"Here, let me make sure you've got it sealed properly." Roger grinned.

"Ha-ha. Never gonna let me forget that, eh?" Kamala waited for him to check her breather pack one last time.

"Well, I can't give you too much shit about it, since you were saving my life when you didn't get your mask all the way on." He gave her a thumbs-up. "You're okay to go."

She nodded and gave him a hug. "This should only take a few minutes."

"Good. See you soon." He gave himself a gentle push and floated from the cockpit to the passenger compartment.

Kamala closed the hatch and locked it down, turned and ran her gaze over the pilot's console. In case of emergency, the cockpit had its own hatch. This would allow her to go outside without decompressing the entire shuttle.

Though, if she didn't find a breathable atmosphere on the newly-discovered ship, they'd all be dead in about twenty minutes, anyway.

Gah, stop that! She shuddered and took a moment to steady her breathing. "I'm popping the hatch." She pushed a sequence of buttons beside the hatch, turned away, and waited for the explosive bolts to blow the hatch off.

A sharp bang made her nearly jump out of her skin, and the hatch flew across the room. Kamala took another moment to let her heartbeat return to something approaching normal, grasped the edge of the doorway and pulled herself outside.

At least T-Bone had found what appeared to be an open hangar door on the forward section of the derelict ship. The bus-shaped shuttle hung in midair and drifted slowly away, propelled by the hatch's explosive bolts and the puff of air rushing out of the cockpit. Its spotlights illuminated the wall directly ahead of it, but the rest of the "hangar" was shrouded in darkness.

"Okay, I'm outside." She switched her headlamp back on, reached into one of the pouches on her tool belt, and took out her new ultratool. "First thing I need to do is find a way to close the doors. If there's air on this ship, we don't want it venting out through here."

"Right," Roger's voice came through the breather mask's built-in comlink. "Hey, would you link your ultratool with mine so we can see what's going on out there?"

"Sure." She switched the cylindrical device on and linked it up with the cybernetic interface she'd had implanted a few days ago. The typical ultratool interface was a customized hard-light projection that floated above the 'tool, but Kamala's "upgrade" let her operate the device simply by thinking, and receive information from it directly into her brain. Quite handy, though she sometimes set it to give her data in the form of a heads-up display because it wasn't as weird as having said data just appear in her mind.

She found Roger's ultratool and set up a link while shining her flashlight around. Its beam passed over a series of small vehicles parked along the wall. "Huh. Some of those aren't too different from our shuttles, only sleeker. More … badass. There's a two-tier docking system, kinda like shelves, with the ships parked on them." She grasped the doorway with her lower-right hand and turned around. "The ones on the other side of the hangar look different. Fighters, maybe. Even if we can't get this ship up and running, maybe we can use some of these."

"Sounds good. But, uh, the door …?"

"Oh! Right! Sorry." She coiled her tail up, braced it against the side of her shuttle, and launched across the hangar. When she reached the parked ships, she propelled herself along them until she reached the outer wall. She swept her flashlight over it. "Hmm. I think I've found a manual control. Gonna need help with it, though. Is Lopez nearby?"

"On my way," the robot answered. A moment later, he appeared at the edge of the hangar door, his magnetic footpads holding him down. He crawled inside and secured himself to the floor.

"I think this is the door control. At least, I hope it is." Kamala waved her ultratool at the handle. "I need you to turn this."

"Sure." Lopez scampered over to her, clamped his pincers onto the handle, and rotated his "wrist". Slowly, inch by inch, thick doors on each side of the opening slid toward the center. Finally, they met with a thud that reverberated through the hull and into the hand Kamala had placed on the manual control housing.

"Thanks." Kamala aimed her flashlight at the far end of the chamber. "Now, to find a door leading deeper into the ship."

Lopez turned around and switched on his floodlights. He clomped forward and Kamala drifted along beside him. When they arrived at the wall, they moved along it until they came to another hatch. After pushing and tugging on several nearby panels, Kamala found one that revealed a manual control when it popped open. This one was similar to the one Lopez had used but smaller.

Kamala stuck her ultratool into her belt pouch and cranked the handle. The thing was probably designed to be operated by a tool of some sort, but fortunately, Kamala -- like most anthros -- was quite a bit stronger than any human. The hatch cracked open and a puff of wind escaped. Kamala grinned.

"We have air!" She clamped all four hands onto the handle and kept turning it until the hatch was open completely. She grabbed her ultratool and scanned the air.

"Is it breathable?" Roger said. "Please tell me it's not an alien atmosphere."

"Well, it's kinda thin, since it's had to spread itself into this huge hangar, but it's safe for us to breathe. It's butt-clenchingly cold, though. I'm thinking this ship has been here for a while." She raised her upper-left hand to her breather mask. "I'm gonna sample the air."

She pulled the mask off and took a slow, careful breath.

"It's … kinda stale." Steam puffed out of her mouth and nose. She took a few more breaths before she allowed herself to relax. "Okay. I'm breathing without much effort. I think it's safe for the rest of you to come out."

"Yes! I'll be right there!"

The hatch in the side of the shuttle slid open and Roger emerged, glanced around, and pushed off toward her.

She sniffed again, frowned, and stared down the corridor on the other side of the door she'd just opened. "Smells weird. Rotten, like …" There was a definite stench, but not nearby. Somewhere in the distance, but she figured it'd be overpowering if she were any closer to the source.

It wasn't hard to guess what that source was.

"Oh, fuck me." She clamped two of her hands over her nose and mouth. "It smells like rotting bodies!"