The airlock cycled with a metallic chunk and a rush of pressurized air. The Highlander’s atmosphere was denser than the stations, probably due to indifferent maintenance of air reprocessors by the station staff, but it was high enough in oxygen that breathing wouldn’t be a difficulty. X-792b was crewed by convicts, not those guilty of respectable crimes like murder or theft, but the far less forgivable sins of getting caught with the supervisor's daughter, or failing to pay an appropriate bribe. It didn’t encourage a strong work ethic.

The hallway was partially finished with metal and structural plastic and partialy carved into the rock. Large cracks from thousands of docking operations and the thermal  flux of opening to the vacum traced a spiderweb through the first few feet. It was unlikely that it leaked enough air to be significant but Junebug felt a slight breeze stir her flightsuit. Illumination was by way of overhead chemical light strips which cast a greenish glow over the whole scene. There was no sign of any crewmen.

“Well, so much for a welcoming committee,” Sayeeda said, “Booster, give me a 25 percent thermal mask and carrot movement.” The quality of her vision changed subtly, rendering everything in cool shades of blue. She lifted her submachine gun to her shoulder and stepped into the station, frost crackling beneath her boots as she stepped into the station.

“Next time we are somewhere civilized, we need to invest in some more hardware.” She didn’t like the flame gun in the tight quarters of the station but you didn’t tell another veteran what tools to use either. Everyone had their own tricks to get the through and she would just have to trust Neil to handle himself.

“Someone ought to have responded, even if just for the oft chance we were pirates,” Sayeeda commented as they mad their way down the rock hall. The ice ended a few feet from the lock and she instinctively shifted to hug the left hand wall, sweeping back and forth with her submachine gun. 

The first door at the end of the hallway opened into what must have once been a decontamination area. A large infrared sterilizer stood a few feet in front of the doorway, although judging by the dust and the corrosion on the unit they had given up any notion of sterilization years ago. There were signs of more recent occupancy. Dozens of stim cones, small chemical phials that delivered a variety of narcotic substances via subcutaneous injection, littered the floor around a large desk which Junebug guessed was the duty station. Several video files were running on the bank of security monitors although all of the feeds except one seemed to be pornography, some of it imaginative enough to turn even Sayeeda’s somewhat jaded head. One of the feeds was blank and, after making sure Neil was covering the exits, Junebug lay down her gun and tapped the terminal. The file had also been porn but a private file rather than a system net feed like the others. She hit a couple of keystrokes and bought up a command history.

“File was started about three hours before they got the word planetside,” she said thoughtfully. 

“Only fifty minutes of video,” she mused. A few minutes of frustrating work revealed that not only had the security feeds been disconnected, but it hadn’t been connected in months or years. Lack of maintenance and interest had rendered the facility as blind as enemy action could have managed.

Sighing she pushed herself to her feet and grabbed the submachine gun by the hand grip. Whatever was going on, the answers would lie deeper into the facility. The needed to get to the comm center where the navigational and communication equipment was housed.

“They kept an outpost here, however… sloppily, something is up and it looks like it started just before the anomaly was detected.”

[@POOHEAD189]