The victory in the debris tail was cut short by a faint, crackling distress bright light pulsing from the shattered hull of a Federation scouting cutter drifting three miles away.
“Arthur! I’m picking up a self-running Mayday on the emergency guard hum!” Toby yelled, his hands working the tracking sensors. “It’s the Luna-Six—a three-man scout patrol from Outpost Alpha! Their shuttle was intercepted by the Prowlers before we arrived! Life support tracking data is reading red across all boards!”
“Match velocities and extend the magnetic recovery arm,” Arthur ordered, already unsealing his razor-sharp kit. “Toby, prep the cargo bay for sterile field holding. We’re bringing them directly into the airlock.”
Within four minutes, the mangled cockpit section of the Luna-Six was clamped against the Vanguard Scalpel’s starboard docking ring.
Arthur cycled the hatch. Then, the scene inside the scout cabin was an emergency physician’s nightmare. The forward canopy had been punctured by a bio-star-fire spike. That left a jagged, fist-sized hole that had instantly vented the compartment into hard empty pocket. Two of the three crew members were already dead, their flight suits torn, their bodies frozen rigid by the minus-one-hundred-and-sixty-degree void.
Only the pilot—Lieutenant Sarah Lin—was still breathing, her emergency suit’s auto-seal collar having fired just in time to preserve a fragile bubble of air around her helmet. But her lower torso had endured twenty seconds of explosive pressure drop before the seals locked.
