The Officers

Chapter 6 - Man this fucking sucks

~~~ Further explorations

By the end of the next week the vast majority of the hull had been patched. They were carefully pressurizing various sections. As leaks were being identified they were being fixed. It was going to take time to ensure the entire station was leak free. To ensure they had both water and enough oxygen many heavy shuttles had been sent out on a search and retrieve mission. It took much of the week to get even a small number of icy meteors. It was going to take time to get enough to really supply the station. Even as one shuttle came in another was dispatched.

By now the levels between the two bubble sections had mostly been explored. Much of it was crew quarters, mostly empty cargo sections, and even some workshops for maintaining the station. Much of the equipment was familiar since there were only so many ways to build metal manufacturing equipment. Lathes, laser cutters, pressure cutters, and even drills. They operated on different power types than they used but that was the largest differences. Some equipment they weren't sure of. Those were going to be examined.

Some power had been restored but the station needed a great deal of cabling run to carry power to the rest of the damaged sections. Thankfully one of the supply rooms had plenty of the cabling needed. It wasn't just for power but fiber optics, and other advanced cabling. It was taking time for the Navy techs to figure out the best way to properly connect the new cabling. In engineering they were working to get the reactors back on line. Thankfully their ship had been designed for a very large crew.

Holcum had taken over one of the blisters for some of the troops even as the other had been. For some reason they were still air tight and with the asteroids being brought in they had enough water to start the hydroponics working and to break down the water molecules for both hydrogen and Oxygen. Even as the Marines were exploring the station the Navy life support crew were clearing out the hydroponics section. All plants were being carefully packaged for further evaluation. The same was going with the skeletons they'd found. Those required a great deal of care since they were so fragile.

For some odd reason several of the crew were armature archaeologists. They were working very hard to ensure as much of the skeletons were preserved as possible. They were weird, and the bones were oddly shaped which made it hard to figure out how the Aliens looked. It wasn't part of their specialty. Once they were packed up they were placed into some heavily padded boxes and stored in the safest store room on the ship.

One thing Holcum was glad about was Mila was now working out of the blister he and his team was in. They didn't have a great deal of privacy unless they wanted to go to a shuttle but at least they could sleep together. They'd found a maintenance port to the blister but were having problems getting it open. If they could get a shuttle connected it would be easier since they had gravity. It would make it easier to relax, cook, and sleep.

Right now, they were dealing with sleeping bags designed to be used in zero G. Even having his mate next to him wasn't what their cats would consider enjoyable. Even though they were sleeping together they weren't really able to be active which was frustrating for all of them. As he was taking a break he was watching the life support tech's clearing the plants out. It was taking a great deal of work since the bubble had a number of levels and walk ways. It was 300 meters across and since it was a globe it was a good deal of space. There was at least one level of plants for every two meters in height.

That was a great deal of foliage which needed to be removed. Right now, they'd finally finished the main level and were now working on the hydroponics to get it to work. The plants had been floating on rafts of some sort of light plastic material. The water wasn't that deep or hadn't been when they were growing. Once they had the level working they'd be planting food plants such as lettuce, carrots, and even onions and beets. Celery would be nice but what mattered was getting any sort of Oxygen producing plants growing.