"Quit your bitching and get the second boom arm working now! That iridium isn't going to magically mine itself and I'm going to need a damn good payout from this contract." Aleyra scolded from the captain's seat.
Zach mumbled inaudibly as he finished working on the boom servo. "Only 2 more weeks to put up with this shit. It's been a long 3 months, but the paycheck should make up for putting up with this cunt of a captain, well, that may be debatable."
"It should be working again now Al... Captain!" he yelled as he climbed back up out of the maintenance shaft of the secondary cargo bay. Zach reached the top of the hatch and sealed it behind him. There was a deafening sound as the shaft depressurized again. "I'm sorry Captain, I wasn't thinking and I'm still not quite used to the formality of the company regulations."
"It's not a problem at all." Aleyra calmly answered. She pulled out her handheld uplink to the Orion Mining Corporation servers and casually tapped the screen a few times. "Alright, we are back on the clock and also I deducted another 2% of your pay for your third infraction - failing to address your captain by her proper rank." she said with a shit eating grin.
Zach just sighed and sat back down at the maintenance terminal. Arguing about it would only serve to get his pay docked further. This had been his first contract job with Orion. It should have been a pretty cushy job: 3 months mining iridium with a 2 person crew in the Haephestus class mining corvette - "The Buzzard". The only problem so far had been the 2 person crew part. "Thankfully, we met the 100 ton iridium quota earlier this week, we will get a straight 15% share of any yield beyond that. We were extremely lucky with the first 3 asteroids. Even with the 6% of pay deductions, I stand to make enough from this contract to hold me over for almost an entire year. Just two more weeks..." Zach thought as he swallowed his anger and frustration.
"WARNING. WARNING. UNKNOWN OBJECT DETECTED AT 472 KILOMETERS." blared throughout the ship as the edges of the captain's terminal flared a bright yellow. "What is it? And how the hell did it get so close?!" Zach yelled at Aleyra.
Aleyra looked panicked and frantically typed at her terminal before slowly regaining her composure. "It looks to be a derelict that just drifted out from behind one of the roids. Their nav system appears to be offline or unresponsive."
"It couldn't have been there long to be drifting in the field and still in one piece. Do you think it's a trap or pirates? We need to relay this to Orion and get an escort out here!" he asked with a note of fear in his voice.
"Don't get your panties in a wad yet. Scans are showing that at least some of the life support systems may be failing as well. Ship atmosphere systems looks fine, but it's damn near freezing inside. Thankfully with the cold temp we can get an extremely accurate heat scan for crew, of which there only appears to be one and they aren't moving."
"I'll go ahead and start writing up the report." Zach offered, anxious to do something. He nearly fell out of his chair as the book the Captain had been reading earlier crashed into the screen of his terminal.
"Did I say to write a report?!" Aleyra yelled. "Your stupidity is mind boggling! If we report this now, Orion will have a ship out here within the day to investigate and confiscate anything they find. If we do a little more completely safe and thorough checking, we may find something to make this profitable contract even better. It's just a personal transport ship, no mounted weapons, one immobile crew - it stands no direct threat to our ship. And if we find anything fishy, we'll contact Orion immediately." Aleyra was already fantasizing on how much further additional cargo or hell, even selling a P-Trans ship would go to paying off those damn gambling debts.
Shards of rock and debris blasted into space as the Buzzard detached from the asteroid it had been mining. They slowly began a circuitous route around the derelict ship, scanning for any potential warning signs. "Everything looks clean. I'm going to bring us in close. Get both of the exo-suits ready and start suiting up."
"Captain, are you sure about this is safe?" Zach asked.
"Fuck! Are you really going to question me at every turn? Do you really want your pay docked again?" Aleyra replied. "...Sorry, I'm probably just a little excited is all. If it makes you feel any better, there's gonna be less action from this then your momma's pussy see's on an average Tuesday!" she said with what he could only assume was intended as a reassuring smile.
There was a slight jar as the Buzzard magnetically docked with the much smaller ship. Zach and Aleyra both finished suiting up then double checked their exo-suit readings. "Your suit good? Mine too. Alright, into the pressure hatch and I'll cut off the G-Drive." she said.
They both immediately felt the unusual feeling in their guts as the Buzzard went full zero-G. Then they both drifted to the outer door of the hatch as the spiral door opened, revealing the outer hatch of the transport ship. Aleyra began tapping on the transport's hatch console. Surprisingly, the hatch opened up after only a few moments.
"That was a lot easier than I expected it would be..." Aleyra said through her comms. "Stay close behind me until we know what we are getting into."
"Understood." he replied. Zach followed Aleyra into the transport ship. His anxiety shot up even further as he noticed the captain pull a pistol from the pouch on the back of her suit.
"Everything is gonna be fine. It's just better to be prepared even if we don't need it" she turned and said.
Inside the ship, the scanners on their exo-suits showed the exact same reading they had gotten from the Buzzard. One prone, stationary life reading, a breathable atmosphere, no toxins detected, 4 degrees Celsius. They began checking the ship, room by room, saving the room with the life reading for last. It appeared to be a rather opulent P-Trans ship, which alleviated some of their concerns about this being a trap.
"Hells yes!" Zach heard through his helmet. "This ship is probably worth an easy 200,000 credits! We could probably only get get 60 or 70 thousand for it without Orion finding out, but still, fuck yeah!"
"Damn!" he thought. A share of 30,000 credits was almost ten times what he was expecting from this job. This could totally change the rest of his life.
"Alright, time for the money shot!" Aleyra yelled as she opened up the door to the last room. The room looked just be an average storage room. The back wall was filled with mostly empty shelving. The floor however was completely littered with various objects, including a completely naked woman.
She was a strikingly beautiful woman. Her long red hair and arms both extended above her head. Her large tits did their best to defy the gravity on the transport, nipples extremely erect from the cold. Her long legs were tightly wrapped around a large two foot tall tear shaped object.
Zach lunged past Aleyra and began checking the vitals of the unconscious woman. Aleyra started to chastise again, but decided her time would be better spent making sure there was nothing nearby that could be used as a weapon.
"What the hell is that between her legs?" she asked.
"I don't know, it almost looks like some kind of seed. The woman seems to be stable, unconscious, but stable." Zach said. "She may have the early symptoms of hypothermia. We need to try and warm her up." He then began taking off his exo-suit.
"What the hell are you doing?" Aleyra asked.
"I'm going to put her in my suit to start warming her up."
"Yeah, I'm sure you can't wait to feel her up, you pervert."
Zach's face blushed a bright red as he finished removing his suit. "Fine, you do it!"
Aleyra picked up the heavy "seed" with a grunt and moved it to the edge of the room. "Quit staring and grab her legs and help me carry her to the bridge. I'll put her in your suit and check the computer to start trying to figure out why it's so cold in here.
They both picked up the unconscious woman and started carrying her through the hallway. Shortly before reaching the bridge, Zach stumbled slightly. "Geez, if you would spend more time watching where you are walking and less time staring at her fucking pussy!" They set her down and Aleyra said, "Leave you suit in the chair and go back to the storage room and find out if any of that shit of the floor is worth anything."
Zach walked back to the room and started trying to organize the giant mess on the floor. As he started putting some of the objects back on the shelves, he noticed what looked to be splotches of dried liquid all over the floor. One of the things the fell off a shelf must have spilled all over the place.
"Alright, it should be heating back up now. System looks fine, it was just set to be this damn cold. I'm gonna close all the interior doors and focus the heating on the rooms we are in to speed this up." she yelled down the hallway. Aleyra then started working on getting the nav system back online.