"Pffft," I inhaled, took aim again, and "PFFFFFFT!"
"Ok, I'll bite. Why exactly are you trying to blow either my eardrums, the speakers, or your microphone out?"
"My hair tie got loose again, I swear!" I whined into my abused helmet microphone while my free-flowing hair continued to block my vision.
Thud! Suddenly, a low sound reverberated through my helmet and was probably picked up by the microphone.
"Pfft!" This time it was my partner doing a noise similar to the one I had just been doing, though for a very different reason. In response, I could already feel the blood rushing to my head. "W-what? Did you find something funny?"
"Ha haa... Yeah. I just saw my partner hitting the helmet of her EVA suit. Again." Noma's tone was the usual teasing and it was admittedly deserved in this case, but before I could defend my action she continued, "Aren't you the one with more hours outside between the two of us?"
"W-Well, the suits in the yard allowed you to pull your arms out of the sleeves to reach your head and stuff. So when I hit my head it's just... muscle memory, you know? Besides, shouldn't we focus on the job?" That's right, I wasn't just out in the hard vacuum of space for shits and giggles, which I imagined were still ongoing despite the muted microphone of my partner. Unlike me, Noma only had the microphone on, if she actually meant for the other party to hear what she had to say. Which also meant she wanted me to hear her laugh at my own blunder. For some reason, that got the blood rushing to my head again.
But before I could wrap my head around those feelings, Noma responded in a more serious tone. "Way ahead of you. The ship looks like a Lynx-class Corvette. No idea about the name obviously, but if I remember my ship classes correctly, the Lynx were mostly used as independent patrol craft or fleet recon. They were pretty popular some 60 to 70 years ago. Nowadays they are getting on in the years, although this one looks to be in rather good condition."
That explained why I couldn't identify the ship myself. Back in the scrap yard, I had only ever worked on civilian vessels, mainly small to medium freighters. I was still a few hundred meters away and going any faster would risk me overshooting my destination too much, but thanks to my suit's camera, I could already see the zoomed-in silhouette of the vessel taking up most of my helmet's HUD. The most striking details were the truly oversized engines for the rather small frame and, if the vessel was an interstellar freighter, it would have been the smallest ship I had ever worked on in terms of length, but the engines seemed larger than that of most medium-sized ships. "What are these weird protruding boxes mid-ship? Probably not cargo hold, I assume."
"You would assume correctly. Those are torpedo tubes, maybe even still loaded, so keep your distance!"
With a small gulp, I responded with a simple, "Understood." I had obviously never dealt with any armed ships at my old job - heck most ships I had taken apart weren't even armoured beyond the absolute minimum. Noma had reassured me that this trip was safe, though, and that I should just treat it like any other job. "Do you know where the airlock is?"
"The main lock should be on the opposite side near the bow... I can also see that most of the escape pods have been launched, which means there may have been conflict, but I couldn't detect any damage back on the ship."
"Uhh, is that so unusual? Maybe they just had an engine malfunction or something?"
After a moment of silence, I could hear Noma activate her microphone again. "No, in that case, protocol should've been to activate a distress beacon and wait until help arrives, unless deemed too dangerous... but we couldn't detect any radiation leaks or similar. I don't know, but something feels off here. Once we're onboard, stay with me until I say otherwise. I am about to make contact."
"Roger that."
In the camera feed, I could suddenly see a small cone of light appear near a point I was floating to myself. Even though I had called the ship small before, that still meant it was over a hundred-and-fifty meters long. The size of the fluxspace engine alone made it infeasible for any ship smaller than that to attempt interstellar travel.
>200 METERS<
The image, as well as my drifting thoughts, were suddenly interrupted by a warning flashing into view. My relative velocity, displayed near the bottom of my HUD, told me that I was still going at a constant 30 ms/s. That may seem slow at first, but if I were to impact the side of the ship head-first, even at such a low velocity, the best-case scenario would be a rather serious concussion. Worst case, my helmet and head could crack against the armour plate of that warship like an egg. Coincidentally, that was also the reason you purposefully missed a target by a few meters on approach.
>150 METERS<
At that warning, I pulled out my suit thruster controls, rotated myself to fly feet first, and activated the main thrusters built into the back of the suit. The acceleration was small, only about a third of a G, but I would rather experience too little gravity than too much. That one time losing consciousness from excessive g-forces was already more than enough, thank you very much!
>100 METERS<
>75 METERS<
-50 METERS-
At 56 meters I came finally to a standstill relative to the ship. The vessel was taking up most of my vision, even without extra zoom. My calculations had evidently been a bit off, or maybe I hadn't reacted as fast as I thought, but I didn't think much about it as I activated my back boosters until I was closing in at a more appropriate speed of just under 4 m/s. A few seconds later, I held onto one of the metal bars running along the length of the ship. Similar structures were common on basically every ship above a few meters and they were intended for exactly this purpose. "Contact. I'll make my way to the airlock now."
"Roger that. I can't see much through the airlock window, but all EVA suits are still here. According to the panels, the reactor is offline, but the ship still has battery power."
"After 60 years? Is that normal?" That got a longer pause again.
"No, don't think it is. Most likely the reactor had still been running when they abandoned, but even then the whole ship had to have basically been shut down for it to last that long. Something seriously weird is going on here. Why would someone go through all the trouble of disabling everything, if you're just going to abandon ship...?"
I didn't have a clue about that, but I suspected Noma hadn't directed the question at me. Most of the ships I had been working on were outdated freighters that were sold to the scrap yard to, well, scrap them, after all. Every once in a while you would have some ship getting tugged in with damages, though most of those were from an unlucky collision when docking or sometimes an unmapped asteroid or debris. In over four years of working at the scrap yard, I had only ever heard of one ship coming in with combat damages and I had never actually seen it in person. In other words, I was the furthest from an expert on why someone would leave the corvette here.
As the airlock came into view, I could see the lights from Noma's helmet being reflected out into space. Making one final turn into the airlock proper, I saw her hunched over a computer terminal near the inside door. "I am here," I said, probably unnecessarily. The light coming off my own helmet should have already alerted her to my presence.
Just as Noma had said, the airlock looked to be in prime condition if you ignored the lights being turned off. All EVA suits sat in their little compartments, emergency oxygen, first aid kits, as well as tools for repairs and common replacement parts, were stowed away where they were supposed to be. The only thing I had never seen before, was a compartment near the inside-facing door. It seemed to be locked with a numpad embedded into the left door. Pushing my way over I tried tapping the screen a few times.
"That's the weapons locker. It's been powered down, just like anything else. But ignore that for now, see if you can open the door somehow. I can't get it to work for some reason." Turning my body towards Noma, I saw her pointing at the airlock controls. Making my way over there, I saw that it was booted in low-power mode, probably because it was running on battery.
[EMERGENCY POWER MODE]
[ERROR RFT: COTOX]
[ERROR ALT: ZEROP]
[UNABLE TO CYCLE]
Internally, I chuckled at that. Noma might have memorized the abbreviations and ship designations from her time in the navy, but the one area where I held the upper hand were airlock error codes. Thankfully, most of those codes hadn't changed in, like, forever and they generally followed a standardized naming scheme, just like in this case. "The refill tanks are filled with toxic levels of CO or CO₂ and the alt tank has no pressure, probably ruptured."
That got Noma to look at the screen again. "Can you fix it?"
"Not really. But I can fill the Airlock with the Refill tank and we should be able to open the door then."
Turning her helmet towards me, she said, "Ok, do that then," before floating over towards the door and I started on overriding the safety measures. Thankfully, my years in the yard had taught me how to do it, even though I had never before needed to. Most ships I had worked on had either already been evacuated or had working airlocks, after all.
After a minute or two, I could hear the air getting released into the room and looking at my suit's barometer, I saw the air pressure was indeed rising. Turning my attention back to Noma, I saw her standing on what would normally be the ceiling of the room when under thrust. I also saw how she held her pistol with both hands while looking toward the closed door. I knew she had carried the weapon on her from the start, but somehow seeing her combat-ready like this made me realize that I might have not given the situation all the seriousness it deserved.
We were currently near the former border of human space some 70 years ago, inside a warship, that had been abandoned for unknown reasons for just as long, and were about to breach it with only the two of us. If we, for whatever reason, got into trouble, the closest ships would be at least two days out and that was assuming our distress beacons would even be picked up. So, yeah, I should probably be on my A-game here as well. "Cycle should be complete in 40 seconds," I inform Noma and take position near the door myself.
"I'll go in first and peek towards your right. You take the left but don't actually cross the threshold. If you see anything move, you get back immediately." Noma answered in a serious tone that didn't allow any objections. I simply got into position opposite of her, floating near the floor. As soon as the door opened, I grabbed onto the frame and let my head peek around the corner. With my helmet lights illuminating the empty corridor, I saw that some dust particles were being whipped up by my sudden appearance, but nothing else was moving.
"Clear," I said and not even a second later heard Noma call out the same. In response, I heard her Mag-boots start to clack along the ceiling as she made her way through the door. I activated my own boots and quickly went after her.
The corridor wasn't tall or wide enough for us to not be in each other's way, so for the moment, all I could see were Noma's thrusters and the backside of her helmet. After a few seconds of walking down the corridor, leading to what I assume would be either an elevator or ladder shaft, she turned around. Although I couldn't see her face through her helmet's reflective plate, I imagined she was at least a bit embarrassed about having to look 'down' at me. That theory was strengthened when she released her boots and wordlessly flipped herself around with trained movements, before activating them again.
"We should be heading towards the main elevator shaft. After that, I would say we go down towards the bridge and have a look around there." I didn't really have a better plan and just nodded once in an exaggerated way, to be visible while wearing the suit.
Arriving at the elevator shaft was as eventless as could be. The power had been turned off here as well, however, so we had to pry open the elevator doors using the trusty crowbar I had on my utility belt. Before we went into the shaft, Noma planted a small beacon on the floor we had been on and made her way through the door.
I followed after her and made the transition from walking on the 'ground' to having my boots attracted to the 'wall' below me. I know that a lot of Void-dwellers prefer the feeling of only having downward force around their feet, but I suspect I would never get used to the sensation. In a planet's gravity well or during thrust-gravity your whole body had the same force act upon it, but when using mag-boots the pull your boots experience was a lot stronger than what your upper body felt. It can enable someone to look like they are almost 'lying’ in the air. It also gave me motion sickness whenever I tried it. So what if I preferred the uniformity of a gravity well!
