Chapter 2 – Through the Airlock
“Oh, I hope they’re hostile,” Murissa growled, cracking her knuckles inside the gauntlets of her armored space suit. “It’s been way too long since I’ve got to indulge myself.”
“But…why? Why do you always want to hurt people?” asked Briar as he finished sealing his own suit, frowning as he awkwardly shifted himself to better situate the suit’s light armored plates. Though much lighter than what Murisssa wore, and even after several missions and training, Briar still hadn’t grown entirely comfortable wearing the suit.
“Because she’s a big, bad pussycat that just has to prove herself the baddest ass around,” Kaylee said, no small amount of displeasure coming through her voice. She slammed the magazine of her launcher into place for emphasis, smirking up at the bigger ferakatian woman. Kaylee wasn’t exactly tiny for a human, standing nearly six and a half feet tall and with a very muscular build, but she still looked small next to Murissa, who had a good two feet on her, not to mention a lot more muscle weight. Kaylee had her thick reddish-orange hair tied back in a ponytail, resting over one shoulder for the moment. “Or at least the biggest ass.”
Murissa let out a low, threatening growl and tensed, her tail raising and swaying threateningly as she turned her feral, yellow-eyed gaze toward Kaylee, her ears laying back. Her crimson hair, dotted with a few darker spots, bristled about her head even though it was currently tied back into several braids to allow it to fit inside the suit’s helmet.
Shi stepped between the two then, shooting each of them with a sharp glare, her icy blue eyes boring into each of them in turn for a few seconds. “Stop it right there, you two. Save it for any hostiles we may encounter. Let me reiterate that this is a rescue mission first and foremost. If you want to have it out in a sparring match later, that’s on you, and I’ll only care if your infirmary visit afterward affects your other duties. But not now, not on this mission. Understood?”
“Yessir,” Kaylee said almost immediately, her eyes quickly turning from the intensity of Shi’s glare, focusing on securing her other weapons and ammunition packs.
Murissa growled again, her tail swished, but she nodded slowly. “That’s understood, commander,” she said at last, through clenched teeth, not meeting Shi’s gaze, rather maintaining her intense stare upon Kaylee, that of a hunter with its prey in sight.
Shi stepped up to Murissa and poked her on the thick chest plate; she probably hadn’t even felt it, but it was enough to get the ferakatian’s amber eyes on Shi. “You’d better switch to another target real fast, or I’m pulling you from this operation. Am I clear?” Shi was at least three feet shorter than Murissa, her body built for agility and speed, not raw power, so she was positively puny next to the ferakatian, but Shi spoke with authority that came from more than just her rank, thanks to a little arcane enhancement to her voice.
The ferakatian’s eyes met Shi’s, and after a moment, she looked away, staring down at the airlock hatch, her armored tail swishing angrily behind her, though her ears finally raised. “Yessir…it’s clear,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Good. Now, are you sensing anything over there?”
Closing her eyes, Murissa took in several breaths, then shook her head. “Just reading the room, commander,” she said at last. “It doesn’t work that way for me; I need something to hunt before I can really start to pick up anything. Something’s…not right though. Feels like…something looming just out of sight. Have to get closer to get a good lead on it.”
“I’m almost through the hatch’s security,” Hilde said from the console in the corner of the staging area. The stout dwarf already had all of her gear ready to go on the floor next to her, the pieces that weren’t already strapped to her armored suit, anyway. She looked like she had packed at least half the tools from the Stalker’s stores with her, including one of the small, portable fusion generators. Her thick, fiery-orange braid disappeared into the collar of her spacesuit. “Nobody is trying to resist my intrusion, just your stock standard DSM security as far as I can tell. No change from the ship on sensors, no visual sightings from the lookouts, either. All indications are that the main power systems are still offline, and everything’s in standby mode; we’ll be in zero-g while their TK-drive is offline.”
Shi nodded, turning from Murissa to Briar. The medic was actually a little shorter than Shi, youthful and undeniably cute like most Erisayan clergy, his strawberry-blond curls pulled back in a ponytail that seemed a bit too tight, his almond-shaped, green eyes revealing his nervousness. Had they not been aboard a military ship, Shi very much felt the urge to go and try to comfort the adorable femboi, but quickly extinguished the feeling; he had to learn to control his nerves on his own; he’d been at this long enough that he should be getting used to recon operations. “Any thoughts on the situation, Briar?”
“Um, I don’t really have enough data to form any kind of opinion, honestly,” he replied in a soft tone, going over his medical kit for the third time to make sure everything was there. “There’s still atmosphere over there from what Hilde was able to get from their computer, but it could be full of poisonous gas for all we’ve been able to glean from the sensors. Everyone should keep their suits sealed up until we know it’s safe, and watch for signs of sudden damage to them, if there’s something corrosive in the air for example. If it looks funny, don’t touch it without scanning it.”
Practical advice as usual, but never a bad thing to remind the team of the basics, especially when there was someone like Murissa in the mix, who tended to act without thinking too far ahead. Kaylee at least, for all her physical prowess and quick reflexes as a pilot, had a pretty good head on her shoulders, most of the time. “Alright, that’s fair. Murissa and Kaylee have the lead to the bridge; Hilde will follow and provide navigation, and I’ll take up rear guard once we’ve cleared the airlock. Keep non-lethals loaded until we have reason to switch to something more potent, and watch your line of fire; don’t want to set off something that may be volatile. Murissa, target to disable, not to kill. And if you think you see something, don’t keep it to yourself; we’ll keep our lights off and rely on our helmets’ visual enhancement for our initial trip over.”
“Yessir!” said the team.
Hilde spoke up a moment later. “I’d say watch out for low-tech boobytraps too; if this is a DSM ship, they probably have plenty of automated and higher tech defenses on the inside, assuming they’ll run on the auxiliary power, but don’t discount the good ol’ grenade tripwire if they’re playing at being wounded over there, or if something turned the crew batshit crazy.”
Shi nodded, as did Kaylee and Murissa, with Briar following a few seconds later, looking a little more unsettled as he likely envisioned the effects of such a trap, his fair skin growing a little more pale. Shi picked up her helmet, her own red hair tied up in a loose bun. “Commence final gear checks. Life support, comms, sensors, support gear, and weapons.” Joining the team in their final checks, putting their helmets on and sealing them up, confirming air supplies and suit integrity first, getting a second set of eyes on each other’s gear, Shi eventually finished up with her own weapons, a pair of heavy break-top blued magnum revolvers at her sides, with an even larger-framed third revolver in a holster on her chest, likewise a break-top, but with a much larger frame and stouter lockup. The frame itself was made of gleam, enchanted mythril, covered in flowing arcane runes in the Kerryn script, glowing faintly in a blue-white light, pulsing slowly in fact. She wore her gun belt harness over her lightly armored environmental suit to carry all the guns and her ammunition for them, .44 magnum rounds in a variety of types, from solids to hollow points to armor piercing and even elementally infused round, all of the bullets enchanted by her own hand. The third revolver was her trump card if things got really dicey, and while it could digest the same ammo as the other two guns, it had some special rounds only it could fire, five of them currently loaded in its large cylinder. That was her big boy, her special companion, for when things got dicey.
“I’m in!” Hilde said over their comms. “Confirming we still have no response from the inside. We should just be able to float on over and go right on through the door.”
“Alright. Murissa, Kaylee, get into position.” Shi tapped the control on her suit’s wrist to call up the bridge as Kaylee worked the bolt on her launcher to load the first round from its magazine. “Captain, this is Sukimori; Red Team is ready to go.” The team had originally been designated ‘Red’ due to the dangerous situations they found themselves going into, but with the team’s current composition, it fit on another level: they all had hair of some shade of red or another.
“Be careful commander; still nothing back from command about a missing DSM ship. I’m reaching out to a few contacts I know, see if there’s something unofficial they can tell me. Keep me updated every ten minutes, even if you have to bang on the hull.”
Shi’s lips curled into a grin. Whatever stealth rigging the ship had, it would definitely mess with their communications, so banging on the hull could likely be more effective than wireless comms. “Hilde has already thought of that; she’ll be leaving a trail of wired relays behind us, should reach right through whatever it is they have infused in the hull.”
“Good. I’ll keep us here for now, but if anything happens that indicates the ship is doing something I don’t approve of, I may have to detach us.”
“Understood. I’ll wait for your order before we try starting anything up bigger than what our portable generator can handle. We’re moving out.”
“Roger that, commander.”
Shi closed the channel and gave the thumbs up to her team.
Murissa’s excited, deep purr came from the helmet’s speakers as she drew a pair of short blades from their sheaths, holding them underhanded, and jumped into the shaft that led to the outer airlock, floating down on the lower gravity until she landed on the airlock door. The ferakatian loved her blades; she wore at least a dozen throwing blades on her harness, a large two-handed, curved sword on her back, plus the two she held in hand. If those failed, she always had her claws to fall back on.
Kaylee followed behind, her deck gun unslung at the ready. It was actually a magazine-fed grenade launcher with a shortened barrel, loaded with anti-personnel rounds, which were just filled with buckshot, and in the case of her first magazine, rubber pellets to limit the lethality. She was likewise packing a heavy pistol in her thigh holster, along with a collapsible stun baton. She usually filled the role of a pilot, but was the second best unarmed fighter aboard the ship, right after Murissa, and had specialized in CQB designed to handle boarding operations, so was well-versed in getting up close and personal when needed.
Hilde wasn’t nearly as well armed or armored, carrying only a standard pistol for a sidearm in addition to a small bullpup SMG and a stun baton, with a more lightly armored spacesuit, similar to what Shi wore, designed more for mobility than absorbing damage. Her gear instead consisted of her portable computer, a small fusion generator, and various tool kits and electronics gear for communications and scanning. The last thing she strapped on before jumping into the airlock was the spool of cable for the wired comm relays, which would feed out behind them for her to attach the comm booster nodes to as they went. She really did look like she had most of the ship’s complement of tools and scanners hanging from her.
Briar was the most lightly armed of them all, carrying only a small pistol for his sidearm and his stun baton. He packed one full medical kit on his back, with everything one could need for emergency medical aid, plus several smaller trauma packs and healing stims hanging in pouches on his harness. His suit had large white patches set with the red crosses that indicated he was a medic; most of the time that meant he was technically considered a non-combatant, but there had been situations in which that hadn’t mattered, and he’d been forced to defend himself.
Shi landed in the middle of her team, then pulled the lever to cycle the inner airlock, which sealed above them with a loud clang. “We’ll play this like we usually do. Be ready for an ambush in the airlock; I’ll help bolster our defenses, but don’t get careless. Once we’re out of there and in the ship, stick to the route HIlde gives us, and watch your flanks; Briar, Hilde, keep an eye on your scanners. Questions? No? Briar?”
Briar put a hand to his chest, or more accurately, over his holy symbol that rested there, and began his prayer to Erisaya, asking for her protection and her blessing for the team.
As the prayer ended, Shi felt the uplifting surge of energy encapsulate her as the blessing took hold. She nodded appreciatively to Briar, then extended her own hands, speaking several words of power as she worked her fingers in specific patterns before spreading her arms. As she did, shimmering panels of glowing energy surrounded her entire team, interlocking not unlike armor before dissipating into a very faint, almost imperceptible glow surrounding their bodies. Her protective spell wouldn’t stop a bullet or knife exactly, but could slow and potentially deflect any incoming attack enough to turn a successful hit into a miss, or at least mitigate the damage, potentially turning a fatal blow into a survivable one. “Here we go,” she said, hitting the button to clear the safety lock, then pulled the lever for the outer airlock.
The pressure around them lessened as the atmosphere dissipated. They found themselves floating in a few moments, shifting their bodies so that their magnetic boots clamped down on what had just been the vertical walls of the airlock shaft. The outer door rumbled as it slid upward. It rotated slightly, then began to open, irising into a larger portal. Beyond this, the docking tube extended about fifty feet, clamped into place over the airlock of the other ship, bright white lights and silver insulating material reflecting those lights down the tunnel. It could be filled with air temporarily in the case of an emergency ship-to-ship evacuation, but for now, it was left in vacuum.
Before the outer door had fully opened, Murissa sprang forward, Kaylee on her heels. Shi waited a second, then followed behind them, one revolver in hand. So far, there had been no response from the darkly painted hatch. She activated her arcane sight, but saw nothing radiating from the approaching portal.
Murissa twisted as she approached the other ship, landing easily in a crouch by the airlock door, poised to pounce on anyone who dared to open the portal. Kaylee landed on the opposite side, not quite as elegantly, but well enough, angling the wide barrel of her launcher downward. Shi twisted herself around, landing between the two of them on the lip of the portal. After a few moments, with nothing happening, she looked up to their ship, then waved the other two to come down.
Once Hilde and Briar were on the DSM ship’s hull, Hilde set to accessing the outer airlock controls, sliding the hatch aside, then sticking the cable from her wrist-mounted tablet to the port. She tapped the screen a few times, then gave a thumbs up, and started a count with her fingers, moving down from five.
As HIlde’s last finger dropped, the hatch slid into the hull, the outer armor plating separating into two halves before the airlock hatch itself irised open. Bright lights shone out from the airlock, but nobody was there to greet them.
“No movement, no lifesigns in or beyond the airlock,” Briar said after a moment, already working at his scanner.
Shi motioned to Murissa and Kaylee. The two leaped over the edge and locked their boots on the walls, moving in slowly. Shi followed, then Hilde and finally Briar. The staging area beyond the inner airlock was dark beyond the thick glass on the portal. “First of the comm relays placed?”
“Yessir,” Hilde said. “We can make sure it’s linked through the airlock control system once we’re inside.”
Nodding, Shi cycled the airlock, the outer hatch closing, pressure increasing as atmosphere entered the chamber. She and the others oriented themselves according to the markings along the tunnel as pressure increased, readying to enter the staging area; it was oriented so that the airlock would be in line with the rest of the ship’s decks. As the inner doors opened, red light flooded into the airlock from the emergency illumination. Something black and stringy spread between the doors as they slid open, stretching, then snapping, faint wisps of magical energy bleeding off and dissipating into nothingness. “What’s that?”
“Um…it’s rubber sealant,” Briar said after a moment, looking at his scanner with a frown. “Picking up a lot of it around the staging area.”
“It had a magical signature, but it dissipated before I could identify it,” Shi said. “Be careful.”
Murissa leaped over the airlock’s threshold and landed with a threatening snarl, blades readied, turning slowly in a circle, but there was nobody there to greet her aside from the empty helmets of a half dozen bulky spacesuits inside their storage lockers. Kaylee was out a moment after, stepping over to the other side of the door. Shi followed them, her keen kerryn eyes seeing the dark patches of the sealant splattered all around the airlock staging chamber; only Kaylee and Briar, being human, would have difficulty seeing without the vision enhancements from their helmets, barring pitch black, in which case Hilde’s dwarven tunnel sight would give her the advantage. Shi’s ears twitched uneasily; something was off, she just didn’t know what it was yet. She uttered a single arcane power word and made a tossing motion with her hand, sending a ball of light into existence, floating overhead.
“Almost looks like they might have had a hull breach or lost atmosphere suddenly in here,” Hilde said as she came through, head turning to sweep the room. “At least, that’s the only thing I can figure for all this stuff everywhere. Like one of the emergency sealant containers popped or something. Usually it’s all bright orange or red for visibility, but on a black ship, I guess it makes sense.”
Briar came through last, stepping awkwardly around a large patch of the sealant, but still managed to step in another smaller patch. He grimaced, pulling his foot away, but didn’t have any major residue left on the boot. “It’s dry, so this happened a while ago, at least.”
“Get that comm relay in place and make sure we can communicate with the ship. Briar, what are you picking up?”
Murissa raised from her crouch, tail snapping angrily as she stalked toward the only other door leading from the staging area. “That wasn’t exciting at all.”
“I feel you,” Kaylee said, sounding almost like it pained her to agree with Murissa before moving toward the door, but likewise holding her position.
“Not a bad thing,” Shi said. Hilde pulled away some of the sealant around the airlock’s control access panel, letting it drift away in the lack of gravity, then went to work setting the next relay after closing the airlock. Shi looked at Briar. “Well?”
“Still getting minimal power readings. Think I’m picking up lifesigns below us, but it’s hit or miss; might be that stealth tech blocking the scans,” Briar said, shaking his head. “I’m getting a lot of interference; the best I’m going to be able to do is maybe twenty feet unless it clears up outside the airlock. Air reads as breathable, though; seems like it’s still being recycled. No immediately obvious signs of poisons or other contaminants.”
“Relay ready,” Hilde said, rising from her crouch, the thin wire from the spool training behind her to the small electronic box that was now connected to the airlock’s control system. “Give it a try.”
Shi keyed up her comm. “Captain, can you read me?”
“Roger that, Sukimori,” said Maerill, his voice loud and clear. “We aren’t picking you up on scanners now, didn’t get anything useful when the airlock was opened, either.”
“No surprises yet here; just a sealant spill in the airlock staging area,” Shi said. “We’re moving toward the bridge now. Standby.”
Shi motioned Murissa and Kaylee to proceed. “Take us to the bridge.”
Things are starting to ramp up as the team steps into the unknown aboard the mysterious black ship! What will they find beyond the airlock? Well, friends, stay tuned for the next chapter to find out!
I started this story mainly as a device to flesh out Shi’s character (who will be showing up in later stories further along in the timeline), and initially struggled with some of the other team members. Kaylee and Murissa were already established in universe prior, thanks to a short RPG campaign I ran for a friend, taking place approximately ten years after the events of this story, but wasn’t really sure what I wanted for Hilde and Briar, aside from Hilde being a dwarf and Briar being a trappy femboi and a priest of Erisaya (goddess of love in my setting, basically). So, originally they were a bit flat, but during the editing phase, I fleshed them out a bit more, though they get a lot more character in the sequel.
Why yes, there is a sequel, and it’s already written! I went through a very productive phase, lol.
But that’s all I’ve got for now.
Stay tuned for Chapter 3 next week!
Until then, Urban out!
Hit me over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server! I’m usually always around, and would love to hear what you have to say!
