“It’ll be a piece of cake.” That might have been too bold to say, but Nate wasn’t exactly one to look a challenge in the face and run away, headstrong and foolhardy under the veil of a more chaotic teenage mind that, in a lot of ways, thought he could outright take on the world. It might not have been the case, but it wasn’t like his life experience had been limited to one lifetime or one timeline, and there were things out there that, if memory served correct, he had already dealt with in some capacity. Aliens? No problem. Mutant opposition? Easy. Ventures into the unknown where he was body sliding by the seam of his pants? Not a favorite, but still possible.
Finding and establishing a space station? Those weren’t new either, and though his memories of Peak rested on the fringes of his mind, not quite clear despite some itchy familiarity with it, it was a situation he knew he could tackle - alone, but he wasn’t going to be alone this time, was he?
It wasn’t that there was anything inherently wrong with taking someone so… green on a mission, least of all one that might have been of some decent help if he didn’t stick himself to the side of the space station wall, unable to get himself off again, but it was unfamiliar territory to Nate who had only on one other occasion worked side-by-side with someone from the C.S.A. that wasn’t his own flesh and blood (and even then, accessing the M'kraan Crystal had been a far more personal effort than it had been anything to do in coordination with the C.S.A.). It was new territory, and boy, he hoped Peter Parker would be able to keep his mouth shut when it would matter the most. Who knew what they would find up there with the station long abandoned or, as the multi-verse proved to add and remove people at a moment’s notice, never manned to begin with…
Thankfully, in those first moments on the station, appearing in a pop of bright blue light with a single command and programmed coordinates into his arm – the technology had to be stored somewhere - it seemed all was quiet on the space front; but quiet, unfortunately, didn’t make him feel particularly safe. Guns, on the other hand, those did plenty as he whipped the rifle of future origin off his back.
“Just keep your eyes open for anything,” he said. “We’ve got to get this thing up and running first and foremost.”
It was hard to wade through the whole lot of stuff he did and didn't remember, and what was from Theo's mind and what was from his own, and whether or not he could do the things he'd been able to do for so many years now. At least this time, his appearance in this world, came along with some actual familiarity in what his body could do. Also, he hadn't woken up dead, which was a big bonus considering the last thing he remembered was having some guy in a ski mask throw a knife at him so fast that his too slow body couldn't dodge it in time. That hadn't been fun, neither had been dragging Felicia into it as he usually did, and now Peter was determined not to make those same mistakes twice, determined not to walk out of this CSA adventure with his ass handed to him.
And as determined as he was, he knew, of course, that making mistakes was just part and parcel of how he did things. Not that he wanted to, just that they - sometimes, against all odds - happened. He hoped at least that his spidey sense wouldn't let him down, especially not now that he was there to give Nate - Cable - support. He didn't have his suit, so he was dressed in whatever he'd been able to get together that would allow him to move lightly - a long-sleeved thermal shirt, sweatpants, a balaclava because who knew who or what they might find up there, and he was still very attached to the whole keep your identity a secret thing.
"As wide as they can be," Pete shot back to Nate, peering down the stark hallway that greeted them. Spooky space stations? No big deal. He began forward, carefully and slowly, pausing when he was sure he heard a - skittering? - nearby. But his senses didn't ping anything dangerous just yet, and he couldn't make anything out, so he continued onwards with a wave to Nate. "If we can find the control room, I can try to make things work."
At one point, there might have been a reason to have a secret identity and there were some moments where Nathan kept up a telepathic front so he didn’t find people staring at his less-than-human features, but unlike many of his cohorts and sometimes his enemies, there was little reason to go trailblazing through time or into a mission with a mask on. He could be there and gone in a flash, could wipe minds of people that he didn’t want remembering their time together, and if need be, he could draw on the cosmic forces of the Phoenix for a little backbone, but as far as the mission handed down by the C.S.A. to scout the Peak station, there seemed little reason for it as the life signs of the station seemed close to none, the only voice echoing otherwise the one belonging to his mission partner.
Still, in the silence, there was a sense of unease. While he had some doubts the station was even manned to begin with, the appropriate beings from the multiverse that should have been present not at all, there was still inkling in the back of his mind that there was something wrong. Something this large and high in the orbit of Earth, something meant to be manned to keep an eye on extraterrestrial threats, should have been manned otherwise what was the damn point?
But still, silence. No operations running. No power to the controls. No means of opening doors besides sheer will of force. There was the occasional creek of metal as the structure shifted or skittering, but beyond that, silence. “It’d be great if this thing was actually online to read schematics,” Nate said, using what directional signs he could to figure out where they needed to go and brute force when the doors, stuck shut in lockdown procedures, refused to budge. “I’d say the bridge, if we can find the damn thing,” he said, still holding the door open so Pete could make his way out into the station’s hallway. As soon as he had been clear of it, Nate stepped aside, the door slamming back shut with a painfully loud echo through the station – not the best of moves, but he wasn’t going to close it nicely if there had been no threats so far.
Peter's shoulders tensed as the huge door slammed shut behind them, and he hesitated there for a lingering moment, waiting as the echoed clang sang back at them through the hallway. Nothing, still. No tingle down his spine, not that Peter could exactly rely on it at the moment, considering the fact that his given abilities had only just returned after two weeks without, and they were doing so a little slowly, a little unpredictably. It didn't matter - he'd do the best he could, and he wanted to watch Nate's back so the two of them didn't end up jettisoned out into space or worse.
"Seems like a big if," Pete agreed and started onwards down the hall. Not all space stations were the same - especially something like this - but Pete went with intuition, checking what markings on the walls that he could for an idea of direction. The hallways were convoluted and seemingly endless, and after another blocked doorway that needed to be shoved aside, Pete paused and held a hand up. There was that skittering sound again. He narrowed his eyes, and shot a look at Nate over his shoulder. "Are you hearing that?" He asked, his voice low. "It doesn't sound mechanical, to me. And this place isn't even online, so."
Maybe it was just the fact that it felt like a ghost would pop out at them at any moment, but Peter suddenly had a bad, unsettled feeling that they were being watched.
"Big 'if'," Nate agreed, "but I'm banking on the idea that the S.H.I.E.L.D. technology apple doesn't fall too far from the tree." Naturally, the station might have had it's own programming and firewalls and workarounds that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't necessarily have to have anywhere other than space, but there could have been some familiar aspects of it that either one of them could be able to pick up on - if not Nate with his cyberpathy than Pete with his technical knowledge.
Now, if only directions had been so easy around the cylindrical hallways, looping about the stations in rings that might have made the architecture of Krakoa jealous had there been an established connection. Nate covered Pete's back as intuition led them about, stopping in his tracks when Peter admitted to hearing a noise. Enhanced senses, he didn't have even with the vast expanse of telepathic and telekinetic abilities he used to heighten everything else, but that didn't mean he couldn't attempt to figure out what was making that nose.
<Cleanse.>
<Dissect.>
<Learn.>
It came in snippets, pieces of artificial voices that transcended through the walls to his mind, and almost immediately flared up the risk and urgency of the situation. They were being watched, but by what, his memory didn't reveal even as he attempted to sort through them in a quick play-by-play. There were things that still hadn't been unveiled, and this must have been one of them - one that he'd answer well enough with the rifle strapped to his back. "I think I know why this place is empty. At least I have a hunch."
That didn't sound good. Peter couldn't hear what Nate was - those snippets of something else with them - but that talk of a hunch made the nerves in Pete's gut twist. "Let me guess," he answered, carefully taking another few light-footed steps forward through the empty hallway, certain that there was something growing in front or behind them. "It's empty because everybody was - eaten by terrifying alien ghosts? Alien creatures? Is the Predator onboard, or a xenomorph?" He cringed underneath his balaclava.
"If I get a vote," Peter said out to the universe, "I'd prefer it to be the Predator." At least they were kind of the good guys, in a roundabout way. Kind of. Not really. He was really grasping at straws.
"Maybe there was just - a vacation. Everybody took a vacation at the exact same time." He turned to shoot a glance over his shoulder at Nate, aware that he was talking rapidly at a mile a minute but unable to stop himself. The nerves were one thing - and talking incessantly was how he dealt with it. And that was when it hit, the sharp, anxiety jarring sabre of warning shooting up through his spine and out the back of his head. The tingle hadn't come first - the danger was on them now.
"I think we need to run." Peter said, just as some metal wrenching and whirring came from behind them, a part of the hallway peeling away before his very eyes.
"You could say that," he said, not entirely sure what their unfriendly opposition might have done to the rest of the crew, but the fact was that they were dead and orders of 'cleanse, dissect, learn' spoke more of high school dissection projects and experimentation on the dead than anything that was any good. Naturally, Peter kept throwing scenarios at him, one after another, and a part of him - the old man parts that weren't ever amused with Spider-man and would've rather launched him out of a battleship than listen - nearly grimaced at the media mentions.
"I don't think they're Predators, Spider-man," he said, not sure if there was any sort of naming protocol to go by when it came to aliens from another dimension all together; and then he kept going again, Nate loosening the tension in his shoulders and dipping his rifle towards the ground for a second in temporary defeat. There was a sigh. It was loud and obvious, Nate's eyes closing while he counted down from ten and tried not to just toss Peter out of an airlock.
But then there it was, that spider sense that Nate probably would have understood from his own telepathic perspective had Peter not been quicker to the jump. The wrenching and whirring would have to take center stage as he drew his weapon back up, glancing back at the door. "You think you can get that open? And I mean soon?" He said, eye burning bright as he threw out a telekinetic blast to knock the metal - and hopefully anything that might have been with it - further down the hall, a force field quickly erecting itself once he had.
"Like now?"
"Now, on it!" Pete nearly yelped, and wished he hadn't - not when Nate exuded a sort of coolness that had, as far as Pete was concerned, often only existed in Bruce Willis movies. He couldn't quite match it - and would have been stupid to try, when he was best suited to wisecracks and zippy lines that did more to annoy than anything else. That worked for him, though - or at least it did when the villains in question could understand what he was saying. He wasn't entirely sure these guys - whatever and whoever they were that were trying to bust through the hall - would know what a yo mama joke meant.
He bounded away as Nate erected the force field between them and the incoming threat, shooting out a web that sprung him onto the door at the end of the hallway. First he tried with his hands, gritting his teeth and trying to dig his fingers in the crevasse of the door opening, pulling and pulling. It budged it a little, but not enough, so he flipped around, shot web after web at it and then yanked.
That did it. The door came off with a clang (and Pete saying loudly, "Open sesame!"). He spun for Nate, already backing through, "C'mon!"
There was panic there, somewhere deep underneath some sense to stay cool under pressure when he was the senior agent trying to get his leg up into the organization’s more clandestine facets and Peter was the junior, perhaps not as green as some of the other shifters the C.S.A. had on their radar, but still fresh. Though getting hurt was a risk he supposed any one of them understood, that didn’t mean there wasn’t some sense of responsibility on Nate’s shoulders to make sure they pulled through without any significant trouble – something he knew wasn’t shared by the Vescora that he knew now were stalking the halls. How many, he couldn’t say, but he could only hope there weren’t too many that they couldn’t cut through.
And jokes? They definitely wouldn’t do that and conscious reasoning? That probably wouldn’t have worked either, not when the voices chimed to the same tune over and over again like a virus, eating up everything that stood in their way.
Though Nate’s eyes remained on the Vescora pushing through, shooting them down as they came or otherwise throwing concussive blasts there way when telekinesis seemed the more prime of options, particularly when the iron was hot and needed to cool down, he kept his ears on the work Peter was doing. The door budged, but not enough, and when there was the smack of webbing against it, Nate was simply counting down the second that it would come ripping off the frame. A quick duck and a dive towards the doorway had him back up on his feet again; foot falls heavy and hurried towards the next series of doors.“What sort of trouble did you get in this time, Cable? How many times do I have to tell you to stop getting in with viruses?”
“Not the time, Belle,” Nate said to the disembodied voice on his arm, “but maybe you can wake up a little bit and tell us where to go. Tap into the InfoNet or whatever it is you do, point us in the right direction.”“And you’re rude. Someone didn’t get his coffee this morning.” Still, the A.I. did what she could to track down mapping of the station, relaying them to Nate as quickly as she could managed to direct them to the bridge where, hopefully, they could get a better look at what might have been going on power-wise – assuming that was even a good idea. “Hang a left, boys.”
"Oh, hi, who's that?" Pete called, listening in to Belle and doing what she was directing - immediately swinging a sharp left at the next corner. He glanced at Nate's arm, intrigued and interested and absolutely wanting to ask more questions, but they would probably have to wait. Hopefully, anyway, they would get to a point where they weren't being hunted by terrifying aliens and Peter could ask Nate all he liked. Or - maybe not. Maybe Nate wouldn't be open to it. Either way, that hadn't really stopped Pete in the past. He was just about to open his mouth to ask something else when a hole ripped open in the wall ahead of them, and a hulking, shiny black figure stepped through.
"Oh, balls," Pete said, halting sharply in the hallway, skidding a little as the big Vescora turned towards them. "You dealt with these guys before?" He asked Nate without looking at him, just hoping maybe that he'd have some useful memory that would help them find a weak spot immediately. Until then, though, Pete would do his best. He fired a hard volley of web blasts at the thing, striking it in the head and knocking it back a few steps as he made to race and half swing past.
"Let's go, go go go!" Pete encouraged, even though he knew he didn't quite need to, and spun a kick on his way past at the Vescora, sending it staggering back into the hole it had created - but only for a second.
That was all they needed: Another big, giant creature running around in a black alien hazmat suit, breaking through walls like it had assimilated a Hulk. Questions could wait - there was always time for questions in more pleasant surroundings - but Nate could at least provide some answers seeing as he had dragged Peter into this mess in the first place. Granted, some of that had been orders, an opportunity to claim a space station for the C.S.A. if only to monitor threats that might have been operating out of their sphere of observation, but team leader meant responsibility and responsibility meant not letting the kid bite the big one.
"I want to say I have," he said, shaking his head, "but very little of it is familiar. I'm still trying to put the pieces together." Once the larger Vescora had been launched back into the hole, there was another telekinetic blast to follow to knock him back even further, the onslaught repeated much like the hard volley of webbing that Peter had thrown in an effort to keep it down while they ventured further into the station.
"Maybe next time we do this with a team. Wouldn't that be something?" Belle snarked though he knew the A.I. was working as best as she could with the information the ship's systems provided to get a door open - one door, any door - that they could actually shut up behind them. It opened quickly enough on their approach before sliding shut again, the ship's main systems not the target so much as it had been the power core, dead just as expected.
"If we turn this thing on, they're is going to be a whole lot more of them," Nate said as he started it down, "which means we're going to have to leave this thing off until we can jettison it." 'It' was only a temporary unknown object, visible to him in flashes - a doorway, built of Vescora bodies or even those they had assimilated, which activated when the station was on, something he wasn't sure they could handle themselves even with the Phoenix.
"Hey, hey, we're a team," Pete interjected back to Belle, friendly and undeterred by her snarking, extremely interested in what she was, who she was, how she was talking, - a lot of questions, all at once, and Pete wanted to keep asking them, but he knew better, for now, and kept slipping forward. It was faster for him to zip from wall to wall at the moment, sliding through the open door and letting out a brief, short, relieved sigh when it snapped shut behind them. He arched his brows behind his fairly useless balaclava and turned to furrow them at Nate as he talked. He turned back to the power core, his fingers itching to get into it.
"Right. Jettison it." He pursed his lips, and zipped on forward on a slip of webbing, closing in on the power core so he could get a better look of it. Some of his memory was still foggy - engineering, all of it, just a little bit further away than he liked it to be, but it didn't take much, his muscles still had an idea of what to do with it. "Well, we don't have to turn it on on." He mused, glancing over his shoulder at Nate again.
"I could power it up - momentarily, if you cover me. And then use the power to redirect it to wherever we need to jettison those assholes, and ... hope for the best."
"Don't mind her. She's just cranky," Nate commented with a tinge of embitterment, but what else was Belle going to do when she couldn't very well do anything more than what she already was. A sentient tattoo - that was essentially what she was and while she could make use of the technology he had on hand (literally) to do everything from accessing information to hacking into systems to manufacturing M-Pox vaccines once upn a time, getting up and moving and being part of a physical team was hardly in the cards; and, for the moment, Nate couldn't very well do anything other than make sure the door held closed, telekinetic fields popping up every which way in an attempt to do just that while Peter worked.
"If we can move them to an airlock," which undoubtedly would have taken some distraction he was more than happy to provide when he had the ways and means to survive it, no matter how sieved the Phoenix Force actually was, "all it takes is a trigger word, pop that thing open, and suck all those guys into the cold oblivion of outer space."
It was optimistic to put it in such a flippant sort of way, as if it would be so easy to barrel through a bunch of beings that wanted to tear them apart and dissect them, perhaps even assimilate them into their hive existence, but Nate had no intention in returning to Nick Fury empty handed or - worse yet - with news that they had to set the whole thing to self-destruct because they couldn't take care of the problem. Pride was easily at work and, of course, a healthy amount of youthful determination that they could do this and it would go off without a hitch - for the most part. A few scrapes, bumps and bruises, were to be expected.
"I can take them on a chase," he said, throwing his rifle onto his back as if preparing for just the thing. "And when I give you the word, pop that airlock open."
Peter swung his head towards Nate, lips pursed underneath the balaclava. This was the problem with team work - one person usually had to take the worst part of the plan, and in this case, it did make sense that it would be Nate. He was the one with experience when it actually came to these alien monsters, and within the CSA organization itself - but Peter still felt a twist of that high-key sense of responsibility, that he could do both, surely?
Only the logical part of him understood that he could not, and he could probably barely get the thing started at this point, considering everything in his brain felt numb and far away more often than not.
"Right." Pete acquiesced finally. "I'll wait for your word. Don't get killed, okay? We still have to go do other friend stuff." Pete turned back to the power source as he rambled, sighing, "Like getting coffee, and pizza nights, and slumber parties..." Still, he was already starting to get working on the source and figuring out what it would take to get it active and open and - ready, hopefully, to time it for when Nate had lured the aliens away.
While he was sure they could do both parts with equal success no matter who was on what side of the equation, there was far more at stake when it came to throwing Peter into the gauntlet. He might have been faster, more agile and quicker on his feet than Cable would have been, but when push came to shove, Cable would be more prepared to escape the depths of space than Peter would have been. It wasn’t a point of pride so much as knowledge that he could, silently hoping that if other options didn’t work – if the Vescora swarmed him and he couldn’t remove himself from the pocket of danger with a quick body slide back into the station – the Phoenix Force wouldn’t forsake him for having his mother lock it away in part if he needed to count on that boost of cosmic power to save his own skin. It still wasn’t favorable, but it was better than having to fish a spider out of an airless sea.
“I’ll try not to. My mother would kill me,” Nate said, realizing the potential impossibility, but it wouldn’t be the first time the Phoenix Force brought someone back from a death in space – not that he had any intention on giving up the ghost. “I’ll owe you at least those things for dealing with this,” he pointed out before he was facing the door again, one pop of bright light teleporting him right back into the hallway where the Vescora had been piling up outside the door.
“Hey, uglies! Over here!” He shouted, whistling loud to draw their attention and even taking a few rifle shots in their direction, steering them from the technical efforts inside for the live bait that was ready to take them on a merry chase throughout the station. Once he had managed to convince some of the hive to go after him, he took off down the hall with the expectation the rest would follow or, at the very least, getting rid of the bulk would allow them to clean out the rest and secure the station. What he hadn’t expected was what his eyes landed on when he finally did make it to the storage airlock. Like a monolith out of A Space Odyssey, the portal for the Vescora stood tall, built of their bodies and closed for the moment.
<Pete…> He tapped his partner telepathically, turning his attention to the creatures piling into the space and taking shots as he needed to, making his way further into the space so they could all gather up in one place. As far as shitty sides of a situation, he was sure Nate was stuck in it, but still there had been no intention to put Pete through this. <Just power this up enough to get the airlock open. I think I know where they’re coming from.>
Pete had spared one glance back at Cable - as well as a friendly, hopeful thumbs up - and a smile reserved only for the fact that now he'd been promised at least those things were the both of them able to survive. They had to, Pete decided, since pizza was on the cards, and so he'd turned back to the power source as Nate blipped away and sucked in a deep breath. He really could have used more smarts right at that moment, but he'd settle for muscle memory - and the assumption that this thing relied on the laws of logic, and Pete could handle that. All it would take was a little finagling - and he could do that, too.
Hearing Nate's voice in his head was never not weird, and his head half whipped around as if expecting to see him standing right there - but Nate was elsewhere, luring away the Vescora, even though Pete could still hear some clawing and slamming at the walls outside, and cringed underneath his balaclava as he got back to work. He wasn't one hundred percent sure if Nate could pick up on his own thoughts - which, Pete half hoped he couldn't, because Pete's mind was a complete mess at the best of times. He tried to focus, though, to think something like, Ay ay, captain! and then regretted it, and tried to think of something else, like, You got it, chief - no, that was worse, oh fuck just fix the thing, Parker.
And so he fixed the thing. Or worked at it, anyway. He stuck his hands deep inside it and pulled out wires and tried this and that until he finally got a spark working, and then a beeping, and then a section of the source powered on with a hum, and Pete threw himself at the control panel and started tapping furiously away, searching for those airlock doors. It worked. They opened. Partially - at least - there was a block, and now some Vescora were breaking through the wall to where he'd sequestered himself.
While the opening of the bay had been a hopeful step in the right direction, a few of the Vescora already slipping to their inevitable demise as the air went with it, it was only a matter of time before something went wrong. Either they would patch up the hole with their own bodies or the gate would never open and the giant monolithic doorway he was hoping to launch out of the station didn’t fit or – this being one scenario he didn’t want to happen – he went shuttling off into the vast of space. Even with the mask and breather over his face, a part of the uniform he had been less than familiar with, the idea of it just didn’t sit well.
And the forth option? That had been being swarmed and assimilated, the very thing he was hoping he could fend off for just enough time to push something that was easily ten, twenty, who-even-knew times bigger than he was. What a way to go: Horribly, painfully, nightmarishly in a space case body horror episode.
Nate moved about the cargo bay as strategically as possible, attempting to throw whatever he could at the Vescora – be it from the rifle he carried or a quick swipe of telekinesis to throw any lingering cargo at the creatures – until he was behind the doorway, looking every which way to try and figure out how he was going to gather enough of a telepathic push to get it out of there. <I don’t see those doors opening anymore. What’s going on in there?> He asked even as he focused more of his energy on trying to knock the gateway down, cautiously testing his limits between one construct and the Vescora that were still piling in. The Phoenix, undoubtedly, would help, but as of yet, there was no going up in a ring of fire to suggest she was even listening.
“Oh come on! Just fall over already!” Nate yelled, about as indignant as they came and nothing of the professional demeanor he had stepped into this mission with, his directive changing as the Vescora drew in too close for comfort before another force field had been constructed, this time with some hope he could make it large enough to do the heavy lifting for him.
Peter gave a huff and a strangled noise of difficulty, hand shoved deep inside the power source as he searched for the wires he knew would be there. It's-- coming! He tried to "think" back at Nate, and just ended up saying it out loud, though the only souls that would have heard him voice it were the Vescora starting to break through the doorway. And then - there it was. Pete let out a hiss of victory, and the airlock bay doors shot suddenly open, and he thought to himself - to Nate, he hoped, who would pick it up, a go, boss, go!
God, he hoped Nate would make it out okay, and he stayed prepared to do anything else from his end - while, turning, at the same time, to catch sight of the nearest Vescora ripping its way through the wall. "Oh, hi, um, the cafeteria is actually that way--" Pete started, and promptly leaped out of the way in time to avoid a bit of sheet metal tossed at him from the other side of the room. Heart in his throat, he flipped up onto the ceiling to avoid another direct attack, and began webbing as quickly as he could - both to block the hole, and to send the Vescora back, to either pin them to the floor or the wall or get them to retreat.
"Nate?!" He shouted - thought, at the same time - hoping that the guy hadn't gone sailing out into space with the rest of the aliens.
There it was, the sudden rush of air out of the airlock that whipped everyone, Nate included, right for the vast of space is they didn’t find something to find purchase against. His own side slammed readily into gateway while the Vescora found reason to change their directive from “assimilate” to “survive” and attempted to grab hold of whatever they could as to not go flying out into the open; but that hadn’t been in Nate’s plans – still wasn’t – and as quick as he could pick them off, he fired at grasping hands and cargo locks, even throwing a few telekinetically, to ensure as many of them as possible were jettisoned into the void.
The gateway needed to do with it.
“This was a stupid idea!” He shouted knowing well enough it had been his own, the rifle slung back onto his back as he put both hands against the gateway, giving it a good shove – a few of them – while trying to will some sort of movement in it between weightlessness and his own telekinetic push. All he needed it to do was budge, to move, to get the hell off of the station, and somewhere in the struggle of it all and keeping what Vescora that remained off of him, he was sure he had lost it – again – in an explosion of fire that ripped out of the airlock, taking the gateway and incinerating the Vescora with it.
It was in the twinkle of lights that he had found himself conscious again – stars. Still, it had been close enough to hear Pete, rattling his mind awake a little more for a quick jump from the vast he had been floating in for the control room where he could be of some help further. “Power it up all the way, get that cargo door closed again,” Nate said, hoping – perhaps even praying – there was some sort of security system within the station that could take care of some of the goons at the gate… that was all made of webbing. “Nice work.”