of the passengers. When the the pressure was safely released and the outer door signalled a good seal he opened it.
The memory of his first space walk was something that was never far from the surface when he took his first steps towards the void. He was in his second year of structural engineering and needed only a few seconds to look around before realizing he was prone to space sickness, a nauseating reaction to vertigo. The systems in his vacsuit did a fantastic job of suctioning away his erupting vomit, but it didn't hide his problem.
It took him over five years to get over the issue on his own, and he had to admit, looking out into open space still made him a little queasy, especially if he let his thoughts drift. He attached a line from his suit to an eye hook beside the airlock and began moving along the fuselage, keeping a brisk drift towards the tail section.
The three meter high communications pylon hadn't been damaged by the attack. As he moved around the hull towards it the primary rear engine came into view. The Eden drones had destroyed it utterly. Beyond that he could see the drifting wreckage of the defence station. Once several kilometres long, it had been reduced to shards of hull plating and chunks of drifting inner decks. He hoped that Laurence hadn't lost a father that day but didn't dwell on the thought.
He used the line brake on his belt, slowing the rate at which the safety line spooled out to reduce his speed right before coming into contact with the communication tower with a little bump. Liam opened the access panel on the side of the rounded pylon and patched his engineering computer into it.
It only took him a few moments before he found a standard distress signal in his wrist computer's memory and added; minimum five hundred, up to three thousand in need of rescue. Sun Veil Starliner 1261-48 destined for Seneschal. No contact with command deck, no attitude control, engines damaged beyond on site repair.
With a sigh Liam looked out into space, not searching for anything in particular. The signal would repeat as long as he was directly tied in, so he could either leave his engineering computer connected to the communications system and go back to the ship, or he could stay.
Just as he decided to stay in the quiet of space for a while and wait, a flash erupted in his line of sight. The object that had just appeared began to move closer, firing the engines that had been turned forward, decelerating quickly.
Fewer than ten seconds passed before the massive carrier settled into a parallel trajectory along side the passenger liner, matching its speed. Liam recognized it immediately, having seen one of them from the outside in orbit around Earth. This one was marked the Triton and he couldn't help but chuckle. “They followed me all the way out here? I must have made a bigger impression than I thought.”
First Officer Stephanie Vega
Stephanie finished sealing up her black vacsuit. It was fitted a little closer than she liked, but considering she would probably be spending most of her time on the bridge, a fully armoured vacsuit would be a little much. She liked it though, it had a high collar, thigh pockets, adjustable holster, and matched her knee high combat boots. The gloves and headpiece of the version she wore could retract and roll up on their own with a quick voice command or if the pressure in the area around her changed too much. I have to ask the Captain about programming the specs for his command and control unit into the materializers so senior officers can make their own. As much as I love the vacsuits, borrowing his spare C and C unit whenever I need a new one is becoming a hassle.
She looked around herself, trying to take it all in again. I can't believe we're on this ship, that I'm second in command. Her quarters were unbelievable, the command deck quarters were larger than anywhere she'd lived, including her family home. She grew up with two brothers, four sisters and so many cousins it would take her several minutes to count them up. Her mother and father, along with her siblings had a two bedroom home on a colony planet that had boomed early on the wrong resources.
When her family first settled there before she was born the assayers said it would be perfect for farm land, there would be hectares of natural foods stretching all the way to the horizon in every direction. During initial settling, around the time her first brother and two cousins were born, the farms started popping up, things were good from the stories she heard. The year she and her cousin Sam was born her family had fifty nine hectares all their own. Another assessment was done that year and the government found evidence of heavy metals.
Stephanie's family was reimbursed for most of the land, allowed to keep a twentieth of what they had to grow their own food and build homes, but they weren't given enough credits to leave the planet and settle somewhere else. They weren't allowed to buy a stake in the new mining operations that started up either. By the time she was a little girl the entire continent she lived on looked like a gravel pit. Even the starport was a blackened, misused thing that looked hundreds of years old from the beating industrial usage dealt. In truth the colony was less than twenty years old, the modest starport just over thirty.
She was in her early teen years when her eldest brother and two of her cousins were killed in a mining accident. It was then that she decided life on that world was not for her. The stars had the answer, she would get off world no matter what it took.
When the military came calling only a few years later she signed up and was gone within two days. She finished high school enroute to the academy and within six months she was a trained infantrywoman, specialized in boarding actions. Three years later she was court marshalled for insubordination and left on a port with her last paycheck. With few options open to her she signed up on the first ship looking for boarding crew. After jumping from one ship to another, joining better and better gangs she finally started making a name for herself. Then she signed up on the Samson. Meeting someone as intelligent, fierce, quiet and confident as Captain Valance changed her life. She learned more from him than in all the time she spent in the military. The fact that he'd been pulling jobs for only a year when she first met him wasn't something she learned until much later.
The years flew by while she was on his ship. She earned his trust, earned more credits than she had ever dreamed of, enough to buy her own ship legitimately and start her own crew. As time wore on that idea appealed to her less and less and the life she lived was tarnished by the memories of all the friends and acquaintances she had lost on the job. Some crew members lasted weeks, others months, and a few would only remain aboard for days. As many boarding crew were killed as those who left after making the realization that the life wasn't for them. Only a couple retired in the time she had been on the Samson.
Over four years. She thought to herself as she looked around the brightly lit bedroom. The main feature of the room was a queen sized bed that made and cleaned itself. If I had stuck with the plan I would be on my way to Elysian right now. Mixing in with other potential colonists on some Lorander colony ship, seeing if I could find mister right on the way there.
She shook her head and chuckled to herself as she walked into the spacious main room. Who was I kidding? Being a farmer was my parent's dream. I'd be bored to tears after just a few weeks, months if I were lucky.
Stephanie looked at the weapons she had laid out on a sideboard. Her particle acceleration assault rifle, a heavy disintegration handgun, and a more modest pulse pistol with an automatic setting. She decided on the automatic pulse pistol, its stun setting and inability to pierce metal made it a more obvious choice for use aboard ship.
She started for the door and stopped as it opened, turning around and taking her new quarters in again. There was a futon that doubled as another bed, a bathroom with an a shower that used water or vibrations to get its user clean and its bottom could convert into a square bathtub, and there was even a large adjustable chair. Trying it the night before had led to her nodding off after just a few seconds, it was the most comfortable little space she'd ever been in. There was even an extra room currently occupied by surplus furniture unceremoniously piled up. Too bad I can't get the lights to do anything but come all the way on or all the way off. I'm either in complete darkness or getting a tan. The controls must be broken. I'll have maintenance take a look, hopefully they have a better understanding of these systems than I do.
The hallway was empty. She turned and checked the door controls. Finding a locking mechanism she smiled. “Voice authentication required for this room. Take my voice imprint and allow Ashley Lamport as well as Captain Valent and Hernando Ramirez entry on vocal verification.”
“Yes First Officer Stephanie Vega. To confirm, you are setting a voice imprint lock on these quarters for yourself, Ashley Lamport, Captain Jacob Valent, and Hernando Ramirez. All others will not be able to enter unless approved by you or the Captain,” replied the moderate male computerized voice. It was strange, some sections of
