Breather - Edited 11-8-2018

With the dropship disabled, the power for the magnetic clamps released, and the three of us were now floating, along with my Monkeys. I immediately powered them on, then pulled the corporal sitting across from me towards me and threw him towards the opening in the back of the craft. A moment later, a “follow” command was sent to the monkeys and Liefsdottir was working his way to the craft exit. I moved to the front of the ship, reached what was now the crumpled canopy of the ship, used that to orient myself “up” with the hole in the back of the ship above me, and I pushed off, hard.

I passed Liefsdottir on my way out, and once clear from the craft I spun then powered on the magnets from my boots. They caught nothing. I then bounced off the interior hull of the ship, losing most of my momentum on the way.

I felt a voice in the back of my skull directing my attention to where the craft was a moment ago. There was a smear of blood on the ceiling, or was that the deck? Why weren’t my boots connecting to the deck, ceiling, or bulkheads?

“Sir?” I heard over my comms. The HUD on my visor identified her as Corporal Watson. Hopefully not related to the XO.

“What is it, corporal?” I asked

“Sorry, Ma’am. Uhm. It looks like the landing is hosed. Anyway off this boat or will there be a change in orders?” she asked. I hadn’t been given the operations package for this Op.

“We meet up with the other Marines, sit tight, and work from there. Any sign of Liefsdottir?” I asked, knowing from the smear that the answer wasn’t going to do any good. My Monkeys started to crawl out of the landing craft that was now wedged into a corner of the room.

I glanced around to get an idea as to what this vessel was and sent a thought to Observer.

Any help would be welcome.

Systems are limited. Too far away from the source.

What the hell did that mean? Also, was its English getting more accurate?

I started setting up the Monkeys as a communications relay hub and sensor scanning uplink.

“Ma’am, uh, a little help?” Watson's voice called my attention away from setting up the Heavy Weapons platform. Fortunately, nothing was coming to kill us at this beachhead. Looking up, I saw Watson about to spin past me.

I grabbed onto the bulkhead pointed my boots towards her, and activated them, pulling Watson towards me, and causing me to rotate more and lose hold of the tiedown on the bulkhead I had been grasping. At least Watson was no longer spinning on all three axes. Like me, she was now only rotating on two.

“Didn’t take the Jump course?” I asked, waiting to come around so I could grab hold of the tiedown on the bulkhead again.

“Wasn’t an option when I went through. Sol had decided to retire that, and a few of the other courses. My entire company missed out on a lot.” She responded, her tone of voice sounded both relieved and sad at this.

“Vacuum training?” I asked, having a bad feeling of being stuck with someone who should have been in a planetary role.

“Only a two-hour lecture. They had already dismantled the chamber by then.”

Shit. Not my day. When my company went through boot, we had an entire week dedicated to vacuum operations and Zero-G. I hadn’t ever used any of it, but we at least had training. The tiedown on the bulkhead came into view again, and I was able to reach it and stop our momentum, releasing the mag seal on my boots.

“Okay, remember the lectures. A breach won’t be immediately fatal. If one happens, let me know so we can stop and patch your suit. As for zero-G, think of things like this. If you push on something, and you don’t have an anchor, both you and the object will move apart from each other at the roughly half speed of the push, each. So, the force of the push will be like what you exerted, just half you moving away from it, the other half is it moving away from you. Action-reaction, and all that.” I looked around the room taking in exactly what I was seeing.

The room itself was about 40 meters wide and 10 meters high. There was a single-entry hatch on one of the bulkheads that lead up and down the ship, but not one that would head further into the interior. I didn’t see anything that looked like writing or a computer terminal anywhere.

The hatch looked manually operated with a single round wheel in its center. The hatch was three meters wide and four tall. The room was charred through large portions of it, but only on the third nearest the exterior. The bulkhead to the ships hull was vented. Looking through the hole that the dropship had punched through it seemed a little too clean, almost as if it had been cut. There were no signs of decompression. If this was a metal construction, there should be some signs of buckling out or metal shearing. That did not make me feel good at all.

“Jax to Mother, do you read?” I called out on the channel reserved for command staff.

“Mother here. Jax, you are coming in low and garbled. Do you have access to laser comms? Over.” The response was shaky. I could make them out, but there was a hiss of static that blanketed every word coming in during the transmission. I hooked up to the communications relay set up by my Monkeys.

“Mother, no laser comms, am using my optional kit to boost the signal. Please confirm receipt. Over”

“Jax, much better. You are now five by five. Report.” I was happy they could hear me, sad that my receivers weren’t able to provide a cleaner signal, I suppose that the relay was only acting as an amplifier.

“Mother, status is the lander is down. I am here with Corporal Watson; the remainder of the squad is KIA. Lander is down, both pilots KIA. Interior structure is non-ferrous, with zero-G conditions. The craft was hit by something which ripped the tail off taking out everyone.”

“The corporal, a PFC named Liefsdottir, the pilots, and I survived that. Then we hit Escort and lost the pilots. Upon evac of the craft, we lost Liefsdottir. I have set up a standard comms relay which is amplifying my signal using the drones I packed. Can you confirm any additional landings? There doesn’t seem to be any signs of an explosion where we are except some charring. No exterior buckling. Over”

There was silence on the line for a moment, Watson was getting her space legs together, working on learning how to move. She had a tether attached to another tiedown on the bulkhead and would occasionally pull herself in, re-orient, and work on moving again. Trial and error were good for learning.

“Jax, we have spoken with the pilots, and they claimed that a high-velocity impact on the ship removed the aft section and that they had been trying to aim for a hole in Escort beforehand. They confirm the tumble took them out. Three others are awaiting new transport over. No sign of the rest of the squad yet, they may be awaiting SAR Ops. Stand by and wait for new orders. Mother Out.”

Okay, so the dead were respawning, but the squad still had some air. Apart from Liefsdottir and the two that grew new holes to breathe from no one else had popped.

Using the Comms relay, I sent a broadcast on the general channel.

“This is Jax, broadcasting in the clear. I’ve set up a comms relay. My squad was taken out before landing. Looking for others to connect with. Please respond on Channel zero-fife. Encryption protocol Golf-thuree-one-four.” I recorded the message and set it for a repeat every three minutes, then switched my comms to send over channel five and entered my encryption key.

“Jax, kill that chatter, and report on your position.” Janssens familiar voice came through my comms on channel five. I killed the broadcast I had set up the repeat on.

“Janssens, what’s the word?” I asked. If he was senior in charge on the ship, then there were a lot of dead. “You the expert in the field today?” I continued.

“Affirmative. Setting up a beacon. Home in on my position and bring everyone you can with you. We seem to be on a hostile craft. According to Mother, there are a lot of ships that didn’t even make it over.” A blip showed up on my mini-map. The problem is that there was a LOT of grey between him and me. Bringing up the map in my HUD, there was shared data being sent and synced to the network.

I could clearly make out a dozen sites that were clearly separated out from the grey that covered the map. Most of the areas marked seemed like mine. 40 meters long, 10 meters deep and high, two outliers were what appeared to be a cargo bay, easily 80 meters long by 40 meters deep and 30 meters high. That was where Janssens blip was coming from, and then there was a small 10x10x10 meter area that appeared to be a maintenance closet.

Taking a cue from Watson, I found another tie down near the hole in the bulkhead and attached a line to it. I then swung to the exterior of the ship and was pleased that I was able to use my boots to mag down to the exterior hull. I shut off the magnetics on my boots and swung back inside.

“Watson, this way. We’re going to go meet up with another team.” I told her. “We can use mags on the exterior of the ship; it will be easier than trying to go through unknown territory.”

Once again, commanding the drones to follow me, we were off. Two humans and a lot of tech were crawling on the exterior hull of Escort. If you’ve never made a Mag Walk across the outer hull of a ship, you are missing out. The view was breathtaking if of course, you took out the various dead that were floating around outside. Had we not decided to make the trip this way, I don’t think we would have known was taking out our drop ships.

After moving what I decided to call “aft” for near twenty minutes, We were just about to arrive at the gap where Janssens had reported being. One of my Monkeys then went offline. Then another. Scanning behind me I noticed parts floating as well as what could only be considered electronics dust. They had been blown into oblivion. Studying the ship hull, I started to switch between spectrums. There were two heat readings about 20 meters to my right. Both were cooling down quickly. I could see them pumping the heat back inside the ship fromthrough an attached heat sink. Had I not been cycling my scans I probably wouldn’t have noticed them. I marked the two objects took a knee to make myself a smaller target and began.

“Watson take cover. Hostiles are cloaked on the hull!”

I raised my Taishi Ci and used the marked target with my optical connection to the scope and sent out two quick bursts. I ordered the remaining Monkeys to flatten themselves to the hull and wished I had brought more than one heavy weapons platform, but I would have probably been down two platforms instead of one and a spare scanning module. The two bursts hit their mark. One of the nearly invisible cannons sparked up and then there was a small explosion from its back. I then started to fire on the other.

“Ma’am, where are the targets?!” Watson was scanning the hull, battle rifle ready, not able to see what I was shooting at. Then another small explosion.

“What sort of scanners and sensors do you have?” I asked.

I scanned the hull again, making sure that I had recorded everything to send back to Mother. Seeing nothing else “glowing” I started heading to the two downed cannons.

“C’mon Watson. Let’s see what sort of goodies delivered themselves to us.”

There wasn’t a whole lot left of the two cannons, but I was able to scrape enough together that I was hoping to be able to get some new schematics. Using some duct tape, I created a bundle then connected them to my Monkeys to carry. I needed my hands free and to minimize mobility restrictions. We then proceeded back towards our original destination. I kept scanning the hull. Finally, Watson responded to my question.

“Just a basic targeting scanner. No additional packages.” It looked like command only sent the basics, just in case.

“Sending you a link up request. My scanners should be able to link you into my targeting data. My package can handle a full fire team, in theory. I haven’t tested it yet.”

I then pinged her with a link request, sharing the data from my scanner and the scanners on my Monkeys. We came across another single cannon on our way, reclaiming the parts that survived that encounter as well. Arriving at the link-up beacon, I sent Janssens a pulse transmission.

“Two coming in the back way. Janssens, tell anyone with you that we’re friendlies.”

We proceeded to climb in through another hole in the hull that was removed with precision instead of the force of an explosion. Still, gravity was null, and the survivors had oriented themselves with what I had considered the far bulkhead as the deck. A barricade made from the hulls of two of the dropships was set up. Liberal usage of emergency hull patching foam had been used to secure the ships to the deck. A heavy gunner standing on the cockpit of one of the vessel was keeping watch on the hatch leading to other parts of the ship. On the other dropship, a weapons turret was set up.

“Hey, Janssens, where can I set up?” I said while floating towards what I was thinking of as the command area. There wasn’t anything g designating it as such, but this was where multiple tethers linked up. I commanded my sensor Monkeys to scan the area, using all available imaging. Some of the sensor packages I now had access to were quite handy. I then passed command of the comms relay to Janssens.

“Have a laser link? We can set up my drone to keep the target on Mother, so we don’t lose the comms home. I also have a lot of data to forward home.” Janssens looked up from what he was doing. He must have been receiving comms already. Janssens raised a finger signaling for me to hold one moment. After several minutes, he opened a channel to me.

“Yes, we have a laser link. Get it secured and let me know when we have a clear signal.” He pointed to the dropship with the turret on it. Everyone worth a damn knew to listen to the sergeants on the ground instead of the junior level officers. Also, on the outside of the game, he did technically now outrank me. I pulled myself along a tether and into the side of the dropship and started work.

Configuring the laser link into the comms array for use by the Monkeys took longer than I expected. Working in zero-G was a pain in the ass. Fifteen minutes later I was setting up a data package to be sent to Mother. The data included all the scans I could take of the turrets from the hull of Escort. After that, I was officially out of the leadership comms link. Somewhere on the ship was a Marine Captain, and we were holding tight for him to hook up with us. I had my Monkeys start pulling deck plating to patch up the exterior hole. Now, all we needed was to get an atmospheric processor to start pressurizing this compartment.

We had been on canned air for just over a full hour. If I recalled correctly, the standard suits had a 120-minute limit. Soon there would be a small panic when the suit alarms started to sound. With nothing else to do, I began scanning schematics to see if I could at the least improvise and create a recycler. That would allow, at the minimum, a fresh 120 minutes for each Marine. Maybe something in the fallen dropships would work.

Scanning through the wreckage, I noted the engines were still technically sound. There was also power from the reactor cores in one of them. Having been broken in the landing, neither of the two were on standby.

“Janssens? Where are the pilots for the birds?” I asked. An idea was percolating. Not waiting for his response, I started heading towards the cockpit of the dropship. Like the dropship I had been on, the cockpit was caved in, but it’s possible the pilots survived. Connecting myself to a tether attached to the dropship, I had one of my monkeys start cutting away at the canopy, and I stood where I could get some leverage, connecting down with my mag boots. I was going to need to pry the canopy open as the sides with the hatches were sealed to the deck.

“KIA in both birds. The other one,” he pointed to the craft with the Marine stationed atop it, “took a single round straight down the center. Both lost power and hit the hull to make entry.” Now that it was pointed out, I could see the remnants of a hole. I say “remnant” as with how crumpled the cockpit was; I had dismissed it as standard impact damage. I continued prying off the canopy on the first dropship.

“What are you doing up there, anyways, Jax?” Janssens was starting to take an interest in my work.

“Tell me how much air you have left, first,” I replied, the canopy giving way enough for me to slide inside. I started keying on the reactor.

“Just over… shit! My alarms for low air just alerted me. We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Janssens was choked up a bit. Maybe he forgot this was a game.

“Game, ‘member? You’ll respawn back in your quarters. But yeah, you’ll die if I don’t do something about this.” I sent the Monkeys to start opening the other dropship, then climbed out of the cockpit and moved to the other craft.

“Fuck, that’s right. Okay, what do we need to do? I don’t want to get back on a dropship and try riding through that mess again.” I think I could get the Sergeant on board with my idea.

“Well,” I grunted while straining to pull enough of the cockpit open that I could climb in this one as well. “I figure that these have a hydrogen power plant in them, right? Those are basically high energy water turbines that use Hydrogen, combine them with an Oxygen molecule, and generates power from the fusing of a water molecule.” I stepped back a moment and took a deep breath.

“The air in our tanks is only about 20% oxygen. Our suits keep the CO2 Off Gasses that we exhale in the empty tanks. I am going to try to set up the power plants to cycle CO2 in, through the water, scrubbing the carbon out. That’s the quick version anyway. It won’t be enough to pressurize the cabin, but it will be enough to allow everyone to recharge their tanks until we can find the life support systems.” I finished prying out a rod from the canopy that was pinning it closed. A moment later I was wriggling inside to start the reactor here as well.

“If I can get it working that is.” I left the craft, pulling a decapitated co-pilot from the seat. “Hey, do you have a mono-blade I could borrow for a minute?” The mono-blade was a ceramic knife with an edge made by housing a blade a single carbon molecule thick. It could cut through most things, and in theory, wouldn’t dull. I wouldn’t be using it long enough to take the edge off, however. I just needed to get to some intestines and the suit filters.

“Sure, what are you going to do with him?” He asked.

“Something you won’t want to see.” I then climbed back in and pulled out the body in the pilots’ chair. Thank God for zero-G. I was able to carry both bodies with me into the other dropship, and I started to work removing tubes and hoses from the suits, as well as the filters. From the helmets of the two which weren’t damaged beyond use. One more trip to the other dropship and I returned with a bundle of cables, linking bother power plants together, and finalized the last of the connections. Fortunately, I only had to use about two meters of intestines, connecting them between some hardware which I hid behind a bulkhead. The Marines wouldn't have to know where the extra hoses came from. I then used a salvaged air tank from one of the pilots as a test. It all worked well enough.

“Okay Janssens, start cycling them through five at a time. It should handle the load. With only 15 of us, we should finish before anyone hits zero. Any word on the Captain making his way here?”

Breather - Original

With the drop ship disabled, the power for the magnetic clamps released, and the three of us were now floating, along with my Monkeys. I immediately powered them on, then pulled the corporal sitting across from me towards me and threw him towards the opening in the back of the craft. A moment later, a “follow” command was sent to the monkeys and Liefsdottir was working his way to the craft exit. I moved to the front of the ship, reached what was now the crumpled canopy of the ship, used that to orient myself “up” with the hole in the back of the ship above me, and I pushed off, hard.

I passed Liefsdottir on my way out, and once clear from the craft I spun then powered on the magnets from my boots. They caught nothing. I then bounced off the interior hull of the ship, losing most of my momentum on the way.

I felt a voice in the back of my skull directing my attention to where the craft was a moment ago. There was a smear of blood on the ceiling, or was that the deck? Why weren’t my boots connecting to the deck, ceiling, or walls?

“Sir?” I heard over my comms. The HUD on my visor identified her as Corporal Watson. Hopefully not related to the XO.

“What is it corporal?” I asked

“Sorry, Ma’am. Uhm. It looks like the landing is hosed. Any way off this boat or will there be a change in orders?” she asked. I hadn’t been given the operations package for this Op.

“We meet up with other Marines, sit tight, and work from there. Any sign of Liefsdottir?” I asked, knowing from the smear that the answer wasn’t going to do any good. My Monkeys started to crawl out of the landing craft that was now wedged into a corner of the room.

I glanced around to get an idea as to what this vessel was and sent a thought to Observer.

Any help would be welcome.

Systems limited. Too far away from source.

What the hell did that mean? Also, was its English getting more accurate?

I started setting up the Monkeys as a communications relay hub and sensor scanning uplink.

“Ma’am, uhm, a little help?” Watsons voice called my attention away from setting up the Heavy Weapons platform. Fortunately, there was nothing coming to kill us at this beachhead. Looking up, I saw Watson about to spin past me. I grabbed onto the bulkhead pointed my boots towards her, and activated them, pulling Watson towards me, and causing me to spin more and lose hold of the tiedown on the bulkhead I had been grasping. At least Watson was no longer spinning on all three axis. Like me, she was not only spinning on two.

“Didn’t take the Jump course?” I asked, waiting to come around so I could grab hold of the tiedown on the wall again.

“Wasn’t an option when I went through. They had retired that and a few of the other courses. My entire company missed out on a lot.” She responded, her tone of voice sounded both relieved and sad at this.

“Vacuum training?” I asked, having a bad feeling of being stuck with someone who should have been in a planetary role.

“Only a two-hour lecture. They had already dismantled the chamber by then.”

Shit. Not my day. When my company went through boot, we had an entire week dedicated to vacuum operati0ns and Zero-G. I hadn’t ever used any of it, but we at least had training. The tiedown on the wall came into view again and I was able to reach it and stop our momentum, releasing the mag seal on my boots.

“Okay, remember the lectures. A breach won’t be immediately fatal. If one happens, let me know so we can stop and patch your suit. As for zero-G, think of things like this. If you push on something, and you don’t have an anchor, both you and the object will move apart from each other at roughly half speed of the push. So, the force of the push will be like what you exerted, just half you moving away from it, the other half it moving away from you. Action reaction, and all that.” I looked around the room taking in exactly what I was seeing.

The room itself was about 40 meters wide and 10 meters high. There was a single-entry hatch on one of the bulkheads that lead up and down the ship, but not one that would lead further into the interior. Nothing that looked like writing or a computer terminal anywhere. The hatch looked manually operated with a single round wheel in its center It was also three meters wide and four tall. The room was charred through large portions of it, but only on the third nearest the exterior. The bulkhead to the exterior of the ship was vented. Looking through the hole that the dropship had come through it looked a little too clean, almost as if it had been cut. There were no signs of decompression. If this was a metal construction, there should be some signs of buckling out. That did not make me feel good at all.

“Jax to Mother, do you read?” I called out on the channel reserved for command staff.

“Mother here. Jax you are coming in low and garbled. Do you have access to laser comms? Over.” The response was shaky. I could make them out but there was a hiss of static that blanketed every word coming in during the transmission. I hooked up to the communications relay set up by my Monkeys.

“Mother, no laser comms, am using my optional kit to boost signal. Please confirm receipt. Over”

“Jax, much better. You are now five by five. Report.” I was happy they could hear me, sad that I couldn’t hear them any clearer, I suppose that the relay was only acting as an amplifier.

“Mother, status is the lander is down. I am here with Corporal Watson; the remainder of the squad is KIA. Lander is down, both pilots KIA. Interior structure is non-ferrous, with zero-G conditions. The craft was hit by something which ripped the tail off taking out everyone. The corporal, a PFC named Liefsdottir and the pilots, and I survived that. Then we hit Escort and lost the pilots. Upon evac of the craft, we lost Liefsdottir. I have set up a standard comms relay which is amplifying my signal using the drones I packed. Can you confirm any additional landings? There doesn’t seem to be any signs of explosion where we are except some charring. No exterior buckling. Over”

There was silence on the line for a moment, Watson was getting her space legs together, working on learning how to move. She had a tether attached to another tiedown on the bulkhead and would occasionally pull herself in, re-orient, and try moving again. Trial and error was good for learning.

“Jax, we have spoken with the pilots, and they claimed that a high velocity impact on the ship removed the aft section, and that they had been trying to aim for a hole in Escort beforehand. They confirm the tumble took them out. Three others are awaiting new transport over. No sign of the rest of the squad yet, they may be awaiting SAR Ops. Stand by and wait for new orders. Mother Out.”

Okay, so the dead were respawning, but the squad still had some air. Apart from Liefsdottir and the two that grew new holes to breath from no one else had popped.

Using the Comms relay, I sent a broadcast on the general channel.

“This is Jax, broadcasting in the clear. I’ve set up a comms relay. My squad was taken out before landing. Looking for others to connect with. Please respond on Channel zero-fife. Encryption protocol Golf-thuree-one-four.” I recorded the message and set it for a repeat every three minutes, then switched my comms to send over channel five and entered my encryption key.

“Jax, kill that chatter, and report on your position.” Janssens familiar voice came through my comms on channel five. I killed the broadcast I had set up the repeat on.

“Janssens what’s the word?” I asked. If he was senior in charge on the ship, then there were a lot of dead. “You the expert in the field today?” I continued.

“Affirmative. Setting up a beacon. Home in on my position and bring everyone you can with you. We seem to be on a hostile craft. According to Mother there are a lot of ships that didn’t even make it over.” A blip showed up on my mini-map. The problem being that there was a LOT of grey between me and him. Bringing up the map in my HUD, there was shared data being sent and synced along the network.

I could clearly make out a dozen sites that were clearly separated out from the grey that covered the map. Most of the areas marked seemed similar to mine. 40 meters long, 10 meters deep and high, two outliers were what appeared to be a cargo bay, easily 80 meters long by 40 meters deep and 30 meters high. That was where Janssens blip was coming from, and then there was a small 10x10x10 meter area that appeared to be a maintenance closet.

Taking a queue from Watson, I found another tie down near the hole in the bulkhead and attached a line to it. I then swung to the exterior of the ship and was pleased that I was able to use my boots to mag down to the exterior hull. I shut off the magnetics on my boots and swung back inside.

“Watson, this way. We’re going to go meet up with another team.” I told her. “We can use mags on the exterior of the ship, it will be easier than trying to go through unknown territory.”

Once again, commanding the drones to follow me, we were off. Two humans and a lot of tech were crawling on the exterior hull of Escort. If you’ve never made a Mag Walk across the exterior hull of a ship, you are missing out. The view was breathtaking, if of course you took out the various dead that were floating around outside. Had we not decided to make the trip this way, I don’t think we would have known was taking out our drop ships.

After moving what I decided to call “aft” for near twenty minutes, I we were just about to arrive at the gap where Janssens had reported being. One of my Monkeys then went offline. Then another. Scanning behind me I noticed parts floating as well as what could only be considered electronics dust. They had been blown into oblivion. Scanning the ship hull, I started to switch between spectrums. There were two heat readings about 20 meters to my right. Both were cooling down quickly. Had I not been cycling my scans I probably wouldn’t have noticed them. I marked the two objects took a knee to make myself a smaller target and began.

“Watson take cover. Hostiles are cloaked on the hull!”

I raised my Taishi Ci and used the marked target with my optical connection to the scope and sent out two quick bursts. I ordered the remaining Monkeys to flatten themselves to the hull and wished I had brought more than one heavy weapons platform, but I would have probably been down two platforms instead of one and a spare scanning module. The two bursts hit their mark One of the nearly invisible cannons sparked up and then there was a small explosion from its back. I then started to fire on the other.

“Ma’am, where are the targets?!” Watson was scanning the hull, battle rifle ready, not able to see what I was shooting at. Then another small explosion.

“What sort of scanners and sensors do you have?” I asked.

I scanned the hull again, making sure that I had recorded everything to send back to Mother. Seeing nothing else “glowing” I started heading to the two downed cannons.

“C’mon Watson. Let’s see what sort of goodies delivered themselves to us.”

There wasn’t a whole lot left of the two cannons, but I was able to scrape enough together that I was hoping to be able to get some new schematics. Using some duct tape, I created a bundle then connected them to my Monkeys to carry. I needed my hands free and to minimize mobility restrictions. We then proceeded back towards our original destination. I kept scanning the hull. Finally, Watson responded to my question.

“Just a basic targeting scanner. No additional packages.” It looked like command only sent the basics, just in case.

“Sending you a link up request. My scanners should be able to link you into my targeting data. My package can handle a full fire team, in theory. I haven’t tested it yet.”

I then pinged her with a link request, sharing the data from my scanner and the scanners on my Monkeys. We came across another single cannon on our way, reclaiming the parts that survived that encounter as well. Arriving at the link up beacon, I sent Janssens a pulse transmission.

“Two coming in the back way. Janssens, tell anyone with you that we’re friendlies.”

We proceeded to climb in through another hole in the hull that was removed with precision instead of the force of an explosion. Still gravity was null, and the survivors had oriented themselves with what I had considered the far bulkhead as the deck. A barricade made from the hulls of two of the dropships was set up. A liberal usage of emergency hull patching foam had been used to secure the ships to the deck. A heavy gunner standing on the cockpit of one of the ships kept watch on the hatch leading to other parts of the ship. On the other drop ship a weapons turret was set up.

“Hey, Janssens, where can I set up?” I said while floating towards what I was thinking of as the command area. There wasn’t anything g designating it as such, but this was where multiple tethers linked up. I commanded my sensor Monkeys to scan the area, using all available imaging. Some of the packages I now had access to were quite handy. I then passed command of the comms relay to Janssens.

“Have a laser link? We can set up my drone to keep target on Mother, so we don’t lose comms home. I also have a lot of data to forward home.” Janssens looked up from what he was doing. He must have been receiving comms already. He raised a finger signaling for me to hold one moment. After several minutes, he opened a channel to me.

“Yes, we have a laser link. Get it secured and let me know when we have a clear signal.” He pointed to the dropship with the turret on it. Everyone worth a damn knew to listen to the sergeants on the ground instead of the junior level officers. Also, on the outside of the game, he did technically now outrank me. I pulled myself along a tether and into the side of the dropship and started work.

Configuring the laser link into the comms array for use by the Monkeys took longer than I expected. Working in zero-G was a pain in the ass. Fifteen minutes later I was setting up a data package to be sent to Mother. The data included all the scans I could take of the turrets from the hull of Escort. After that, I was officially out of the leadership communications. Somewhere on the ship was a Marine Captain, and we were holding tight for him to hook up with us. I had my Monkeys start pulling deck plating to patch up the exterior hole. Now all we needed was to get an atmospheric processor to start pressurizing this compartment.

We had been on canned air for just over a full hour. If I recalled correctly, the standard suits had a 120-minute limit. Soon there would be a small panic when the suit alarms started to sound. With nothing else to do I started to scan schematics to see if I could at the least improvise and create a recycler. That would allow, at the minimum, a fresh 120 minutes for each Marine. Maybe something in the fallen dropships would work.

Scanning though the wreckage, I noted the engines were still technically good. There was also power from the reactor cores in one of them. Having been broken in the landing, neither of the two were on standby.

“Janssens? Where are the pilots for the birds?” I asked. An idea was percolating. Not waiting for his response, I started heading towards the cockpit of the dropship. Like the dropship I had been on, the cockpit was caved in, but its possible the pilots survived. Connecting myself to a tether connected to the dropship, I had one of my monkeys start cutting away at the canopy and I stood where I could get some leverage, connecting down with my mag boots. I was going to need to pry the canopy open as the sides with the hatches were sealed to the deck.

“KIA in both birds. The other one,” he pointed to the craft with the Marine stationed atop it, “took a round straight down the center. Both lost power and hit a wall to make entry.” Now that it was pointed out, I could see the remnants of a hole. I say “remnant” as with how crumpled the cockpit was, I had dismissed it as standard impact damage. I continued prying off the canopy on the first dropship.

“What are you doing up there, anyways, Jax?” Janssens was starting to take an interest in my work.

“Tell me how much air you have left, first.” I replied, the canopy giving way enough for me to slide inside. I started keying on the reactor.

“Just over… shit! My alarms for low air just alerted me. We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Janssens was choked up a bit. Maybe he forgot this was a game.

“Game, ‘member? You’ll respawn back in your quarters. But yeah, you’ll die if I don’t do something about this.” I sent the Monkeys to start opening the other drop ship, then climbed out of the cockpit and moved to the other ship.

“Fuck, that’s right. Okay, what do we need to do. I don’t want to get back on a dropship and try riding through that mess again.” I think I could get the Sergeant on board with my idea.

“Well,” I grunted while straining to pull enough of the cockpit open that I could climb in this one as well. “I figure that these have a hydrogen power plant in them, right? Those are basically high energy water turbines that use Hydrogen, combine them with an Oxygen molecule, and generates power from the fusing of a water molecule.” I stepped back a moment and took a deep breath.

“The air in our tanks is only about 20% oxygen. Our suits keep the CO2 Off Gasses that we exhale in the empty tanks. I am going to try to set up the power plants to cycle CO2 in, through the water, scrubbing the carbon out. That’s the quick version anyway. It won’t be enough to pressurize the cabin, but it will be enough to allow everyone to recharge their tanks until we can find the life support systems.” I finished prying out a rod from the canopy that was pinning it closed. A moment later I was wriggling inside to start the reactor here as well.

“If I can get it working that is.” I left the craft, pulling a decapitated co-pilot from the seat. “Hey, do you have a mono-blade I could borrow for a minute?” The mono-blade was a ceramic knife with an edge made by housing a blade a single carbon molecule thick. It could cut through most things, and in theory wouldn’t dull. I wouldn’t be using it long enough to try to dull it, however. I just needed to get to some intestines and the suit filters.

“Sure, what are you going to do with him?” He asked.

“Something you won’t want to see.” I then climbed back in and pulled out the body in the pilots’ chair. Thank God for zero-G. I was able to carry both bodies with me into the other drop ship and I started to work removing tubes and hoses from the suits, as well as the filters. From the helmets of the two which weren’t damaged beyond use. One more trip to the other drop ship, and I retuned with a bundle of cables, linking bother power plants together, and finalized the last of the connections. Fortunately, I only had to use about two meters of intestines, connecting them between some hardware which I hid behind a bulkhead. The Marines wouldn't have to know where the extra hoses came from. I then used a salvaged air tank from one of the pilots as a test. It all worked well enough.

“Okay Janssens, start cycling them through five at a time. It should handle the load. With only 15 of us, we should finish before anyone hits zero. Any word on the Captain making his way here?”