One of the pieces of software onboard a knight's power armor is Snake Game.
After a set period (normally 7 minutes) of no motion, the inner HUD buzzes annoyingly. The knight can either push an uncomfortable pair of buttons with their face to silence the alarm, or play the snake game.
The snake rapidly moves across a field in the periphery of the knight's vision there is a single pixel dot that the snake must consume. Doing so ends the game uneventfully.
If the snake fails to eat the dot within 4 seconds a "punishment" intended to wake the knight is administered. Electric shock normally, some suits come with a pincher, or the adhesive. Premium suits sometimes carry more than one. The philosophy being that one source of stimuli can create a tolerance, multiple, if failing to prevent tolerance, will at least slow the development of tolerance.
The snake is traditionally controlled with the left large toe. Though the best way to control the snake is ancient debate.
And so in silence the knights kept their posts, movement was minimized to minimize auditory and visual signatures. Only the basic climate control of their suits of armor would betray their presence as more than metal scrap.
Outside the station, there was a predicted ambient radiation of 400 mSv/hr by the time the shuttle arrived. The suit could cut that down to sub 50 mSv/hr. The sacred texts said that they had a 5 hour limit in such an environment. But the ancients were known wussies. The official church limit was 10 hours in this environment.
And when you stand for an hour in silence watching impressive mSv/hr numbers go up. With only a few seconds of propellant to save you if you lose your grip or gentle magnetic footing. You start to ask yourself what the divine limit for radiation exposure is.
The sacred texts say something above 2000 mSv. Which would be at least 20 hours outside the station, probably less with how the environment was going.
You could see the spiral of coolant spray sometimes as the station rotated. It was not every rotation, but sometimes the distant light of the young yellow star caught the silver disk and a phantom cloud of death would appear in the mortal plane, fading as the station, and your body, invariably spun away.
You could even see the trail of the station in the cloud, where the reactor cut a neat little stencil into the cloud, implying a truly hellish amount of radioactive heat in some parts of the station.
The unnerving mass of the planet they orbited, a gas giant, was another matter entirely.
And so Oscar and Jason, the eldest two knights, sat patiently accumulating what was estimated to be a 70 to 80 mSv dose. The hope was that that was the only danger they were exposing themselves today, in the best case scenario the monster had run scared for whatever reason.
Charles popped from the airlock, a plume of gas escaped. Which indicated that the airlock was not so much an airlock anymore as it was being used expeditiously.
There was a brief communication there was no encryption the message was simple
"Enemy detected. They are not attacking. Hold your position. Do not attempt to aid us."
And though the knights outside could observe Charles Charles did not appear to observe them. The hope was their positions would remain passive receivers of the information minimizing signature.
And Charles ducked back into the airlock, and it closed behind him.
Charles returned to the people. There was one hour remaining before the shuttle arrived. Radiation levels continued to rise. And one of the civilian janitor bots had during its shut down phase recorded footage of the monster, before uploading the data to one of the computers accessible by what still existed in the command net.
Old footage had simply shown an unfortunate accident followed by an out of context collapse. Review of new footage seem to imply that this monster did have a ranged weapon, but did not prefer to use it. Indeed, the radioactive casualty, who is the station paramedics had now wheeled to departures, and swaddled are in what appears to be a lead straight jacket had brought the footage now analyzed. Footage that displayed the horrific injuries sustained by his comrades. Three of five had been mangled severely, as if crushed and shredded by industrial machinery.. one nearly decapitated, one crushed rib cage and spine, one destroyed face caved in such that the skull was more visible than anything it was meant to provide structure for. The final unaccounted for body according to the footage, had been reduced to nothing but bones. It lay in a pool of once molten slag, nearly bonded to the primordial puddle. The last casualty had no obvious injury, only on close inspection would a viewer find what appeared a clear bullet hole through their helmet.
The mundane nature of the friendly fire death was less alien and less shocking. It may have been existentially horrific to a rational actor who understood just what it meant to be killed by friendly fire. Yet it did not have the same emotional shock value as did the other four, and if you include the living, five casualties.
Are in the footage also the three mangled bodies bore one single cut cleaved deep into their mid sections. The details were as of now unclear, but a forensic expert among the security officers believes that on all three there was but one cutting motion responsible for the results.
Not everyone had been informed of course, only the few remaining security and the two knights that stayed in the station.
Charles was stationed near the airlock, Gabriel had placed himself in the main hallway in front of a door, a pair of security stationed themselves hidden in close proximity.
The other hallways could be supplied with a pair of station security. In reality they were glorified mall cops with hazard pay. They were being severely underpaid today.
It was a total of 2 knights indoors with 7 security and one Captain. Two knights outside and the metal beast had been spotted entering a mess hall.
The find and fix doctrine had been abandoned on account of the monster's recorded speed. Deterrence was the plan. Obvious knights, obvious security, clear weapons. A few of the crew had been given weapons of self defense. Normally anathema on a syndicate asset.
10 minutes passed. the emergency shuttle was close, departures was quiet aside from the gentle murmur of a few civilians. When the noise rose above a fixed point the captain sternly demanded they be quiet so the monster could be detected.
A security listener sat next to Charles with a listening spike. A simple rod connected to a structural member of the station. The goal was to listen for footsteps or breaches.
20 minutes
30 minutes,
No change, the civilians were getting noticeably louder. It was inevitable, unless there was some punishment.
Yet the monster was not moving. Or at least not audibly.
The voice crackled on radios, comms, inside the knights armor.
"Turlington station we have pinpointed the intruder just outside your breached mess hall! This is Captain Owningsburg representing the syndicate. Knights and security this an order to aid us as best you can in preventing its escape."
There was no chance Charles, Oscar, or Jason would've respected such orders. Gabriel was young however, I was immediately instructed not to do so by Charles.
The issue was station security. Who is the knights had no authority over.
Such was human social dynamic. Charles quietly informed the captain that he believed it to be a trick and offered no more insight. Perhaps Oscar would have seized control of the situation but that was not Charles.
"As best you can implies they don't expect meaningful help." Said Charles.
The captain would not be dissuaded, the guards in their basic atmospheric protection ventured out into the station Gabriel followed at a distance station in LOS of the doors to departures. Charles remained at the departures airlock.
Outside there was only Oscar's brief transmission,
"Bull"
To Jason's response
"We could have a look, it's to your left."
And Jason was correct.
Oscar shouldered the Amat-rifle and remembering his childhood instruction on that idyllic farm world.
"If you ever raise a weapon in anger prepare to change your life."
It was only two steps backwards and a turn to the left. He was looking over a hallway and the station's gentle gravity would have pulled him headfirst into the floor if he was inside, and into the void otherwise. The armor was working overtime to keep him "upright."
He stood parallel to the "floor" of the station. If someone in the hallway could look outside, they would have seen an armored robot with a gun standing comically above the frame of the door. As if he was some mannequin or carnival clown suspended by wire.
Such was the disorientation of the third dimension.
He saw the monster, it was exactly where it was reported. Which just made things more confusing. Was Owningsburg real? Or was this alien killer seriously toying with them like this? How long had it been there?
All unnecessary intrusive thoughts. Mindlessly he aimed and prepared to shoot as he had been trained. Of the four knights he was the most patient, the marksman, in nearly every simulation that had been run it was the rifle that brought him victory.
The monster seemed to know exactly how close to his reticle it was and it skittered, it could only be called a skitter. Just around the gun's barrel in the crosshairs. A bullet flew anyway. The recoil mostly controlled by Oscar's armored suit.
The shell had left silently and the gasses had puffed out of the muzzle brake, they did not "hang" as they do in atmosphere. But blasted away into the void a close observer would have seen them follow the slight arc of the station's "gravity"
Not a single person could hear the bullet. It was a simple shared moment between Knight and Beast.
The metal critter was otherworldly, some cross between a lemur an ermine and a rhinoceros. From dense to spindly and back to dense in an instant. A robot, it was larger than the knight, maybe the size of a small car according to the aiming optic on Oscar's HUD.
The semi auto mechanism of the gun brought another round to the chamber and the beast was gone.
"I shot, It saw me, It's moving." Oscar called out. He didn't know if he hit the creature but he didn't like the shot.
It was on every channel, everyone listening could hear it. Inside and outside the station. The monster probably heard it too.
t- 19 minutes until shuttle arrival.