The expression on the guard’s face was hidden behind a thick visor, but it didn’t seem pleased to see Joe’s lanky figure wandering down the concourse. Joe found himself growing nervous as the rifle raised into a more ready position, and halted as the figure held up a hand.
“No entry beyond this point, buddy. It’s dangerous in there.” the helmet speaker distorted and crackling.
Joe smiled nervously and held up his ID card.
“Whoa, I’m the new engineer. I’m here to fix the plasma leak in the reactor, and I need to pick up some equipment. Ask Sergeant Mane.”
He remained passive while the guard verified with HQ. After a few seconds, the figure shrugged and the rifle lowered.
“Wasn’t expecting you to get started so fast. Go on through. Equipment storage is down the right hall.”
Joe thanked the figure and walked past, scanning his ID card at the entrance to engineering and receiving a cheerful chime in response. The access light turned green and the main bulkhead to engineering cycled open, revealing a near pitch black corridor. A faint whiff of ozone puffed out into the lighted hallway as the stagnant air saw movement for the first time in months.
“The hell is this?” Joe asked the guard incredulously, “Where are the lights?”
The guard shrugged.
“No power to the whole section. Need a flash-light?”
Joe grunted in irritation but shook his head, pulling a headlamp out of his pocket and securing the strap around his head. Flicking it on, he took his first steps into the abandoned engineering section.
Joe cast his head about and examined the area. A thin layer of dust had settled over everything, rendering everything a little dull in the narrow cone of the headlamp. Joe looked down and saw he was leaving footprints in the dust, next to older, fainter tracks from someone with much smaller feet. Joe was more or less inured to this degree of neglect by this point however, and carried on his way. The corridor was quite wide, enough for three fully suited figures to traverse, with dull grey and white painted plastic panelling covering the walls. The floor, like most of the rest of the station, was a faded green plastic used to protect gravity tiles from the thumps and bumps of whatever stood atop it.
After what felt like entirely too long, Joe found himself standing in front of the hatch for the equipment room. Swiping his ID card got him access and the hatch - thankfully - swung open, protected from the localised blackout with dedicated circuitry routing to the reactor and several redundant batteries. As he stepped inside, he gasped in horror. They’d stripped the place bare. All the regular tools, meters, probes and other accoutrements of station engineering were gone, the racks holding them forced open and their contents pilfered. Except for one, he hoped.
Most pipe monkeys were aware of the hidden hazard safe, although it’s presence was typically only acknowledged by top station brass. It was the place used to store equipment and tools that could easily be a danger to the station - prepared explosives for debris management, corrosive agents, high powered cutting tools like portable plasma torches, and even occasionally a gun that was snuck past the local security chief. In most stations this required direct approval from the chief engineer and chief of security to crack open, but Joe had been granted full authorisation by Anele in order to speed up his job (and so that he wouldn’t bother her).
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Looking around, he started checking the sides of the shattered racks, looking at the serials for a specific unit. When he found it - clearly attacked with a hammer - he saw the contents had been looted, but nobody had noticed the false back. Pulling out his hand unit, he enabled NFC and pressed it against the inside back of the cabinet. A few seconds later, a confirmation beep was emitted from the unit and the back of the cabinet - which was in fact part of the wall - swung inwards. Stepping inside, Joe sighed with relief.
Firstly, there was light. Backup power hadn’t failed and that meant no contaminants had escaped yet. Secondly, nothing was gone - he saw not one but two full sized plasma cutters, a heavily reinforced box with explosive hazard stickers covering the sides, multiple plastic barrels storing acid secured behind triple paned glass and gas-repellent seals, as well as the usual accoutrement of laser cutters (used for fine cutting and hull etching) and bolt guns used to temporarily secure loose plates to hull breaches when there was no time for a weld. There were also several hard suits in the room - mostly stored here because they could allow easy access to hazardous yet delicate station machinery. Joe saw the plazmat suit, haphazardly hung on it’s rack with the front facing seals open. There were signs of scorch marks on the inside of the suit, and the slight odour of burned pork hung about the tough plastic. Looks like the previous occupant had caught fire inside the suit. Joe shuddered. There were many unpleasant ways to die in space, and even more unpleasant ways to die as an engineer in space, but immolation inside a fireproof suit ranked very highly both in irony and discomfort. Reaching into his pocket he took out a hand microscope, capable of zooming in tens of times optically and another several orders of magnitude digitally, then began the process of examining the edges of the hardened chest plate. He couldn’t see any immediate signs of a suit breach. Maybe whoever had “patched” the suit had actually done a reasonable job. Assuming they didn’t use the wrong materials and the patch wouldn’t just ignite on first exposure to a plasma bath.
Sighing, he bundled the suit up and left the hazard safe, careful to ensure it sealed properly behind him. With the suit in his arms, he started making his way back through the darkened passages. The eerie silence somehow seemed worse on the way back, with every stray creak and groan reverberating through his feet. In fact, so focused was Joe on the small noises of the station around him that he failed to notice the new set of footprints in the dust.
Finding himself back in front of the main bulkhead, Joe scanned his ID card over the dull glow of the access panel and was chimed out. He wrinkled his nose slightly as the station air hit him - he hadn’t noticed the slightly ripe odour until he’d been breathing stale air for a while. He added atmospheric filters to his list of things to replace, but his contemplation stopped as he noticed the guard was gone. Wasn’t this place supposed to be off limits? He sighed, but with his hand unit still not on the network he couldn’t ask anyone where the man was.
He hung around for several minutes in case the guard returned, but soon gave up and decided to make his way to the security offices. He felt a lot more comfortable there, where there was consistent light and power, and he could occupy one of the empty offices to do his suit examination. Nodding confidently to himself, and gamely ignoring the tingling sensation running down the back of his neck, he set up a brisk pace to perceived safety.