Cath

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“Alright, let's get this over with!” Light replied.

What he’d seen in the upper deck didn’t leave Light as they got to work. If anything the unsolved mystery expanded to fill his head. Before long he was scanning the doors back the way he’d come, as if the corpses would stumble through at any minute.

He worked his suit hard. Senjen still moved more boxes but Light wasn’t far behind. Together they forged a path through the cargo bay towards the loading doors in a significant but respectable amount of time.

“And now to load it onto our ship…” Light pondered. “It makes sense to bring the ship closer rather than try to lug this over uneven terrain.” He accessed his neural lace and reached out to his craft from across the couple of hundred metres of void. His aim was to run a new scan of the area and then lift off remotely to bring it gently to a stop right outside the cargo ramp.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“Ooh, nice!” Light yoinked one of the protective cases out with a tentacle and examined it closely. That included popping it inside his gel suit like one might with a candied date, and then popping it back out again. “Its a lot of money for something so plain. They should add some colour…” He slid it back into the crate and surveyed the cargo hall.

“What a mess!” Light sidled over to the closest part of the blockade and tried to lift one of the crates by himself. He could just about manage it, but the suit whined in protest. He placed it back down a few inches from where it had laid before.

“Gravity is not our friend today - what say you help me here, Senjen?”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“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.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

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.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“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.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

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.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

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.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“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.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“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.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

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.