[right][sub]location unknown[/sub][/right]

The wreckage of the Chimera was still floating freely through an unknown system, followed by the alien weapons.

“Hey, what about that?” Julianna sounded weaker and weaker, but something must have caught her attention. “You think we could maneuver there?”

Kelsie wasn’t in the room with them and couldn’t see what they were looking at. “What? Where?” Julianna and David had a short debate. Their radio stayed on, but they weren’t talking directly into it and Kelsie could barely understand them. “Hey! I need to know what is going on, guys.”

“Sorry,” Julianna picked up the radio. “There is something like a space station orbiting the planet. It looks in one piece and deserted, or at least there are no ships or anything like that around. Except for the balls, which have deactivated by the way. We have been debating trajectories and whether our thrusters could get us there.”

Kelsie tried to scratch her head, forgetting she was wearing a spacesuit. “So, you want to end our suffering by smashing the ship into an alien space station? Hmm, I like the sentiment, to go with a big bang, but…”

“No, you idiot,” Julianna interrupted her, groaning in pain. “We are going to land there, get it operational, and then find a way to get back home.”

A bold plan. A crazy one. “I love impossible plans.”

“You said yourself we don’t give up. So shut up and let David do the one thing he is actually good at and fly this piece of garbage into a docking bay, which happens to be opened and empty. Just get ready, it might get a bit bumpy.”

Kelsie made her way into the supply closet where she had found the spacesuits earlier. There were a couple of emergency seats designed to keep people alive in case of a rough landing, and she quickly made her way towards one and strapped herself in. Was not being able to see what was happening for the better or for worse? Her fingers hovered over the radio button, ready to demand a status update, but eventually she decided to just sit in silence. There was nothing she could do for them. David was a great pilot and she trusted him. If anyone could safely land a crippled ship in a dead alien station, it was him.

Still, it was nerve wracking to just stay still and do nothing, especially when the ship started shaking and loud metallic wailing and screeching resonated through the hull. Kelsie’s hands reflexively jumped up to her ears only to get stopped by the suit helmet. And even if she could cover them, it probably wouldn’t help, the sound didn’t seem to be coming just through her ear drums but rather reverberated through her entire body, making bones rattle and muscles cramp. Even after the noises finally died out and the ship became still Kelsie still felt deafened and disoriented.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.” David’s voice was shaky and he was panting heavily. “Our piece of garbage has successfully landed inside a dead alien junkyard.”

They’ve actually made it. Kelsie realized that she never really believed they would. Fuck. What now? “Great job. You two stay put, I’ll take a look around.”

“Negative, we are already suiting up. We’re coming along.”

Kelsie frowned. “Like hell you are. Stay in position, that’s an order.” There was no reason for all of them to risk getting murdered by creepy alien spiders or robots or whatever could be stalking this place.

“Kelsie, I understand you are in charge and I totally respect it, but…” David had to pause to catch his breath. “The air is already getting... pretty thin in here. If we... don’t suit up now, we’ll pass out… and die.”

Crap, that was faster than she expected. Even without functioning life support, shouldn’t a room full of air last longer with just two people breathing it? “Copy, go ahead. What about Julianna? She can’t walk.”

“I don’t have to, dummy.” Julianna chuckled and cried out in pain. “Shit! Sorry. David is just duct taping this bone so it won't make a hole in my suit. It’s zero gravity, I don’t have to walk, you can just push me around. Plus, you think I would… AAH FUCKING HELL! … I would pass on this opportunity to explore new… SHIT! … technology?”

Kelsie winced every time she heard her friend scream out, whatever misunderstandings or feuds they had were completely forgotten. She knew damn well Julianna’s injury was severe, but there was nothing they could do about it until they had a breathable atmosphere. And even then, neither Kelsie nor David were doctors, they had no idea how to treat a bone sticking out of someone’s thigh. Kelsie remembered that for such a case the field medicine guide clearly stated one thing. Get the patient to a real doctor or they die. 

She took a deep breath, trying to sound calm and encouraging. “Of course not. Plus me and David wouldn’t recognize an alien reactor even if we were sitting on it.”

The hangar bay wasn’t large, but three humans in space suits still looked tiny in it. Aside from the Chimera, which looked more like a twisted piece of metal than like a spaceship now, it was completely empty. Kelsie eyed several sets of wide and deep scratches on the floor and the ceiling, leading from the entrance to the Chimera. “Nice landing. The locals will love you.”

“Next time you try it.” David rolled his eyes. “Besides, there don’t seem to be any locals around coming to give me a parking ticket.”

That was true, the place looked completely deserted. There was no power but Kelsie and David managed to pry open the door leading from the hangar bay to the station itself through what would normally function as an airlock. The hallways were dark and eerily still and silent but more importantly very large, as if built for creatures about twice the human size. The occasional closed doors they passed by matched the size of the corridors, dead screens hanging on the walls way above the trio’s heads.

As per Julianna’s request they were following a set of large tubes and thick wires on the ceiling, hoping it would lead them to the engineering section. The station was massive, Kelsie didn’t get a chance to see it from the outside, but even from within it looked huge, the dark corridors, illuminated only by the thin light of their flashlights, were seemingly endless. The magnetic boots made no sound in the cold vacuum. 

Julianna’s guess proved right, the tubes and wires kept joining together and eventually led them to another large door leading to a separate station section. There was even a small floor plan on the wall, captioned with unknown symbols. David climbed up to grab the paper and bring it down but it withered away, falling apart in his fingers.

“Don’t touch anything, it’s ancient,” Julianna frowned upon seeing it destroyed.

David scoffed. “It was a fire escape plan, not a priceless artefact.”

“Anything is a priceless artifact when it’s hundreds of years old,” she sneered, beads of sweat popping up on her forehead. Her voice was weaker by the minute and she seemed to have a hard time keeping her eyes open. “Just get to… the biggest room.”

Kelsie and David exchanged worried looks but they grabbed the girl’s hands and slowly pushed her forward as they walked. 

“I’m not an expert, but that does look like a reactor.” A huge circular object, not unlike the balls that followed them outside, was hanging in the center of a gigantic hall, much larger than their flashlights could ever illuminate. There were some wires and thick cables connecting it to the walls.

Julianna smiled faintly. “See… not even sitting on it. A console?”

“I think it’s up there,” David pointed to a workstation with a height of at least seven feet. “Seems like these guys were a bit taller than us.” He climbed up to look at it and threw his hands up in frustration. “There are some controls here alright. But I have no idea what they do. There are some squares and triangles and lots of other weird shapes marking it. It seems dead though.”

“All right, I’ll help Julianna up so she can take a look at it. You ready?” Kelsie turned to the girl only to realize her eyes were closed. “Julianna?”

“What happened?!” David yelled from above.

Kelsie didn’t respond right away, but checked Julianna’s vitals on the suit monitor first. “She passed out. Her pulse is too weak.” She was dying. Kelsie didn’t have to say that out loud, they both knew it damn well. “Just start the fucking reactor.”

“What do you mean, start the fucking reactor? There are dozens of buttons and switches and I don’t even know what the other things are. I can’t exactly try them all out randomly. Plus they don’t really seem to be doing anything, I pressed one by accident while climbing up and nothing happened.”

This was a nightmare. Her friend was dying in her arms and there was nothing Kelsie could do for her until they had at least some resemblance of a breathable atmosphere. Ironically, it was Julianna who could have told them how to start the damn reactor. But Kelsie refused to give up. “We only need emergency power. Which means we need some sort of emergency switch. No matter how weirdly alien these guys were, something like that must be big and easy to reach.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything like that up here. But… what about that?”

Kelsie looked up to see David pointing to a wall behind them. There was a lever there, a big one, covered in black and white stripes. “Worth a shot. Come help me.” Kelsie walked over and climbed up the wall, David pushed himself off the console and flew across the room. Using their magnetic boots to stand on the wall, they both grabbed the lever and tried to pull it. It didn’t move.

“This… would have gone a lot easier… in a damn combat suit,” David growled.

That was definitely not the first time today that thought had crossed Kelsie’s mind. “Just shut up… and pull! 3..2..1.. NOW!”

The lever finally gave up and they managed to pull it down. Nothing happened. 

“Fucking hell. Maybe this place is just dead for good.” David kicked the lever angrily. 

And so were they. But… There was something different. “Wait. Do you feel it?” It was a slight vibration, a silent hum that they couldn’t hear, but some primitive part of their bodies could feel it. A couple of lights came on and Kelsie quickly disconnected her boots off the wall and pushed herself down to the ground. Just in time. The gravity was way smaller than their normal 1G, but it still made her landing pretty hard. David hit the floor right next to her with a loud bang. 

“You alive?” Kelsie pushed against his shoulder.

There was a quiet painful moan. “I think so. You could have warned me.”

Bright white lights were coming up all around the room, finally illuminating the entire vast space. The big ball in the middle was surrounded by a faint blue glow now, not very safely-looking, but stable for now. The couple rushed over to Julianna, suddenly feeling strange after such a few hours without gravity. 

“The pressure outside seems stable.” Kelsie checked a small screen on her suit. “Lower than our normal atmospheric pressure, but that shouldn’t be an issue. Quite low on oxygen though. It will be breathable, but just barely.”

David frowned on the readings. “You do realize this thing only scans for oxygen and no other elements? What if there is something in the air that those aliens needed to live but it will be poisonous to us?”

“What other choice do we have? It’s not like we know how to reconfigure it. I mean it’s a freakin’ miracle there is some oxygen at all.”

“Fine, but I’ll try it first.” David’s hands rose up to his helmet but Kelsie stopped him.

“No, you won’t. You are a pilot, Julianna is a scientist. I am the most useless person around here. I’ll try it.” David opened his mouth to protest but shut it again after seeing her expression. There was no debate on this matter. 

Kelsie took a deep breath and unlocked the safety flips on her helmet. There was a quiet hiss as the high pressure in her suit pushed the air out. She exhaled slowly and then, after a moment of hesitation, inhaled the outside air, her face immediately twisting in disgust. “Oh my god,” she gurgled, trying to keep the contents of her stomach inside. “It smells horribly. And it feels like when you take your mask off at a high altitude. I feel a bit dizzy, but I think I’ll live.”

“Great.” David’s helmet went off as well and he coughed in surprise. “What the hell is that smell? Alien piss?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Come help me.” Kelsie was already bent over Julianna’s lifeless body, taking her space suit off. The girl’s pulse was barely even registering at all. “Shit. What do we do?”

“Well…,” David hesitated and reached into the backpack he had been carrying. “I brought this, just in case.”

The box had markings of the New Haven Directorate. Kelsie opened it to see several injections carefully tucked inside, each filled with a strange fluid. Nanoshots the New Havenists offered them on their first diplomatic meeting. A sample box to be brought to Ellara for careful study. “You do realize we have absolutely no idea what this thing will do to her?”

David raised his eyebrows. “She is dying, it can’t be worse than that. You said yourself that those guys were quirky but quite friendly. They wouldn’t give us something straight out harmful.”

“Right.” It made sense. “But I doubt it can fix that,” Kelsie pointed to the sharp white bone end sticking out of Julianna’s leg. “I think we need to… like… I don’t know, get it inside somehow?”

“Dammit. Fine. I’ll pull and you just… press on it, I guess?” David was just as nervous as Kelsie. This was way beyond their level of expertise. “Ready?” It was a very good thing the girl was unconscious, because what they did resembled butchery more than an actual medical procedure. After that, David grabbed one of the injections from the box and looked at Kelsie with a silent question. She was in charge, it was her call. But the decision was obvious here. She nodded and David shoved the needle into Julianna’s thigh near the wound and pushed a button on the top to release the nanites.

Kelsie exhaled slowly. “Now we wait.” There was nothing they could do until Julianna woke up. Kelsie tried not to think about the option the young scientist wouldn’t wake up at all. 

“No, actually.” David reached into his backpack again and fished out some tubes and needles. “Now I will give her my blood.”

“Your blood? When did you come up with all this?”

David shrugged. “As much as I’d like to claim credit for this brilliant plan, it was actually her idea. We had some time to think what’s next while you were hooking up the reactor to the Chimera. Don’t worry, we’ve cross-checked the personnel files to make sure we are compatible. You aren’t, by the way, just in case you wanted to sacrifice yourself heroically again.”

Yes, that did sound like Julianna, having a plan for everything. Saving her own life despite being unconscious. Kelsie’s numb fingers needed two tries to get the needle into Julianna’s arm. And four tries to get it into David’s. “You sure about this?”

“Now you are asking after stabbing me a hundred times? Of course I am, just do it.” 

She connected David’s and Julianna’s bodies with a thin flexible tube and opened a small valve. The tube turned red immediately. “I think you should be higher than her.”

David yawned. “Well, there isn’t exactly a bed I could lay on.” No, there wasn’t even a chair. There was something vaguely resembling it standing in the corner, but it was taller than a normal table.

“Just sit up here.” Kelsie helped him lean against the base of the workstation, sitting beside to support him. They were both tired from all the stress and the low oxygen levels, David even more so from the bloodloss. Kelsie reminded herself she needed to stay awake to stop the blood transfusion soon, unless she wanted David to bleed out. “We’re fucked up, aren’t we?” she sighed.

“Hmm.” David’s voice was quiet. “But it’s pretty.”

Kelsie looked up. The reactor was still surrounded by a faint blue glow that seemed to be moving, reminding her of Aurora Borealis. The shimmer was mesmerising, dangerous and alien, yes, but truly beautiful. Kelsie rested her head on David’s shoulder. “Yes. It’s pretty.”