I guess the most frightening part of this all, the death looming over me and the probe which will eventually give in to the hail of gunfire from the raider ship. Is that is was completely soundless, there is no sound in space. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breath and the thumping of my blood through my ears. Knowing I was about to die in a really stupid way in this game. I look around for anything that could protect me or I could escape to. But that boat has long since sailed and I felt my death was imminent.

“I have a plan, just… Keep him distracted.” A voice I could have misheard as an angel giving a divine message.

“I’ve had their attention for the last hour!” I give an exasperated shout back at him.

I try to return fire from around the probe, peeking over places he wasn’t expecting me to be. But it would only be a matter of time before I get hit by a stray bullet or get pinged by a ricochet from the back of the hanger.

It wasn’t long before the Engineer came to my rescue, he was sneaking under the hangar floor by using the maintenance tunnel that runs underneath or the ceiling depending on what your perspective of up and down is in space. He made his way to one of the ice mining ships and as stealthily as possible tried to get in. His idea might have worked if the cockpit didn’t illuminate as he entered. The ship stops firing at me and turns to the Engineer.

“Get out of there! Move!” I shout through my mic and I can hear his panicked breathing. The pirate ship began shooting the fragile mining ship, turning it into swiss cheese. So I have the idea to one-up the engineer in terms of pure stupidity. Activating my jetpack I launch myself at the pirate ship, now I’m not sure about the acceleration of one of these things but damn it cleared fifty meters in just over a couple of seconds. Luckily for me the pilot couldn’t believe I was charging was him and when he did it took a second to turn and adjust his ship. By the time that happened, I was right in the face of the cockpit.

I shot point-blank into the glass, but the shielding used to deflect tiny rocks from asteroids deflected the weapon’s ballistics. Which is totally fucking bullshit. I had no time to think and gave the pilot my best smile through the glass. The torque gun that I had secured under a strap was useless, I left the bag of grenades and ammo in the security room and my shotgun is useless. Maybe I can attack them by finding their frequency and screaming at them until they have a headache.

That was until I noticed the support dampeners, what quickly drew my attention to them was the circular plate that shimmers, if I had some explosives I would probably make a good breaching point, but I didn’t have those.

“Move!” I hear a shout through my headset, I do the first thing that comes to my head. My jetpack activates and I shoot upwards and away. A fraction of a second later, the flying swiss cheese crashes into the dropship. How it’s still working I have no idea, both of their shields seemed to repel each other like magnets of the same polar side but the thrusters from Swiss kept inching closer and closer. Electrical sparks flew off both their hulls and fizzled out quickly and the two metal objects clashed against each other. With my EVA suit back on I readjusted myself quickly and flung myself back into the glass of the cockpit of the pirate’s dropship.

Shooting through the glass as I fly straight at the cockpit, it pierces through and kills the pilot. I keep going, smashing through the broken glass I clear the rest of the ship making sure there are no more onboard, finding none, I give the all clear

“It’s clear, you alive?”

“Somehow.” The Engineer breathes a sigh of relief and places Swiss into a safe out of the way place.

“We have a sort of less damaged ship now.” I make the best out of the situation.

“I suppose, we need to fix that glass you breach through. Fuckin’ hell man. I’ve never seen anyone do that before.”

“I tried it the first time but the shielding deflected the shotgun.” I made my way to the cockpit again and checked over the dead pilot. Most of the gear I needed was destroyed by the shotgun. His helmet cracked and destroyed as well as multiple punctures in his suit, overall just ruined.

“Yeah I saw, so I had the idea to overload their shield by hitting it with ours.” He explained.

“Uh, I don’t know how to really say it but… thanks for coming back for me.”

“Hah! You too, I would have died if you hadn’t suicide charged him!”

“Well we’re both in this shit situation together, so we gotta work together.”

“True enough.”

We spent the next half hour checking through the dead and I got myself a nifty pair of magnetic boots. I attached them to my harness by their laces until I could safely get changed in an oxygen-rich environment. No point fucking around with my suit right now.

“Maybe we should grab some scrap metal together and just cover up the glass of the cockpit. We could use the RTG as a power supply for the welder.” I suggest to the Engy.

“Honestly, the RTG was a long shot to even get life support working. The energy it produced would be minimal. But it was the only shot we really had, I’ll be taking the power cores from the pirates to charge the welder and do that.”

“Sounds good. I have… No idea what I’m doing now.”

“Take a break, we’ve got a good chance of surviving now. I think it was just bad luck that the pirates found us.”

“Uh… Nah I’ll just grab some scrap and help you build.” I seen the Engineer nod and start taking power cores from the dead pirates. I floated about and took stock of my condition, my vitals are fine, a bit hungry and thirsty. However, my fuel and power took a big hit and is sitting at a whopping 20% and O2 is at 49%.

                                                                                           ⚶

“Feels good to get the helmet off, doesn’t it?” The Engineer sighed and relished not having his helmet on. He’s older than me, around twenty-five to thirty. Copper coloured hair with green eyes, a five o’clock shadow covers the lower half of his face.

“Yeah, how much power is left in the ship?” I ask, taking my helmet off the cold air, making the sweat on my face quickly chill. I take a moment to refill my hunger and thirst.

“A couple of days worth of battery power - luckily they have a reactor and that charges the battery as well as providing power. I’d say we got about two weeks worth of power all in all.” He explained. “I thought you’d be older.” He adds at the end and I snort.

“I don’t think we ever introduced ourselves. I’m Eric. Eric Spectre.” I gave the same first name but changed my surname to the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m Martin Drake, nice to meet you.” He offers a hand and I shake it. “I take it you’re security Div then?”

“I don’t know.” If you gotta lie, it’s best to keep it close to the truth. “I don’t remember much besides my name.”

“But you know how to kill six pirates and clear a ship?”

“I’m probably security.” I give a wry smile and he laughs.

“I’ve never seen any security training videos for what you did. I’m just gonna say man. If you want to keep your job to yourself you don’t need to worry. I can read between the lines, let’s just focus on getting out of here.”

“Agreed, but let’s not leave the others in the pods, afterward we should make a break for some secure station and try and find out what happened, the rest of the station has gotta be in worse shape.”

“Yeah, but what do we do now? I’m only good with circuitry I’m only watched the basic vids on how to survive in space.” I take a moment, he’s turning to me for direction and I have to provide as good an idea as possible.

“We’ll search the rest of the station, we shouldn’t stay here longer than possible but we may need the supplies even if we need to sell them for cash. We’ll wake up a couple more people to help us loot the shit and bail.”

He began nodding at my plan seeing the sense of it, I changed my boots to the magnetic ones, finished eating and drinking then recharged and refueled. We left the ship as soon as we were ready. “Let’s go to the armoury on the way,” I suggest over the radio and he agrees.

I chose a modular weapon, one with picatinny rails for the top and bottom. It is a standard bullpup rifle, however, I added a holographic sight and an underslung shotgun on their respective rails. I took the moment as well to grab better combat gear as well. I had ignored most of the gear in the Security because of the firefight but wasn’t going to miss out on premium, free, and maybe even rare loot. If there’s one thing Dom has taught me, it’s that good shit appears when shit gets harder in games. Or it’s well hidden, or both.

Martin and I began once again making our way to the cryo-pods. I didn’t notice but at some point, he also got a pair of magnetic boots. Getting around the station has gotten a lot easier now, I fingered the trigger of my new weapon but the suit’s gloves are too thick for anything but the survival pistol and the shotgun.

We inspected the pods together and decided to wake up a mining ship pilot, a security guard, another engineer, and one of the opaque ones that I assume have a player in them. Rather than telling them all one at a time what has happened Martin and I wait until they are all awake.

“Right guys, the station is shagged we’re going to die here if we stay either due to space being a psychopathic bitch or the fact we’ve had to kill a few pirates.”

“What do we do?!” The one I assume is a player yells and panics. The others regard him kind of coldly, panicking in a situation like this will get someone hurt or killed.

“The reason I woke the majority of you up is that we require your skills to get out of here. Pilot, I want you to make your way to the hanger and sort your life out there. Do whatever checks you need to do and monitor the fuckin’ sonar if anything drops in to say hi.”

The pilot nods.

“Security, you’re with me clearing the rest of the station. Currently, the spire has broken off and we’re adrift in empty space. We need to find anything worth taking with us and eliminate anything that doesn’t want tea and crumpets.” I toss him the bullpup rifle as I can’t use it because the pistol grip is too small unlike the one for the survival pistol, so I assume he can.

“Engineers and spare guy. You two are fixing anything that needs fixing or moving anything we find into the ship.”

“Sounds good.” Martin agrees.

“Good, now since we don’t know each other’s voices. Whenever we talk on the radio you have to announce yourself. The pilot is Base. Security and me is Sierra and Engineers plus runner is Echo. Questions?”

No one said anything.

“Get to it!” Everyone launched into action, the Security guy’s suit already has magnetic boots installed but the pilot, engineer, and runner don’t. I can see where they spent their budget.

Things are looking promising to getting out of here.