Issue With The Crew

The thrum of industrial centrifuges came through the docking sleeve without stopping as a dull mechanical pulse echoed hour after hour…

Across the forty-meter gap, the Black Kite was processing the kill.

Thousands of liters of volatile orange blood drawn out of the cryogenic vats, split apart by cracking manifolds and distilled into dense liquid propellant. 

It was slow heavy work, and the raider's exhaust vents spat intermittent plumes of acrid sulfurous steam that drifted past the Wanderer-7's viewports like pale ghosts.

Leo stood by the port console on the bridge with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his flight jacket.

He hadn't touched the cradles in five hours… Without the link humming in his spine the bridge felt hollow, stripped of the living pulse that usually tied him to the frame. 

The runners along the baseboards were dimmed to a low-draw cycle.

FLICKER!