The three met up in the cargo bay after making their preparations. Senjen had been the first to make it there, and he felt like he had been waiting for half an hour before Jess finally came staggering in. She was suited up for a vacuum, but it did not provide any assistance to movement, and it looked like every step was a workout for her in double gravity. The suit was not overly bulky, as instead of air pressure, it dynamically constricted around the body to counter low pressure. Only the helmet created a rigid, sealed environment.

Senjen was going to tease Jess for being late, but seeing how she was already showing signs of struggling against gravity, he decided to go easy on her. Meanwhile, he looked to be moving around almost normally by comparison. His frame could handle the extra resistance without any real sign of difficulty. After a moment, he eyed the sack of equipment Jess was lugging around. Hey, uh...why don’t you let me carry that?”

Jess was normally someone who did not rely on others for assistance, but even this short walk was going to feel like a hike in this place. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” She sighed before taking a look up at Light. “Park all the way out here if you want, but you’re gonna be the one dragging the crates back to the crater. Let’s get to it.”

The cargo hold depressurized, and the whole world went silent. The cargo ramp lowered, and they felt the thud of its impact vibrating through their feet, or equivalent appendages. They stepped out onto the dull grey dust of the planet’s surface, and made an immediate right turn towards the shallowest incline they could spot to exit the crater.

To natural eyesight, this side of the planet was in near complete darkness, save from what light came from the, admittedly brilliant, night sky above. But, that bit of light was enough for the visual filters in both Senjen’s eyes and Jess’ helmet to give them adequate night vision.

“Radio check. All good, Light? All good, Jess?” Senjen spoke up.

Jess answered back quickly. “All good, Sen.” She stopped at the foot of the crater’s edge, looking up at the long climb ahead of her she was going to have to make at 2G. “Hate you, Light.”

“I accept that.” Light bowed solemnly, seemingly in the zone for their upcoming endeavor. He had clipped a utility belt to the outside of his suit, but some of it still floated inside his suit with him. His suit was deliberately blocking his skin’s bright colours, so the others would have to rely on the translations his suit provided instead.

QV night vision was excellent and Light was no exception. Even on the dark side of this moon he could soon make out details of the craft as they approached. He looked for any signs of forced exit or entry but found none. The hull seemed mostly intact, though there was a lot of debris in the wake of the crash.

“Check, mic. No signs of EVA. Will you stop hating me if I carry you in my suit?” He turned 90 degrees to look at her while still progressing forward.

There might have been a moment, however brief, where Jess found Light’s offer tempting purely to get a break from having to fight her own weight on every step. The climb out of the crater had not been long, and had not been too steep, but between that and the walk to the ship, she felt like she had just climbed a mountain. As soon as they had finally arrived, she came to a stop and sat herself down in the dirt. “I can handle myself, but I am taking a break. Why don’t you two look for a way in? I’m sure you can handle it.”

Overall, the freighter seemed large from where they were standing. It was almost twice the size of Light’s ship, but for these massive corporations, even that was on the small side for their cargo haulers. It was all of Human make, with by far the largest of its components being its cargo bay. These sorts of ships were known for having the bare minimum in living space and other crew accommodations, in favor of being able to haul more cargo at once and get the best returns per trip. Each hull component of the ship was simple, blocky in shape, and all completely modular. Each room of the ship, whether it be a simple habitation module or vital ship system, was designed to be easily removed, replaced, or added on to as needed. Companies that operated across wide regions of space had need of ships that could handle a wide variety of conditions, but buying a single model of ship that could handle everything would be expensive, as would buying and maintaining many different models simultaneously. Having completely modular vessels allowed them to essentially assemble their own specialized ships while having a wide stock of standardized, interchangeable parts.

It was all very efficient, even if it did make their freighters look like flying bricks.

On this arrangement of modules, there looked to be exactly one normal entrance into the ship, which was the cargo ramp. There was also a secondary escape hatch on top of the cockpit module, but both were still locked down tight. Peering in through the cockpit windows was awkward from ground level, but at a cursory glance, it seemed empty and unpowered. The main reactor was certainly offline, and no module they could access from the outside seemed to be receiving any backup power, though if an internal module was being powered, they would not necessarily be able to tell from outside. There were no active atmosphere leaks in any module, which of course meant that either there were no hull breaches, or the affected modules were already fully depressurized. The cargo bay comprised the largest amount of the hull by area, so it was the most likely to be breached, but a breach was also most likely to be on the underside, which they could not currently reach.

Given that the freighter did not have airlocks, for safety, there was also no easy external manual release on either entrance, so either they needed power, or to break their way in. So far, there had been no attempts to contact them, so either their arrival had not been noticed, or there was no one to notice them.

“Check the cargo bay doors. Look for an external power source port; maybe we can use that fancy new power supply of yours to operate the mechanism.”

Light floated surreptitiously along the ship, examining a few of the modules. The joins between these modules were weaker than the walls, but there didn’t appear to be any obvious damage that they could exploit. Then he whirred off the ground and up onto the top of the ship.

“Eureka.” He said over comms.

In the centre of the ship at the top, the hull was breached in multiple places by some kind of explosion. This must be the handiwork of the reactor core, load shedding after a massive hit of radiation.

He edged closer and peered inside. It did appear to indeed be the ship’s primary power plant. The breaches weren’t big enough to fit through, but they could be widened. Light ejected the laser cutter from inside his suit and powered it up to begin cutting through.

“Multiple breaches top side. I should be able to make a hole we can fit through. Have you found anything, Senjen?”

Senjen did just as Light asked. Most ships had external maintenance access for components near the hull, in case there was damage that needed to be repaired. They also needed ways for potential rescue teams to force their way inside, in case of emergencies, so there were a few options for Senjen to search for. He was not familiar with this specific model of cargo module off-hand, but he did have enough knowledge to know roughly what he was looking for. There were quite a few panels on the exterior of such a large module, but sensibly, it was one near to the door’s mechanisms that he was looking for.

Overall, it was not a difficult task for Senjen to figure out which power conduit led to the door, and compared to powering his shield generator, operating a few motors to lower a door would be nothing. Of course, he would also need to unseal the door and disengage the internal locks, which would mean powering the locking mechanism as well and hoping it was not under a security lockdown. Though, even if it was, these modular ships had some well-known security issues. If disconnected from central computer control and forcibly shut down, entire modules could be rebooted to factory settings without authorization.

Senjen was investigating the wiring when Light questioned him. Being that Jess had known the kind of ship they were searching for, she had brought compatible cables. He would just need to splice it into his own power core, but simply transferring power was not the most complicated of tasks. “Yeah, I found a panel down here. Should be able to power it. Do you want to go in through the door down here, or the breach up there? Anything dangerous up there for you, like radiation or something? I didn’t even think fusion reactors could explode.”

“They can’t really, under any normal conditions.” Jess chimed in, though she was still very much just resting nearby. “An unstable FTL bubble can cause spacetime warping, though. In a reactor, that can mean an uptick in quantum tunneling events, which means more fusion, which means a sudden, violent burst of energy. Anyways, tritium is a radioisotope, but it releases beta particles. They can’t even penetrate skin, much less our suits. We should be fine either way, but we’ll probably need to open up the cargo door anyway if we want to get our salvage out of there.”

Light thought for a moment, resting on top of the ship.

“The hull is dead quiet. I say we enter through both and meet in the middle. We may even find more valuables this way. Besides, I’m intrigued by this meltdown now. Sound good?”

He fired the industrial laser cutter and a red lance buzzed into existence. Light lowered it into the widest hull breach.

“Don’t know if I see the point, but if that’s what you want, sure.” Jess answered. “Not really a ‘meltdown’ exactly. That’s something that happens more to fission reactors. Fusion reactors tend to just shut down when something goes wrong, but if there was spacetime warping in the core, then there would have been one hell of an energy surge first.”

Jess finally got up to join in on helping Senjen get into the cargo bay. While he had actually been able to handle getting into the cargo bay on his own, it was easier to splice the power cables to his own power source with some help. Once linked in, he could power the cargo bay door. He did not even need to ask Jess for help in bypassing the lockdown to unseal the door. Since it was being activated without a central connection, the computer booted into factory settings. Senjen noted that there was no release of air when the cargo door unsealed, which meant the interior was already a vacuum.

Meanwhile, Light did not have to widen the largest of the gaps too much in order to squeeze through into the reactor module. When the cargo ramp hit the ground under the heightened gravity, he would feel the impact reverberate through the hull.

“Ah, looks like a mess down here. Looks like some of the crates got knocked loose in the crash. Most of what they were carrying was mining gear, but what we’re looking for should be secure near the back. Just got to get through the rest of this junk.” Jess informed him.

Through the breach, Light was able to drop down into the module’s maintenance corridor. The reactor itself was roughly donut-shaped at the center of the module, with the corridor encircling it. Right away, he could see he could see a massive hole in the side of the reactor that looked to have been made with intense heat. Indeed, there were signs of what had once been molten metal re-solidifying on surfaces all around the hall. Just opposite the hole in the reactor, there was a hole in the module’s wall as well. There was a tank inside with a hole blasted out from the top, judging by the metal bent outwards around the opening. Scattered around as well, both near and far from the signs of the blast, parts of the hull were also “twisted” in a rather unnatural fashion.

At the very least, it did not look like it would be difficult to get out of the reactor module. The door to the hallway leading out was “closed”, but with a massive hole melted in its right side.

“Hey! That’s what I meant! Stupid translator…” Light grumbled, cutting away with the laser.

When he was satisfied with the opening, Light stuffed some gel from his suit into it to scan for threats inside. There were higher levels of radiation, but nothing he couldn’t handle for a few hours. There were no angry life forms in the reactor module, at least.

“Reactor module is clear, going internal.” Light reported. He swapped the laser cutter for his BangStick and fed that through first. Then he contorted with the rest of his suit to slide into the downed freighter.

“I guess we’re not flying this out of here any time soon. The reactor is totaled. At least it looks like the backups aren’t in here. Smart really…” He murmured, shotgun protruding about six inches from the front of his suit as he did a cautious lap of the room.

“I can’t see any signs they tried to stop it happening. That’s a little strange, right? Hey, easy!” He protested as the cargo door slamming shook the ship.

Light circled back and peered through the wall at the burst tank. He shrugged eventually and examined the rent to the right of the exit door. For some reason the cilia along his spine stood on end. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

“Door is totaled too, moving out into the gangway.”

Light squeezed through the gap, shotgun whirling round in an attempt to cover any avenue of attack.

Jess chimed in with whatever helpful information she could remember. “Let’s see...it’s hard to know the exact layout these kinds of ship are going to use, but if they follow a standard layout, the other rooms up on that floor should be storage. Maintenance storage for tools, equipment, that sort of thing. The mid-deck, on the floor beneath you, should have living quarters, mess hall, all the habitation modules. Oh, and cockpit access at the front. It’s going to take us a bit down here to search through these crates. I don’t have their cargo manifest, so I’ve mostly just got to guess on what their labeling system means. We’ll try to search through as quick as we can.”

“You mean I am searching while you’re sitting there ‘supervising’.” Senjen interrupted.

“Tomato, tomato.” Jess said, an idiom that the translators absolutely did not convey.

At the end of the short hallway, through the melted door, was the main vertical corridor between the decks of the ship. It was circular and comfortably wide for a Human, with a ladder in case it needed to be traversed in a gravity well. On his current floor, there was a hallway straight ahead leading to a door, along with another branching off to his right. Looking down the ladder, he could see three hallways branching away on the floor below, and two on the lowest deck. Based on its positioning, one of the doors on the lowest floor likely led into the cargo hold. Save for the melted one behind him, every door Light could see was shut tight, but if they were powered down, these types of interior doors would have a manual release.

“Got it, thanks.” Light’s swollen suit billowed lethargically along the bottom of the corridor as he headed towards the stern. The Bangstick’s stock was carefully oriented away from his body so as not to deliver devastating recoil if he had to use it at short notice.

He traversed up the corridor, checking the door panels as he went. None off them appeared to have power. He stacked up against the wall next to where the hall bent right.

“I hope you’re not waiting for me to get down there and fix it for you.” He joked. Steeling himself, Light put a feeler subtly around the wall until the suit could transmit an image of down the next section.

“We’ll be fine. Crates down here got jostled around a lot, but the ship is mostly in one piece. If you happen to find the manifest anywhere, it could speed things up, but we’ll find it eventually. There will of course be a copy on the ship’s computer, but the company would also send a copy of the manifest on a read-only drive. That would probably be with the captain.” There was a short delay from Jess. “If you actually want to find them…”

In any case, the halls on the top deck were empty, and as Light would find quickly enough both of the closed doors were sealed, but unpowered. There was a manual release that allowed him to force open one of the doors, which took him, or rather his suit, a bit of effort to slide it open. Inside, first thing that he would notice was that the small room was also unpressurized. Just as Jess had suggested it might be, it looked like it was a storage room, and unsurprisingly, the whole room was a mess. It seemed like more than one box had not been sealed tightly enough to withstand the crash, so hand tools and spare parts were scattered all over the floor. It was chaotic and hard to judge much at a glance, but one thing he did notice was that one of the drawers of a container built into the module itself was open. Its contents were some of the more important repair tools on a ship. Several of them were gone, but the drawer itself would had to have been unlatched in order to open to begin with.

Light pored through the mess inside the store room. When he found the integral cupboard open he rifled through, emptying everything else out onto the floor.

“Hmm, looks like some did attempt repairs somewhere. Just not in the most important room on the ship.” He mused, heading back out into the corridor.

Light briefly considered searching every room on this floor for more intel, but ultimately decided against it. They needed to keep their eyes on the prize, and if finding the manifest would help with that he resolved to focus there first. If the captain had a copy, it made more sense to search the crew areas first - which were downstairs.

“Ok, heading amidships.” Light billowed back to the ladder running through the decks and plunged down with his Bangstick at the ready.

The next deck that Light reached down the ladder had three doors accessible from the central corridor. All three were shut tight, and two of them were unpowered, much like on the top deck. However, the third door, which led in the direction of the bow of the ship, had an active control panel. The module was still powered. Though, investigating the status of the module through the panel revealed some rather curious contradictions right away. The module was still powered and the doors still shut, but there was no emergency lockdown. It looked like it had been ended manually; in fact, the module’s interior showed as being depressurized. There was no security or safety measures to bypass, so opening the door was as simple as pressing the button.

The door opened into what one could immediately see were the crew quarters. It was an altogether cramped space for the number of people it was meant to accommodate. Everything about it was meant to be space-efficient while keeping the center hall as free as possible for foot traffic. The floor space of the module had a rough “T” shape, with the junction being on the near side to Light. To his left and right were the bunks, four of them in total, built into the walls of the module. On the far side of the module, the hallway leading towards the front of the ship had a closed door on either side, likely a small restroom and shower.

The module was just as messy and chaotic as the others Light had seen so far and there was plenty to scrounge through, but of course, what he would see most immediately were the bodies. There were two out in the open, both Human. Although he could see a few environment suits tucked away in the corners, neither of the bodies were wearing them. The bodies were swollen and showed the usual signs that most species presented with vacuum exposure, but there was more to it. At a glance, Light could also see reddened, burned-looking patches of skin, signs of bleeding, and patches of lost hair. There was no doubt plenty to investigate, but it was a gruesome sight right away.

Light’s breathing became more pronounced as he slowly approached the powered door. “That’s odd. This room is powered but depressurised. I didn’t see any issues here externally; maybe they suited up and left to-”

He opened the door and startled at the bodies, sticking to the ceiling and flashing bright to distract predators. When nothing moved, he slowly detached and floated into the room. Rather than being a low billowing cloud, his suit looked more like a floor-to-ceiling pillar with a much smaller floor footprint. This was to avoid touching any of the detritus littered around the room.

After a tantalising pause over comms, Light tried to narrate his situation.

“Nevermind. There are, ummm, two bodies amidships. Wait! Three bodies.” He eyed the third body huddled in one of the bunks, multiple apparent stab wounds in their back.

“All of them without suits and signs of radiation, one with stab wounds. Looks like we’ve had an unintended depressurisation. What a mess… I’m going to check the bodies.”

Light drifted closer, intent on carefully checking the corpses for clues and/or the manifest.

There was a bit of a delay and some hesitancy in Jess’ voice when she replied. “Shit, that’s…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “Look, if you don’t want to go digging around corpses, I understand. We’ll figure it out down here eventually.”

It was hard to say how long the bodies had been here, exactly, as being in a vacuum would prevent any decay from taking place, and indeed there were no signs of it on either of the bodies on the floor. Although, Light could spot some early hints of decomposition on the covered body with the stab wounds. The clothes they wore were company-issued, and they had symbols on them that likely denoted position or rank, but as they were symbols instead of translatable words, Light did not know which was which. In any case, the manifest was not on any of the three bodies.

Aside from the bodies themselves, there were compartments near each of the four bunks with space for belongings. There were also stacks of boxes in one corner of the room, though based on the opened ones he could see, it was likely they contained rations and medical supplies. He could spend some time searching the room, or move through the door on the far side of the module to the cockpit.

“The least I can do is cover them…” Light warbled. He gingerly rolled all three of the bodies onto their backs and crossed their hands over their hearts. Then he removed bedding from the bunks and draped them neatly over the top. He left their eyes open, mostly because he couldn’t really detect if they were closed or not.

He cast an eye forlornly about, considering whether to scavenge around. In the end though, he hefted his Bangstick and turned for the door. This was taking too long; he needed to find that manifest. He was going to proceed to the cockpit, on the lookout for the owner of the fourth bunk.

The door leading out of the crew quarters was powered, though the cockpit module beyond was not. Just like the other door, there was no lockdown, so he was able to head through without issue. The cockpit was large enough to have some room to walk around, with multiple seats and consoles. The pilot’s seat was front-and-center. It was blocky and mostly metal, with just a few thin cushions for some comfort when flying in a gravity well. Though, since ships like this spent most of their time in space, one could easily strap themselves down into it. As such, everything the pilot would need was easily in arms’ reach. All of the controls and consoles were either built into the chair, or adjustable screens just in front of it. A ship of this size was designed to be possible to fly solo, but was ideally aided by other crew members at the similar, smaller workstations to the left and right.

The question of who owned the last bunk in the crew quarters was quickly answered, as there was a corpse slumped over next to the pilot’s station: a Human woman in a full environment suit. It was easy to see why, as there was also a rather sizable hole in the floor of the cockpit off to the right. It was surrounded by twisted metal, likely from the spacetime warping of their uncontrolled drop out of FTL, and went straight through the hull into space. As it was on the bottom of the ship, they had not seen it from the outside. As soon as the ship had dropped to sublight speeds, the cockpit would have been depressurized, and bathed in an even greater doses of radiation than the rest of the ship.

Light had already recognized the signs of radiation poisoning in the other Humans, and just from what he could see through the visor of this last corpse, her case had been even more severe. It could be hard for one to even stand to look at. Her suit was not compromised, so she had almost certainly died of the radiation exposure. Yet, from the look of the work she had been doing before her death, it had not been immediate. The pilot’s station had multiple panels removed to expose the internals. High energy cosmic radiation could fry electronics, and it seemed the Human had pieced together so many haphazard, jury-rigged repairs to get the station working that it was hard for Light to even make sense of them. Wiring and cables were strewn about, disorganized, connecting to three different tablet devices scattered around on the floor. It looked like some components had been stripped out and replaced with others taken from the copilot’s station. While the cockpit module was not powered, the pilot’s station itself was hooked into a portable power cell that was still active. Since the station was mostly shut down, it had not been drawing much power.

It was easy for Light to recognize the systems that the Human had been working on before death, which was communications. The ship was not broadcasting any sort of distress beacon, and it looked like she had been trying to get it working. It was hard to say from first impressions if it had been a doomed effort or not, but in any case, it would take some time to try and make sense of the repairs if Light wanted to try and use the console.

Light recoiled at the sight of the captain’s deformed visage with in her suit. Even to his form of vision the degradation was pronounced.

“I’ve got a fourth body - likely the captain - in the cockpit. A lot of damage, some repairs. Looks like she had a plan before she died. Searching.”

The captain did not have the manifest on her person. Many of the computers in the cockpit were out of action, having been harvested for parts. He was eventually drawn to the main console attached to the captain’s chair.

Wincing, Light gently unbuckled the body and flopped it onto the floor so his suit could envelop the console. Light stuck his face right next to it while his manipulars fiddled with the tablet interface.

It took a fair amount of time, but he eventually got through and let out a little bubbling coo as he found the manifest.

“I have it!” He announced proudly, before falling silent again. His suit read him names and job roles for the deceased crew, which he tried to commit to memory. It also read him flags from the route.

“They flew closer to the star; captain’s orders. I wonder why.” Light said solemnly.

In trying to get the console to work, Light would be able to get a sense for how inspired some of the repairs really were. Cosmic radiation had caused severe damage to may of the electronics, and the fact that the Human had managed to cobble together something that could even access the system was impressive enough. Not only that, but she had managed to use it to bring in the ship to a relatively safe crash landing.

Light would be able to hear that Jess was a bit winded when she replied. Despite Senjen’s teasing, it did seem that she was helping in the search. “Great, that’ll cut down a bit on the search. Send it here and I’ll comb through it. We’ve already searched through the crates closest to the door and, unfortunately, it’s none of those. No matter where it is, we’re probably gonna have to push a lot of crates out of the way just to get the damn things out of here. Might need your help with that.”

Aside from the cargo manifest, the ship’s database had also revealed some extra information, especially about the crew. None of it was of any immediate, practical use to their salvage operation, but it did give some additional context about the ship and crew. He knew their names now, at least, and it did tell him the meanings of the symbols on their uniforms. Notably, despite his initial assumptions, the Human in the cockpit was not the captain, nor the pilot for that matter. According to her rank, she was the ship’s engineer. As well, there had been a security warning he had to close when he accessed the system about a safety protocol having been bypassed about three days ago. It implied that the crew quarters had been depressurized manually.

“OK, I’ll be right down.”

Light pinged the manifest to Jess and Senjen via their private network. He made another sweep of the cockpit but found nothing else of value. He finished with a closer and appreciative look at the engineer’s handiwork, and his attention was drawn back to the body itself. Why had they depressurised their crew quarters with people inside? Had they been fighting, or was it something else at play?

He fiddled with the console and accessed the crew’s medical records. There were no new entries. He huffed, resigned. He would have liked to bring closure to these Humans’ deaths, but there was no time to waste.

Light exited the cockpit and headed down to the cargo bay, BangStick still at the ready as he traversed the corridors.

“Where can I help?” He asked when he arrived, removing the obfuscation over his suit to reveal his emotions again.