Blinking through sleep-smeared vision captain Orpicea slapped the escape pod's sensor readout. Dull neon lines spasmed. When they steadied, the contact was still there.
Thank Christ, she thought, and wanted to say it too but took another drag on her suit's oxygen instead. She fumbled numb fingers over the console. The hailing indicator winked on and off in silence.
She snorted awake as the transport and her pod locked hands with a rattling clunk. Stirring, she kicked herself forward.
She didn't remember cycling the airlock but suddenly she was on her back in the transport's umbilical, gravity tugging on her bones. Lurching onto her side she felt weak hands scrabbling at her helmet and realising they were her own she licked dry lips as they groped the visor latch—
The suit's external sensors let out a peevish chime. Her eyes slid shut. She laughed. The sound squeezed out from between her lips like molasses. Of all the ships that could have crossed her path, she'd stumbled into the one without an atmosphere.
Crawling to her feet she sleepwalked down the umbilical, one arm slumped over the guide rail. She'd never thought she'd miss zero-g, but gravity—now of all times—was the cherry on a poisoned cake. Her legs barely had the strength to bear her. She didn't even want to think about how the exertion was cutting into her oxygen; the indicator had been glaring red since her pod had first detected the transport and nagged her awake.
The ship's internal airlock crashed shut behind her. A scrap of something black brushed her visor. She slapped at it, frowned cross-eyed at the dark smear it left, and then heavy-lidded let her eyes drift into further focus to take in the rest of the bay. Her first thought was that this was a questionably gothic paint job for a transport. Then she saw the peeling finish on the walls, the burst piping, the spaghetti innards dribbling from a blackened terminal. Gears chugged away in her head.
'Very sorry about this,' a voice trilled. She sucked in a sharp breath, stale air like mud in her lungs. A thin and jagged figure seemed to detach from the wall. As she doubled up, coughing and vision swimming, all she could make out were two flickering lights. 'The place,' they said, 'is in such a state.'
Stiff hands slipped around the collar of her suit and, to its squealing protest, tore the helmet off her head.
