Reenneesuash (Ren to humans) daughter of veanamdarr

The foreman listened and nodded watching the two women talk, both the same but one was far more normal height of the Kieeller kind than the woman from the mega corp, this white haired woman with those metallic eyes driving the rough orange servo loader. The marine carried the heavy weapon and set up a body portable gun that was far more powerful than anything they had between them.

Ren turned paler if she could thanks to the heat and tiredness at the fact the metacar was invading the station. How had security failed this far and this badly that they could defend the last Station? The final place they knew and held, the rest was… where the hell could they go now?

Where would the rest of the marines be if they could only send one to the defences? Where were the Marines they had left?

“By the goddess… they were sitting and waiting for us to ping like a microwave. Fucking bugs, dam them to the airless void.” Ren said as the claws dropped and the machine slowed, paused and appeared to power down before she rose again slightly, tensing the heavy machine to maintain its balance.

“Right then… ya hered the Marine, its fucked, so lets act like it.” The foreman shouted and they stood about the area and began to give directions. The others were nervous but purposeful and honestly they had very little hope or options to work with.

“Corpo, stay here… we know the station, you take a welder, reinforce that barrier and secure that crate to the deck. This one is yours. Corpo get in the way…” He was being remarkablely more polite than normal, maybe it was the marine with the large weapon on a bipod mount. “Barricades… weld the fuck out of em, block em, make voids in the air locks, whatever we fraking can, got it. Divide ya up, you know where we need to go.” He said as he banged his ever present heavy wrench against the wall to get them to move.

He paused though as Rens wars also rang...again... "il leave a few but this one's on use miss mega corp, one way in, one way they have to go."

“Looks like you're stuck with me. Got it, do my best.“ Ren said as she watched the others leave at pace, thankfully the ship was cooler than the station's sheer stifling and dangerously high heat. No wonder. The Metacar would make them too tired and too hot before they struck and try to wear them down if they did think like that. Thanks to being a station suit, it did come with a small welding kit built into the power loader for emergency repairs as well as some rather battered looking welding glasses attached to a hook on the side of the controls.

“Eye protection. ” Ren found a spare pair and dropped them to the marine before she started welding the heavy crate to deck. It might not last long but it will be harder to push over or move.

“Least I know one more of our kin made, Now to make those bugs pay for every damn inch.”Ren said without any hiding her feelings, they had lost far far too many people and who knew how many had escaped or made it to the last ship but her sadness at the loss turned to a cold anger, she was pissed off at bugs… and someone gave her a mech suit with claws and multi ton servos.

The instruments fed back decent stats for a hasty start up. John wasn’t too concerned; flicking a channel to the bay master while slowly dialing up the turbine to launch velocity.

“Bay 12, Shamrock 1; Standing by for scramble launch.”

She pulled the helmet on, clicking it into place, scrambling to buckle herself into a seat, "Done!" she declared a split second after she had buckled herself in, "Lets hope someone on the shuttle is sensible enough to open the docking bay doors. I've never not do a space walk to try to open it from our side," she declared, continuing to voice her fears, "Tell me if you need me to do anything."

Velia’s voice came over the crew channel set to John’s left earpiece. John flicked a side display on his right; pulling up the shuttle bay’s feed. Velia had strapped in at the crew chief’s chair towards the shuttle’s front. The safest position in the shuttle outside the armored cockpit.

“You should be fine. Just don’t mess with your seat’s controls back there. It’s our engineering and comms.” Not that he didn’t trust her with the communication given her professed occupation. But rather he didn’t want her playing with unfamiliar interfaces that could strand or disable the shuttle in approximately twenty three different ways.

“Shamrock 1, Bay 12. Confirm scramble decompression in ten, nine, eight…”

Lights lit up the bay beyond his cockpit. The yellow and black striped doors illuminated in the strobing orange flashes. Soon the stars would reveal-

“Lockman, going to need a steady hand outside the station.”.

John took a moment at the sudden female voice replacing the professional, steady countdown. A glance at his HUD showed the ID as “Sokolova, V”; the voice familiar but not in an instant manner. Then he remembered, the auburn haired ranger that had been part of the group. She had disappeared into entering with the combat engineer, Lopez.

He was about ask why they needed a steady hand when the bay door’s cycled and the expanse of space filled the cockpit windows. Instincts, well honed, came into effect.

Release clamps. Punch drive. Follow exit vector. A brief gut churning bit of acceleration as the force of the station and the launching shuttle conflicted for two seconds. Then, the station’s gravity fell away and the shuttle was clear.

John banked slightly to clear a spoke. Prepping a flight path back to the colony ship.

……..bottom………..station…….trained ……..comm’s location.”

The Ranger-engineer’s next comm was broken. Static and interference eating the transmission John’s brow furrowed as he attempted to troubleshoot his comms. Not wanting to ask Velia, for fear of the aforementioned engineering problem.

Though the beacon now popping up in his HUD, both cockpit and helmet, was clear of her intentions. At least what he thought her intentions were.

‘Is she trying to get an extraction? A space walk?’

John tuned to the crew channel.

“Velia, why is the Ranger telling me to head to the bottom of the station?”

“Seven-Four-Seven-Seven-……… for …….. shot, Only …………. call.”

Another broken transmission. Though John at least remembered targeting beacon numbers. Strange they were usually five digits. Hey keyed in his targeting pod, letting the last number reset at its natural zero-

“Scratch my last Velia. Why am I shooting at the station now?”

A red crosshair moved incrementally on his screen towards the station’s “bottom”. He banked slightly to the attack computer’s optimized angle as the next generation system selected the best weapon for the target. His ship wasn’t too resplendent with weapons but it was between his nose mounted anti-armor heavy plasma blaster and one of his two MPSM-28 Loggerhead anti-craft missiles. The missiles were designed for fighting off orbital cutters and defense craft. They would crack the stations-

“John, take the shot!”

John couldn’t say why her voice now came in loud and clear. Or how his finger instinctively jammed down the right bay launch system. The ship shuddering slightly as the weapon bay opened and kicked the Loggerhead missile into space before its engine ignited. Streaking towards the station in a blink of the eye. The explosion over the targeting beacon seeming small and anticlimactic given the distance and lack of sound in space.

He was immediately flooded with requests from eighteen local agencies on the station.

“Uhhh… Shamrock 1. CAS complete.” Because what else could he say for an instinctive, half computerized assault of a space station.

Vitiafa of Endiohon

"Yes, let them aboard! Deputize anyone armed and willing to help." Vitiafa quickly replied to the guard as she steaded herself in the middle of the corridor. "We don't have time to spare, and I don't know of a metacer that can blend in with us."

She looked over to the trickle of people making haste to her position, the lack of screams gave a temporary relief that it wasn't critical yet. It was unsettling in its own way as she thought back to the war... a slaughter in reality... before her own hurried evacuation from Eden. The moaning of the dying and injured in hospital, the ever present acrid discomfort of smoke from distant fires, and the pleadings of civilians trying to leave. It all flashed before her before she stomped the memories down.

She paused for a minute before picking a face out of the crowd. She remembered him at one of the medical bays aboard the station, dressed in sterile scrubs and nearly prepped for surgery, though it was only a meeting in near silent passing as she too was moving between patients.

"That man is a doctor! Let him through first," she said, sharply pointing to Vitella, "I'll take him to the medical bay."

"Make your way aboard in an orderly manner!" the Security officer bellowed, "No running and no pushing!" He lowered his voice to address his two remaining security officers, "Aspen, Shamil, make sure this doesn't turn into chaos, clear the corridor as quickly as you can."

As the crowd of civilians began to move onto the ship, the man called over his communicator, "Anyone out there hearing this? Hello, Station Security?" the message was repeated a good three times before he turned to Vitiafa, "I'm not getting anything on comms. I don't know how much of the station is overrun. Can I suggest we move out to the Concourse where we can watch the approaches and fall back here if the bugs show up? We can seal the shutter to give us a few minutes to get moving."

"Hey!" one of the troopers called (presumably 'Shamil' from his deep, rough-sounding, voice), pointing threateningly at a man in the crowd, "No pushing. You'll all get on the ship."

---

Mark kept at the consoles, toggling power levels and rerouting as the ship shuddered faintly from the impact out in space. The reactor spike from Lockman's shot had kicked a transient across the bus; a handful of sensors hiccupped and vomited noise before settling.

"Crazy fucks..." He swore under his breath and kept moving.

“All right, cutting extra coolant and air to the boarding tunnel and cargo corridor now,” he said into the open channel, “Should keep people from fainting and slow the spread of heat. Lights are down to emergency in nonessential decks.”

He pulled up the drone feeds. About a dozen of them were live and obedient, cameras spitting grainy video as they crawled forwards out the cargo bay and the boarding sides. The bots were not impressive, tracked and short stubbed, no more than 4 feet with scuffed paint and patched plating with the ship's designations and marked as "Exploration Rover," but their flares and powered claws were ready.

“Vitiafa, Ren, listen up,” Mark spoke over comms, “I’m assigning a handful of rovers to the boarding tunnel and some more to cargo. They’re configured for flares and claw routines but that should keep some bugs distracted if worse comes. I can manually pilot one at a time into a hot spot, but I need eyes and calls from the ground. Tell me when you spot bugs or someone falling in the lane. Call the drone number and target quadrant. I’ll take the rest.”

A warning chirped on the console as a sensor line spat static, then recovered.

“Transient spike from the det. Some local feeds just melted for a second. If I lose a camera, bark at me and I’ll switch control. I’m running systems and drones at the same time, so hit me fast.”

He grabbed manual control for drone alpha and eased it toward the cargo lip. The little unit wheeled, camera zooming in on a cluster of civilians being shepherded toward the ramp. One of the dock workers was bracing a stamped metal barricade, Ren’s loader clanking in the background.

“Cargo bay, I see your lane. Drone alpha on visual. Moving to hover near the left ramp to push back anyone trying to climb the barricade,” he said, fingers nudging the joystick. The rover's claw extended and gave a demonstrative shove at a loose crate, sending it a harmless meter and clearing a narrow path.

---

Ginny was already in motion after she made the call for the shot, silently praying that Lockman was smart enough to put together everything and willing enough to listen to the words of a stranger to fire on the last bastion of Eden. Her doubts and concerns would be put to rest as she stands atop the bulkhead, shielding herself and getting sturdy for what would come.

The missile would slam into the shielding, shaking the entire station with its impact, and a jet of molten metal would bore through it, a flash of white-hot material breaking into the compartment before a vast wooshing filled the maintenance shaft. The concussive force would push Ginny into the wall she was braced against, concussion ripping through her head as she struggled to remain conscious.

The explosive decompression of the reactor chamber would cause the few metacer chasing the Ranger to screech and be pulled from the walls, their chitinous bodies crunching loudly as they are forced through a pressure differential all too rapidly. The eggs and the queen would remain sturdy as air rapidly escaped from the chamber.

The louder reeling of the queen would become more quiet and distant as the air thinned. Metacer could not survive hard vacuum, nor could their eggs. Ginny looked down at herself, the hole in her soft-suit that was mended with copious amounts of duct tape was holding for now. In the moments after the air began to still, the lights in the shaft would go out for a few seconds. Sirens would echo throughout the station as emergency power came online, the halls being bathed in a dull red. The station which had been their sanctuary had only a couple hours until it became as lifeless as the world beneath them.

Ginny, for her part, would stay there for a long minute after that experience, the stillness of a lack of air giving a certain meditative quality to the contemplation How fucking stupid am I, they’re going to panic. her ears would be ringing for some time, and while her head was swimming some, she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

A slurred “Good shot, Lockman.” would come from her comm. Another long pause “I’m gonna… go back to the ship, give me a ride?”

She would jump back into the dark husk of the reactor, toward the black streak of void visible between softly-glowing metal of the blown-away housing. She shined her comm’s light towards the dead core, the lifeless husk of the queen standing watch over her motionless brood. With any luck, they had bought everyone some time by disrupting the bugs.

She’d emerge from the side of the station, seeing the world below. She could only imagine the countless queens there she could never have hoped to stop. Using her magboots, she would click her heels along the hull, and flag the shuttle.

Doctor Raphael Vitella continued down the boarding tunnel as he heard footsteps behind him. His mind returned to Eden Prime for a third time. Refugees at the last spaceport on Eden Prime were being ushered onto transports by the guards, the firing of tanks and artillery echoing in the distance, ships flying off as quickly as they could reach capacity. Doctor Vitella boarded a transport and sat down at a window seat as it took off, swarms of Metacer overwhelming the defenses, the pounding of tanks and artillery growing quieter as the ship he was on rose higher into the atmosphere. He continued looking out the window as the transport headed to the nearest docking area.

Raph's mind returned to the present as he entered the modified colony ship. "This is it. The ship that will take humanity to its new home. I hoped that it would start under better circumstances, but sometimes life doesn't go the way you expect. Thank God that I am the first human they let aboard humanity's last hope." Doctor Raphael Vitella thought as he headed deeper into the colony ship.

Across the station the lights flickered out, replaced, a few moments later, by dim, red, emergency lighting. For those on the station, an alarm began to blare.

For those in the loading bay, this was, on queue, accompanied by the sudden appearance of huge, ant-like, six legged insectoids - metacer. They streamed towards the bay like an angry wave, some clambering up the walls in their eagerness to get to their prey...

For those at the boarding tunnel, some floors above, this was accompanied by panic amongst the civilians, who surged forward in their panic to get aboard, knocking one of the Security Guards, the one their leader had called 'Aspen', off her feet.

"No running!" the lead guard bellowed, "Get back!" though the command was completely ineffective at controlling the rush...

John had shut off his comm circuit three minutes post missile impact. Easier to let the sudden influx of people demanding answers decline with the decreasing power and rampaging bugs. He fumbled around his vest for a specific device and upon finding it mounted the contraption on the bottle he removed from its pouch. The zero gee ration paste dispenser hose designed for his helmet armor also did a wonderful job with alcoholic containers. Something he thanked the military industrial complex for as he took a healthy gulp. Fortified, he stowed the bottle and flipped the comm circuit back on.

A slurred “Good shot, Lockman.” would come from her comm. Another long pause “I’m gonna… go back to the ship, give me a ride?”

A beacon coming to life in the HUD. Right by the entry point of the missile. John pulled up the distance and did the quick mental math; factoring the stations decaying orbit and thrust now that the power was gone.

The approach took twenty minutes to set up and John felt a slight tinge of worry as he brought the shuttle’s rear ramp forty meters from Virginia’s position.

He toggled a new channel to Virginia; keying Velia into it to.

“I’m opening the rear cargo ramp. You’re going to have to jump for it. Velia, get ready to catch her.”

A quick flip of two switches and the rear bay depressurized in a slow hiss while the ramp slowly yanked open to space.
@Pragia12@Dyelli Beybi

Doctor Raphael Vitella headed deeper into the colony ship with the rest of the refugees who had already exited the boarding tunnel, amazed by what he saw. He had never been aboard a colony ship and never seen the inside of one. "Get comfortable, people. This is gonna be our home until we reach our destination." Doctor Vitella heard one of the refugees say to the others, stopping and turning around to face them. "I ain't gonna lie to y'all. The trip to humanity's new home is gonna be a long one. A lot of you will be placed in statis by the colony ship's crew to conserve resources." Raphael Vitella said to the others before continuing to follow the female Kiellar deeper into the colony ship.

"I would like to thank you for escortin' me to the Medical Bay. The sooner I can get settled in, the sooner I can begin treatin' the wounded. The Chief Medical Officer will need all the help he can get with all the injured refugees who will be coming aboard." Doctor Raphael Vitella said to the female Kiellar. He heard two pairs of footsteps in the distance.
@Bingelly

He toggled a new channel to Virginia; keying Velia into it to.

“I’m opening the rear cargo ramp. You’re going to have to jump for it. Velia, get ready to catch her.”

A quick flip of two switches and the rear bay depressurized in a slow hiss while the ramp slowly yanked open to space.
@Pragia12@Dyelli Beybi

"Catch her?" Velia sounded alarmed, "This was not in the training manuals!"

To her credit though, she did move towards the ramp, crouching down with the apparent anticipation of receiving a person flying towards her. She paused, scanning the scene in front of her, scanning for where Virginia might come flying in from.

Doctor Raphael Vitella headed deeper into the colony ship with the rest of the refugees who had already exited the boarding tunnel, amazed by what he saw. He had never been aboard a colony ship and never seen the inside of one. "Get comfortable, people. This is gonna be our home until we reach our destination." Doctor Vitella heard one of the refugees say to the others, stopping and turning around to face them. "I ain't gonna lie to y'all. The trip to humanity's new home is gonna be a long one. A lot of you will be placed in statis by the colony ship's crew to conserve resources." Raphael Vitella said to the others before continuing to follow the female Kiellar deeper into the colony ship.

"I would like to thank you for escortin' me to the Medical Bay. The sooner I can get settled in, the sooner I can begin treatin' the wounded. The Chief Medical Officer will need all the help he can get with all the injured refugees who will be coming aboard." Doctor Raphael Vitella said to the female Kiellar. He heard two pairs of footsteps in the distance.
@Bingelly

Vitiafa listened to the man as they moved through the metal corridors within the colony ship. Their footsteps were audable, especially as the kiellar had a way of marching while under stress despite the difficulty brought about by her leg. Her expression remained serious, even if she found the optimism presented by the man as endearing. Hopefully, he could maintain it, but Vitiafa feared that he too would crack once given time to process the events that had played out around them.

"Chief Medical Officer?" Vitiafa cocked an eyebrow as she gestured to the door, perhaps more adequately described as an airlock, into the medical bay. Waiting inside was a well ordered, well stocked, and pretty much untouched medical bay. One large enough to serve as a hospital for early colonial efforts, but the lack of extra hands was a stark reminder of the reality against the image of an optimistic future.

"I pray that we should lucky," the Kiellar sighed, "but specialist hands are rare. Gods willing, one should be evacuating here, but you are all we have right now. So familiarize yourself with the space, and brace for whatever trouble might come. I do have medical training if you need assistance, but I am trying to coordinate our efforts."

Ginny was exhausted, staring out into the void and that shuttle. When John called that it would need to be a catch, the spacewalker groaned into her helmet, glad that her comm wasn’t active… or was it? “Maglocks aren’t working?” she asked, seeming to assume he could land on the hull. Shaking her head as the ramp opened, the ranger would take out a cord from the engineering bag. Whipping out the line, she would spin it next to her before loosing it. The strong rope would be aimed true for the assistant pilot to grab and draw her in.

---

A back and forth argument had erupted between the Gendari monarch, the guards, and the clergywoman, so much so that Sarve began to have trouble tracking who was saying what. The Gendari said that he said that the people commanderring the ship now were pirates, which made Sarve begin to doubt his own memory. Did he actually say that? He couldn't recall, not anymore. His attention was split, worry creeping into every crevice of his mind as this whole situation felt like a bubble waiting to burst. It is, as the settler races would say, the calm before the storm. The fact that nothing had happened yet did little to assuage Sarve’s growing anxiety. The longer they tarry, the more likely people will rush into the ship! And the amphibian overprelate might just prove to be the spark to this forest of panic, waiting to be ignited!

Across the station the lights flickered out, replaced, a few moments later, by dim, red, emergency lighting. For those on the station, an alarm began to blare.

For those in the loading bay, this was, on queue, accompanied by the sudden appearance of huge, ant-like, six legged insectoids - metacer. They streamed towards the bay like an angry wave, some clambering up the walls in their eagerness to get to their prey...

For those at the boarding tunnel, some floors above, this was accompanied by panic amongst the civilians, who surged forward in their panic to get aboard, knocking one of the Security Guards, the one their leader had called 'Aspen', off her feet.

"No running!" the lead guard bellowed, "Get back!" though the command was completely ineffective at controlling the rush...

The next sequence of events were quite something to behold at the moment. An explosion rocked the station. Then, everything was bathed in bloody red. Alarms that shrieked like banshee screams drowned the station in a terrifying warning. The people were already in the process of walking into the ship’s bay when that all happened, and every semblance of order fell apart.

For his part, Sarve had, by this point, volunteered to deputize, as he had trained in the military. Unlike literally everyone else, though, he was no longer on the floor, but on the ceiling, his serpentine form coiled around one of the many structural supports. It gave him a good vantage point with the blaster rifle he possessed, which was custom-built for his unique physiology. Of course, the cat was still with him, clinging on as always. He refused any and all offers for anyone to watch over the cat. Verminslayer was the last of the family he knew, and he sure as hell will never let her out of his sight.

Which all led, of course, to the present, where people began running in a disorderly mass. He was immediately at a loss of what to do; crowd control wasn't something he trained in back in the day, and this situation was entirely new.

“D-don’t push!” Sarve hissed half-heartedly, more concerned with taking aim at the end of the boarding tube to see if any Metacer were actually close. “You might step on or kill someone in the process!”

Reenneesuash (Ren to humans) daughter of veanamdarr

“Bugs.. Frak…This Is Ren. Cargo bay… whatever the hell, incoming Metacar. We have barricades but the ramp is not closed yet. Whatever your bloody planning with cutting the power, bloody well do it.” Ren put across the ships main comms channel and watched as those remained ran to find whatever they could get in the weapons locked available, even if it was a flame thrower for bio cider or something. Anything was better than nothing. There were also several native swear words, insults and a loud clunk as she looked around picking up a metal girder that made a satisfying heavy mace / bat sized to an exo suit.

Ren did not have much time to think, plan, or anything really. She had been taught some basic riot drills and other things on her former home station, those were more so they knew what would happen then ever doing them! Remembering one part she thrust the claws through a shipping container door and gripped, ripping it free and using it as an improvised shield. That shield would probably not last even then, it was just a container door more than anything particularly advanced.

One of the crew joined the net running as they began to hit controls. “Cargo gates are not fast, we need time as stations frakked up, even with a marine and an exo suit going barbarian. Even with arms lockers, things are bad.” The crewman added as they were hitting codes and the siren blares warning the cargo docks would begin to retract and doors would be locking down.

“Warning. Cargo bay closing procedure comenacing. Keep clear of the ramp.” Came over the intercom and was joined by a sound of metal shuddering and heavy metal components breaking free from friction.

“Warning, station systems reporting non operational. System overriding safety protocols.” Came next as the seconds turned into days.

"Figured as much. The sudden evacuation would've left the bureaucrats with no time to appoint someone. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't make it. Well, better get comfortable while I still have time to myself." Doctor Raphael Vitella said before walking around the Medical Bay. It was brighter and shinier and cleaner than the Med-Bay on the shipyard, its equipment looking new and unused. "Looks like they spared no expense." Doctor Vitella said to himself right before he heard footsteps. "Looks like I will need to get started earlier than expected." Raphael thought as he got to his post.

"Excuse me, Raph? Do you know where the ship's Chief Medical Officer is?" Doctor Ferdinand asked Doctor Raphael Vitella as he and several other medical personnel. "Unless the station's Chief Medical Officer is onboard, I will have to fill the role until I'm dead or the captain finds someone better." Doctor Vitella answered as he looked at his colleague. "The senior staff in administrative roles bought the farm, for lack of a better term." Doctor Ferdinand said to Raphael Vitella. "Good. When they arrive, tell them that they are to start working as soon as they can." Vitella said to Doctor Ferdinand before turning his attention to the others. "What the hell are you standin' around for? Get to work! This is triage, not a lecture!" Doctor Vitella said to the rest of the medical staff, his co-workers immediately beginning to tend to the patients in the Medical Bay.

Ginny was exhausted, staring out into the void and that shuttle. When John called that it would need to be a catch, the spacewalker groaned into her helmet, glad that her comm wasn’t active… or was it? “Maglocks aren’t working?” she asked, seeming to assume he could land on the hull. Shaking her head as the ramp opened, the ranger would take out a cord from the engineering bag. Whipping out the line, she would spin it next to her before loosing it. The strong rope would be aimed true for the assistant pilot to grab and draw her in.

Velia caught the rope as it came drifting towards her, twisting her legs into the cargo webbing at the back of the shuttle before she began hauling Ginny across towards her, "I thought you were going to jump," she commented, through a grunt of exertion. It sounded a bit like a complaint, but not made with any particular vigour as, while she was actually needing to do some manual work now, this was a much safer and more sensible way of traversing the gap.

"Wonder what's going on on the ship," she remarked as Ginny floated across the void towards them, "Hope our people are ready to move."

---

Reenneesuash (Ren to humans) daughter of veanamdarr

“Bugs.. Frak…This Is Ren. Cargo bay… whatever the hell, incoming Metacar. We have barricades but the ramp is not closed yet. Whatever your bloody planning with cutting the power, bloody well do it.” Ren put across the ships main comms channel and watched as those remained ran to find whatever they could get in the weapons locked available, even if it was a flame thrower for bio cider or something. Anything was better than nothing. There were also several native swear words, insults and a loud clunk as she looked around picking up a metal girder that made a satisfying heavy mace / bat sized to an exo suit.

...

“Warning. Cargo bay closing procedure comenacing. Keep clear of the ramp.” Came over the intercom and was joined by a sound of metal shuddering and heavy metal components breaking free from friction.

“Warning, station systems reporting non operational. System overriding safety protocols.” Came next as the seconds turned into days.

There didn't seem to be much coordination amongst the bugs. They were swarming, though without their usual laser focus. A dozen or so swarmed into the cargo bay as they sighted potential prey, clattering along the floor and ceiling with terrifying speed, mandibles clacking viciously as they approached the group of engineering bay crew.

Thankfully the civilian loading was able to proceed with a bit more order, though it was only a matter of time...

"Doc, we have a lot more wounded incoming!" A member of the medical staff said to Doctor Raphael Vitella as he brought in an injured refugee. "This quickly? Somethin' must've caused whoever's in charge to step up the timetable for the evacuation." Doctor Vitella said to himself before turning his attention back to the others. "Those with easily treated wounds are to leave the Medical Bay as soon as they are patched up. We need to save beds for people with injuries that will take longer to heal when treated." Raphael said to the rest of the medical staff as he kept an eye out for anyone who might require his immediate attention. Truth be told, Vitella was out of his element. Leadership was not something he expected. As Chief Medical Officer, every mistake would be more heavily scrutinized than when he was just a doctor.

"Chief Medical Officer, come quick! His leg got sliced off above the knee by a Bug and none of the nearby guards were able to retrieve it before they were forced to retreat!" One of the female medical personnel said to Doctor Raphael Vitella as she put a soldier on an operating table. Doctor Raphael Vitella immediately headed to the table as Doctor Yeoman injected the injured guard with an anesthetic. "We will do what we can, but until we find a workin' prosthetic that fits, you ain't gonna be doin' much." Doctor Vitella said to the injured soldier as his patient went under.

John was definitely multitasking as he held is stable orbit relative tot eh station. Eyes watching its steady decay, the debris field steadily inhibiting his flight path, Virginia’s slow reeling in and the speed needed to keep all three from violently interacting.

So it was with some relief when Velia’s comm announced the safe retrieval of their one woman strike team. Or rather, one woman strike designator.

“Alright, get buckled in back there. Debris is kicking up and we’re back to the ship in twenty seconds.” He toggled the ramp for the benefit of his OTJ trained flight crew of one and engaged the atmosphere so they would have an atmosphere by the time they got settled in.

The route back was definitely slower. Not out of any sense of ease but rather orbital mechanics and the debris field plus their relatively short destination meant short thrusts of the engines was the order of the day.

Flashes near the colony’s ship umbilical however were visible even as he set up for approach. He toggled the shuttle’s crew channel again.

“Looks like bugs are trying to get into the boarding tube. Still want me to take her in?”

Velia had secured herself back into her seat. Her knee bounced up and down nervously as she considered what to do, "How about this... suggest they seal the shuttle and cargo bays off then launch, venting those spaces. Then we dock with them and jump out of here."

---

Meanwhile in the civilian loading bay someone yelled 'Bugs!'

The effect was an immediate stampede that nothing short of weapons fire would halt. There was yelling, screaming, injuries from the crush. And amidst all of that, there were actually Metacer launching themselves at the rear ranks of civilians, dragging them back onto the station amidst screams of pain and terror. And there was nothing anyone could do except fire directly into the civilian force.

"Seal the door, seal the door!" one of the guards yelled. It was the one that had been named 'Aspen' earlier, her voice etched with a note of panic.