I looked at the two dead guys on the ground.

"How did you know they were there?" I asked.

"Intuition," Amber told me as a matter of factly with a grin on her lips.

Right…

I had a more important question though…

"How do you know that they aren't friendly?"

She tilted her head at me, "Why else would they be hiding behind this wall with their weapons ready to fire?"

"I dunno… Maybe they're the guards or something?"

"While the power is out? I'd say they're more likely to be the reason why that Linc guy isn't getting his box of stuff."

"And if we're wrong?"

Amber thumped her chest, "Trust me on this one, Tera. They're definitely not friendly."

Well, she's the one with more experience in this so I guess she must know something I don't.

Amber kept watch as I searched the two dead bodies. Not for loot, mind you, but to figure out what these two were doing here.

I found their personal terminal and managed to unlock them using their biometrics before I started looking for any messages that they might have sent.

Looking through their latest messages, most of them seemed to just be complaining about the fact that there was no power in the station.

Those actually make them look like they are simply people hired to guard the station. That's not good…

I continued scrolling through the personal terminal to look through the older messages.

Hmm… There's one that they were talking about 'hitting a target' and that this guy was concerned that they might be in trouble if they fail but also be in trouble even if they succeed.

Odd.

I looked through the other terminal and… Oh. The first message on the list literally solves the mystery.

The guy himself literally wrote that he 'didn't start being a pirate for this shit' and he was promised that this station 'would be a jackpot'. But now they're stuck here because the owner of the station shut down the power and went into hiding while their ship had its engine blown out.

Obviously the mail wasn't that straight forward but it was more of an expletive rant to someone else but at least I managed to decipher it and understood what he was talking about.

"They're pirates," I told Amber, dropping the personal terminals aside.

Amber grinned, "I told you so~"

"Yes, yes. But the owner of the station is hiding somewhere on the station so I guess we should also be careful not to kill him by accident."

She shrugged, "I'll try my best~"

Right…

I hefted my shotgun and stepped over the dead pirates, figuring we would be able to loot them later after we had cleared this station.

Looking around, the reception area looked more like a sitting room but there was at least a console panel that I could connect my Codex to.

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As I plugged my Codex into the console, I was prompted to enter a password to be able to connect to the station's network.

No problem… I booted up the window to start hacking the console panel and in just five seconds I was in.

I searched for the map of this station and… There it is~

"Got it. Seems like this station is as small as we thought," I muttered.

She looked over my shoulder and I leaned slightly to the side to show her the map.

There were only about a dozen rooms on this station where half of them were storage rooms while the others were just living spaces.

"What's the plan now? Should we get the power back on?" I asked.

Amber shrugged, "Turning on the power would help us spot the pirates better but might also put them on guard against us. It might also make the station's owner more cautious as well."

I considered our position, "I suppose we might as well fight our way to the generator room then we could use it to make an announcement through the station to tell the owner we don't mean him harm and that the pirates have been taken care of?"

The generator room was located at the bottom of the station that required us to take a lift down after moving through most of the rooms anyway so we should be clearing out the pirates anyway.

Amber nodded, "Sounds good~ Let's do that!"

I hefted my shotgun while Amber did a check on her pistols before following after me.

With my Codex showing the map of the station on my wrist, I moved towards the door that should lead me to the corridor that connected to the living space area of the station.

The door was closed so I stood to the side with my shotgun prepared before tapping on the button to open the door.

…

Nothing happened.

Oh wait… No power. Of course…

The docking hatches have their own emergency power supply to allow ships to dock in case things like this happened but I guess the other doors in this station weren't equipped with that.

Maybe it was even designed that way so that the owner could lock down the station when he shuts off the power.

I turned back to look at the two dead guys, "How are these guys out here? Their messages suggest they've been stranded here for a few days already."

Amber tapped her cheek with the barrel of her pistol thoughtfully, "If I had to guess… They probably forced open the doors to get through and then stationed these two guys out here to watch out for incoming ships before closing the door again. These two have access to the other docked ship anyway so they have the supplies to survive off for that."

Oh right, I forgot about that.

I turned to the door, "Does this mean we have to force this open as well?"

Amber leaned against me, pressing her boobs on my back, "Is there another way around the door?"

I tapped on the map to zoom in on our current location.

Hmm? There seems to be a small path around it? Oh wait… Don't tell me…

I went to the side of the door and kicked at a panel on the wall, causing it to be flung backwards and into the revealed crawlspace.

Of course, the ventilation shaft. Classic.

"Looks like the owner prepared secret passages to get around the station while the power is out," Amber mused.

"Secret passages? Isn't this a ventilation shaft or something?"

"Ventilation? Tera, I'm not sure what your ventilation shafts look like in your universe but they normally aren't big enough to fit a person in there ."

Ah… So it's an alternate universe thing here… Unless the movies I watched were all faking this…

I knelt on a knee and peeked inside the crawlspace, "I guess we'll have to head in and see where this leads us?"

Amber gestured, "After you~"

I didn't question her and just crawled inside the hole, using my Codex to light up the space.

As I started crawling forward, I suddenly felt a hand on my bottom and I turned back to see Amber grabbing my ass.

She smiled at me, "What? You can't show me such a delicious behind and not expect me not to grab it."

I rolled my eyes but chose not to say anything because if our positions were reversed, I would definitely grab her ass as well.

Heck, I might have just shoved my face in there as well.

Ahem…

I took a moment to look at the map and it seems like this tunnel should lead to another room up ahead.

But if we wanted to, we could choose not to exit into the room as the tunnel also turned to connect itself to the rest of the station. We could actually reach the power generator through the tunnels without entering any of the rooms.

Amber's right, this is a secret passage that the owner designed for his own use.

As I continued crawling, we reached a corner and I found someone suddenly lunging towards me from the side.

I managed to react in time and grab his wrists to stop him from strangling me as the both of us slammed into the wall behind me.

"Damned pirate! Die you bitch!"

I threw my head forward and headbutted him in the face, knocking him back and away from me.

"We're not pirates! Linc sent us here! We're here to pick up his package!"

The guy had wanted to lunge towards me again until he heard my words.

He narrowed his eyes before letting out a sigh, "Should have thought he would send someone… Though I expected someone else to come here instead…"

"Yeah well, you're stuck with us so deal with it."

"Fine… Whatever… Follow me then, you have some pirates to flush out from here if your boss wants his goddamned package."

I frowned at his words and looked behind at Amber, just in time to see her lowering her pistol.

Damn, were you planning to shoot him just now?

You know what… I don't want to know.

Let's just follow him…