Oscar and Jason ignored the chatter; it didn't concern them. Most of the danger had flown away, which probably implied there was either no hope for anyone here, or that the entity wasn't worried about killing everyone.
"Those are both the same thing," Jason had told Oscar.
Oscar didn't grace the snarky comment with a response. He just slowly drifted back to the station.
"Use more propellant boy! We are cookin' out here!" Jason was referring to radiation levels. Both of them should be near 90 mSv's of exposure.
Oscar dutifully used more propellant; he wasn't sure why he was conserving it. Humans were mean, but they were not murderous, normally. It was only 11 minutes and 38 seconds until that shuttle, now on the radio, arrived.
Comms remained a mess. Charles was ordering around some station security guy who didn't suffer from clumsy "marine hands" to fix Gabriel's coolant system. Two people were dead in that hallway, possibly a third. Gabriel was claiming not to be injured, but Charles thought he had sustained severe burns and was going to cook without replacement coolant.
The station captain was one of the casualties. The total score was as follows: Alien - 8 humans, 1 reactor, 1 lieutenant marine, 3 MIA. Technically, the stunned marine in the hallway was MIA because he wasn't responding to communication. The other two MIA were drifting in space.
Injuries were not yet counted, but that radiation zombie was gonna be at least one, if he lived.
Scratch that, 9 humans dead; one had died in the stairwell of asphyxiation. Somehow their suit had depressurized.
Captain Owningsburg was upset, which was a captain's job. The guy was better than most syndicate marines. And now with at least two casualties under his command, he could potentially be on the hook for a "failure."
"The MacAbleson's family is gonna be in hell for the next decade." Jason said it better. Owningsburgwas going to be fine.
"Blame the dead man." Oscar was familiar with the practice. The station captain was going be the fall guy because he couldn't defend himself.
"So do you think it could've killed us all?" Jason was always blunt.
"It didn't seem like it wanted to fight."
"It ran as soon as you hit it; it does fear that gun."
"I think it fears how many of us there are. If it was just me, I would be toast."
"Just shoot more often." Jason could not turn it off. If every living soul died, Jason would make a joke about it. Oscar wished he could do that. For all his flaws, Jason's sense of humor probably would've kept him a knight in hell.
"Come now, JJ, we have cameras to collect."
"Ancients say 250 for the rich man the church asks for 500." Jason didn't need a response; he amused himself.
"Scratch that scar!" it was Charles. "We have two missing in action. Can you reach them with propellant?"
Oscar didn't know the marines' names, and as petty as it was, he wasn't in the mood to take orders from Charles. "That marine in the hallway who screamed, is he dead?"
"Gabe is checking now. I can see the crew member who was ejected into space. I'm going to get them."
"No more than fifty percent CC, and count your blessings."
Charles had screwed up, but he would find that out later. And in all honesty, it wasn't that big of a screw up, which was what the phrase, 'count your blessings,' meant in this context.
Jason spotted the drifting marine and lept after them.
The old plan had been to use the gun boat the marines brought to fetch the men overboard, but that craft was gone.
Oscar finally alighted on the surface of the station, magnetic boots keeping a gentle but firm grip on reality.
Oscar accounted for his own blessings. In his youth, he had trained as a first responder; he responded to traffic accidents. He was rather glad he was far away from most of the casualties. Everyone else was already attending to them, and he was happy to avoid being another cook in the kitchen.
His mind wandered, and he found one of his favorite blessings in the present was that in space you could not hear others scream. And if you did, most Syndicate communications devices were smart enough to filter the scream out. It was bad for morale. That marine in the hallway, and the pilot, had managed to slip by the filters. To Oscar, the robotic/static scream was more horrifying but less uncanny than a proper screaming injury.
Oscar wasn't sure if everybody knew about injury screams, but he knew because he had heard more than one scream in his youth. Screamers always haunted him, because he never understood why anybody would scream.
Sure it made common sense: scream for help. But in every situation Oscar had seen, there was little chance it would help. Even if it did, somehow Oscar could not respect the scream. The screams of others brought him only the uncharitable feeling of disgust. It made him not want to help.
In Oscar's experience, most people who got hurt, put themselves in harms way unduly, or perhaps, put others in harm unduly, were screamers.
It seemed an odd mercy that those put in danger by others died swiftly, and those who put others in danger lost themselves to screaming.
It was one of the first things that got him into the Church.
There had been a train accident, and while he and the other responders rushed to cut the metal apart and search for inaccessible injured, an old lady had approached a more accessible screaming man ahead of the paramedics. His legs would never work again. Her prayer had quieted the man. Oscar had never asked if the man lived or died; it could have gone either way one the paramedics got to him, but he remembered the power of the old lady's prayer.
Once a skeptic of spirit, he understood its strength after that simple episode he had come to research faith's and inevitably it had led him to become a knight of the church of Ludd.
And now he believed what the Syndicate had told him: that collecting data might save more human lives, that doing so might be a good thing. He looked to a nearby camera mount; he saw the camera was naught but a shriveled mess of plastic and glass. No matter, it was evidence.
Charles and Gabe reported instead that the non-responsive marine in their hallway was, in fact, dead.
It was a tradition; they had offered the one living security member in that hallway ownership of the dead man's suit. The security member who had helped them in battle and aided Charles in repairing Gabe's suit was given a far better suit of armor. The only requirement was that they would be bound as a squire to the church.
The Syndicate would probably not be happy with this result, but that was part of the entire point. The Church took any opportunity it could to acquire a squire. They were somewhat lesser than knights, but each squire had the opportunity to become a knight and could be treated as more expendable. For the most part, squires were good enough people. It was rare for one to be created without a knight's invitation. Statistically, few squires ever became knights. Most were permitted to peacefully retire after a few years of service with a couple of benefits. The hope was to offer them rewarding but difficult experiences so that they remained as members of the Church well into their elderly years. Ultimately, most squires did not have the fanatic mental fortitude, and some would say insanity, required to become a true knight.
Predictably, the remaining security member agreed.
It was a cinch, and the guy had already fought with Gabe and Charles. He felt connected to them.
When Charles did things like this, it scared Oscar. Charles was too much of a cynic to really believe that he was helping this stranger. It was that sort of two-faced politics the Church frowned upon most of the time. Ultimately, the institution of squires was supposed to be good for humanity, but the process always made Oscar anxious; he thought being a squire was a bad deal. Gabriel at least would put on a good show for the convert.
Jason, slowly floating away from the station, welcomes the new soldier of Ludd with the traditional "Hammer and Stones, Brother!"
Oscar smiled; he was too old for that kind of thing when he was still a kid.
"Jason, what's the ETA? Charles, weren't you going to save that man out there?"
"Confirmed, he is moving slowly."
Jason didn't respond. Oscar didn't care; he mostly wanted to harass Charles.
Charles was full of excuses, a rat in human skin. In times like this, Oscar felt Charles didn't belong among the Knights. Charles was nearly a corporate man. It made one question every faith.
It was almost tranquil now. The stakes had lowered but were still relevant enough nobody was shirking their duty. Peace rendered in violence. The emotions of death, injury, pride, and monetary loss were dulled by the impact of a vorpal blade's edge for now.
Peace could not last. Patience, the cutting of losses, was impossible for human kind. No, that was false.
It was impossible for those who were not knights.
The marines were rushing, trying to go as fast as possible. Perhaps it was wise: to save seconds that mattered. Oscar tried to breathe deeply as he approached an airlock and, as politely as possible, traversed it, two cameras in hand. They should have had data chips in them.
The temporary freedom of disaster was Oscar's safe space.
It all came crashing back down as he stood in the starless and dreary station hallway.
The realization of the events began to unfolded as soon as the ugly human construct replaced the stars and solar system.
10 minutes until shuttle arrival.
The marines were frantic because every shred of information needed to be collected and 2 of their number were dead. Military disaster for them; they were used to shooting poorly equipped pirates.
Four minutes, and Jason and Charles would be back with their rescues.
The drifting marine was on comms, and provided Jason's suit didn't malfunction, both would be back in the realm of humanity soon.
Charles was not convinced his body was living, but retrieved it anyway.
The marines had brought body bags, because for all of cold Syndicate profiteering, they couldn't alienate themselves from death without removing any trace it had happened.
Oscar helped with the dead bodies.
The rescue of Charles was not dead; he had severe necrosis of the leg where his space suit was torn, and it was radioactive. The station doctors amputated the leg promptly. The suit saved the rest of his body. There was a fear the radiation would cause something nastier to happen.
The marine was fine; they had a headache from struggling to stop spinning, and just wanted to sit down. Significantly better results than losing a leg.
Oscar was relieved to hear that the time Charles had spent worrying over Gabe and the new squire was not a factor in that man's leg. It would have been amputated even if he drifted for only two minutes. He felt like he should yell at Charles to re-prioritize things. This was the dreaded politics he preferred to avoid, Charles would weather the ordeal better than Oscar would. Better the disaster happened and the chips fall as they may, than let one man's imperfect vision of a future strike a blemish.
8 minutes till escape shuttle arrival.