The outer airlock slid open slowly. While the team couldn’t hear through the vacuum, they felt the protestations of the ancient portal vibrate up through their feet. When it had reached its full width, they stepped inside and closed it behind them.
As the doors sealed, Boots noted absently, “With how that felt, I hope we can get these doors open again. I don’t like the idea of getting stuck in an airlock and dying.”
Boomer piped up, “Nah, I got a thing in my pack here for uncooperative doors.”
Boots turned to face him and asked, “Something that we could be standing a few feet away from when it’s used?”
“Oh, sure,” Boomer replied, before amending, “Well, probably.”
Boots just stared at him until Boomer eventually admitted, “Well, maybe not, but at least we wouldn’t go out from exposure or lack of oxygen.”
Their conversation was cut short by the faint and then growing hiss of atmosphere being pumped into the space. They could barely hear it through their helmets, but it was a familiar sound to all of them.
As they were waiting for the pressure to equalize, the Sister said, “Given it has missed over a thousand maintenance cycles, I am impressed it is working as well as it is.”
Bob tilted his head and asked, “Where did you find that out?”
“It has a maintenance log powered by an internal diamond encased gamma voltaic battery. It’s not enough power to do anything significant, but the internal chronometer is still functioning off of it.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. How much time since the last maintenance cycle does that add up to in Earth Standard Time Units?”
She replied, “Rounding down, one thousand six hundred and eighty-two years.”
Heartbreaker quipped, “So, the last time anything in this station had a tech look at it was when the Roman Empire was still tooling around? Perfect.”
Eventually the sound of gas entering the chamber stopped and with a large cracking noise the inner doors made a slight jerking motion before smoothly, albeit loudly, opening. The noise suppression of their helmets made it tolerable, but the sound of long neglect found its voice in the high pitched whine of metal grating against metal.
Sarge called out, “Eyes up, odds are anyone could have heard that from a few decks away, find a position and cover whatever we find in there.”
The human soldiers flowed out of the door and into the adjoining room with a smoothness and precision that told of hours upon hours of training. When the all clear was given, Bob followed and looked around.
It was another hallway, but this one was in much different condition than the previous. The shiny blue metal on relatively pristine display in the former passage was predominantly obscured by dark patches and spotting. This section of the station had the distinct disadvantage of not having been exposed to vacuum over time.
While they clearly had the same general design, this space had matching doors on the right and left sides of the corridor, and a larger bay door on the far side.
Showing her light on a particularly dark spot on the wall, Heartbreaker asked, “What happened here? Anyone have any idea of what this crap all over the walls and floors is?”
Lasik replied, “It looks like a shower that hasn’t been cleaned in years.”
She pivoted her torso to look at him and replied, “You really are a filthy human being to come up with that first thing.”
“He may not be too far off,” Bob said.
Moving over to the wall on the right, he ran his finger along a panel and examined the results. The blue metal underneath became visible where the armored glove scraped against it. The coating itself flaked off and was somewhat powdery.
He looked over his suit HUD readouts and said, “I am showing an atmospheric mix of 45% Nitrogen, 35% Helium, and 21% Oxygen. Biological contamination detected, but nothing looks toxic. Can you confirm my readings on that?”
Sarge spoke up, “Affirmative, Lieutenant. I have the same.”
A round of confirmations went up, and after Sparks asked, “Can we breathe that much Helium?”
“The suit says it’s okay,” Boots offered.
Sarge looked at Bob and said, “With your permission, Sir?”
Bob turned to face him and said, “Go ahead.”
The team watched as Sarge opened his visor. He took a deep breath in and held it. Letting it out, he looked around and nodded to the team.
“Okay, if we can breathe the mix in here let’s save the suit supplies. Crack open team,” Bob instructed.
They did so, and with experimental breaths they all sampled the air in the station.
With a surprising and strangely high pitch to his voice, Boomer noted, “This place smells like-“
He stopped talking, unsure what to make of the sound of his voice. The entire team looked at him. Some were smiling, others were aghast with open mouths.
“It must be the Helium,” Sarge offered, his usually deep and gruff voice now sounding comically high pitched yet somehow just as commanding.
“Lieutenant, do you want to go through the mission talking like this?” Heartbreaker asked.
“Whoa, this atmo makes Heartbreaker sound like an actual woman.” Boots observed, barely suppressing a smile.
She retorted, “Yeah, too bad no gas mix exists that can make you sound like an actual man.”
A round of chuckling erupted in the group, with Boots smiling and giving Heartbreaker a quick salute. She smiled back and returned the gesture.
Longhorn said, “We sound like those little yellow guys my nieces and nephews watch on TV. You know the critters with the big eyes and blue overalls?”
“Yeah, maybe we do, but she sounds like something straight out of an Anime.”
Heartbreaker whirled around and put a hand to her cheek and exclaimed, “Uwu?”
The team actually broke out in laughter with that, and she joined in and said, “There, you degenerate primates happy now? Let’s get back to work here.”
The mirth died down and Bob spoke, his voice only slightly less high pitched than the rest for some reason, “To answer your question, Heartbreaker, yes, we will breathe this until we can’t anymore. There’s no telling how much of this station is in hard vac. We may need the suit reserves when we reach the primary mission location.”
“Yes, Sir. Of course,” she responded.
“Sarge, we need to recon this area,” Bob said.
“Roger that, Sir.”
Turning, the Sergeant pointed and said, “Teams of three. Let’s clear this hallway. Heartbreaker and Picasso, you two stick with the Lieutenant and over the hallway. Boomer, Lasik, and Sparks take right. Boots and Longhorn, you’re with me going left.”
The going was slower than they would have preferred. With each of the rooms in the hallway, the Sister had to make a temporary power patch, then only grudgingly would the door open for them. After that, the team for that side would sweep the room inside.
By the time they got to the end of the hall, it was clear this was some sort of storage section. One of the rooms was noteworthy for having a hidden reinforced vault, but when the Sister hacked through the digital security and got it open there was nothing inside.
When they got to the end of the hall, the massive door spanned the entire length of the passage before them. The second to last of their power cells gave out when the door had only opened a few feet. Heartbreaker went in first, and when she gave the all clear, the rest of the team filtered in behind her.
The room they had entered was expansive, and their suit and weapon lights could only illuminate small sections of the whole at a time. All around them were metal containers that showed signs of violence in their opening. Varying kinds of detritus of all kinds were spread liberally around the floor. Close to them they currently had small nodules of dull ceramic looking beads and food that had spoiled and desiccated at some point far in the past.
They progressed through the warehouse sized room, and found three points of access beside the door they had come through. Two of them were clearly for individuals, but the one at the back of the room was large enough to move even the largest containers through.
The group had regrouped in front of the large door, and Bob looked at it and noted, “This one seems different than the big hallway doors. Any ideas?”
Longhorn said, “My cousin works on Remembrance Station and showed me around his digs one time. This one is clearly alien, but I would bet it’s some kind of cargo elevator.”
Bob nodded, “Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t see a lot of processing systems in here so they must be further in. This must be some kind of cargo receiving area.”
“Sarge, something’s been bugging me,” Picasso interjected, “I figured when we got it scouted out in here there would be two more of those big doors like we came through after the airlock. I mean, there were obviously three docks on the station. There’s the one the Goons are using, the one that was welded shut, and the one we came through. So, if there were three of them, wouldn’t it make sense for each to feed into this room? Where are the other doors, and why aren’t there goons in here moving cargo or whatever?”
There was a moment of contemplation where the team looked at one another. When no answers seemed forthcoming, the Sister spoke up.
“Based on the external readings we took of the station on the way in, the central section of the facility has more than enough space for three rooms this size. It is likely that each hangar bay is attached to an area similar to this one.”
The group was quiet for a time, and the Sister asked, “Did I say something wrong?”
Heartbreaker spoke up and said, “Nah, it’s just a big station is all, Sister.”
Sarge turned to Bob and said, “Sir, given the size of this station and the rate we are going through power cells, unless something changes, the original mission parameters don’t seem feasible.”
Bob turned to look at him and was silent for a long time. Only his antennae twitching showed his intelligent mind was working on the problem in front of him.
Finally, he spoke, “If all things were equal, I would say let’s pull out now and report back our findings to command. The problem is, there are warships out there now. We can bet after the raid on the Trisklassa home system, and the threat Redeemer left in their system, every sensor they have is working at max power looking for power signatures that look anything like us. The moment we power up that shuttle, let alone start charging the FTL drive, we will light up on their sensors.”
Turning and gesturing with his arms somewhat, he said, “Normally, with a station this big I would be willing to take the risk. The power requirement for something this size would imply a reactor powerful enough for a warship at the very least. Something like that could in theory mask us long enough to get out. The station is for all I could tell on the way in dead except for minor power spikes. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but now it seems pretty clear the Goons are using portable power generators. I don’t know if that means they have powered specific areas of the station, or if they have their own equipment they are supplying. Either way, it doesn’t give us enough EM cover to get powered up and out of here.”
He turned back to the NCO and said, “We are in a tough spot, Sergeant.”
“I trust you, LT, you can fly us out of here.” Sparks said, “You have gotten in tough scrapes before and pulled through. People are still talking about what you did in the A4 nebula.”
Bob turned to him and said, “That was a radically different situation. While I have every confidence in the Sister here to perform as well as Wolf did, she doesn’t have the same resources we did in that mission. I am not too proud to say that while we did as much as we could, we got lucky in the A4, really lucky. Even with that amount of Kismet on our side, I still almost died.
Bob shook his head and looked around at the shadows of containers in the dark room, “From a cold start, it would take at least five minutes to power up the drive capacitor for a micro jump. Assuming they don’t blast the hangar the moment they see something off and we actually get out, it doesn’t get much better. We would be dodging rail gun slugs and missiles that entire time. I may be good, but at point blank range against a battleship and two escort frigates? I’m not that good. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Bob turned his head and nodded to the container attached to the back of his armor, “On top of that, the Admiral has a standing order that it is of the highest priority to keep our QE-COM technology and any of the Sisters out of the hands of the Enemy. One lucky shot could kill or incapacitate us, and the Goons could get both.”
“I didn’t know that,” The Sister admitted.
A sharp tone of anger became present in her next words, “It’s not your job to protect us. It’s our job to protect you.”
Bob’s soft reply was in sharp contrast to her as he said, “Oh, Sister, don’t take it that way. The moment you and your sisters joined them, you all became part of the constellation of sentient life orbiting the Apex. They see such commitments as you, and we, have all made as a privilege. It is a long held belief among Humans that all privileges have corresponding duties. In this case, they see it as their duty at the very least to protect and defend you, as they have for all the beings in the Milky Way Galaxy. This isn’t new, it’s what they are. If you try to argue that with them, you will be going against the very nature of the Apex, and when you go against that, you lose.”
“We don’t need protection!” she shot back.
“Sister,” Bob said tenderly, “As much as we all think of Humans as creatures of light and purity, they aren’t. There is darkness in them that runs deep, and to the core of their being. They are intimate with it, and know what you would face if you were captured by creatures of evil intent. They may not know the details, but they know what kinds of things you would experience at the hands of the Jergoon. As dedicated as you are to protecting their bodily safety, they are just as incapable of tolerating the idea of you facing that kind of abuse.”
“You speak of the Apex like they are Destroyers.”
Bob gestured to the team around him and said, “They all have the capacity to be what you call Destroyers, but they aren’t. It’s a choice they make every day, every minute, to be agents of good in the universe. If it weren’t, they couldn’t inspire change everywhere they go like they do. They show us all that positive change is only one choice away. That’s also why they are so good at war. For them, the struggle against good and evil, right and wrong, never ends. Every Human is always fighting a personal battle only they know about. The reason they are so good at facing the darkness and demons of the galaxy is because they have had to face those things in themselves for their whole existence. In that, they choose to be Creators, as you understand them.”
There was a long pause, and pulses of light flickered through the gaps in the case the Sister was in showing her processing all this information.
“Is that true?” she asked finally, “Are you all at war inside yourselves all the time?”
“You get used to it,” Sarge offered, “And eventually, if you make a point to practice doing right, you get good at it.”
“So,” Bob continued, “Now you see why the Admiral gave that order. As much as you think you are protecting us, he is protecting you in return. The more important question is how we are all going to get out of here.”
Lasik spoke up, “Look, I’m no techie or anything, but what if we got the base power supply back online and turned on some of the systems that were still working?”
The team looked at him and Heartbreaker asked, “So, you think we should just go ahead and start up an ancient alien station that has God knows what kind of power system, announce our presence to the Jergoon, and then book it back through the station?”
Picasso interjected, “Then once we get there, we will have to start the ship up and start charging the FTL capacitor, keep out of sight of the Jergoon for five minutes as they are looking for us, and then jump away?”
Lasik’s eyes dropped a little and he said, “It was just an idea.”
Bob had been looking at him and quickly jumped in, “It may be the best one, Lasik. I had reluctantly come to the same conclusion actually. Does anyone else have any input? I am open to other suggestions.”
The group looked at each other, but nobody said anything.
Bob concluded, “It’s a long shot, but I don’t see any other way with the currently available information to get home.”
Sarge stepped forward and asked, “So your orders, Sir?”
Bob looked around at the infiltrators and said, “We will find the power core and attempt to get it restarted, then have the Sister here turn on as many systems as possible and we make our way back to the ship for exfiltration.”
Sarge said, “Okay, let’s get to it then.”