"The Ice Hound? I saw that on my orders, it's the name of the ship Zeo is going to pick up, why?"

"Oh, no reason, just saw it on my status screen was a bit surprising since no one told me the ship's name, just that it was brand new."

"Yeaa, that's why I read the document orders that we receive when we are ordered to do something, not just listen to what my commanding officer says."

I gave him a glare as we both started walking towards my new, very used ship. I chuckled softly at that thought. Beside the ship was a mobile staircase that we walked up to the port side airlock. As I stepped within a few feet of the door it began to cycle open, I turned to look at Brendan with an eyebrow raised.

"Uh, few possibilities, Your biometrics were logged during the transaction and added to the ship so only you can open it. If that's true, then there should be an access permissions system in there somewhere. Option two would be: it's programmed to open for whoever gets within a certain distance of the airlock. If it's that one, then we are going to want to change that, preferably as soon as we find out how."

I nodded slowly as I stepped through the door that closed behind us and the air began to cycle. I breathed deeply, suddenly feeling less lethargic and more alert as fresh air was cycled into the airlock.

"Oh, that sneaky son of a…" Brendan suddenly growled. Causing me to turn and look at him. He trailed off when he noticed my look for a few seconds before coming back strong.

"What! He is pumping chemicals into the station's air systems to make people more lethargic and gullible. It's outlawed in eighty percent of known space."

"Is it outlawed in this one?" I asked curiously.

After a few moments, I saw him clench his teeth as his eyes shifted from his HUD To look at me before he replied.

"No."

I let out a sigh, not liking it anymore than he clearly did, but the door in front of me had opened, giving us access to the ship's interior, and it looked like a war zone. My mouth fell open as I stood there in shock. The hallway in front of us had panels missing from the walls and ceiling, wires, cables, and pipes were hanging down or strewn all over the floor. I could even see a little bit of fire damage and electrical damage. When I finally managed to pull my eyes away from the mess and turn to ask Brendan if he could even get this ship off the platform. I saw him standing by a locker wearing some sort of new space suit and was pulling the helmet off the top shelf. He slid it under his arm, then turned to look at me and grinned.

"Relax a little Captain, I'll head down to engineering and see what's what, Then I'll have a better idea of what's going on and how long it will take me to get this ship off this lousy station. Why don't you put on a suit from that locker over there and then head up to the bridge, that way you can monitor the ship as everything starts coming back online." He said before sliding the helmet out from under his arm and placing it on his head, sealing it shut. He then turned and walked off down the corridor, being careful not to step on or get tangled in anything.

I quickly turned to the locker that was behind me and pulled it open expecting to get sprayed or auto equipped or something like back in boot camp but nothing happened. Inside the locker was a huge suit that looked very baggy and a helmet sitting on a shelf over the top of it. "Okay" I mumbled as I reached in and pulled the suit out, being careful not to break or tear it as I carefully stepped into it. When I pulled it up around my neck, the entire thing suddenly shrunk until it was skin tight against me, or at least from the outside it looked skin tight. On the inside, I was still wearing my clothing, but the suit didn't show any signs of this from the outside.

"Ooh, this is awesome" I exclaimed in excitement. I quickly scooped the helmet up off the shelf and slid it on over my head before sealing it in place. Looking around for an exciting change, when nothing happened for a few moments, I let out a sigh of disappointment.

"Not everything can be magical and advanced, I guess." I mumbled before turning to look down the hallway.

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I took a few steps into the hallway when the helmet turned on with words and bars on the glass. My vitals appeared on the lower left, oxygen levels appeared on the lower right, it even had the oxygen levels for outside the suit. Both showed the oxygen was 21% and nitrogen was 78%. The numbers were in green to indicate a breathable level of air. The bar for inside the suit also had a little 72 next to it. A little 3d map appeared on the top left, it only showed the airlock and the hallway in front of me.

"Yea, magic advanced stuff!" I squealed in delight.

I hurried down the hallway whistling a merry tune as I carefully kicked a few cables or pipes to the side so I could pass by a little easier. The damage continued through the ship and when I found the stairs up even they were damaged With a few steps missing. I groaned, knowing there was going to be a lot of work in getting this ship fixed back up into a working order. Eventually I found myself walking past the eco habitat. I glanced in, seeing a few rows of hydroponic tanks with its glass shattered and all over the floor towards the back, I also saw a lot of aeroponics taking up the majority of the room. I was glad that I couldn't spot any pillow beds, I was really not looking forward to having to grow food in soil. I did note that most of the equipment inside the room was broken in some way before I moved on. The housing habitat looked like a small town or hamlet of some kind, except it had a large road style hallway through the middle of it. I also noticed a lot of damage inside, a few houses had even collapsed. I did stop to do a quick count, and rough calculations indicated that about eighty people or family's could be housed here. I moved on, heading for the staircase up.

I came out into a wide open area that had ammo, scrap metal and a few bits n bobs lying around. I walked over to the door, turning my head towards the rear of the ship, I could see Brendan passing by the door to engineering as he carried things back and forth. I turned and looked into the fabrication room and finally understood why the industrial fabricator had been left behind. Someone had the brilliant idea to build it into the ship so that it could not be removed without compromising the ship's systems as a whole. Plus, there was a hole in it, where a missile or something had punched through. I let out a sigh, knowing Brendan would have to fix that before it could help us fix anything else, and turned my head towards the front of the ship and began walking to the door into weapons control.

When I peered inside my mouth fell open, it was an absolute mess, everything was trashed or slagged, and it looked like dozens of electrical fires had gone after everything else in the room. I had no idea how the crazy salesman had managed to fiddle with anything in this room until I noticed a panel that was slightly ajar, like it was on hinges. I walked over to it and slowly pulled it open, seeing a narrow hallway behind it. I cautiously walked down it. I was very surprised when I came to a blast door that scanned me the second I stepped foot into the sight of it. It had a blue beam of light and everything. The blast door started moving to the left and once it had finished rotating a second one that the first had revealed began rotating to the right, once that was open I could see only a narrow staircase leading down.

"Ooh, what's this?" I mumbled as I stepped slowly in and tried to peer down the staircase, but I could only see darkness. I thought about where it could lead and remembered the housing habitat had pillars coming down around the town. At the time, I figured they were support beams or something to hold up the floor above or to run water pipes and air ducts or something like that. Frowning, I slowly descended the staircase back to the floor below and into a very small and cramped room that was a perfect circle, in the centre of the room was a single reclining chair. I could not see any markings or writing on the walls or chair, there was nothing to indicate what the chair did. But considering it was behind two blast doors, it had to either be a prisoner's chair, not likely considering the room was hidden inside the weapons room, so that just left.…

"Oh! It's a CAC!" I squealed in delight as I rushed over to sit on the chair and find out exactly what it did.

*******

Brendan was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, he had his terminal sitting in his lap as he worked on figuring out exactly how damaged everything was. He had released nano machines into the room and was watching the data come back to his terminal from them. From preliminary results, the engineering room did not look like it was in good shape, he believed the engine might be on its last leg and would need replacing.

"I think I can kick it over and get us out of here, blimey that piece of shit wasn't kidding when he said we might be able to limp it through a gate to a dry dock somewhere.

He glanced up looking the engine over as he considered when the best time to kick it over would be, they would need to leave immediately otherwise risk it stalling out and dying which would leave them stranded here. He turned his attention to his HUD, about to call Kenna, when the engine in front of him suddenly kicked over and came online.

"What the fuck!" he screamed as he leapt to his feet. He was about to check if it had enough just to kick over again if he shut it down, but before he could, he heard Kenna voice all around the room.

"Ha! I was right, it is a CAC."

"What, in the ever loving kish, is a CAC?" he asked before remembering the engine and snatched up his terminal to check how it was doing.

"Oh, I can hear you, that's interesting, uh, a CAC if I remember correctly is a Centre And Command, or maybe a Control And Command?"

"Uh huh, that sounds more like you don't know, but that doesn't matter right now, you turned over the engine, and I'm not sure if it will do it a second time, we need to leave like right now, or we will be stuck here until I can rebuild the engine, and that could take months.

"Oh, okay, contacting the tower now to get clearance to leave, you might want to strap yourself into… something, I don't know if all the air will be sucked out of the ship when we leave or even if your area has life support."

"Right, good call!" he shouted as he quickly activated the mag boots in his new suit, magnetising them to the deck so he wouldn't float away. He then activated decompression protocols and felt the suit stiffen up to keep him secure and in place. It was a few minutes later that he was really happy the suit could do that because all the air was suddenly sucked out of the room pulling cables and piping about like they were stuck in a storm. They had even struck his suit multiple times. However, he had not felt a thing, all the debris fell back to the deck when the air was finally gone. He had stood there the entire time watching the gauge for outside air plummet to zero.

"I am in vacuum" he stated simply as his eyes shifted back to the engine that was silently humming along.

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