10. Connections are key

John stood there, recorder in hand, waiting for the steps closing in. He could hear more than one pair, unsure how many others he could hear, his thoughts raced, could be the chatty group returning even though the order to stop still standing? Could be the previous guy bringing friends, or someone else is approaching? Nevertheless, the slow data upload continues and John’s only focus is to solve the case, he needs every bit of data in hope of doing that.

A distant beeping coming from his helmet notified him to an incoming message, pulled it back up to see it. A status report from his remote computer, stating upload ten percent done, a week worth of data, however a red line showing almost half of data are corrupted. A short message appeared from his assistant:

• “Team is still on their way, why didn’t you wait?” — she surely can see the incoming data, thought John, and her continuous worries ought to pay off once. He quickly growled a few words into his helmet to send a reply:
• “Workers break recorders, have no time, contact the carrier shipmaster” — silently cursing himself for not asking the master’s name now slowing down his route to help, he tuned his radio in hopes of establishing direct contact.

On the original band he could hear only white noise, still he uttered some words to ask for assistance. Switched secondary radio to emergency band, a military one his briefing materials contained and repeated same message as he saw the bright orange worker uniforms appearing in front of him. Six figure lined up in an arc, a seventh figure in their centre, all turned toward John. Their helmet on sunshade mode so John could not see their faces, not even his net-gear can pick up any details. A few of the figures were brandishing metal pipes, one of them a hammer and a screw bar, as a silent threat. However they could not surround John fully with a few corridors behind his back. Upload is at twenty percent, maybe if he can stall them a bit.

• “Hey, guys, what’s up?” — John threw his helmet back.
• “Just drop that and we let you go” — slightly distorted voice coming from the central figure.
• “What do you want with a junk like this?” — already expecting the obvious answer, John played the moron. If they would know they are messing with a trained GTSB investigator.
• “None of your business, drop it and run before we start breaking bones”
• “How about being civilized here?” — John threw his helmet back — “And let’s introduce ourselves, my name is John”
• “Who cares” — as the central figure moved slowly and directly toward John, the figures in the arc pulled apart and followed the contours of the room.
• “An investigator of the Galactic Transportation Safety Board” — the middle figure stumbled for a moment, just as John thought, these had no idea who they are dealing with. And John had no idea who he was dealing with here, the insignias were missing from the uniforms, faces invisible behind helmets even though they were in a pressurized area.

The figure in the middle touched his tool-belt when John made his move. The momentary confusion as the assumed leader of this group unsure what to do with the investigator was John’s chance. Yanked the QEC module out and swung the recorder right into the face of his opponent. Tempered glass and plastic shattered. The heavy recorder acting as a hammer in low gravity knocked the skull without much resistance. John could only see a fish tattoo on the neck of his opponent before he kicked his feet up. The figures from the side jumped after him but missed as John was already flying toward the back corridors. The line behind fell with a loud thump catching their boss’s unconscious body.

John took long steps in the low gravity of the moon, corridor after corridor, his turns looking like a grasshopper travels grass. Though he knew the layout of the ship well, he didn’t knew the damage nor the current state. He could hear two figures following him, they had easy task in that as junction after junction were full of rubbles and only one way was cleaned. A few moments later John almost flew into a pressurizing door. Salvage workers installed a few pressure checkpoints throughout the clean-up making internal work easier. These doors can take some beating however they are more akin to a reinforced bouncing castle, kept inflated by the air from the internal pressure zone. Doors with magnetic lock could be easily operated, this one had no code or access requirements so John pulled up his helmet again. While securing it to his peeked on the frozen upload state, he hoped he can find useful clues what lead to the blowup of the ring in the fifty percent saved. However if he gets out of this alive, he needs to find other recorders.

Outside of the airlock, a wide open space, reminding John of his opera visits, a large concert area laid bare. Where once the huge glass allowed real stars to act as performance background, now half a moon surface and half the black space was visible. The bright moon surface in the daylight shined through the hall of the dead, still frozen into their seats from the day of the disaster. Such a scale of the horrifying events, there lay still hundreds if not thousands of souls no-one got to give their honors yet. And John had no time to process the scene either as his pursuers were already opening the airlock. He jumped sideways, there should be some viewing rooms where he could find a route back to the temporary hospital.

Then he felt a body behind him pushing downward, one of his pursuer. Landed harder into the frozen carpet threw ice crystals in the air. John was held down, crowbar around his neck though the suit kept it away enough to be able to breathe. Knee and an arm on his back, crowbar now knocking his helmet. Glass braking, a few more hits and his helmet will break. In the low gravity and a swift push up with all arms and legs threw his heavy back-pain to the air missing the last swing. John is back up and rushing toward the balcony, jumping meters in the lower gravity. Barely can see out his helmet through the cracks, at this point not at all amused, searches for anything he can use to defend himself.

On his surprise, middle of the balcony floor lies a pistol, still loaded. No time to think what a loaded gun did in the concert hall, he cocked it, his old police training kicked in and aimed stably. Humans are great at developing machines to kill other humans, all modern ammunition were ready for the time when the race entered the space era, holding its own oxygen for burning. He has never killed anyone before and wished to keep it that way. The fear of having to do it grabbed his logical mind, and his brain already swimming in fight or flight stress hormones could not resist the savage urges. As the figure with the crowbar held high flew up to the balcony, John fired his shot. Right through the helmet, knocking the lifeless body into a backflip as the low gravity pulled it down, like a slow motion movie emphasizing the death of the bad guy. However to John, it wasn’t a fiction and had to gulp his stomach content back down multiple times. Normally it would be bad to let vomit out into your own helmet, with the flaky integrity of his damaged one, it could be fatal breaking it.

As he composed himself, walked back up to the balcony to look down.