trans_9 | [OPENING EDEN. CLOSED TO ASSIGNED SECURITY/COMMAND/SCIENCE PERSONNEL]

Luis, on the other hand, looked queasy.

Sure, he was a scientist exposed to the vast reaches of space with nothing more than a flimsy suit around him. But he felt like that put things in the proper perspective for him.

You are currently standing exposed to the vacuum of endless, infinite space. There is but a sliver of gravity holding you in place. Going through this barrier will send you careening off into the distant reaches of the universe where there is nothing, absolutely nothing to stop you as you float on and on until you suffocate, freeze or starve, billions upon billions of miles away from anything that could possibly save you.

He was holding on tightly to what remained of the rails on the side of the hall, wondering how he got roped into doing this and why he wasn't just supervising over on the other side.

Samus was used to the vast abyss of space. Careening around the galaxy for so many years had that effect on her. And even despite her usual apparent lack of caution, she attaches herself with a tether without complain. Having been sucked out into the vacuum of space before may or may not have been responsible for this.

She stood close to the rest of the group. She was here for their protection after all. She wondered how many actually had experience with missions like these. Judging by the current reaction (both those of wonder and apparent fear) of the rest of the crew, she decided not many.

Carol had seen many things in the middle of space, but the Bleed was something completely new. It was astonishing to her, beautiful in all it's glory, but also slightly frightening. She knew she could handle being sucked out into it, but she didn't want to do it. So she attached the tether without a word. Following after Samus and the others, she kept her eyes on everything.

Though even then, she was prone to miss the smaller things. The Bleed was taking her whole attention, more than she would ever want it to do.

After several weeks of working in the Spacewalk, Indigo wasn't as immediately awed by it as the rest of them were. The first time she'd stood there, surrounded by floating rubble, she'd been at a loss for words. Even now, she has to admit that it's beautiful.

The Spacewalk is incredibly long, several hundred feet in length. All of the rubble and the bodies that were formerly floating around are now lying on the ground, brought down by Indigo's artificial gravity generators. As they walk for a few minutes, the first body can be found, crumpled. Indigo steps over it like it's not even there, she's seen all she wants to of those things.

The body, and there are several others that look just like it, seems very deformed. The skin is dark and leathery, and the body looks like it underwent a form of mummification. The face, though heavily mummified, seems human, but the proportions of it are all wrong. The eyes aren't the right size, and neither is the mouth. The oddities don't end there, the legs and arms seem warped somehow. Too short arms, fingers don't seem right, the legs are too long.

It's definitely humanoid, whatever it was. But it's just as alien as the rest of the ship.

If Wyn were a biologist (or even a physician), she might have been more curious about the humanoid corpse-- but she's an engineer. She's not here to perform an autopsy or to determine what's growing in the Hydroponics lab on the other side of the Spacewalk, just to see if some of the setups might be transferable to the rest of the ship. So Wyn just steps gingerly over the body, very consciously not looking at the corpse of the former crew member.

Motoko kneeled to examine the body nearest the door, touching the flash-frozen face gently, testing the plasticity of it. Utterly alien thing that it was, she had to touch it. See it from the near angle, as if to be sure of was real. The closeness let her take in the texture of it, and her cyberbrain stored the 3d scans and video automatically.

Instinct was a manifestation of 'gut feeling,' something she'd learned from Batou's example. It was the unconscious manifestation of experience and emotion, and Motoko had lived long enough that when her ghost whispered in that small, still voice that her head came up like a gunshot had been fired. The Major scanned over the spacewalk again— what was wrong here, what was out of place?The Hydroponics end was still, everyone present was at their tasks— or else gawking like an idiot out the window.

For some reason the Major's eyes caught on the edge of the tear, where Indigo's patch met what passed for glass on this ship. Her vision reduced and without questioning it she moved to get a clearer view.

The body was the thing that finally snapped Dustin back to reality, at least to a degree where he could concentrate on a single task. You know, such as examining alien corpses.

He frowned a little at the back of Wyn’s head, mentally chiding her for avoiding such an obvious research opportunity, and so kneeled down himself by the leathery form and took out his data pad. Fantastic—no decomposition, no sitting fluids. The creature must’ve dehydrated almost instantly, his blood and digestive juices leaving first, then his cerebrospinal fluids, then wastes and stored liquids seeping out until they were floating about in the vacuum of space, leaving nothing but a twisted husk of cured skin and marrowless bone. The idea of such a death sent sudden shivers down Dustin’s back. It was, like so many things, horrible yet wonderful at the same time.

Surely they would let him take this one back. Or at least a sample, right? That was part of their task. Dustin glanced up at Indigo, ready to pose the question, when his eyes caught something far more interesting.

Motoko was on to something. “You find something, Major?” he asked, the clear image of the body revolving within his memory as he committed his mind to other things.

Luis was busy jotting down notes about the bodies scattered through the area. Sure, scans were nice, but he trusted his own observations more than anything else.

That, and it was keeping his mind off the endless gaping vacuum of dead space he was yards away from flying through. They probably noticed he was sticking almost amusingly close to the wall even as he took notes.

"Let's hurry up and get this thing open and secure," he urged as he finished his notes. "I don't want to linger out here."

Samus was hardly a xenobiologist, but she did scan the bodies with her visor. She couldn't do much with the information (unless she encountered on live and had to fight it), but it was no extra trouble on her part.

She silently transmitted the information to omnicomms of the scientists on staff. Whether they would think to see it right away, she didn't know, but she figured they'd find it eventually.

Carol had seen more than enough dead alien bodies, so floating over one wasn't really going to turn her head. The major focusing on something that wasn't the body though did. She kept her mouth shut, even as their scientific minded boys were taking their notes. Samus she knew had to be doing more than she let on. Carol had seen and heard Tony do multiple things in his armor at once, she imagined that Samus could do much the same. Which left her. She felt nearly useless. She was the muscle and nothing more.

They would scan the bodies. Indigo figured that the scientists in the group wouldn't wait until the bodies had been removed to give it a perfunctory examination. Her gaze drifts over to the Major, and her ward, and then goes over to the object of their concern. Her patch job. She doesn't see why, her force field generators were powerful enough to keep the vacuum outside and...

Indigo freezes up for a second, eyes going wide. Her sensors flare off warnings in her skull, reporting damage to the spacewalk's structural integrity, too much pressure exerted by the fields, and the cracks that were growing larger as she watches. She whirls to face the other members of the party, hand outstretched in warning. "ABORT MISSIO-"

And then there's a terrible cracking sound as the material between two of her patch jobs breaks open. A roaring sound as all of the air rushes out explosively, exposing the insides of the Spacewalk to the void once more. The bodies are all sucked into the Bleed, as are Indigo's spare tools and possibly anyone who isn't fully weighted down. Indigo herself goes spiralling out, but manages to correct herself quickly. There's a moment of confusion before her sensors alert her to the location of the life signs of her party, and she turns and flies back towards them, fighting the escaping air and dodging the alien corpses.

Her mind is already constructing explanations for what had just happened. She rejects several of them outright.

The bodies had only interested her slightly - Grace was along to see what was in hydroponics, after all. Still, she'd jotted down a few notes on her omnicomm and had been getting ready to move on. And then everything went to Hell. She jerked and tumbled off of her feet as the cable keeping her connected to the rest of the team jerked taut.

"Jesus-!"

The rest of her kit was still strapped safely to her suit, which she was immensely grateful for. Of course, there was also the problem of being jerked around by the rush of escaping air. She tried to grab on to the cable, doing her best to get her feet back on the ground. She was not about to die here.

"F%ck!" Wyn yelps, grabbing tightly onto the lifeline. She'd heard Indigo's warning and managed to turn towards the sound, but she wasn't fast enough to avoid being knocked off her feet by the escaping air. Her tools are gone, sucked out into the vacuum of space, and Wyn is determined to make sure that she doesn't suffer the same fate.

Kusanagi is already in gunfight mode, her body moving with inhuman speed that to her seems agonizingly slow. Her mind races ahead at computer speeds, the augmenting display flashing oxygen readings and diffusion rates, outlining the corpses in red and every living body and tether in shining greens and blues. She doesn't speak, but snatches the lifeline and digs on against the pressure.

Once, she held back a helicopter with her weight as it attempted a tug of war. Now she applies that same attitude against the sudden weight of those tethered to her. One step back. Another. She's panting but not for breath, but to store any excess oxygen she can manage, already delegating hordes of inactive micromachines in her systems to snatching and holing all she can. She can store perhaps fifteen minutes of it. Not enough. Better than none.

The tether holds, but her grip is tenuous, so the Major drops to grip with her hands as she slides a centimeter under the tumbling jerk of weight against the line. The floor wasn't glass, so she dented it with a kick and crouched there, using her sheer mass as an anchor. Milliseconds passed as she watched the others react in slow motion.

"Anchor on me, if you need," came the terse radio-transmission, mirrored aloud though it was an oddly tinny sound through the thinning atmosphere, "The gravity hasn't cut out. Don't panic, exhale against the decompression and get back to the causeway!"

The radio was at least temporarily washed out by the sound of Luis screaming at the top of his lungs, then scrambling to hold on to the line. For a few horrible seconds he was floating, sucked along with the bodies and the rubble, and the equations and facts he had thought of earlier came roaring back.

He managed to hang onto the tether and was even mostly weighed down, but the message I AM GOING TO DIE was plastered across his better reasoning and he had frozen in horror, very near to the fetal position.

An arm reached out to the screaming scientist. Even if he was tethered, he seemed terrified beyond belief. Samus, although initially shaken by being hurdled out into space, quickly composed herself. After all, it wasn't the first time she had gotten yanked out into the vast abyss.

She grabbed Luis's arm and yanked him back with her. She wasn't gonna let people lose control on her watch.

Carol didn't even blink as the world around her went to hell. She heard the screams, the curses, the warning, and even the major's statement. But she was already in action. She had undid her own tether, it was useless for her anyways. She looked around, making sure the others were still secured and went flying at top speed after Indigo. Once she reached her, her expression was anything but friendly.

"We need to get the others back on board the ship, then we can work out what the heck just happened." Carol's arms were folded over her chest. She was fine in the environment, at least for a little while. "Get your force field around them so they can get better grips. Is there anything that blew out that we'll definitely need?"

Indigo swears to herself as she hears the others panicking, and is already working on the calculations for a patch field before Carol even comes up to her. She'd planned on snagging everyone by their EVA suits in an electromagnetic field and pushing them in that way, but scans revealed that Motoko's electronics were not sufficiently hardened, such an attempt would be fatal.

After several seconds of making sure her calculations are correct, she nods, forming a dome above the hole to scoop anyone still stuck too far out, and gradually smooths it out, so that there's a pink force field patching the hole.

Atmosphere slowly hisses back in, but it will be several seconds until it has enough oxygen to support everyone.

Ignoring Carol for now, Indigo scans what remains in the spacewalk, scowling as she notes that everything has been blown out. She looks out, but the Bleed interferes with her scans too much for her to readily tell anything. Finally, she speaks in a voice that starts off an odd mix between frustrated and horrified, but gradually bleeds into an emotional blank. "The bodies are gone. As are several tools, but nothing essential. Everyone seems to have everything important strapped to their suits." The suits she didn't see the point in them wearing. At least Motoko had the weight to keep them all on the floor, and the tether held out.

Indigo drifts down, landing on the outside of the Spacewalk, and inspects the damage done. The two smaller holes had grown, taking all of the material between them out. The resulting hole was much larger, and would take more power and material to repair. "I miscalculated." Her face betrays no expression, save for a scientific detachment, but her fists are clenched and trembling. "I didn't factor in the atmospheric pressure when I set the power levels of the fields." And the result tore chunks out. "That will have to be altered." She glances up at Carol. "I will, of course, take full responsibility for all of this."

With that, she stands and heads over to her field, pushing herself down until she's in the Spacewalk with the other crewmembers, giving each a quick scan to be sure they're safe.

Grace was shaken, but not hurt. All of her equipment had been )thankfully) strapped to her person, so she hadn't lost anything. She kept a tight grip on the line as she slowly made her way back to the others. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line and her heart was racing. That had been one of the most terrifying moments of her life and one which she was not keen to relive anytime soon. She glanced over the rest of the group. Luis seemed terrified and everyone looked a bit rattled, except for the Major and Indigo - although Grace knew enough to think that the other woman might possibly be hiding it all. Failure was never fun.

The pressure-drop collapsed and Motoko fell back into real-time as her micromachine systems counted down the differences between adequate oxygenation and her stored. The right amount came back into balance before she ran out, so the Major resumed breathing, quietly purging the excess. The line looped around her belt was still taut with the way the tethered ends had fallen, so she gamely disconnected herself before standing.

Careful hands touched sidearm and holdout gun to be sure the snaps holding them had held, then she turned to look at Indigo and in a tone that very calmly added an 'or else' informed her, "You're going to have to submit a more detailed report than that."

Edited 2010-04-08 02:09 (UTC)

Luis was still mostly on the ground, still clinging onto the tether that had for a moment very literally been his lifeline. Slowly, when it was apparent he wasn't about to go hurtling out into deep space, he settled down and was calm enough to look up and glance around at the others.

He didn't stay calm for long, though.

"Me cago en la madre que te parió! What in the name of Christ was that? We're all going to be killed! Don't you people look into this kind of thing before we throw ourselves out into the endless vacuum? Puta madre, are we going to get this thing open and get back to the ship, or is there going to be another MASSIVE DISASTER as soon as we do?"

Mistakes happen. Samus knew that. That didn't stop her from being perturbed at Indigo, though. She endangered the crew in a seemingly preventable incident. Yes, Samus was reckless at times, but she always made an effort to put the safety of those around her above her own.

Fortunately, this initial anger (if it could be called that) was hidden by her helmet. The hunter was given a moment to collect her thoughts. She reminded herself that mistakes do happen despite careful precautions. She reminded herself that the other members of the crew acted quickly and admirably to ensure the safety of the others. Mostly she got the hunch that Indigo didn't need a lecture on safety precautions right now. She knew what had happened. She admitted responsibility. That satisfied Samus for now.

What did not satisfy Samus was Luis' outburst. She held up her hand. She offered a simple, "Stop."

It wasn't angry. It wasn't mean. It wasn't demanding. It was a suggestion, calmly stated though if he chose not to follow it, she would unafraid to quiet him in other ways.

And at the same time, Samus was glad she heard the outburst. It was a reminder of how truly different the crew was. How unexposed they were to different situations. Her day's work was the breaking point of others. Likewise she had to keep sight of the fact that one day this inexperience would catch up with her. It bothered her. She pushed it to the back of her mind for the moment but perhaps she would do best to talk to one of the command crew about it...

Carol had to roll her eyes at Luis. He was being a bit over dramatic, even for her tastes. Then again, he probably had never been thrown into such a dangerous situation before. She was going to ignore it for now, and stayed outside of the force field. Someone had to stay back and make sure nothing else went wrong, and this way if someone fell out of the field, or if Indigo faltered. Well Carol could be there.

"I assume one of you are talented enough to get that door back open?" Her voice was a bit hard, but she didn't have breath enough for small talk. Plus she was holding back a whole lot of bitching that they just didn't need to hear her make. Though a part of her wanted to defend Indigo. Even the brightest minds in her world had made horrible mistakes. The Civil War, Hulk's return, the Invasion, Osborn... she could even list off about a hundred things that Pym himself had done wrong, and the man was one of the smartest men on the planet. But she'd save it for another time.

"Dr. Sera, such outbursts don't fit you." She gives him a chilly glance before turning to stare up at Carol, raising both eyebrows. "Are you sure you want to abandon the mission? Yes, we've lost the secondary objectives, but we can still scan Hydroponics." She sounds almost pleading, despite how she keeps her face nearly, nearly blank.

After a second, she speaks up again, without the pleading tone. "However, if you think it best that we scratch this mission, I can open the door again." She'd just rather this little outing didn't end on a complete failure. "I can support this field for a sufficient time enough to scan the area and then allow everyone to lead."

"If you think everything will hold, I'm all for giving hydroponics a look."

Despite the adrenaline rush, Grace was relatively calm again. She'd lived with danger on a daily basis for the last few years of her life - this wasn't that much different. The Bleed and vacuum would kill you just as dead as the air and wildlife on Pandora.

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