Chapter 3: Three Little Lambs

I hopped out of my ship, knowing that I might not have much time, forgoing my usual post landing routine to ensure the ship was reading for its next takeoff. I had already sealed up my suit so when everything quit moving, I started moving.

Doing a quick visual inspection of the ship, I could see no obvious damage. There was no obvious leakage of the internal atmosphere and no clear hull breach.

I quickly found the power port and ran a cable from my ship to their ship, giving me access to their communications system. I heard the life support unit kick on when the power came online, suggesting it had been off for some period of time, never a good sign. But at least it indicated that there wasn’t a loss of atmospheric pressure which would have disabled the system.

I then climbed up the ship and tried to peer in the cockpit, hoping to see inside the ship to see what I might be dealing with. In the best case, I could pop the cockpit and enter the ship that way, but worst case I would have to erect a temporary airlock and try to enter the ship that way.

When I looked in the cockpit, I could see three bodies, in their suits, all in the hold portion of the ship. They had their helmets on, but they weren’t moving. I tried to hail them on the comms unit, but just like in orbit, I received no answer.

I was surprised though that this ship had a small airlock, so I quickly checked to see if it was working. That appeared to be the case, and now that I had power to the life support systems, I decided to enter that way. There was a chance of me getting locked in if they were trying to capture me, but my gut said to go for it.

I grabbed my dart pistol and stepped into the airlock, hitting the quick cycle and keeping my EVA suit sealed the entire time. I watched carefully for any signs of life, but there was no movement and the ship was still running on emergency protocol indicating the batteries were nearly completely drained.

In a few minutes the inner door opened, and I stepped into the hold and quickly over to the closest body. It was a woman, as I could see from the face plate, and she was breathing, but appearing unconscious. Her suit life support was working, so I quickly moved to the next person.

Ascertaining that all three were alive but unconscious, I suspected they had been drugged. I also noticed that they were chained to their seats. I needed to get them out of the ship and into my settlement where the life support was more stable.

I saw a toolbox in the cockpit with a standard plasma metal cutter, needed for making hull repairs. It was too much tool for the job, but it made quick work of the shackles and soon all three women were laying in the airlock, essentially laying on top of each other with me standing over them. I cycled through the lock, hoping their suits were intact, though they appeared to be maintaining pressure inside the ship.

Then I had to carry all three of them across to my airlock. Once again, we cycled through and when the inner door opened, I finally felt I could pop my helmet.

I pulled all three into the hallway and let the airlock door close. It was then that I popped the helmets on the three women, hoping that they didn’t have some horrible contagious disease.

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A man, nearly broken by loss, lives a solitary existence off planet earth in a small habitat he has constructed on the moon.

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