The Epherium Chronicles: Embrace Read Free Page A

loosening the screws on the door’s control plate, he popped the plate off and set it to his left. Kristin shined her utility light into the panel, and Restal quickly found the manual lever for the door. The lever activated a piston that, after several pulls, pushed the door open to allow Restal and Kristin access to the small tunnel to the next dome.
    “Kristin, watch your step in here. With no gravity and loss of atmosphere, lots of equipment could have been tossed around,” Restal said as he stood from the panel. “Keep an eye out for any damaged systems. If we get power back, we don’t need a spark show.” Kristin nodded and followed Restal into the tunnel.
    Unlike the crew quarters dome, the survey dome was a completely open structure. In the center of the room, a gigantic telescope was positioned on a large revolving pad.
    Restal and Kristin moved into the dome and used lights on their EVA suits to maneuver around floating furniture. They activated their magnetic boots and began to setup several portable lights from their maintenance kits around the dome to illuminate the interior. Each light was connected to a power connector in a chain that was looped to a small generator.
    As Restal and Kristin were about to power on their lights, Justin Sevard, one the Gerard’s lead maintenance technicians, called over the comms. “Skipper, we’ve completed our sweep. No sign of any survivors in the crew area, and all EVA suits in that dome were accounted for.”
    “Any bodies?” Restal asked.
    “None, sir,” Justin replied, almost whispering into his comm unit.
    “Okay, the rest of the teams, continue to sweep forward into the hydroponics dome. Kristin and I will activate the lights here and search for the station crew,” Restal said. He really had hoped to find someone alive in the crew area. Now he feared the worst and so did his team. “Kindel, anything with the station computer logs?”
    Kindel replied over the comms, “Logs confirm that four members of the eight person crew were in the survey dome at the time of the incident. Two were supposed to be in the crew area and two in hydroponics. But the logs end there for the areas that lost power. They could have left these areas at any time after that and there wouldn’t be a record here. I’ve found an exterior camera vid stored in the logs that’s eight hours old. It was covering the outside of the station next to the communication arrays. The picture’s blurry, but I’m working to clean it up. Best I can tell so far is a white streak striking the communications array and barreling into the hydroponics dome. That could be our meteor, but I’ll let you know when I get a definite.”
    “Any response from Command?” Restal asked.
    “I just got a comm from the medical ship, Tama. She and two EEF Marine drop ships are now in high orbit and await our signal to come in to help with the wounded.”
    Restal scanned the blackness of the survey dome and hoped that there would be survivors that needed help. He keyed his comm system again. “Roger that. Glad to know our backup got here. Keep me informed of your progress on that camera vid. We’ve got lights going up in the survey dome now. The rest of the teams are moving forward into the hydroponics area.”
    While Kristin began turning on the portable lights, Restal checked the last two couplings to his generator. Finding them secure, he looked over and watched as his other search teams manually opened the tunnel door to the hydroponics bay. The door on this side had several cracks around its frame. He’d seen that before. Structural damage like that was often the result of explosive decompression close by. As the door on his side opened, Restal could see the door on other end of the tunnel was mangled badly, most likely blasted open as a result of the meteor impact.
    Behind him, Kristin activated the third of the eight lights they had positioned. The light was jammed into its stand, and Kristin had to hit it