Arriving At Kestrel-9

Silence fell over the bridge again but this time, it was heavy and thick with anticipation.

…Everything they needed was sitting right there.

The fifty units of alloy… The twenty units of copper... The filters to fix their dying scrubber… The fuel to keep the engines burning…

It was the key to breaking the death timer and turning this rattling coffin into a real Tier-2 ship.

The only catch was that blinking word.

[Threat Level: UNKNOWN]

"Non-human," Camila whispered. "Somebody… something built that. Before any of this happened."

"And then they left," Jin-Ah said quietly. "Or something made them leave."

"That's a cheerful thought, Jin," Harper muttered. "Thanks for everything."

"Leo… It's a gamble," Ms. Tachibana said softly, looking up at Leo.

Her dark eyes were serious, but there was no fear in her voice.

"An unknown threat could mean anything from empty corridors to a nest of Void Beasts... But staying here means running out of air in thirteen hours."

Harper grinned, though a nervous bead of sweat rolled down her temple. 

"Looks like we're going big-game hunting, Cap."

"P-please don't say hunting," Chloe squeaked.

Leo looked down at station six.

Elena was still clamped with her head held rigid against the rest but her icy blue eyes were locked on the Kestrel-9 schematic and her breath coming in tight steady flares through her nose.

…Even she knew there was no other choice.

Leo sat up tall in the throne and settled his hands back onto the crystal cradles.

ZAP!

The electric prickle surged through his palms, and the deep thrumming heartbeat of the Wanderer-7 lined up with his own pulse.

The pull in the small of his back tightened, locking onto the distant shadow of the dead station.

"Unknown threat or not," Leo said, his voice ringing through the cabin with cold steady resolve, "that station has our oxygen."

He leaned forward.

"Alright… Here we go."

[Course plotted: Kestrel-9]

[Distance: 48 km]

[Main engines: Ion drive engaged]

[Estimated arrival: 26 minutes]

[Final reminder: This unit cannot shoot anything and neither can you… Have fun.]

"Love the pep talk." Leo muttered.

VWOOOOM!

Twin flares of brilliant blue ion fire erupted from the stern engines.

The Wanderer-7 shot forward into the dark, slicing through the outer dust cloud and racing straight toward the looming shadow of Kestrel-9… with no idea what was waiting for them inside.

…

WHOOSH!

The silence of the void was a total suffocating absence of sound that pressed against the outer hull of the Wanderer-7 like cold iron.

High on the dais, Leo's fingers barely twitched against the crystal flight cradles. 

The neural link hummed steadily at the base of his skull, painting the edges of his vision with faint ribbons of azure data.

Somewhere along the hull, the chemical thrusters fired in tiny whispers.

Psst! Psst!

Little gas-puffs so small they barely registered on the inertial dampeners.

Ahead of them, the dust field around Kestrel-9 was a nightmare of frozen momentum. 

Twisted girders the size of highway bridges drifted through clouds of iridescent irradiated dust, and jagged chunks of lunar mantle which were black like glass and sharp enough to gut the hull, tumbled end over end in lazy three-axis spins.

Leo didn't trust the sluggish navigation computer to clear a path however, he trusted his back instead.

Whenever a tumbling slab of rock threatened their trajectory, that pull in his lower spine tightened, and his palms answered with a millimeter-wide flex against the cradles.

PSHHT!

The old hauler slid through the narrow gaps like an eel through kelp with its hull never grazing a single bolt.

"Keep the burn under twelve percent," Jin-Ah muttered from station three, her fingers flying across her wrist terminal. "If our ion discharge peaks, the sensor bloom will light us up like a flare in this dust pocket."

"I'm keeping it cold," Leo said, his eyes locked straight ahead then they narrowed.

"Alright, everyone, start thinking. We're almost at Kestrel-9… What's the plan once we land?"

The bridge went dead silent for three long seconds.

Harper shifted in her station with her harness creaking against her charcoal uniform. 

The usual playful bravado had drained out of her freckled face.

"Plan? Leo, we don't have a plan. We don't even have a crowbar… What happens if there are things crawling around in that metal graveyard? Real things, not just scrap?"

Camila swallowed audibly, her hazel eyes darting around the cabin.

"She's right. That alert said the threat level was 'Unknown'... What if there are more of those chitin beasts? Or... or alien scavengers? We're walking into a dead relay station completely empty-handed."

"We have the Foundry," Ms. Tachibana said.

Her voice was measured, but there was an undeniable thread of stress running underneath it. 

She leaned forward from her astrogation console with dark hair falling over her cheekbones.

"Leo, can the Foundry make anything we can hold? Shock prods, mining picks, anything?"

Leo checked the fabrication tab and shook his head with a bitter scowl.

"Foundry needs raw materials, Sensei… All we pulled from that scrap was nine units of low-grade alloy and one strip of frayed copper wire. The AI says that junk is only good for hull patching so we couldn't cast a decent kitchen knife with it, let alone a gun." 

He let out a breath. 

"We're going in clean."

"Then we need reconnaissance before we disembark," Ms. Tachibana pressed with her posture rigid. "Have the ship run a full sweep through the station. Thermal, radar, everything… We need a layout, and we need to know if there's anything alive in there before we set foot inside."

Leo tapped the console with his thumb. 

"AI… Run a penetrating thermal and structural scan on Kestrel-9, Map the corridors and flag any life signs."

A low hum ran through the deck plates as the forward sensor array spun up.

VRRRRM...

A translucent green cone swept out from the bow and washed over the looming silhouette of the dead station.

Two seconds later, the scan bounced back in a mess of static and broken error logs.

[Sensor sweep failed… The outer bulkheads of Kestrel-9 are made of Graventhal plating layered over dense dampening composite, and this unit's sensors cannot see more than forty centimeters past the surface. To put it in terms the crew will appreciate, this unit is trying to look through a bank vault with a flashlight.]

[Internal layout: UNMAPPED]

[Life signs: UNKNOWN]

"Great," Harper groaned, resting her forehead against her padded console. "Blind as bats… We're basically walking into a pitch-black basement knowing there's a rabid pit bull loose somewhere inside."

"Then we go in on foot and stay sharp," Leo muttered, his jaw setting hard. "Get ready for touchdown."

The station wasn't just floating out there alone.

As they cleared the last of the dust, the whole picture came into view.

Kestrel-9 was anchored to a massive chunk of moon rock roughly half a kilometer wide with its lower support pylons driven deep into the cratered stone.

Station and rock drifted through the void together like a single ship, leaning at a sickening fifteen-degree tilt.

…It looked like a shattered lighthouse rising out of a dead lunar reef.

'That's why it looked like it was drifting earlier,' Leo thought. 'It's dragging its own island with it.'

With one last hushed puff of reverse thrust, he eased the Wanderer-7 down into a shallow crater roughly seventy meters from the station's base.

PSHHT...

The hauler's rusted landing struts deployed with a grinding screech of dry gears and bit deep into the fine powdery grey regolith.

THUD-CRUNCH!

The ship settled and the engine purr died into hollow silence.

[Touchdown confirmed and orbital drift has been arrested.]

[Location: Exterior perimeter, Kestrel-9]

[Landing evaluation: Acceptable… This unit only screamed internally twice.]

Camila let out a ragged breath and fumbled with her harness buckle.

"Okay... we're on the ground. Now what? How do we even get out? The ship doesn't have an EVA prep room, and none of us have spacesuits. If we open that hatch, our lungs will turn inside out in three seconds."

Leo stood up from the throne, his boots clicking against the steel.

"AI, how do we survive out there?"

[Your uniforms are the answer… The Void-Weave Field Uniforms include a deep-vacuum environmental seal, a single-use kinetic shield charge, and grav-anchoring soles, none of which this unit listed earlier because nobody asked. This unit did not want to overwhelm anyone as you were all very naked at the time.]

Harper slowly turned her head toward the ceiling. "...You're telling me these pajamas were spacesuits this whole time?"

[Correct. You're welcome.]

"And you just... didn't mention it?!"

[This unit mentioned thermal insulation and puncture resistance. The rest seemed obvious and clearly, this unit overestimated the crew.]

Before anyone could fire back, the bridge's main vents let out a sharp sucking hiss.

HSSSSSSK!

Across the central dashboard, the master oxygen readout started to fall.

The numbers didn't tick down simply… they plummeted.

[Transferring life support reserves from the ship to the crew uniforms…]

[Ship Life Support: 12:51:00 → 02:21:00]

[Per Crew Member: 01:30:00 of suit oxygen]

[Note: Compressing ship atmosphere into seven suit reservoirs causes heavy compression loss… Ten and a half hours of breathable air went in and ninety minutes per person came out. This unit is aware that this is terrible math but this unit did not design the suits... Take it up with whoever did, assuming they are still alive.]

"What the hell?!" Harper exploded, lunging up so fast her hip slammed into the armrest. "An hour and a half?! And you just sucked the ship down to two hours?! If we get pinned down or lost in that maze, we won't even have air to come back to!"

"It's forcing efficiency," Jin-Ah said, her voice tight as a bead of cold sweat rolled down her jaw. "The ship can't run seven separate life support loops without cannibalizing its main tanks… We either get those scrubber filters within ninety minutes, or we suffocate no matter where we're standing."

"Ninety minutes," Ms. Tachibana whispered, her slender hands clenching into fists at her sides.

Even her composure was starting to fray at the edges.

"That leaves no room for error… None."

[Additional note: Each uniform's shield can absorb one lethal impact before it breaks, and recharging it requires a high-output power tap. In other words, everyone gets exactly one free mistake... Please don't spend it on something stupid.]

"Move to the cargo bay," Leo commanded, already heading down the dais steps.

As they filed into the narrow corridor, the restraints on station six disengaged with a sharp pneumatic hiss.

PSSH!

The black clamp retracted into the headrest.

Elena dragged in a sharp desperate breath and rubbed her reddened jaw with manicured fingers.

Her icy blue eyes flared with pure venom, and the second her mouth was free, the poison spilled out.

"You disgusting… unwashed… tyrannical piece of garbage!" Elena shrieked, stumbling into the corridor after him. "You clamped me! You put an animal muzzle on a Sterling! The moment we reach a proper authority, I will have your credentials stripped, your hands broken, and your pathetic family thrown into debtor prisons for the rest of their miserable lives! You petty deranged stray, you—"

Leo stopped dead.

He turned around so abruptly that Elena nearly tripped over her own boots.

He looked down at her with flat empty eyes then, slowly, he raised his right hand and pointed one finger at the ceiling.

"AI. Status on Crew Unit Elena's volume?"

[Crew Unit Elena is currently at seventy-six decibels, which is louder than a vacuum cleaner and considerably less useful. The disciplinary clamp is warmed up and ready for redeployment… It missed her.]

Elena choked on her own sentence.

Her chin jerked back and her teeth clicked shut so hard she nearly bit her tongue. 

Her cheeks burned hotter with helpless humiliation, and her chest heaved against her uniform… but she pressed her lips into a tight trembling line.

She glared at him with enough hatred to melt steel.

'My family, huh?' Leo thought, and something cold twisted in his gut. 'Debtor prison… As if there's anyone left to throw in.'

He shoved it down.

"That's what I thought," he muttered, turning back toward the hatch. "Keep it shut, Sterling. You've got ninety minutes of air… Don't waste it trying to convince me you're important."

Harper snickered into her hand and gave him a subtle thumbs-up behind Elena's back then beside them, Chloe walked with her head ducked low with her dark bangs hiding her eyes.

She'd barely said a word since the flight.

Every time Leo's shadow crossed her path, her small shoulders flinched and her pale fingers dug into the seams of her trousers, utterly mortified by the memory of her fangs in his neck and her bare thighs pinned across his hips.

"Leo," Camila said, her voice shaking a little as she stared at the heavy manual wheel on the cargo hatch. "What about gravity? That rock out there is barely an asteroid. If we jump, are we going to launch ourselves into the sun?"

[The grav-anchoring soles lock onto solid ground and simulate one standard gravity, so nobody is launching into anything unless they try very hard… Based on what this unit has seen of this crew so far, someone will try very hard.]

"That's great on paper," Harper muttered, "but looking down a drop into infinite nothing tends to make people hesitate."

"Depressurizing," Leo announced, gripping the heavy release lever. "Hold on to something."

CLACK! HISSSSSSSSSS!

The pressure valves opened with a deafening roar as the warm recycled air of the Wanderer-7 tore outward, whistling through the vents as the pressure in the cargo bay plunged toward nothing.

The moment the air began to thin, their uniforms reacted.

FLASH!

A sharp surge of energy rippled across the charcoal fabric of all seven suits. 

For a split second, they blazed pure white, so bright Camila yelped and threw a hand over her eyes then the deck dropped out from under them.

WHUMP!

The cargo bay floor tilted violently downward at thirty degrees. 

The rusted ramp pistons groaned and gave way, dropping the ramp open like a broken drawbridge and dumping all seven of them toward the open threshold before anyone could brace.

"Aaaaahh!" Camila shrieked, sliding down the diamond plating.

"Leo!" Ms. Tachibana cried out as she lost her footing completely.

"Holy shit!" Harper yelled as all seven of them tumbled down the icy metal ramp and right over the lip into the open void.

For one sickening second, there was nothing under Leo's boots at all.

'This is how I die,' he thought. 'Survived a vampire, survived a debris maze, and a broken ramp takes me out.'

'...At least I'm wearing pants this time.'

Right behind him, Elena went over the edge with her arms windmilling with her furious shriek ringing in everyone's ears.

And as they fell, the suits finished changing.

The charcoal ballistic weave bleached into stark white armor, threaded with glowing cobalt-blue circuit lines that lit up one by one like veins filling with light. 

The fabric hardened and pressurized, molding around their bodies like lightweight powered armor.

From their high collars, a ring of emerald light shot upward.

ZWIP!

Nanite fields curved over their heads and snapped together at the crown, forming translucent green helmets that hummed with clean filtered oxygen.

THUD! THUD! CLACK!

…They hit the regolith.

Leo slammed down onto his hands and knees, and his boots locked into the frozen rock with an iron grip.

CRUNCH!

His lungs expanded on cool crisp air inside the green bubble around his head.

"Ugh... damn it..." He pushed himself upright and brushed grey dust off his white armor plates. "AI, remind me to fix those ramp pistons the second we get back… That was not an authorized ejection."

[Reminder logged. For the record, the ramp has been broken for longer than any of you have been alive. It was simply waiting for the right moment to humiliate you… This unit respects its commitment.]

Around him, the girls were groaning and picking themselves up out of the dust.

"My knees..." Camila whimpered, checking her white suit before she looked up.

Then every single complaint died.