One of Hurston’s Com Array satellites had failed. I was offered the job of investigating the matter. I was not sure why, especially me. Did I have a good reputation, or was I dispensable. After all, there was no information why the system was offline. So there was a risk that I got into a dangerous situation.

When I arrived at the satellite everything seemed calm. Then two contacts appeared on the radar. I already wanted to drive up the weapon systems, when I thought something strange. The contacts did not move and they were not displayed as hostile. That could be a trap. I sent a ping to scan the area. There were no other contacts. The situation was very strange. I did not trust it. The two spaceships hovered motionless in space and did not react. Not even on a call. It seemed like a huge EMP had disabled everything. The satellite and the two spaceships.

I had no choice, I had to check the systems in the satellite. I parked right in front of the satellite entrance and opened the side sliding door of my Cutlass. With a bad feeling I went out in EVA. Now my Cutlass would be defenseless against an attack. I could only hope.

Carefully, I floated through the maintenance shaft into the satellite. A faint yellow-green light illuminates the shaft. In some places smoke came out of the supply lines. Even though it was quiet outside, there could still be a trap inside. I’ve heard of situations where pirates hid in a deactivated satellite and killed anyone who came in.
Fortunately there was no sound in the vacuum, otherwise my loud heartbeat would have been heard everywhere. I reached the end of the shaft and the entrance to the inner hall. Carefully, I looked over the edge. It went deep down, the ground was more than 10 meters below me. I briefly had the feeling of tilting forward and falling. I wanted to hold on tight. Then I realized again that I was in zero gravity.

I checked the pipes at the top to see if anyone was hiding. I could not find anyone.
Then I floated down to the terminal. The system was offline. There was no defect, no failure. I started the system again.

It took a while to boot, then everything turned green and the main lights went on. I paused and waited. Waited if anything bad happened. But nothing happened, it just got light and it came the message that the systems were online again.
I suddenly felt safe again. Deep inside, I knew that was deceptive.

Without further precautions, I floated back to my Cutlass. Everything was still quiet outside. Nobody waited in an ambush, my spaceship was undamaged and waited patiently for my return. I got in, started the drive and flew back to Hurston.

When I reached the orbit of Hurston, the sun was just coming out from behind the planet. It was a beautiful sight. I wondered if I really wanted to go back to Lorville.