Jewel of The Stars: Season 1 Episode 1: Earth's Remnant

Chapter 17

Haylee worked at the housing. She'd never been great with her hands. She usually just designed the technology, and sometimes inspected it. She didn't mind getting her hands dirty— She'd changed enough diapers to cure her of that—but she lacked the dexterity to be good at this kind of thing.

Her helmet beeped. Her eye lenses overlaid an icon in the top-left of her field of vision. An incoming call from Captain Miller.

She tapped her wristband to accept the call. Miller's face appeared, floating in front of her.

"What is it, Captain? I'm busy."

"I'm checking how you're coming along, Mrs Scott."

"Making slow but steady progress."

"Every minute you spend over there puts not only yourself in danger, but everyone on this ship."

"Yep."

"Time is of—"

"Shut up, Captain!"

Miller's eyes went wide. He stared open-mouthed. That was probably insubordination. At least, it would be if she were a member of his crew.

She wasn't.

"I'm working as efficiently as I can. You putting pressure on me is going to stress me out and make me slower. Now get out of my face and let me do my job."

Miller bit his lip. "Very good." The image faded.

Had she been too harsh? Probably not. After all, there were lives as stake.

#

The alien's clawed arm thrust up through the hatch a couple of times but it couldn't reach him. After about thirty seconds the arm pulled out. Was the alien still down there? Had it given up and left? Braxton didn't dare move close enough to the hole to peer down and find out.

His helmet was still beeping. He shifted to survey the damage to his leg. The cut itself was little more than a scratch. It would be fine as long as the bloody alien didn't have venom in its claws. The real problem was damage to his suit. He was losing oxygen through the shredded fabric.

Braxton's heart clenched. He'd be dead in minutes unless he could fix it.

The beeping changed pitch and stopped. Then the suit spoke again.

"Sealing at nearest intact joint."

His trousers clamped hard around his thigh. It was the blood pressure cuff from hell. The stream of air stopped. He was safe for the short term, but his leg was now exposed to hard vacuum and the coldness of space. What would that do to his physiology? He wasn't sure.

He looked around for something to tie around his leg. There was a strap hanging off the wall—a brace point, probably. Braxton disconnected it and tied it around his calf, pulling the tattered remains of his suit together. It wouldn't have been enough to create an airtight seal, but at least he was offered some measure of protection from the cold. He needed to get back into a fully pressurised environment soon, but right now he had a mission to complete.

This crawl space wasn't big. He could hide here, but he couldn't get anywhere. There was another access hatch above his head. That must lead to the floor of deck six. He could go up there and try to double back to the armoury. There were two spaceys left in the clip. One thing was sure. He'd not be able to kill or even hurt the alien without terrestrial rounds in his gun.

He reached up and undid the cover. If nothing else, he could lead the alien on a game of cat and mouse long enough to let Haylee do her work. At this point, he was expendable. The engineering team was not.