Time was being wasted for a little reason other than to keep the Intel people from having an ego crisis. Such was reality you could've solved every single thing in the world, and the Intel people would still be having a conniption because they had their own delusions they could not manifest. Why was this the case? The knights pondered this question as they traveled in the automated robotic shuttle. The one that decided to do it so those awkward zigzags through space turning what should've been a simple one hour flight into four hours of pretending like somebody was watching.
Depending on how you counted, the delay was more of a liability than simply moving from point A to point B in the first place. The real cost benefit analysis happened aboard that Red Solstice they had just left and the cost benefit analysis was one Intel person proving to all the others they were just really smart. The knights all knew what it was. Everybody would have a brain knew who it was and it didn't really do to say who it was. Everybody just accepted this truth, this falsehood, this sin. Why? The knights knew it was because they were weak, not just the employees on the Red Solstice, but the knights themselves, few were those who would join the Church for the Church was meek and did meek things. Their lives were not standard, their lives had been dedicated to the study of the simple premise, and so now in penance, they enjoyed three extra hours of their life they would've never gotten to experience without such a wonderful and bright creature directing them.
Sure a little bit of them entertained the idea that they would be blasted out of the sky or that some sabotage would depressurized the entire environment and they would be left crawling around the wreckage in their space suits for 12 to 24 hours like lost pillbugs as nobody came to rescue them. Knights, perhaps were better equipped than most to handle such a death. They had read histories of people who had died in this way they had seen the images, and they had prayed that such would not be their fate. Civilians, draftees, they did not prepare for these sort of deaths the way religious fanatics did, and so in this, perhaps these risks or maybe just imagined risks were properly placed in human society. Efficiency was the puzzle, the name of the game or indeed such was the paranoia. Silence filled the robotic shuttle. The tiny windows peering out into the great void, rendering nothing but empty stars dim in this remote part of space. Then eventually Turlington station.
"They are leaking some sort of fluid."
"Confirmed?"
"Confirmed!"
The only dialogue.
Finally docking with the station the knights sealed their power armor off from the external environment. Their precious vitals, inside their own containers. Ones they alone could pilots and control. It was a good thing they did for the first airlock had been, by the station forgotten. It was a locked and they stood before an unpowered door in the vacuum of space, a thumb claw on the left hand of the power armor that established them beyond the ordinary infantry was more than enough to pry open the door.
Inside the station the lights were dark, off, emergency power to this location has been cut, and as their night vision flipped on their armored suits clanked out into the hallway. They each had a map of the station and relevant locations, maintenance hallways and atmospheric intentions. They made a beeline as best they could in the lonely cylinder for the control room. Surely there if there is any power, they would find it or along the way. Of equipment two carried with them on the liter that was suspended between two of them. They deployed one civilian drone on a local Bluetooth-like network. A survey model, it was intended to do nothing more than report damages of a disaster. Which it did appear there had been a little bit of a disaster here, and so from arrivals they walked to the control room.
They found the lights, and at the sealed airlock they identified themselves as Knights of Ludd and they found quick entrance. Within the bridge they found a captain, two security personnel and three engineers in the room. All of them almost half asleep.
"Thank goodness, more bodies," The captain said this in such a way that implied both happiness and dread.
The knights removed their helmets to be polite.
"Did you bring caffeine?" asked one of the security personnel.
"Did you bring firepower?" asked the other.
The nearest, Jason was the first knight to speak
"What's the situation? We are Knights of Ludd. We knew that this station was in danger and so we came as fast as we could. We wanted to know what had occurred here and what disasters may soon befall us all."
'I didn't know there was a chapter nearby." Replied the Captain.
"There always is," Responding Charles
"Firepower. What sort do you want?" it was Gabriel "There must be an enemy."
One of the security officers produced a datapad. "Let me show you." they handed the device to Gabe.
Gabe whistled almost immediately as the video started, and then, after about four or five seconds the other Knights, all curious crowded around as best they could given their armor and took a minute in silence to look over their comrades shoulder and see what Gabe saw. What they saw sort of thing that the proper Knight always finds exciting. It appeared to be an alien knight of some variety.
Oscar was the first to respond out of his stupor of wonder "The civilians? Where are they?"
Captain Mc-Ableson responded dutifully "They all have power, and they are all safe, we have basic emergency comms to their quarters. I have instructed them to stay within their quarters and avoid drawing attention to themselves and as far as we are aware, that thing that you guys are seeing on that video as little interest in them, though it did pass outside some of their hallways. If we are correct in its movements."
"You don't have eyes on it?"
"No, we've been unable to get eyes on it" The captain almost choked. "Some of the security personnel may have video of it on their bodies."
Humans were awkward about such occurrences Charles spoke up "How did that happen?" The Captain of the two security officers did not speak. Charles assumed that it had been a mistake, and that the security team likely demanded by one of these three had perished. Probably at the hands of that armored thing. "Are they for certain dead?"
The Captain's face was suddenly a little brighter, "They are not for certain dead, I guess we don't have a positive confirmation that they have died but that seems a little optimistic don't you think?
"I don't know what to think." responded Charles,
"Yes, we did bring firepower" followed Oscar.
The knights gathered information as they could from the exhausted civilians in the room.
One of the engineers showed video he had taken of damaged panels that had appeared in hallway near the biologics attack where the first depressurization was detected, they had patched that one. The other waking civilian had told of a man that had been attacked by the creature and remained alive. The living man had been sent to the infirmary and could be communicated with via specialized equipment as they had woken up from their stupor. Their injuries were horrific, no tongue, no eyes otherwise healthy aside from a benign kidney disorder. They could answer yes-no questions using a brain scanner, theoretically they could say more, but were not currently in a mental state to do so.
"I saw leaking fluid outside the station, looked like a tank of something that wasn't water."
"Good to know, I thought our ECCS was acting up for no reason."
The other engineer was speechless, the sleepy one woke up
"What!?"
"Thats's huge!"
"How much was lost?"
"I don't know"
The sleepy engineer complained "We are SUNK, that's a meltdown in 18 hours no… 16 hours, tops! Captain can the emergency shuttle bring coolant? No way right?!"
Gabriel and Oscar went to investigate the injured man.
Yes the janitor had been attacked, no the janitor didn't remember it very well.
Jason and Charles investigated the tragic tale of a security group responding to a reactor malfunction by grilling the remaining and present security personnel.