Chapter 1: |1| – Partners

"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.

"Pffft" This time it's my partner doing a noise similar to the one I had just been doing, though for a very different reason, as evidenced by the laughter she had tried to hold back, coming out of my speakers. In response, I can feel my blood rushing to my head. "W-what? Did you find something funny?"

"Ha ha haa... Yeah. I just found my partner hitting the head 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 technically the one with more hours outside out of the both of us?"

"W-Well the suits in the yard generally 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, she 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 a few seconds later, she responded in a more serious tone. "Way ahead of you. The ship's probably a Lynx-class Corvette. No idea what the actual name is, but if I remember my ship designations correctly the Lynx were mostly used as independently acting patrol craft and fleet recon. They were popular some 60 to 70 years ago. Rare to see one in such good condition." That explained why I couldn't really identify it. I mean the ship definitely had human characteristics, but 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 silhouette of the vessel blown up on my HUD. The most striking details were the truly oversized engines for the rather small frame, if it were an interstellar freighter it would have been the smallest I had ever seen in terms of length, but the engines are larger than that of some 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 had to deal with any armed ships at my old job, heck most ships I had taken apart weren't even armored with anything more than the absolute minimum, but  Noma had assured me it was safe and to just treat it like any other ship."Do you know where the airlock is?"

"The main airlock should be on the opposite side near the bow... I can also see now that most of the escape pods are missing, 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 her 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 weird. Once were onboard, stay with me until I say otherwise. I am about to make contact, I'll wait in the airlock."

"Roger that." is all I said in response. On the zoomed-in camera image taking up the center of my field of view, I could suddenly see a small cone of light appear near a point where I myself was heading. Even though I had called the ship small before, that still meant it was over a hundred-fifty meters long. The size of the required fluxspace engine alone made it infeasible for any ship smaller than that to attempt interstellar travel.

>200 METERS<

The camera feed, as well as my drifting thoughts, were suddenly interrupted by a warning flashing into view. Looking at my relative velocity, displayed near the bottom of my HUD, told me that I was still going at a constant 30 ms/s, though I would probably be more worried if it unexpectedly changed. That was also the reason you never aim yourself directly at your target. Because if I were to impact the side of the ship head first even at such low speeds, the best-case scenario would be I hit the inside of my helmet and suffer a pretty serious concussion. Worst case on the other hand would be my helmet and head cracking against the armor plate of a warship like an egg. So yeah, better to intentionally miss by a few meters.

>150 METERS<

At that warning, I pull out my suit thruster controls from their holsters on my belt and rotate myself, so that I fly feet first. Then I activate the main thrusters built into the back of the suit and accelerate myself upwards at a third of a G. The thrust gravity feels a bit weak for me, but I would rather experience too little gravity than too much. That one time losing consciousness due to excessive G-Forces was already more than enough, thank you very much!

>100 METERS<

>75 METERS<

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>50 METERS<

At about 56 meters I came to a standstill relative to the ship now taking up most of my vision, even without the camera zoom. My calculations were evidently a bit off, or maybe I hadn't reacted as fast as I thought, but that was irrelevant. Activating the thrusters pointing towards my back, I accelerated until I was closing in at approximately 5 m/s. A little over ten seconds later, I grabbed onto a bar running along the length of the ship. Those were rather common and basically, every ship above ten meters had them 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’s offline, but it's still running on battery power." "After 60 years? Is that normal?" That got a longer pause again. "No, it isn't. Most likely the reactor had still been running until it ran out of fuel and basically the whole ship had to have already been powered down at that point for it to last that long. Even the emergency lights would have to be inactive. 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 honestly didn't have a clue about that. Though to be honest most of the ships I had been working on were outdated freighters that were sold to the scrap yard to, well, scrap them. Every once in a while you would have some ship that got tugged in with damages, though most of them were from an unlucky collision when docking or sometimes an undetected asteroid. 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 even seen it in person, so I wasn't an expert on why someone would leave the ship here.

As the airlock came into view, I could see the light coming from Noma's helmet lights 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 say, probably unnecessarily. The light coming off my own helmet should have already alerted her to my presence. As she had said the airlock looked to be in normal condition if you ignore 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.

[LOW ENERGY MODE]

[ERROR: RFT_COTOX]

[ERROR: ALT_0PRE]

[UNABLE TO CYCLE]

Internally I chuckled at that. Noma had probably memorized most of the abbreviations and ship designations from her time in the navy, but the one thing where I apparently had the upper hand was airlock error codes. Thankfully most error codes hadn't changed in like forever and generally followed a standardised naming scheme. Just like here. "The refill tanks are filled with toxic levels of CO or CO₂ and the alternative 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." and floated over towards the door and I started on overriding the airlock safety measures. Thankfully my training had taught me how to do it, even though I had never before needed to. Most ships I had been working on had either already been evacuated or had working airlocks. After a minute or two I could hear the air getting released into the room and looking at my suit's barometer showed the air pressure slowly rising. Turning my attention back to Noma, I saw her standing on what would normally be the ceiling when under thrust. I also saw that she held her pistol in both hands while looking towards the door. I knew she had it with her from the start, but somehow seeing her combat-ready like this made me realise that I might have not given the situation 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 also 70 years, 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 2 days out and that was assuming our distress beacons could even reach that far. 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 go in. If you see anything move you get back immediately." Noma answered in a serious tone, that didn't really allow any objections. I simply got into position opposite to 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 went after her.

The corridor wasn't tall or wide enough for us to not be in each other's way, so all I could see was 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 and although I couldn't see her face through the reflective helmet plate, I imagined she was at least a bit embarrassed about having to look 'down' at me. That theory was strengthened, when she undid 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 I and Noma had to pry open the elevator doors using the trusty crowbar I had on my utility belt. Then Noma planted a small beacon on the floor we had been on and made her way into the shaft. I followed after her and made the transition from walking on the 'ground' to having my boots be attracted to the 'wall' below me. I know that a lot of Void-dwellers prefer the feeling of only having a downwards force around their feet, but I suspect I would never get used to it. In a planet's gravity well or during thrust-gravity your whole body has the same force act upon it, but when using mag-boots the pull your boots experience is a lot stronger than what your upper body feels. It can enable someone to look like they are almost 'lying’ on the air. That also gave me motion sickness, whenever I tried to replicate it.

So what if I preferred the uniformity of a gravity well!