In Space Everyone Screams Ch. 02

Author's Note:

This story has been retitled from 'In Space Everyone Hears You Scream' to 'In Space Everyone Screams. I'm very sorry for the long wait on Chapter 2. I told myself I would never be one of those writers who leaves their readers hanging and yet here we are, a year later. 2021 has been the most ridiculous year for me and I am finally getting back into writing on a regular schedule. Those of you who decide to pick this story back up and continue to read, I thank you. Chapter 3 is halfway written and by the time this posts, it will likely be in editing phase.

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Chapter 2

Anna levered her arm into a tight space spanned by coolant hoses, bundled wires, copper tubing, and steel brackets. The metal parts were dull; they had lost their luster ages ago. Her flashlight floated in the air at an angle so that its light shone into the narrow opening. The bluish white light gave the machinery a pallid tinge. As she loosened the last bolt and pulled the part free, she gave thanks for the lack of artificial gravity. Without it she was able to do things like change out parts that would weigh well over a hundred pounds under Earth's gravity. And she could do it by hand with minimal tools in the middle of the reactor by herself.

The ship's reactor was massive. Somewhat spheroidal, the inner chamber towered two stories tall and was as large as a small city block in diameter. The actual core itself encompassed a complex network of steel, aluminum, and titanium. It was sealed to the outside except for a series of vents that ran laterally down its sides like the seams of a massive pumpkin.

She pulled the old part free and held it under the light to inspect it.

It was charred. Burnt. Half of it blackened and discolored blue and dull gray. One side of the piping looked like half melted popsicle. She let it drift "downwards" at a sluggish pace (She'd grab it on her way out) and went to work pushing the new part into place. It looked like an F with a curved section at the end and a bracket in the middle that made it difficult to position. She spent a minute shifting in place to get it into the right position before bolting it into place.

Most of her days went the same way. She'd read through the reactor's system errors, scour the shelves in engineering storage to find the correct part, and replace said part. Rinse and repeat. This was the twenty-seventh part. She looked over her shoulder for what felt like the tenth time that day. And shook her head afterwards. The space was empty. The pressure of being alone was starting to get to her. That or she had watched too many horror movies as a teenager.

Inside the flood chamber, the only source of light came from her work light. The rest of the chamber was dark, with only a red glow haloed around the entry shaft. The reactor manual had been a dense piece of reading but she'd skimmed it over. This chamber was designed to be a buffer between the reactor's core and the rest of the ship. If the core's coolant system malfunctioned, the core could be flash cooled by venting the chamber to space.

With her flashlight in her mouth, Anna grabbed hold of a pipe and spun herself in the air so that her head was facing "down." She pushed off. Waiting for her at the "bottom" of the chamber was a suitcase sized block covered in hard plastic and metal plating. The sides were covered in yellow vinyl letters that read "100kWh." A battery pack.

She had hooked up the battery to the core's sensor array and her tablet floated in the air, tethered by a cable to the pack. Anna tapped the screen and watched as the backlight came on and a cool light lit the darkness. She pulled up the app designed to handle core diagnostics and read through the notifications.

A list of maintenance items in red colored text appeared. There was also a small but growing section of green. Items that the system had registered as completed. She wiped her brow. Her tablet told her that it was about 9 degrees celsius inside the ship. Cold but not deathly cold. Moving about and retrieving parts had warmed her body up but after spending the last twenty or so minutes in one place, she was feeling cold again. She took a moment to untie the sleeves around her waist and pull her tracksuit back up. She still wore her cryosuit underneath. It was a functional outfit. And she had been too busy trying to get the ship up and running to go looking for more appropriate clothing. Staying alive was her highest priority. Besides, there was no one else on the ship aside from her. Social customs were moot. If the ship had been warm enough, she would have likely floated through the halls naked. Still, having pockets was always useful.

Turning back to stare at the tablet floating in the air, she tried to focus on the lines of text on the screen. The first order of business had been attempting to diagnose what went wrong with the reactor. It had been a tedious game of cross referencing error codes with the manual to see what was actually wrong. She had tried at several points to look at the raw code that the system spat out but it was coded in a newer language that she wasn't very familiar with. In the end, she had chosen to focus on the maintenance items that the app described as being the most critical.

When she had dug through the reactor's event log, she had found the cause of the shutdown. Shortly after the crew came out of cryo they had enacted an emergency reactor purge. That had been weird. From what she had read in the manual, a reactor purge was only to be done if the reactor was overheating. It was a last ditch effort to cool the core down and avoid a meltdown. It told the core to pour all its excess heat into the flood chamber which would then be vented into space. When they had done that, they had damaged parts of the core and the entire reactor had shut down as a precaution.

"But why vent it in the first place? There were no documented overheat warnings before the event," she murmured. She scrolled back to stare at that old line of text. "Doesn't make any sense."

She realized she was still holding the flashlight in her mouth. So she let the thing go and it drifted downward.

She pulled down one of the command menus and ran a system diagnostic. Probably the dozenth time she had done so in the last week. It came back with a few lines about parts that the system had detected would need to be replaced or maintained eventually but weren't critical.

It was time to insert material and see if she could start up the reactor. If she could, she could breathe a sigh of relief for a while.

At least until I have to worry about food, she thought. But one problem at a time. She reached out for the flashlight and swung it around to shine it at the opposite wall. The light revealed a bundle of supplies floating in the air. It was a mixture of plastic boxes filled with parts along with larger pieces that had been wrapped in foam for transport. There was a bundle of steel pipes, and a box full of tools as well. She'd basically pulled everything she thought she might need from maintenance storage.

The reactor used deuterium-tritium to start the reaction. The isotopes were contained inside a metal canister that was almost as long as she was tall. Anna wrapped an arm around the canister and pushed herself back toward the core.

On the other side of the core, exactly halfway up the side of the thing, there was a receptacle hidden underneath a stainless steel door. Exactly where the manual said it would be. Grabbing the handle, she pulled it open and shone her light inside. A circular chamber with a sort of sled sat inside. She pulled the sled out, rotating it with some effort until it slid open. She pulled the old canister out and sent it floating away behind her. In went the new canister, which fit perfectly. This done, she pushed the sled back in and locked the door shut.

It took her a few minutes but she was finally getting close to getting the reactor back online. Or so she thought. Every previous attempt at restarting the thing had failed. It was always one thing or another. A loose coupling here. A faulty valve here. A coolant hose that needed replacing here. It had been a never ending laundry list of repairs. But she was finally close.

Drifting back towards where she left her tablet, she plucked it out of the air and tapped through menus until she found the correct one.

Her finger hovered in place over the button labeled "Begin Reactor Sequence."

She pressed the button.

Silence. The entire room shuddered. A near imperceptible hum droned through the air as the systems started up. Air circulated through ducts. Various fins and valves began shifting, going through their pre-programmed checklists.

Anna held her breath. It had taken her a long time to reach this point. Too long. She had cursed all her life choices up until this point. Choosing software engineering instead of mechanical. Agreeing to go on an ice cream date with the feisty, red-head in a worn leather jacket covered in colorful pins. Agreeing to come on this god forsaken colony mission.

The core seemed to halt like a giant beast taking great pains to pause before changing direction. It wound down, the electric hum in the air subsided, dying out.

Below, on the tablet screen, a notification appeared:

Error 54-10: Start Sequence Aborted.

She snarled and swiped downwards to reveal the rest of the error message.

Duct 31-A non-operational. High risk of extreme temperature during emergency venting. Please repair duct venting before commencing reactor start sequence.

She threw her head back and hissed out a frustrated breath.

It was always something.

For a few seconds she floated there, her toes just touching the "ground" and her eyes closed.

Come on, Anna. Pull it together. Let's go see about this stupid duct, she thought.

Fifteen minutes later, after checking the schematic, she found the problematic duct. It was critical to operation. In the event of a projected core meltdown, the ship's flood chamber was connected directly to the vacuum of space. These ducts opened, venting excess heat into space. The flood chamber could also be filled with coolant to rapidly cool everything down.

Anna had pulled one of the space suits from a maintenance closet. Now, dressed in the stark white and gray of the suit, she pried open the hatch. Lifting the door out of the way, she pulled herself inside.

The space was narrow, comparable to the dimensions of on-board air ducts. If the gravity had been active, she would've had to crawl on her hands and knees through the vent. Instead, she gripped the edges with her hands and launched herself through. With her head tilted up, it felt as if she was floating "upward." She eyed the distance, making sure to keep her light on in case there was debris blocking the way.

Soon she reached a bend where she caught the round and stuck an arm out to stop her travel before shifting in place and launching herself "upwards" again. Thankfully, this particular vent wasn't overly long or twisted. There was just one more bend before she neared the first shut-off gate.

The diagnostic program had listed this gate as being operational and without fault. She pulled the device off of the velcro strip at her hip and tapped the screen. She found the menu for reactor controls. Another two seconds and the gate came to life as a low hum nearly imperceptible to the ear whistled through the air and the surface slid smoothly away.

The temperature dropped almost immediately. Her suit insulated her from the harsh temperatures of outer space but even underneath it all she could tell that there was a breach somewhere.

As she approached the end of the vent, she shone her task light into the vent mechanism and frowned.

It appeared to be in a normal condition so far as she could tell. The vent was designed with a mechanism analogous to a camera aperture. A series of interlocking pieces in a circular fan configuration moved in tandem to control the size of the opening. It was then that she noticed there were marks and splotches of darkened color along one side. That seemed a bit odd. Using her hands to ease herself closer, she leaned in as close as her bulbous helmet would allow and stared at the edge of one of the blades.

It looked as if there was some sort of stain on it from long ago. A smear of something that almost looked black against the dull gray of the steel vent. She reached out, tentatively, to touch a finger to it.

It had the half-hard, half-soft consistency of something that was once more viscous. It was almost springy. Like a piece of candy or chewing gum that had been left out and forgotten for a long time. She was no materials expert so it was anyone's guess what the substance had once been. The fact that it didn't react to the fabric of her suit was a good thing. It meant that she wasn't in any immediate danger from it.

As she examined the rest of the blades, it became clear what the issue was. Whatever the substance was, some of it had gotten on the hinges. In its probably centuries old hardened state it was causing the servo motors problems.

Anna sighed and reached into her toolkit to begin pulling out the tools she would need.

Looks like it'll be another long night.

*****

Kia was stuffed.

Not stuffed like she'd had too much to eat. Stuffed as in she had a cock down her throat and another rammed into her pussy from behind. She was down on all fours, tits and girlcock swinging with every thrust atop the bed sheets.

"So. Tight. Fuck!" huffed a voice from behind. Kia couldn't quite turn her head but she could hear Zoe groaning between thrusts--her caramel tan hips pushed into Kia's firm ass at a slow, almost lazy pace. It was driving Kia crazy. She arched her back and pushed herself backwards, hoping Zoe would get the hint. She was so close to cumming, she just needed to get fucked a little harder.

"Mmph! Mmph! Mmmm."

Kia's moans were muffled with the cock that jackhammered in and out of her throat. Her lips were with slick with spit and pre. There was slobber that trailed down her chin onto the bed. She looked up to make eye contact with Lilian who tossed her head to one side, her platinum blonde hair fluttering away in graceful wave. Lilian bit her lower lip and winked down at Kia. Her red irises seemed to sparkle behind her large, horn rimmed glasses. One of Lilian's hands tugged at Kia's hair while the other played with her own tits.

"Such a good little slut you are," purred Lilian. "So good at taking cock."

"Fuck!" grunted Zoe. "This is so fuckin' hot."

"You like being stuffed don't you? Such a good little cumslut," said Lilian. Kia hummed with pleasure and made eyes at Lilian. She did her best slutty 'ahegao' face, making her eyes cross and and then roll upwards. And she followed that up with a trick of the tongue that always made her partners crazy. It was a technique she'd mastered a long time ago that turned her tongue into an undulating wave underneath Lilian's cock.

"Ohh!" Lilian shivered and she grabbed hold of Kia's head as her eyelashes fluttered. "Oh, FUCK! I'm cumming!"

Lilian rammed her hips forward until Kia's nose met her soft curls.

"Don't. You. Dare. Spill. A. Drop."

Lilian tossed her head back and cried out as her hips jerked against Kia's face. Kia felt the cock throb as Lilian came, jerking and pumping her thick cum down Kia's throat. Kia didn't need to but she swallowed a few times, allowing her throat muscles to massage Lilian's cock and coax more of her cum out. Lilian let out a breath as her orgasm finally died down.

Kia felt Zoe speed up her thrusts. Finally, she thought. She was so close. Just a little bit more. Zoe's hips smacked faster and harder against Kia's ass. For a moment the only noises in the room were Kia's delighted whimpers and the sound of Zoe's hips clapping Kia's ass.

Kia pulled herself off Lilian's cock and gasped. That woman could cum and cum and cum. Her mods were ridiculous. With her mouth free, she egged Zoe on now.

"That's it. Just like that, babe. I'm so close," Kia whined.

"Fuck, your pussy is the best," groaned Zoe as she drove into Kia's sopping lips.

"Ahhhhh!" Kia screamed out, her fists clenching the sheets as her head and chest collapsed onto the bed and her entire body shuddered. She felt her pussy clench and her girlcock jerk as she came forcefully. All pistons firing.

"My! Turn!" Zoe hissed before sinking herself to the hilt and throwing her head back. Kia felt Zoe's fingers tighten around Kia's waist as her cock clenched over and over again. She felt the heat of Zoe's thick spunk pour into her pussy. They both panted and writhed against each other. Finally after what felt like an eternity, Zoe pulled out and some of her cum trailed out of Kia's abused pussy.

Kia's legs folded and she let herself lay on the bed a moment, basking in the afterglow of pleasure. Her cheek was still smeared in spit and cum. She gulped in air as she licked her lips, eyes still glazed over with pleasure. Behind her, Zoe let out a big breath. Lilian ran her fingers through Kia's hair and stroked her fingers up and down Kia's back tracing circles and patterns in a way that made Kia shiver. Zoe crawled over to plop down beside Lilian and reached over to the beside table to pick up a small rectangular device. She brought it to her lips, pressed a button on the side, and inhaled. A plume of white vapor trailed from her nostrils. For several moments there was silence in the room as they all enjoyed the moment. Zoe took a few more puffs from her vape before offering it to Lilian who partook as well.

Kia twisted in place bringing her face up to rest her cheek against Lilian's now flaccid cock. She kissed the tip and continued kissing up the length, raising her gaze to meet Lilian's.

"Round two?" asked Kia, a grin on her face.

Their chips buzzed with activity and Pal, the ship's AI spoke to them with its melodic yet androgynous voice.

I'm sorry to be a joy-kill but I have relevant news to share. The captain has asked me to inform you all that we've begun deceleration from NLS. Approximate time to arrival of the source of the distress beacon: seventy-nine hours.

"That's enough time for another round or two," said Kia.

Zoe snickered and slapped Kia's ass playfully. "Or twenty."

Kia bit her lip and pushed herself up onto her forearms, baring her tits. "Or forty."

Pal made a polite cough that sounded quite natural and human-like.

There is one more thing. We've picked up a few pieces of debris along the energy trail that may have originated from a ship of some sort. Captain has requested Dr. Karuiki and engineering officer Zarlin for analysis.

"Can't it wait an hour?" asked Zoe. "Or two?" she added hopefully.

While I sense that the captain would allow a delay since she is quite lenient, I do not recommend one myself. This information you provide on could be vital to the success of this mission.

There was a brief moment of pause but then Kia blinked and rolled over, springing to her feet. The inside of her thighs were still slick from their combined juices and spunk decorated the corners of her lips but they pulled into a wide smile.

"Finally! Something to do!" she nearly shouted.

Zoe sighed and looked over at Lilian. "One of these days you gotta to let me top you."

"Mm, tempting. But not before you choke on my cock," replied Lilian with a deadpan face. But her eyes soon wrinkled and she brought a hand to her lips to cover a giggle. "You won't."

"Aight. Bet." Zoe fired back. "But who says I would choke?"

"Hey, none of that," called Kia. "Both your cocks belong in me. End of conversation. Now get out of my room. I need to shower."