Anyway, here's part two.
The Cat’s Eye had half a dozen spacesuits. Each suit consisted of a single piece, tear-resistant bodysuit, to which was attached plates of impact armour; the suit provided no protection from kinetic trauma. A chest plate with a wide collar attached to the torso, containing the suit’s power supply and air recyclers in a small backpack unit, as well as a small thruster unit. They were big and bulky, and in a way, a lot like the Cat’s Eye: old but well maintained, having seen plenty of use during midflight repairs to the ship’s superstructure. Lorenzo was loath to replace them, even though there were better, less bulky models on the market. But he just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of them, despite his crew’s protestations. Although, considering the way the suit pinched, he was beginning to consider coming round to their way of thinking.
Once he was suited up, Lorenzo put on his shell helmet. Everything went dark, then there was a hiss as the suit sealed. An array of activation lights lit up, and the faceplate cleared. Yeven was staring at him, holding out an SIPC. He gave his sensors officer a thumbs up, and took the rifle, clipping it to his chest.
‘Ready?’ Lorenzo asked.
‘Aye Captain,’ came the replies through his suit comm.
The three moved into the airlock, the door sealing behind them. Lorenzo watched his tactical display as the airlock cycled, and once the external pressure dropped to zero, he opened the hatch.
The Cat’s Eye was holding station three hundred metres away from the ragged hole in the side of Sintra station. Two external lights were focused on it, but he could barely make out anything. With luck, they would find an entrance point in there.
‘Captain,’ Katria’s voice spoke in his ear. ‘I’m burning a lot of delta v holding position with the station.’
‘Alright. Once we’re clear, drop down to a trailing orbit a thousand kilometres back. We’ll holler if we need you to come get us.’
‘Roger.’
Lorenzo stepped up to the edge of the airlock. He paused for a moment, staring straight at the space station. It was only a few hundred metres, but at right this moment, it could just as well be a hundred thousand. It was impossible to gauge. He took hold of the side of the airlock, and jumped.
Once he was clear, thrusters in his backpack fired, rotating round to stare back at the Cat’s Eye. Both Riko and Yeven had followed him out, and now the three of them floated in a loose formation, steadily retreating from the bulk of the ship.
‘We’re clear, Katria. You’re free to break position.’
‘Roger Captain.’
Bright pinpricks burst to life as the Cat’s Eye’s manoeuvring thrusters fired. The big ship began dropping behind and below them as it turned away. Then the main drive lit up, and the ship rapidly dropped away.
Lorenzo watched it for a little while longer before he fired his thrusters again, reorientating himself back on the station.
With the Cat’s Eye moving away, they had lost the ship’s searchlights, turning the ragged hole they were heading for into a gaping, black maw. Suddenly, Lorenzo’s perception changed, and he was no longer heading toward the station, but it coming for him, to swallow him. Lorenzo’s fingers twitched toward his SIPC.
Twisting his head inside his helmet, he looked away and toward the bulk of Heathcliff. The Station was just heading into the planet’s nightside, the thick bands of storm clouds disappearing into the darkness. When he focused on the station again, it was back to just a blasted, ragged hole of twisted metal and composite.
A glance at his suit telemetry told him that he was now only 50 metres away. Gripping the controls for his suit thrusters, he began firing the jets. Both Yeven and Riko did the same, the trio drifting into the maw at less than a metre per second. Their suit lights came on, playing across the interior.
‘Fuck, it’s like the station was cored with a fusion lance,’ Yeven said.
He was right, Lorenzo saw. In the beams of light, he could see that the surface of the hole looked as though it had been melted. A glance at his display told him that the melted structure wasn’t emitting any radiation. He’d been wrong in his first impression. A compressed muon explosion would never have done this sort of damage. Never so cleanly. It was as if a miniature star had blossomed momentarily against the side of the station, disintegrating everything it came in touch with before it winked out.
As his lights played across the damage, he spotted a corridor, leading deeper into the station. Activating his thrusters, he flew over to it and manoeuvred inside, Yeven and Riko following. Halfway down the corridor, he began to drift toward the floor. Instinctively he brought his legs out to brace for the landing, realising only at the last second that it was the wrong move. His boots touched against the floor and he bounced back up to the ceiling, his helmet knocking against it with a thud. Lorenzo winced and pushed himself back to the deck and activated his boots just as he touched down again. This time he didn’t float back off.
He ignored the grunts of laughter from his two crewmen and stomped off down the corridor, feeling weight return with every step.
‘Still gravity,’ Yeven said. ‘It’s weak, though. You reckon the gravistar is still spinning?’
‘Maybe. That would assume there is still power to it.’
‘Sintra’s got a vacuum motion generator attached to the gravistar. Even if the main reactor goes down, the gravity stays on,’ said Riko as he peered at a melted intercom. He poked it with the finger of one gauntlet and little black flakes erupted out in an expanding cloud.
Both Lorenzo and Yeven turned to look at him.
‘What?’ Riko said defensively. ‘I went on a date with one of the station engineers a while back. Hey, I do have interests outside of the ship, you know. Plus I thought we might get a VMG as a backup, so I wanted to get to know about them.’
‘Was she pretty?’ Yeven asked.
Riko grinned. ‘Yasmin Denehey.’
‘Oh. How’d you manage to pull that off?’
The grin turned malicious. ‘I borrowed a page out of your book.’
‘Cheeky bastard.’
‘Stow it, you two,’ Lorenzo said.
There was a bulkhead door at the end of the corridor, sealed shut. Taking out a sensor wand, Yeven pressed it against the door. ‘No atmo on the other side. I’m guessing it closed when whatever it was exploded, but the compartment vented anyway. Some organic residue on the other side. Can’t tell what. It’s hard to tell, but I think there’s trace atmo further in.’
‘Alright, Riko, see if you can get it open.’
‘You want me to cut it?’
‘No. Let’s see if we can use it as a makeshift airlock.’
‘Got it.’
Moving over to the bulkhead door, Riko braced one foot against the side of the corridor and tugged at the service hatch next to the door. It came away abruptly. He reached inside and pulled on the manual release handle. The doors shifted apart slight, and as Riko continued to pump the handle, they slid back into their recesses.
Once the doors were open enough, Lorenzo, Yeven and Riko moved inside, resealing the hatch behind them. Riko paused as he passed through the airlock, one foot having come down on something uneven. Moving his foot, he looked down.
‘Er, I think I found your organic trace.’
It was a hand. Or what was left of it. The skin was very pale, and covered in a layer of hoarfrost. The thumb was missing, sheared off in whatever incident had removed the hand from the owner.
‘Keep it,’ Yeven said.
‘Now the next one.’ Lorenzo detached his SIPC from his suit and flicked off the safety.
It took another ten minutes to open the second blast door. The manual release had seized up and wouldn’t budge. In the end, Riko took out his SIPC and switched to his under-barrel plasma beam, and cut a hole in the door. Air hissed through as he cut, a torrent that sent globs of molten metal flying.
When the three crewmen climbed through the hole, they found a scene of utter devastation. Light fittings hung from the ceiling, some still flickering on and off. Emergency lights pulsed away on the floor, heading deeper into the station. Conduits in the walls had ruptured, spilling fluids into the corridor, dribbling down the walls and pooling on the deck. Some had frozen the moment they burst, freezing in iridescent water bursts that glittered in their suit lights. There were, fortunately, no bodies.
‘Any signs of life?’ Lorenzo asked.
‘Six decks down, I think,’ Yeven replied, frowning at the readout from his sensor wand.
‘You think?’
‘I’m not sure. There are some readings the deck below, but they’re weird, you know? Like they’re not quite there.’
‘Some trapped, maybe nearly dead?’ Riko suggested.’
Yeven shook his head. ‘No, the sensor read’s biologicals, not life signs. It’s more like it can’t make its mind up.’
‘We’ll take a look as we go,’ Lorenzo said. ‘Let’s move.’
This place gives me the creeps, he thought, but didn’t say it.
*
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