As the door to the cockpit started its opening sequence, I was prepared to strike off this mission as a success at this point.

After all, this guy just needed to put on one of his space suits and we should be fine.

…

Wait… Where are his decompression suits?

I looked around the storeroom and didn't find any at all. Could they be stored in a hidden compartment somewhe-- Wait.

I stopped when I noticed something that was stored in the corner of one of the shelves.

Going over to the shelf, I picked up a rather familiar Data chip which looked quite similar to the ones I snatched off of that pirate lord's secret stash.

No way… Is this another Pre-AI Rebellion tech? Or maybe this contained information that might help me with the other two Data chips?

I'm going to have to ask him about it… I'm even happy to just claim this as my reward if it turns out it really was what I think it was.

Honestly, I think I'm wrong about it since it's literally left on top of a shelf so casually like that but it doesn't hurt to be sure.

The door cycled open and the Merc that had been hiding inside the cockpit rushed out through the door before stopping right in front of me.

"Where… Where's my suit?!"

I blinked at him, "Didn't you say that you have your own suit that you could use over the comms just now?"

He pointed at the corner where there were empty racks that I'm guessing were where his space suits would have been.

I looked at the empty racks before turning back to him, "Wait… Where are your suits?"

"That's what I want to know! Where the fuck are they?! I don't even have--"

He did not get to finish his words when a loud crack came from the cockpit's direction.

Both of us turned towards the direction of the sound and that was when I finally saw just how screwed he was.

It did not look that bad from the outside because the glass was tinted. But from here, I saw that the cracks had reached all the way across and it was a miracle that it hadn't shattered this entire time.

I also realised that the cause of such a state of the glass was what looked like a metallic pole had pierced through the glass and remained stuck there.

But now, the cracks around the pole were widening and I think it wouldn't be long before it shattered completely.

The Merc turned to me, his face pale as a sheet as he realised what would inevitably happen in the next few seconds.

That glass would shatter and everything here would be vented out into space. If that happened, this guy would most definitely die but I would, of course, survive thanks to my suit.

"I… I'm going to die, aren't I?" He asked.

I gritted my teeth before speaking into my comms, "Amber! Bring the ship around! Line up the entry hatch with the cockpit and get as close as possible!"

I could hear the doubt in her voice, "Are you sure about this?"

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"We have no other choice! Do it now!"

"Understood. We'll be there in ten seconds."

I quickly went up to the console and turned to him, "Vent out the air right now!"

His eyes widened, "Are… Are you serious?"

"Yes! Do it now!"

"That would kill me!"

"It would be worse if you don't do it!"

He hesitated for a moment before he started manipulating his ship's controls.

There was a loud hiss coming from behind as the air in the room started being sucked out and a warning came over his ship's speakers.

"Warning, room decompression imminent."

I then grabbed the guy by the hand and pulled him towards the cockpit and up towards the glass.

"What… What are you doing?" He asked.

"Taking a risk. Now, breathe out," I instructed, pulling back my fist.

He realised what I was going to do and tried to pull away from me, only to fail when I pulled him back.

"No way! No way! This is suicide! Stop this!" He protested.

I shook my head, "If I do nothing, you die. If I do this, there's a slight chance that you would survive. Now exhale!"

He tried to protest again but I had already punched my fist forward and hit the glass, creating another crack on the glass that protruded outwards.

The Merc was still panicking but he could not pull away, especially considering the air in the room behind us was rapidly venting out which would have killed him if he stayed anyway.

I pulled back my fist again and warned him to exhale one more time before punching forward on the glass.

This time, the windscreen shattered from the blow and the remaining air in the room pushed us out through the opening and into the void of space.

Right on time, my ship showed up above us with the entry hatch right above us.

Using my suit's thrusters, I managed to control our flight path and angle ourselves towards the hatch.

Amber even manually engaged the hatch to open it up for us so all we needed to do was to reach it.

I held on to the Merc tightly and pulled him towards the hatch with my thrusters on full power, flying past the threshold of the hatch just as it started to close.

Even after I shut off my thrusters, the momentum still resulted in us crashing into the end of the decompression chamber quite painfully but at least I had my suit to absorb most of the impact.

The other Merc had to bear the full brunt of it with his body and both of us crashed onto the ground just as air started venting into the room.

I groaned and sat up on my haunches, turning to check on the Merc who had been knocked unconscious from our brief travel through space.

He was breathing at least but his body was deathly cold with his fingers already turning light blue.

The door then cycled open, revealing both Amber and Lea standing there with concern on their faces.

"Might want to get him treated with what we have, get him warmed up. I'll start the course back to the station to get him to a doctor."

"What about our loot?" Amber asked, completely ignoring the fact that the owner of 'our loot' was still breathing right in front of her.

"I'll mark this place on our map. We can come back and tow the entire ship back with us after we have brought him back."

"Do we need to? No one will miss him if he just dies, you know?"

"Oh, I would," I told her, before showing her the Data Chip that I had taken from his ship.

Amber narrowed her eyes at it before turning to me, "You think that he might know something?"

"I'd say it's better than any lead we have so far so it's worth a shot."

Lea seemed understandably confused about our exchange but she chose to keep her questions to herself.

But seeing Amber obey my request to bring the unconscious Merc into the spare room, she also moved to aid her as well.

I took off the space suit before returning to my cockpit, setting a course for the station itself.

As I watched the derelict ship peel away from us before disappearing into the distance, I took out the Data chip again to inspect it.

Hmm… If only there was a way for me to slot this inside my Codex… Do we have to go back to Cietai to get this read? Or maybe we can ask Mara again to point us to someone with a Decoder or whatever that could potentially read this chip.

Speaking of which… Let me check the two files that I extracted from the earlier Data chips.

I scrolled through my Codex and found the two folders easily enough, both of them containing files that were completely unreadable.

Oh well, might as well just put them both in one folder to better organise the files.

When I created a new folder to drag both folders into it however, a new window popped up with a status bar in the centre with a single word at the top.

[Decrypting]

I froze, watching the progress bar fill up in a few seconds before it disappeared.

I rushed to open the folder once again, only to see that the files were still unreadable.

No, wait!! There's a few that actually can be read now!

I opened one of them, only to see that it was a pixelated picture of some sort that I could not make out the details of.

Looking through the other files that were now readable, I realised that they were also roughly the same but with different depictions in them.

Ok… Now things just started to get interesting.