Back in the ship the two friends looked at each other with grim faces. They sat down at their posts and took off from the secret facility, each saying a silent prayer to whatever gods they believed in. Once in orbit, Derek broke the silence.
“What do you think John? Are we going to make it out of this one?”
“I reckon we’ll beat the odds again my friend, as we’ve done so many times before. The thing is, we’re now involved in something very complicated and it’s not going to be easy to untangle even when we get back. What’s so important on these cubes that’s worth the lives of these people?”
“Don’t know… but whatever it is, we’re in deep. That looks like a groundbreaking research lab and they’re on the brink of a discovery, hence this secrecy, alien tech for encrypting data and trigger-happy mercs. Let’s set the course for Gundo station and then take the magic pills as we’re in Quantum. We need to plan this well, stay out of reach of sensors and recover anyone we can” said Derek in a grim tone.
“I can’t quite shake this feeling of foreboding. GrimHEX is a terrible place to go to find and rescue someone. That place is as lawless as it gets, we could be stabbed in the back at any point in time” John mused.
“That’s why we need to split up. When we reach Gundo, you take the Archimedes to scout around, then in Grim I’ll find out what I can, plus I got some old friends there. We need to have each other’s back, can’t risk getting caught.”
They punched in the destination and headed to Daymar, with the abandoned station in orbit. Once there, they parked at a safe distance and turned off all unnecessary systems. Their ship signature was incredibly low thanks to the prototype stealth systems on board, much better than they thought.
John headed out cautiously in the Archimedes towards Gundo, the destroyed space station in a strange accident. He scanned the area as he got close and to his surprise he found a faint lifesign. His mobiGlass started emitting a blue pulse. Another tech enhancement? Time to see what this was about. He opened the ship canopy into Zero G and went inside the station through a hole in its walls.
Inside, it was pitch dark and there were many items and boxes floating around. After the accident, the Covalex courier company never repaired it, so there was no gravity generator, power was intermittent, every part of it malfunctioning.
As he got further in through the elevator shafts, floating, the pulsating light on his mobiGlass wristband got stronger and stronger. That lead him deeper and deeper until the blinking stopped, only a steady light remained. Back in one of the former crew rooms, there was a person, apparently still alive but not moving. As he got closer he realized she was one of the couriers as her wristband was glowing the same way as his, but she looked… asleep.
Suddenly it dawned on him that she’d done it to conserve oxygen, the sleep was induced by a pill. Time to pop a new oxygen capsule in her suit.
Claire breathed in deeply, opened her eyes and looked up at the stranger in front of her, one hand on her gun, the other on her knife. A quick assessment led her to believe he was not a threat though and noticed the wrist band glow as she’d been trained to do. She stretched, got herself up and opened comms, looking a bit fuzzy still.
“We were under attack… who are you… we don’t have much time. Take me aboard your ship, we need to find my partner.”