---Derelict---
---Victor’s perspective---
I come round a corner in a corridor on Deck 17, in the ship’s central section.
The first thing my attention snaps to is a pair of arms, about 30m away, of a girth and power that I’d be sorely tempted to sell my soul for(!)
The next thing I notice is the set of shiny robes and long, straight, jet black hair.
The last thing I notice is the hushed tone that Emiko is talking to Thran in, a mix of consoling and exasperated.
“No… I can’t see it anymore… but it doesn’t matter!… It’s a perfectly natural, normal and healthy part of your body!”
“One that looks ugly…” says Thran in a flat tone (though I’ve known her long enough to be able to tell when she’s miserable about something). Her hand moves to the short hair at the back of her head to trace its fingertips over the place I know her occipital bun is.
“I think it looks lovely!” asserts Emiko.
Thran starts “Stetter…!”
Emiko interrupts, impatiently “You want to base anything off of insults flung at you by someone like that?!… Yes(!) That man had suuuch good taste(!)… Couldn’t you tell from the lovely body he designed himself(!!!) Oh and was sooooo reasonable and measured in all his other viewpoints(!)”
Supressing a snort at Emiko’s withering sarcasm I decide to announce myself.
“Hey Thran! Hey Emiko! You get asked to Cap’s office too?” I say, cheerfully, casually, louder and from further away than I normally would, acting for all the world like I wasn’t just accidentally eavesdropping on their private and sensitive conversation.
Thran whips her head around like I’ve just caught her doing something both shameful and illegal(!)
Emiko, on the other hand, plays it much, much cooler, turning her head to me and smiling in the most natural and nonchalant way you can imagine!
“Indeed so, Victor… I can’t wait to hear what it’s about… Perhaps another lost colony(?) Maybe another castaway(?) Or perhaps another Revanchist raid(!)… I’m beginning to wonder if fate might be conspiring to keep us from our final destination(!)”
As I catch up to them I wave a hand in reassuring dismissal “Sure it’s nothin’… Prob’ly just an FYI ’bout somethin’ trivial!”
---Tcakqaal’s perspective---
My office door opens and in walk three Terrans.
“Ah, good, you’re here.” I say, really to Victor and Emiko but being careful not to exclude Hunter.
“What’s this about, Cap?” asks Victor, straight to business as the trio take seats across my desk from me.
I gesture to the elastomer clad form of the woman sitting next to me and say “I shall let Twila explain.”
The three Terran faces turn to the woman, in unison.
“So…” begins Twila, opening a map of the galactic region we’re currently navigating “…6 days ago we entered what is known as the Great Eastern Desert.”
Thran gives a confused frown, seeming to be struggling with the metaphorical use of the word ‘Desert’ in that sentence.
Twila quickly clarifies that “It’s not a literal desert… It’s called that because…” she brings up an overlay showing every inhabited system in green and every cradleworld in red. The region we’re currently in, at the outer edge of which sits our final destination, is almost completely devoid of them “…of the relative poverty of sapience supporting and producing planets. It’s deserted… It’s also on the edge of the galaxy that has been arbitrarily assigned as ‘East’… and it’s the largest such in known space… hence ‘Great Eastern Desert’… Until around 35 years ago, the area where the bulk of the UTC’s worlds were was referred to as the Lesser Western Desert, for the same reason… it was thought that there was little to nothing there.”
“Alright…?” says Victor with the tone of someone trying not to sound impatient for the point to come.
“The thing is, until around 200,000 years ago, there was a fairly well trafficked spacelane that ran across it, North to South…” the route is highlighted, a few days’ journey ahead of us and perpendicular to our direction of travel “…it was created to connect the Agek and Nephthi cores around a million years before the formation of the Galactic Union… As the years passed, new lanes were laid down that bypassed the area and new advancements in FTL tech were made, it was less and less in demand. Eventually, not even the historic value could justify the resources that had to be spent on its maintenance and the route was closed…”
“So… what’s the issue?” asks Emiko, her tone having all the patience that Victor’s lacked.
“Well…” hesitates Twila “…right here…” the map zooms in massively to show only the space between our current position and the place she’s indicating “…is a derelict space station that used to serve that lane… The signals coming off of it have been… irregular…”
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“‘Irregular’ how?” asks Victor, his eyes narrowed.
“Well…” she says, half shrugging half grimacing “…the fact that it’s putting off signals at all for a start!… It’s supposedly 40,000 years abandoned… It should be as inert as any other lump of space debris!… Other than that… I can’t really say… they’re just… weird in ways it’s really difficult to explain in meatspace terms!”
Victor frowns “OK, can you interpret any of ’em? Any actual intel you can give us about ’em?”
“It’s mostly just garbled noise but… flashes of coherent thoughts occasionally peak through… never with any context though.”
Emiko leans forward “How confident are you that there’s any intelligence behind these signals, Twila? Could this just be a malfunctioning old computer that occasionally spits out something resembling intelligence?”
“I would stake my sentience on there being at least one sentient being aboard that station, Ma’am.” says Twila with rock solid confidence.
“So…” I interrupt “…that’s the situation… We don’t know whether it’s squatters, or castaways, or what, but there’s someone aboard a space station that should be long abandoned. They may be sending out signals for some purpose… Perhaps they’re trying to signal rescue… We don’t know… The reason I asked both of you here is that I wished to discuss the possibility of a short detour to this station to check what the situation actually is… Emiko, as the expedition coordinator, this would need your approval. Victor; you, Brunhilda, Tuun and Ms Hunter would be the ones I am proposing to send aboard this station and search for any strandees… What do you say?”
---Victor’s perspective---
I’m aboard the Swift Claw with Tuun, Samus and Thran.
I pick up my helmet and place it onto my head, pushing it down and locking it into a seal with the collar of my uniform.
I pick up one of the metallic gauntlets in front of me and slip it over my left hand, sealing it to my cuff. Then, I repeat the process for my right hand.
“Vacuum mode.” I state into my helmet, causing the breathable fabric all over my body to instantly become airtight.
I take a brief moment to appreciate Tuun’s helmet. More or less like mine but with blue sensors and ear cones on either side.
I love the scifi, space Elf aesthetic it gives her!
“Alright… Thran, you check Samus’s and my suits. Samus, you check me and Tuun. I’ll check Tuun and Thran and, Tuun, you check Thran and Samus.” I instruct.
A few minutes follow as each of us both performs and submits to two separate inspections.
No problems are found.
“Well… that was a waste of time(!)” chuckles Samus.
“Won’t be a waste of time on the day it saves someone’s life, Samus.” I say, sternly.
She doesn’t answer and, because her face is covered by a helmet, I’ve only got her bodylanguage to glean the ‘Yeah… No shit, Sherlock!’ that I’m guessing she’s thinking.
“Alright… we’re gettin’ close. Everyone in.” I gesture to the airlock, deployed around the door right now.
We file inside and the doors shut and seal behind us.
I can hear the steady hum of the air being pumped from the room which gets fainter and fainter as there’s less and less air for it to travel through.
The negligible layer of air, trapped between my suit and me, expands, not being opposed by an atmosphere’s pressure anymore.
My suit swells up as it’s lifted about a centimetre off of its antifriction lining in all directions.
My helmet injects more air to maintain the pressure. It gets it almost perfect but my ears do pop a bit.
I can’t reach my nose for the Valsalva manoeuvre so I settle for stretching my jaw to try and unpop them.
The flexible parts of Samus’s, Thran’s and Tuun’s suits all visibly swell up, just like mine.
It’s incredible how much resistance you realise you face, just moving through air, when it gets taken away!
Moving your limbs in a vacuum always feels… disconcertingly, uncannily easy! Like someone (who you can’t feel touching you) is helping you! You’re so used to having to factor the energy necessary to overcome air resistance into all your equations for how much force to put into your actions that, when it’s gone, all your movements feel too strong, too powerful!
The decrepit old space station comes into view.
Instantly, I have a pit of unease in my stomach… but I can’t tell what’s wrong.
My mind shows me a bunch of images that have nothing to do with the current situation.
An Earth insect landing in the jaws of a carnivorous plant which close around it.
Divers coming up from the deep sea.
A name comes into my mind… Petrikov?
No, no!
Petrikov is Olga’s last name… It wasn’t Petrikov… It was… Petrov! Stanislav Petrov!
A black and white photo of a young man with short, dark hair and wearing a 20th Century military dress uniform swims into my mind.
It’s been years since I learnt about him! Why has my brain decided to remind me about him now?!
We’re getting closer to the docking point and I still can’t work out what it is that’s causing me this anxiety.
If I abort the docking just ’cause ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’, I’m gonna look fucking crazy!
The door lines up with one on the outside of the ship.
My breathing gets fast.
We clamp.
My heart is pounding!
I see inside the station where the shuttle's lights illuminate a dank corridor.
My subconscious is screaming at me!
The Swift Claw’s internal doors open and I decide that, right now, I don’t care if I end up looking crazy anymore!
I dart behind Tuun and put my hands on her shoulders to try to push her to the floor as I shout “EVERYONE BREATHE OUT, GET DOWN ON THE GROUND AND BRACE YOURSEL…!!!“
Midsentence, I’m interrupted by the station doors opening, breaking the seal between the vacuum chamber we’re in and the supposedly unpressurised corridor.
Hundreds of kilos of air, travelling at roughly the speed of sound, hits Tuun, collapsing her airtight suit and blasting all 40kg of her into my front!
An imperceptibly miniscule amount of time after, the wall of air hits me too.
My eardrums are in immediate agony but I managed to empty my lungs just in time, so at least they don’t burst!
Me and Tuun are flying backward through the air for what my adrenal dump makes feel like an age but what’s probably, actually a fraction of a second!
Then my back hits the wall… hard!
Tuun hits my front and crushes my chest between her own momentum and the solid wall!
I hit the floor and wheeze as I struggle to fill my lungs back up after being winded.
“You…*hhhhh*… alright…*hhhhh*… Tuun?” I choke.
“Not…*hhhhh*… dead!” she answers.
My hearing’s blown out from the rapid change in pressure, so I can’t actually hear her but, from the way her words are translated, she seems about as much the worse for wear as I am.
I look over to where Thran and Samus are gingerly picking themselves up from the places they landed.
On her hands and knees, Samus turns her helmet to face me and asks “The fuck…*hhhhh*… was…*hhhhh*… that?!?!?!"