Universe Online - Enter the Game: Complete Edition (12 page)

The heavy machinery and pumps required to store a vast amount of liquid require constant maintenance.  That means workshops and storage holds.  As well as docking bays, or at least docking ports.  Perfect places to gather supplies.

I check my inventory, switch out a couple of empty air tanks with refilled ones from the capsule, and head out.

It’s quite a long distance to travel in zero-g. Thankfully it seems that the corridor goes around the entire outer ring of the station.  I don't have to deviate my path at all.  I go ahead and skip all the rooms in-between.  There will be time to check them later.

Another bonus of zero-g is that once you get the hang of it, you can go at a pretty nice speed.  It’s like floating.  Because the outer ring of the station is so large, even the curve of the corridor feels like a straight line.  I use the handrails that line either side of the corridor walls to basically bounce my way toward my destination, which I've pinged on my map.  As I go, my map fills in the surrounding area, with each compartment or room I pass getting a closed door icon to show their positions.  The rooms I've already checked have open door type icons instead.  Really handy.

But a mile in space is still a mile.

Although I'm not even sure if 'miles' is the proper measurement of distance in space.  I could use kilometers or the like, but I'm a US brat.  I just feel more comfortable in thinking that way.  And my HUD also represents distances like that too.  The game most likely adjusts to each person’s preferences.

I end up coming to a dead stop, though.  In front of me, a massive emergency bulkhead had slammed shut across the corridor, cutting it off from the other side.

“Of all the fucking...  Shit.”

I cannot help myself.  I curse out loud.  I hadn't been expecting something like this.  Damn the Gods.

Then I notice something.  The bulkhead isn't locked down.  It simply closed down over the corridor.  Hm.  A failure of the machinery that held it up, maybe?

I move over to it, and anchor myself to the floor again before pushing my hands against it.  It has quite a bit of mass, and it’s rusted a bit around the joints with the wall, but with a stronger shove it shifts.

Yes!

I quickly use my strength and telekinesis to push it back upwards, and with a slow groan that vibrates against my suit it finally opens.  Or at least, it opens part way and then gets stuck for real.  No matter how much I push I couldn't get it further open.

Well, at least now I can get under it if I duck.

Just another thing in the massively long list of repairs needed in order to make the station usable again.

Well, technically the station could be used as is, so long as a couple of conjoined compartments are fixed up with localized power, atmosphere, water and gravity.  It’s what I'm probably going to end up having to do.  Simply to survive for myself.  I'm getting dreadfully tired of the dark, anyway.

Moving past the now jammed bulkhead, I reach my destination.

As I had thought, it’s an area filled with storage tanks, and from what I could see it was used for water storage.  Water is a precious thing in space, which can be used to make breathable air as well as fuel in the form of hydrogen.  It just cannot be found in its liquid state, but instead can be pulled out of things like icy asteroids or mined from the surface of an ice-encased moon.

All you gotta do is heat it and it turns back into liquid water.  From there, put it through a filtration system and it’s good to go for whatever you need.  Truly marvelous.  You don’t want to have to deal with grey water though.  Ugh.

I go straight for the tanks without checking any of the equipment or the other rooms.

And promptly start cursing again.

The tanks are all empty.  Entirely fucking empty.

In my hate-rage, it takes me several minutes to figure out why they are empty, as well.

Without power, the heavy pumping and storage machines used to keep the water from re-freezing and keep it fresh all went down at the same time.  Over time the water turns back into ice in the cold conditions of zero-g without any insulation from an atmosphere, and ice made from water, expands.  It ruptured either the tops of the tanks or the piping that had held the liquid water before.

Then the ice basically sublimated into space over time.  Just like water would evaporate from a puddle on a planet.  And because the station is so large, it actually receives a fair amount of sunlight, and thus is heated to a temperature higher than the surrounding space.  Energy always flows from heat to cold, so the ice had been lost.

Probably hundreds of years ago.

But it’s a bad situation for me.  Really bad.  If these tanks weren't strong enough to hold the pressure of expanded water ice, then things didn't look good for me finding any more water on the station.  The place is probably as barren and dry as a desert by now.

There isn't even any condensation on the walls.  Without an intact hull to keep it all inside, it is all whisked off into space.

I grind my teeth and look away from the tanks, scanning the rest of the large chamber.  There's all sorts of machinery in here, and some of it even catches my attention.  Especially those with working monitors.  Most of it is pumping machines and heating coils and compressors.  It’s really hard to put a large quantity of ice through processing into liquid without large, bulky machinery.  It can be done on a smaller scale, but for large amounts of water you have to have proper infrastructure.

As such, all the machines I check out are large.  Taller than I am in most cases, and much bulkier than even Bub I'd just found earlier.  The compartment itself is also open on both sides, cut in half by the corridor.  One half holds the tanks, while the other holds the machinery.  There's probably an airlock somewhere nearby where ice or liquid water was pumped in or out.

Sadly, I have no way to move all of this machinery, so it'll just have to sit here for now.  But getting back to my original purpose, I start searching the surrounding compartments.  My intuition was right.

There are several workshops, storage holds, and even a hangar bay within spitting distance of the tank compartment.  I'll have to go through them all one by one to inventory what they all have.  But I'm stopped dead in my tracks when I reach the hangar bay.

It is a medium sized compartment, large enough to hold only a couple freighter-sized ships or tankers.  Or a handful of smaller craft.  It’s wide open and the large airlock out to the station hull is wide open.  But what catches my attention are the bodies.

I recognize those twisted, bulbous forms in matte black and gray armor.

The Drex.

I cannot help but shudder.  Ever since they were introduced during the Beta Test briefing, they've seemed like things out a nightmare to me.  Monsters in the depths of space.

And here are the littered remains of over a hundred of them.

An entire Drex pack.

Not much is known about the Drex.  No one knows where they come from, or what their intentions are.  They refuse to speak with any other species.  What is known is their command structure.

The Drex are separated into packs.  A hundred Drex units, and a few others of higher ranks that command them.  It’s the minimum requirement of manning one of their raiding ships.  From that, a grouping of five Drex ships and their interlocked command structure becomes a Clan.

Drex Clans prowl the space lanes, often pirating and looting smaller convoys of trader ships or fighting station patrols.  At that level, they might number 550 individuals.  But you get more problems when two or more Clans come together.

Legions.  Drex Legions.  Raiding armadas that'll come out of deep space to attack whole stations and ransack anything they can get a hold of.  The attack on the mining station in the Beta Test was by a Legion of ten or more Drex Clans.  Thousands of individuals hell bent on killing and pillaging.

They make the Vikings from Old Earth look like friendly neighbors in comparison.

The Drex also fight amongst themselves, and their position within the ranks is based upon the total number of battles won, enemies killed.  They have no recognizable motivations beyond fighting.  They don't even seem to build anything themselves.  All Drex ships are those taken by force and then 'remodeled' for their own purposes.

The armor of the Drex is some sort of biological secretion, and they use it to break down the hull of their ships and rebuild them.  How their energy systems or weapons work is basically a mystery.  For individual Drex, their weapons seem to be a part of their bodies.  Molded from their own bulbous flesh and armor.

But they work just like lasers and projectile weapons the other races use.  And the tentacles...

Okay, I do shudder at that.

During the Beta Test I saw a Drex grab a marine with tentacles that had sprouted from its back and tear the poor man apart limb by limb.  It doesn't even make for an exciting erotic experience, either.  The Drex seem utterly uninterested in taking captives, prisoners, or slaves.  So no sex, as far as we've been able to figure out.

Their culture is completely opaque to us.  If they even have a culture.

But thankfully the Drex require an atmosphere to survive just like the rest of us.  Their natural armor also acts like a space suit, sealing them and their air inside.  If punctured or destroyed in space-like conditions, they will die.

That appears to be the cause of the death of this pack in front of me.

They are riddled with bullet holes and melted patches from laser fire, then the airlock was opened and they died from lack of air.  It’s a horrible way to go, but I don't really pity them.

From the looks of it, they've been dead for a long, long time, as well.  Their armor is dried out and cracked, like the shell of a crab that's been left out in the sun far too long.

I gingerly kick one, and it collapses into a fine spray of dust and frozen flesh.  Hm.  It seems the Drex have a higher water content than other species.  There's actually less mass and flesh in their corpses than what a regular human-like person would have.

It’s interesting, anyway.

I get over my shock, and start my scavenger hunt of the bay.  There aren't any ships, but it’s still a treasure trove of goodies.  Hull plates and bulkheads stacked up against a wall for ship repairs.  Unopened crates of specialized electronics and parts for systems.  Overhead, there are several hanging cranes for moving stored goods and the like.

I even find a couple of small drones.  Their batteries are dead, so I cannot figure out what they were used for.  But they're folded in on themselves about the size of basketballs, so I put them in my inventory to check out later.

Also in the back of the bay I find two things that really catch my interests.

I bounce over to them with a grin on my face.  Once close enough, my HUD scans them and brings up the details for me to see.

Tugs!  Part mining craft, part loader/unloader.  Basically two story tall bricks of metal with four arms mounted to the sides, a mining drill, and thruster engines in the back.  They are twice the size of my escape capsule, and have all the systems required to let a two-man crew survive in space.  Or an asteroid field!

Hell yeah!

One of them looks to be in fairly good condition, but the other one was in the process of being dismantled, probably for repairs or upgrades.  I don't waste any time and go to check them out in detail.

The dismantled one I check out first, peering into the open hull of it to look at all the parts and systems stuffed into the space.  The insides seem similar to that of the capsule, except all the parts are bigger and older.  Power core, storage tanks for air and fuel, gravity generators, atmospheric processors, thruster engines and tons of wiring and electronic control runs.