data transfer partially unsuccessful....... files damaged proceed with caution........ attempting data retrieval..... retrieval unsuccessful........ ERROR... data corruptions in main databases.... existing file-system corrupted........ Initiating Project Pathfinder..... re-initialising main systems......3....2.....1........

Well, that sucked, it felt like my body had been shoved through a blender, and now, yups, somebody let Nara have explosives, I’m smoking, and yup, sat in the middle of a damn crater, overkill much sweetie?

I bit back a curse as I desperately scanned through the remains of what had been the mother-lode of all tech scores, and was now greatly reduced. Trying to do anything to distract from the blast as I looked around for wherever the others had been thrown.

Bleyk was the first I saw, they seemed fine, as far as I could tell. Power-armoured space squid from a race we've never even heard of aren’t exactly easy to identify damage on. But the amount of cussing they were doing kinda gave me a hint he was okay. Next up was Jenel, she’d gone through a couple of partitions, but was picking splinters out of her hair and dusting off, so she must have been clear of most of the damage.

Then there was Nara, oh god too funny, she seemed intact, but looking at her it would be a few months before her eyebrows came back. Seriously, the amount of times she’s singed them off it amazes me she hasn’t taken to shaving them off in a preemptive action. That’s about all I remember before being flying tackled, and practically hugged into exploding by a relieved Jenel.

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“Jenel sweetie, OUCH OUCH OUCH, insides stay inside, seriously safe-word red, I’ll cuddle hell outta you later, but I haveta survive first, air please.” I groaned, as my arms were pressed into my sides with a force that would have made a hydraulic press feel inadequate.

It took a few moments for Jenel to process this, and let me go, flushing red, god that was always adorable.

“DON’T SCARE ME LIKE THAT, safeguards exist for a reason Eileen, I like your brain uncooked. We thought you’d picked up a virus or something, for all we know that system could have had doomsday installed. Nara was worried.”

“I figured that from the explosion, but I didn’t come out empty-handed, we got a handy little guide to the systems, well most of it. Lost about a third because somebody BLEW US UP, you two wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?” I joked, playfully shooting them the stink-eye. Going dark like that had probably scared the crap out of them both, and we all knew Nara’s go-to panic reaction was usually a mushroom cloud. Looking at the bullet holes in what was left of that wall it was a fairly safe bet Jenel had a panic of her own. No idea how Bleyk reacted of course, given that there was no pink or purple goop all over the place it seemed their reaction was a tad more subdued than anybody else in our little team.

The way I figured after worrying them like that it was hardly surprising they weren’t doing their best thinking. I would have appreciated them maybe setting up better cover, bits of me were still smoking, but for scaring them like that we were probably about square on the bad decision-making on this one. In the background an evacuation alarm blared away like there was anybody left to evacuate, as with a hiss the remains of the reception desk slid aside, revealing a new tunnel to properly facilitate evacuation. I couldn’t help but facepalm at that, but before we went to check out what lay down there it was probably best to head back to Reliance, get patched up, and check on our newest guest. I really hoped Relly had gotten her out of there on time, and that she was still able to wake up at all. The chemicals used in Cryo back then had been primitive at best, not much more than bio-identical nanites that kept the temperatures above cell death, and some kind of stem cell release system that nobody now really understood enough to replicate. Nowadays temporal stasis was favoured, as when anything went wrong with it at least it took the poor sod out in an instant. Now we had to take a chance if the nanites had failed to do the job, or the enhanced stem cell clusters hadn’t survived well, the poor kid would be lucky to get out of that pod without the aid of a ladle.

But we did have tech from the time which would probably help. I looked at the smouldering wall again, amazed we’d all survived that, and couldn’t resist a parting shot.

“Nara sweetie,” I said in my sweet as pie tone, before grinning when she looked my way, swapping to my terrible attempt at an Essex accent, (which I will admit was bad enough to be used in lock stock, let alone Italian job). “YOU WERE ONLY SUPPOSED TO BLOW THE BLOODY DOORS OFF.”