“Hehehehe…” I giggled to myself, It’s not every day you can say you disarmed a nuke, anyway what the hell is up with the torque? Can it unbolt anything? Fuck the Gerber and knives, everyone needs a torque gun.

“You… Uh okay there?”

“Perfectly.”

There’s a long silence over the net before he talks again, I take to trying to open the RTG to place the uranium in it and yes, I have just been hauling that around with me. It’s a bit awkward but I don’t believe we’re going to move it much now from the security room. It takes more awkward fumbling than a horny twelve year old but I work my around the generator.

“Things okay in here?” The Engineer asks again now that he’s waited the ‘soak’ period.

“Yeah, it’s giving out some amount of power we just need to connect it all up.” I do my best to shrug but it doesn’t really work. Especially since I’m upside down, or am I?

“I’ll work that out, I can hook it up to my welder kit. Just find me some scraps so we can make this room airtight.” I nod and float away past him, which roughly took an hour to complete. It’s a pretty big station. I drift my way over to some ripped open bulkheads to start to collect the biggest and flattest metal I can and that’s when I spot some more “good news”.

“Engy, we have a ship comin’ in.”

“Does it look friendly?”

I take a good long hard stare at the hull, then it took a pot shot at the hanger. Way off the security room, “Nope.” I pop the ‘P’ at the end of that, I could hear a sigh at the end of that and I retrieved the pistol from my survival kit. “Get away from the RTG, they’ll probably use it for their sensors.” That’s what I would do if I were a super futuristic raider hell-bent on killing survivors (assumption), I try and think of a plan to get out of this alive.

I take a longer look around my surroundings, this pistol will definitely not cut it. I grabbed hold of the metal that I picked and decided to use it as a shield to hide behind for now. Their ship slowly moved in and dropped off some guys before it circled the station waiting to be called again. I can’t really see them but they appear to have high power flashlights on their weapons, combat EVA suits. Most likely bulletproof. Their visors glow a menacing red while they move as a team to track us down and kill us. They don’t seem to be floating but using some sort of magnetic boots. I want to steal their shoes. I threw myself as quickly as I can into the security wing, they spot me and a hail of gunfire comes my way.

“Chances of survival have decreased.”

Surely they would have some sort of weapons locker here, and I see it hidden behind locked bars that I have no access to at this moment in time. I see the engineer is still in the room, he hasn't had much of a chance to escape since the Security Wing overlooks the hangar. Then I get a wild idea.

“Give me your gun!” I shout, there wasn’t much of a need to but I do it anyway. He scrambles to hand it to me and I attach it to my harness while I brainstormed an idea. “I have a plan, get that locker open!"

I ordered my helmet light off and grabbed the edge of the window to pop my head up, my orange helmet shining in their flashlights and another burst comes my way, I throw myself down. “Get that damn locker open then!” He scrambles and takes out his cutting torch, he struggles to connect it to the loose power cables of the RTG. I ignore him for now and try to think of weapons that I can use. I reach out and grab something to throw at them for a distraction. A dead potted plant flies slowly towards them and they quickly obliterate it with gunfire. I reach again and I grab ahold of the nuke casing, I take the shell and quickly bolt it back together again without the plutonium and throw it at them. No hail of gunfire, these guys know what is up. I pop my head out and try to get one of them in my sights, one guy threw himself to the ground in a moment of panic, that didn’t do him any good. I take aim and fire.

Headshot.

“Chances of survival have increased!”

I watch a large pool of blood pour out his head, it doesn’t separate into tiny droplets but keeps most of its surface tension. I can see why this game is 18+. There appears to be five left, I try to get any more easy shots but the rest seem smart enough to disperse quickly. They’re moving cover to cover on both my right and left to perform a pincer maneuver and with the dropship outside I can’t make any rash movements.

“How much longer?”

“Five minutes!”

“You have one!”

I begin shooting at them to slow them down, however, they keep firing back keeping me well suppressed while their other team moves. I’ll have to use that tactic later. I feel a cold sweat take my body as they inch closer and closer to me but I can’t shake this grin off my face, I can’t dampen the feeling of my heart thumping or dam the rush of adrenaline through my body. A thought in the back of my head saying ‘It’s a game.’ Just makes this entire thing exhilarating. Then I get another idea, I empty the pack and throw it to the engineer.

“Fill the pack full of shit!”

“It isn’t open yet!”

“Hurry the fuck up then!”

I watch as they’ve almost got to the stairs, my helmet display is showing them highlighted in red where they are when they are visible to me but the damn thing can’t predict or tell where they are behind cover.

I’ve already had to switch pistols to the Engy’s, six rounds are nowhere near enough for combat but in a way that may have saved my life. If I was more aggressive I would have peeked more and more likely gotten shot. That and the natural thickness of the walls of the Security Office.

“Are you there yet?!”

“They are designed it to stop people from doing shit like this!”

I let off another round and I received coordinated fire on my position as they started climbing the stairs. Their dropship now remains stationary at the entrance of the hangar waiting for me to peep out and die.

“Open!”

“Anything! Now!” I turn my head to him and hold my hand out ready to grasp something, what I got was a shotgun. I look at it up and down, it does look high tech, sleek, and amazing. “A fuckin’ shotgun!?” I sigh and resign myself to my death. Sparks scatter my left peripherals as they have ascended the stairs and they suppress my position for the kill move, not revealing my head I push the barrel over. “EVA!” I shout turning on my jetpack for the inertia dampening effect and begin firing the shotgun wildly over cover.

“Shitting fuck!” Engy screams as some bullets ricochet near him from the raiders.

I quickly peak and then throw myself back down to the floor, looks like two of them were moving to here before I shot them and now they’re dead. Lucky. The dropship is maintaining its position while the remaining three look like they’re preparing something.

“We need to take out the ship.”

“We’ve got nothing heavy enough for that!”

“Pass me some grenades then!” He throws me my bag which he has a quarter filled with grenades and various pieces of ammunition. I leave the shotgun to float just next to me under cover while I grab grenades from the pack.

Then I just begin tossing them at them, I threw roughly nine grenades before stopping and hiding again. The dropship I can safely say did not like what I did at all and started rotating the barrels under its nose, I would be too close to their guys for that to be effective so… I must have got them with the grenades. Which is why the dropship is so mad. Luckily for me, it seems the dropship doesn’t have any significant weaponry.

Just a fucking minigun that can rip me to shreds with one good hit.

I do believe if it concentrates its fire on me, it will break through the Security Rooms walls.

“Make a break for the tunnels!” I make it my job to try and distract the gunship as it begins spinning up its weapons to fire.

“What about you!”

“Go!”

“... Shit!” He makes a break for the corridor to hide in the tunnels, I activate my EVA jetpack to fling myself from one end of the hanger to the other. The Engineer got away safely, however, the ship refuses to come inside the hanger and is happy enough to concentrate its fire on my position.

I’m currently hiding behind the probe that I dismantled in an attempt to rush the fucker. Crazy right? I regret that decision, I am never doing anything crazy in this game again. I’ll just work as a shop clerk or something, nice and quiet and not people trying to gun me down.

“Chances of Survival have decreased!”

Fuck off Jarvis.