Posted by: procyon
« on: January 10, 2013, 10:01:52 AM »March 2205 part 10
March 2nd 0555 hours/Mars Traffic Control Center, Mars surface
Rear Admiral Jamie Gauld looked about the control room. The once bright room was now lit by several battery powered lanterns. The staff, once dressed in Space Service uniforms, were now dressed in light EVA suits. The screens were mostly dark. Power had been restored to a few, but no more than half a dozen. A portable radio, heavily shielded against EMP, was now hooked into the communications array and was set to work as a repeater from the Communication Specialist's EVA suit.
Jamie looked around at the Control Center and the staff. 'We have some ability to follow what is happening and give orders. But it sure ain't much.'
Jamie moved over to the Traffic Control plot. "How is the redeployment of the Seventeenth going? Have we got lifters to their site yet, Charlie?"
A young woman, Ensign Charlotte Peterson, turned from the monitor she had been intently tapping at. "Admiral, I think we have one lifter routed from the Mars Station to their site, but I haven't gotten confirmation that it has landed. The Control Center's array is down and we are working off a feed I have patched through from Defense Base One. But the debris from the blasts is making it difficult for them to track movements near ground level."
"Keep working on it. If you can track down any assets that can help, put them to work. Commandeer anything that can move passengers."
Another voice grabbed Jamie's attention. "Admiral, the Third Battalion of the Fourth Light Power Armor has made contact. They indicate they have their company of Stewart Light Assault Vehicles loaded and ready to go. They could get here with them carrying a company of infantry in thirty minutes."
Jamie moved away from Ensign Peterson and turned towards the radio. "Tell whoever's running the Third of the Fourth that they need to move to the spaceport near Dome Fourteen. There are only two facilities set up to offload the amount of supplies we will need if this drags out, and this one is not open for business. They need to secure the civilian facilities by Dome Fourteen before the aliens do. Get the rest of the Fourth on their heels as soon as possible."
Jamie turned back to the monitors only to see them black out. "What the hell just happened?"
"Admiral, we've lost the link to the external array. All external feeds are down. Comm is out also."
Jamie switched his internal radio over to the Security Team's band. "Sierra Tango Tango Charlie this is Juliette Bravo, Sitrep."
The radio filled with static for a few moments before a voice broke through. "Juliette Bravo, this is Tango Charlie. Heavily engaged in Concourses One through Four. Ogres times two have breached external walls near Hatches Seven and Eight. Moving in unknown strength toward Juliette Alpha. Sending squad for extraction..." The radio signal suddenly broke off and was replaced by static.
Jamie switched his radio back to the Control Center's internal frequency. "Everyone, pack up what you can. We move in two minutes for Concourse Five. Comm, see if you can get that portable to raise anyone over in that area. See if they have any birds on the ground that can still fly, and better yet, someone who can fly them. We are moving to Mars Station One. It's the only place we are going to have the eyes to track this situation and keep in contact with all the units."
Jamie scrolled through the menus on his HUD. 'It's been a long time since I piloted a lifter. Sure hope we can find one I can fly.'
0612 hours/Enemy Spaceport, Fourth planet surface
Soldier 24-52 extended his magnetic field, along with the other light suit and his Team Leader, Soldier 24-50. 'We need to push back all this dust. The particles are becoming charged and clouding the sensors on my suit.'
Soldier 24-52 could feel the rapid pulses from his Team Leader's gauss weapon as he sprayed fire through the nearby hatchway and out across the searing landscape beyond it. Soldier 24-52 could feel that his suit was still far too hot to fire his weapon yet, and tried to vent heat into the lower external rockets. Moments later he detached them and fired both out into the hellish landscape outside, programming their fields to settle into the dust and activate their movement sensors.
'Those two bombs will give us some warning if they try to reach this hatchway. Venting this section of the enemy's home has cooled it for now, but soon it will be just as hot in here as it is outside.'
Soldier 24-52 could sense as the Team Leader moved away from the hatch and Soldier 24-51 moved to continue the suppressive fire. 'It will be my turn in only a few moments. The weapon is ready.' Soldier 24-52 altered the field in his suit and tried to use the targeting sensors to extend his perception through the wall. 'I can feel through the wall for a short distance, but the floating charges make it impossible to lock onto a target from here.' Soldier 24-52 switched the targeting over to a thermal setting. 'This can't see through the walls, but the enemy suits still shine like flaming demons, even in this inferno.'
Soldier 24-52 suddenly felt his suit shift violently as a grenade detonated in the hatchway. He could sense as sections of the external wall were vaporized by some weapon and the two rockets he had placed outside the hatchway detonated, spewing more of the swirling charged dust inside the hatch.
Soldier 24-52 altered the suit's field and moved away from the hatch then began firing on it with his gauss weapon as he fell back. Even as he moved his suit behind a craft in the bay and continued to fire underneath of it towards the hatchway, he could feel the pain and fear of Soldier 24-51 as the superheated atmosphere slowly invaded his suit. He could also feel Team Leader 24-50 sending orders to Soldier 24-51. Even as Soldier 24-51 was dying, he moved his suit beyond the hatch into the scorching ground filled with the enemy and detonated the remaining rockets on his suit.
Soldier 24-52 suddenly sensed several of the enemy suits rocket past the hatchway and into the bay. He shifted behind the cover and detached four of the external rockets and locked them onto the rapidly moving figures. Soldier 24-52 felt dozens of other rockets closing on the hatchway with his and felt the detonations as they shock the inside of the bay. 'We won't have enough rockets to hold them all off much longer.'
Soldier 24-52 could feel a new field suddenly filling the room, followed by the field of his Team Leader ordering him to push forward toward the hatchway again.
The new field became clearer and stronger and meaning filled it. He tried to supress the fear he felt, trying to keep it from invading the field.
"This is Attack Craft 22. Four Heavy Assault Suits and twenty triads to deploy immediately. Supporting fire requested for landing."
Soldier 24-52 moved toward the door and fired his gauss weapon into the clouds of dust and the enemy soldiers it hid.
0620 hours/Mars Central Spaceport, Concourse 5, Mars surface
Li Xue hung on tightly with both hands. 'I feel like part of a streamer some child is waving in the wind.'
A sudden ripple in the human chain made Li grab even harder to the woman in front of her, as her left arm became even more numb. "I know we need to hold on to each other like this so we can keep up with you, but I don't think I can hold on like this much longer." Li waited to see if there was any response.
'I didn't figure he could hear me. This silly suit has no radio. The only people who can hear me are the ones I'm right up against. Which would be some woman I don't even know in front of me, and the nurse that is all doped up behind me.' Li felt a moment of guilt as she remembered forcing the nurse to take the meds that had been intended for her.
Li looked around at the chain of people she was part of. 'There are about eight of us, and I'm halfway back along the chain. The cyborg can move quickly because his feet stick to these floors. But the rest of us just bounce in the low gravity if we try to go fast or change direction in a hurry. So one of us hangs onto the cyborg and the rest of us just string out behind.' Li felt her left arm begin to slip and dug in even more tightly with her right. A muffled squeal of pain and an angry voice echoed in her puffed up skin suit. All of it gibberish.
"Oh please shut up. If I let go, I and everyone behind me are dead. If you don't like it, complain to the aliens. They started all this." Li could feel her left arm slipping more and suddenly reached up with her legs and wrapped them around the woman in front of her. 'Oh my. She sounds even more upset than before.' Li leaned forward so the bubble around her head touched the woman's in front of her. "Just shut up and keep your legs toward the floor. You stumble and both our butts are going to bounce on this hard floor."
Li could feel sweat trickling down her face and back as she held on. She took a few deep breaths but it didn't seem to help. 'The air in this skin suit is getting stale already. They say it will last five minutes, but I doubt that is if you are holding on for dear life and bouncing around like a rag doll. Oh no. Another corner.'
Li braced herself as the cyborg moved quickly around the corner and the chain swung with him. Li could feel feet skittering on the floor trying to slow down, and watched as she and the line slowly hit the wall. 'That wasn't so bad. Maybe that cyborg is taking pity on us.' Li looked up and saw a cloud of dust suddenly billow into the new hallway they had just entered and the lights dimmed. "Oh smeg, that isn't good."
Li could feel the cyborg change from a fast walk to a dead run and felt her left arm pull free. Another sudden jerk pulled her right arm free also. Li cinched her legs hard and tried to lock her feet together while her head was folded harshly against her chest as it was pushed forward by the body of the nurse behind her. She felt the pressure on her neck let up and looked back in time to see the nurse drift free as she lost her grip. Li grabbed for the nurse with her right hand and just managed to get hold of her arm. She could feel the nurse's fingers dig into her as she also held on for her life. Suddenly the nurse was rushing toward her and Li felt herself smashed between the nurse and the woman in front of her.
"What was that for?" Li tried to look around and saw that she was only a few meters from a lifter of some sort and that the cyborg had freed himself from the chain and was beginning to move up the side of the lifter. Li released her grips and tried to orient herself as she fell toward the floor in a slow spin. As she seemed to crawl toward the floor she could see that a side hatch on the lifter was open. As she continued her slow spin, she saw flashes light the dim bay. 'Oh no. Oh no ! Please No !" Li struggled to get a hand or foot to the floor to push off with as over a dozen alien suits and power armored soldiers fought in one of the entrances to the bay. Li saw dust spray from the side of the lifter as one of the alien suits fired.
Li pushed her way toward the open hatch and scrambled inside the lifter. "I can't see a thing. Can anyone turn on a light?! Please turn on a light !" Li found a structure inside the lifter and clung to it. Tried to pull it between her and the hatch. Li looked back and forth. 'It's too dark. I can't see anything !'
Li watched as the lifter door shut and the compartment was plunged into complete darkness. Li realized that her chest was burning and her breath was coming in ragged gasps. 'Oh god, I'm going to suffocate in this suit before they know I'm even in here.' Then she felt herself being pulled away from whatever it was she had hold of, and clung to it harder. 'I can't even catch my breath to scream ! It can’t end like this.’
Li's chest began to ache from exertion and her head hurt. Light flooded her vision and she realized that everything looked very grey. She could see others in skin suits gathered in the compartment with her, and that someone was up walking around. She watched as the grey figure reached down to pull the hood of her suit loose and felt cold air on her face.
0629 hours/GTOS 22, 500 meters above Mars
Ensign Tom Hudson tried to pull the struggling Chinese woman from the bracket she had wrapped herself around. 'Damn, she has a death grip on this. She had a good hold on it when she was purple and nearly suffocated. Now she's really latched on. I could peel her off, but I'd definitely hurt her doing it.'
Tom looked over to see that the nurse who'd accompanied him for the better part of the last hour had taken the helmet off of her EVA suit and was helping the other passengers. 'I'm just going to let her take care of the rest. She can fix the ones that haven't opened up their skin suits yet. We didn't go through all that work to save their sorry butts just for them to suffocate on my boat. She isn't going to be able to talk to this little lady though. At least I doubt that nurse Kelly speaks Chinese.'
Tom took a moment to count heads in the shuttle's outer hatchway. 'Looks like I've got six in here. Damn. We must have lost one somewhere along the line.' Tom turned back to the woman curled up into a ball around the bracket, then selected the translator menu on his HUD and switched the output to the dialect of Chinese that had worked a few days before. 'Alright, now what do I say?'
Tom knelt beside the Chinese woman and waited as her breathing slowed down. As he waited he heard several pings on the outer hull that told him some alien was taking pot shots at his shuttle. "Lay off, damn it."
"What?"
Tom looked back to the woman in front of him and found her looking into his faceplate. "Not you. You're safe for now. Are you hurt?" She seemed to lose focus for a moment and took a few breaths, then began to slowly move her arms and legs a bit. Tom watched her speak and waited for the translator to catch up. 'This is like watching a poorly dubbed vid.'
"I think I'm no worse than I was before you found me. I can't feel my left arm very well."
Tom nodded to her. "I need you to let go of the bracket so we can get you into an inner compartment. We are heading to the station in orbit. If this compartment has been holed it will lose pressure before we dock."
Tom watched as the woman's face grew more focused, and she struggled to unwrap herself from the bracket. "Good. Good. Slowly. There now." Tom gently took her arm as she tried to stand in the shuttle while its acceleration shifted which direction was 'down' every few seconds. "Let's get to the passenger bay. You should enjoy this ride. It isn't every day you get to ride a shuttle flown by an admiral." The woman didn't seem to be paying much attention to what he was saying, just shuffling along beside Tom.
"You might even have left a souvenir on this crate. I don't know if they ever unloaded your suit after we landed." Tom felt the woman stop moving and looked at her. 'Hell, she's even paler now than when I opened the room she was trapped in.' Tom watched as the woman slowly began to shake like a leaf and tears started to roll down her face. Tom waited for a moment and picked her up. 'I used to carry my kids like this. That seems like another life now.'
Tom placed her in the acceleration couch as Kelly came up beside him. "What happened to her? Is she hurt?"
Tom pulled the straps across the sobbing woman and snapped the buckles together, then switched the output on his speaker to English. "I don't think so. Not physically. She was one of the Chinese soldiers on Hektor. I think she's the only one now. Only god knows what she went through there, or who she lost."
Tom was surprised to hear an accented voice from a nearby couch, and the hate in it.
"She should have died with the rest. They killed my husband when they landed. She deserves whatever happened to her."
March 2nd 0555 hours/Mars Traffic Control Center, Mars surface
Rear Admiral Jamie Gauld looked about the control room. The once bright room was now lit by several battery powered lanterns. The staff, once dressed in Space Service uniforms, were now dressed in light EVA suits. The screens were mostly dark. Power had been restored to a few, but no more than half a dozen. A portable radio, heavily shielded against EMP, was now hooked into the communications array and was set to work as a repeater from the Communication Specialist's EVA suit.
Jamie looked around at the Control Center and the staff. 'We have some ability to follow what is happening and give orders. But it sure ain't much.'
Jamie moved over to the Traffic Control plot. "How is the redeployment of the Seventeenth going? Have we got lifters to their site yet, Charlie?"
A young woman, Ensign Charlotte Peterson, turned from the monitor she had been intently tapping at. "Admiral, I think we have one lifter routed from the Mars Station to their site, but I haven't gotten confirmation that it has landed. The Control Center's array is down and we are working off a feed I have patched through from Defense Base One. But the debris from the blasts is making it difficult for them to track movements near ground level."
"Keep working on it. If you can track down any assets that can help, put them to work. Commandeer anything that can move passengers."
Another voice grabbed Jamie's attention. "Admiral, the Third Battalion of the Fourth Light Power Armor has made contact. They indicate they have their company of Stewart Light Assault Vehicles loaded and ready to go. They could get here with them carrying a company of infantry in thirty minutes."
Jamie moved away from Ensign Peterson and turned towards the radio. "Tell whoever's running the Third of the Fourth that they need to move to the spaceport near Dome Fourteen. There are only two facilities set up to offload the amount of supplies we will need if this drags out, and this one is not open for business. They need to secure the civilian facilities by Dome Fourteen before the aliens do. Get the rest of the Fourth on their heels as soon as possible."
Jamie turned back to the monitors only to see them black out. "What the hell just happened?"
"Admiral, we've lost the link to the external array. All external feeds are down. Comm is out also."
Jamie switched his internal radio over to the Security Team's band. "Sierra Tango Tango Charlie this is Juliette Bravo, Sitrep."
The radio filled with static for a few moments before a voice broke through. "Juliette Bravo, this is Tango Charlie. Heavily engaged in Concourses One through Four. Ogres times two have breached external walls near Hatches Seven and Eight. Moving in unknown strength toward Juliette Alpha. Sending squad for extraction..." The radio signal suddenly broke off and was replaced by static.
Jamie switched his radio back to the Control Center's internal frequency. "Everyone, pack up what you can. We move in two minutes for Concourse Five. Comm, see if you can get that portable to raise anyone over in that area. See if they have any birds on the ground that can still fly, and better yet, someone who can fly them. We are moving to Mars Station One. It's the only place we are going to have the eyes to track this situation and keep in contact with all the units."
Jamie scrolled through the menus on his HUD. 'It's been a long time since I piloted a lifter. Sure hope we can find one I can fly.'
0612 hours/Enemy Spaceport, Fourth planet surface
Soldier 24-52 extended his magnetic field, along with the other light suit and his Team Leader, Soldier 24-50. 'We need to push back all this dust. The particles are becoming charged and clouding the sensors on my suit.'
Soldier 24-52 could feel the rapid pulses from his Team Leader's gauss weapon as he sprayed fire through the nearby hatchway and out across the searing landscape beyond it. Soldier 24-52 could feel that his suit was still far too hot to fire his weapon yet, and tried to vent heat into the lower external rockets. Moments later he detached them and fired both out into the hellish landscape outside, programming their fields to settle into the dust and activate their movement sensors.
'Those two bombs will give us some warning if they try to reach this hatchway. Venting this section of the enemy's home has cooled it for now, but soon it will be just as hot in here as it is outside.'
Soldier 24-52 could sense as the Team Leader moved away from the hatch and Soldier 24-51 moved to continue the suppressive fire. 'It will be my turn in only a few moments. The weapon is ready.' Soldier 24-52 altered the field in his suit and tried to use the targeting sensors to extend his perception through the wall. 'I can feel through the wall for a short distance, but the floating charges make it impossible to lock onto a target from here.' Soldier 24-52 switched the targeting over to a thermal setting. 'This can't see through the walls, but the enemy suits still shine like flaming demons, even in this inferno.'
Soldier 24-52 suddenly felt his suit shift violently as a grenade detonated in the hatchway. He could sense as sections of the external wall were vaporized by some weapon and the two rockets he had placed outside the hatchway detonated, spewing more of the swirling charged dust inside the hatch.
Soldier 24-52 altered the suit's field and moved away from the hatch then began firing on it with his gauss weapon as he fell back. Even as he moved his suit behind a craft in the bay and continued to fire underneath of it towards the hatchway, he could feel the pain and fear of Soldier 24-51 as the superheated atmosphere slowly invaded his suit. He could also feel Team Leader 24-50 sending orders to Soldier 24-51. Even as Soldier 24-51 was dying, he moved his suit beyond the hatch into the scorching ground filled with the enemy and detonated the remaining rockets on his suit.
Soldier 24-52 suddenly sensed several of the enemy suits rocket past the hatchway and into the bay. He shifted behind the cover and detached four of the external rockets and locked them onto the rapidly moving figures. Soldier 24-52 felt dozens of other rockets closing on the hatchway with his and felt the detonations as they shock the inside of the bay. 'We won't have enough rockets to hold them all off much longer.'
Soldier 24-52 could feel a new field suddenly filling the room, followed by the field of his Team Leader ordering him to push forward toward the hatchway again.
The new field became clearer and stronger and meaning filled it. He tried to supress the fear he felt, trying to keep it from invading the field.
"This is Attack Craft 22. Four Heavy Assault Suits and twenty triads to deploy immediately. Supporting fire requested for landing."
Soldier 24-52 moved toward the door and fired his gauss weapon into the clouds of dust and the enemy soldiers it hid.
0620 hours/Mars Central Spaceport, Concourse 5, Mars surface
Li Xue hung on tightly with both hands. 'I feel like part of a streamer some child is waving in the wind.'
A sudden ripple in the human chain made Li grab even harder to the woman in front of her, as her left arm became even more numb. "I know we need to hold on to each other like this so we can keep up with you, but I don't think I can hold on like this much longer." Li waited to see if there was any response.
'I didn't figure he could hear me. This silly suit has no radio. The only people who can hear me are the ones I'm right up against. Which would be some woman I don't even know in front of me, and the nurse that is all doped up behind me.' Li felt a moment of guilt as she remembered forcing the nurse to take the meds that had been intended for her.
Li looked around at the chain of people she was part of. 'There are about eight of us, and I'm halfway back along the chain. The cyborg can move quickly because his feet stick to these floors. But the rest of us just bounce in the low gravity if we try to go fast or change direction in a hurry. So one of us hangs onto the cyborg and the rest of us just string out behind.' Li felt her left arm begin to slip and dug in even more tightly with her right. A muffled squeal of pain and an angry voice echoed in her puffed up skin suit. All of it gibberish.
"Oh please shut up. If I let go, I and everyone behind me are dead. If you don't like it, complain to the aliens. They started all this." Li could feel her left arm slipping more and suddenly reached up with her legs and wrapped them around the woman in front of her. 'Oh my. She sounds even more upset than before.' Li leaned forward so the bubble around her head touched the woman's in front of her. "Just shut up and keep your legs toward the floor. You stumble and both our butts are going to bounce on this hard floor."
Li could feel sweat trickling down her face and back as she held on. She took a few deep breaths but it didn't seem to help. 'The air in this skin suit is getting stale already. They say it will last five minutes, but I doubt that is if you are holding on for dear life and bouncing around like a rag doll. Oh no. Another corner.'
Li braced herself as the cyborg moved quickly around the corner and the chain swung with him. Li could feel feet skittering on the floor trying to slow down, and watched as she and the line slowly hit the wall. 'That wasn't so bad. Maybe that cyborg is taking pity on us.' Li looked up and saw a cloud of dust suddenly billow into the new hallway they had just entered and the lights dimmed. "Oh smeg, that isn't good."
Li could feel the cyborg change from a fast walk to a dead run and felt her left arm pull free. Another sudden jerk pulled her right arm free also. Li cinched her legs hard and tried to lock her feet together while her head was folded harshly against her chest as it was pushed forward by the body of the nurse behind her. She felt the pressure on her neck let up and looked back in time to see the nurse drift free as she lost her grip. Li grabbed for the nurse with her right hand and just managed to get hold of her arm. She could feel the nurse's fingers dig into her as she also held on for her life. Suddenly the nurse was rushing toward her and Li felt herself smashed between the nurse and the woman in front of her.
"What was that for?" Li tried to look around and saw that she was only a few meters from a lifter of some sort and that the cyborg had freed himself from the chain and was beginning to move up the side of the lifter. Li released her grips and tried to orient herself as she fell toward the floor in a slow spin. As she seemed to crawl toward the floor she could see that a side hatch on the lifter was open. As she continued her slow spin, she saw flashes light the dim bay. 'Oh no. Oh no ! Please No !" Li struggled to get a hand or foot to the floor to push off with as over a dozen alien suits and power armored soldiers fought in one of the entrances to the bay. Li saw dust spray from the side of the lifter as one of the alien suits fired.
Li pushed her way toward the open hatch and scrambled inside the lifter. "I can't see a thing. Can anyone turn on a light?! Please turn on a light !" Li found a structure inside the lifter and clung to it. Tried to pull it between her and the hatch. Li looked back and forth. 'It's too dark. I can't see anything !'
Li watched as the lifter door shut and the compartment was plunged into complete darkness. Li realized that her chest was burning and her breath was coming in ragged gasps. 'Oh god, I'm going to suffocate in this suit before they know I'm even in here.' Then she felt herself being pulled away from whatever it was she had hold of, and clung to it harder. 'I can't even catch my breath to scream ! It can’t end like this.’
Li's chest began to ache from exertion and her head hurt. Light flooded her vision and she realized that everything looked very grey. She could see others in skin suits gathered in the compartment with her, and that someone was up walking around. She watched as the grey figure reached down to pull the hood of her suit loose and felt cold air on her face.
0629 hours/GTOS 22, 500 meters above Mars
Ensign Tom Hudson tried to pull the struggling Chinese woman from the bracket she had wrapped herself around. 'Damn, she has a death grip on this. She had a good hold on it when she was purple and nearly suffocated. Now she's really latched on. I could peel her off, but I'd definitely hurt her doing it.'
Tom looked over to see that the nurse who'd accompanied him for the better part of the last hour had taken the helmet off of her EVA suit and was helping the other passengers. 'I'm just going to let her take care of the rest. She can fix the ones that haven't opened up their skin suits yet. We didn't go through all that work to save their sorry butts just for them to suffocate on my boat. She isn't going to be able to talk to this little lady though. At least I doubt that nurse Kelly speaks Chinese.'
Tom took a moment to count heads in the shuttle's outer hatchway. 'Looks like I've got six in here. Damn. We must have lost one somewhere along the line.' Tom turned back to the woman curled up into a ball around the bracket, then selected the translator menu on his HUD and switched the output to the dialect of Chinese that had worked a few days before. 'Alright, now what do I say?'
Tom knelt beside the Chinese woman and waited as her breathing slowed down. As he waited he heard several pings on the outer hull that told him some alien was taking pot shots at his shuttle. "Lay off, damn it."
"What?"
Tom looked back to the woman in front of him and found her looking into his faceplate. "Not you. You're safe for now. Are you hurt?" She seemed to lose focus for a moment and took a few breaths, then began to slowly move her arms and legs a bit. Tom watched her speak and waited for the translator to catch up. 'This is like watching a poorly dubbed vid.'
"I think I'm no worse than I was before you found me. I can't feel my left arm very well."
Tom nodded to her. "I need you to let go of the bracket so we can get you into an inner compartment. We are heading to the station in orbit. If this compartment has been holed it will lose pressure before we dock."
Tom watched as the woman's face grew more focused, and she struggled to unwrap herself from the bracket. "Good. Good. Slowly. There now." Tom gently took her arm as she tried to stand in the shuttle while its acceleration shifted which direction was 'down' every few seconds. "Let's get to the passenger bay. You should enjoy this ride. It isn't every day you get to ride a shuttle flown by an admiral." The woman didn't seem to be paying much attention to what he was saying, just shuffling along beside Tom.
"You might even have left a souvenir on this crate. I don't know if they ever unloaded your suit after we landed." Tom felt the woman stop moving and looked at her. 'Hell, she's even paler now than when I opened the room she was trapped in.' Tom watched as the woman slowly began to shake like a leaf and tears started to roll down her face. Tom waited for a moment and picked her up. 'I used to carry my kids like this. That seems like another life now.'
Tom placed her in the acceleration couch as Kelly came up beside him. "What happened to her? Is she hurt?"
Tom pulled the straps across the sobbing woman and snapped the buckles together, then switched the output on his speaker to English. "I don't think so. Not physically. She was one of the Chinese soldiers on Hektor. I think she's the only one now. Only god knows what she went through there, or who she lost."
Tom was surprised to hear an accented voice from a nearby couch, and the hate in it.
"She should have died with the rest. They killed my husband when they landed. She deserves whatever happened to her."