Sayeeda was already out of her couch and pulling on her black and silver vac suit. SHe paused before fitting on the helmet.

"Its all relative Taya, think ho much worse it will be for us," Junebug laughed a bitter amused laugh. Sometimes gallows humor was all there was and if you couldn't laugh at death, at least sometimes, you would crack up sure as the suns burned. She thrust the helmet down and closed the face shield, checking the air bottle both manually and on the aging display.

"Lets do this."

They stepped out of the airlock and into the hold. The light seemed to flatten somehow as the air which usually scattered light was removed. All Sayeeda could hear was the steady cycling of her breather and the soft thump of her pulse. The exterior of the ship was almost unbelievably immense. She doubted there was a shipyard in a hundred that could turn out something like this. It was almost a shame to destroy it, but the vessel was already gutted beyond any reasonable expectation of repair. 

They trugged across the deck, magnetic boots clanking to the access port Neil had selected. He knelt down in the enforced silence of vacum and pulled at the handle. Nothing happened. Whatever had hit the ship had torqued the hull bad enough to bind even a solid steel hatch. Sayeeda clicked on her radio.

"Stand back," she instructed and took a gel dispenser from her belt. Carefully she squirted a continuous line around the hatch and then set the detonator pack into the extruded substance.

"Fire in the hole!" she said and clicked the detonator. A jolt of power energized the crystals and the ferrite paste light in brilliant white for a moment then fluttered out. The hatch, propelled by the minute difference in pressure beneath lifted slowly burned clean away from the hull. Sayeeda put a foot to it and shoved hard. WIth the gravitas of ice sliding atop ice it began to drift slowly aside. The door was open at least.

"After you," she said over the radio, already unslinging her submachine gun. Just in case.



[@POOHEAD189]