This sucks.

Sam’s breath came hot and fast, sweat sliding down her brow as she brought the duck-tape around her leg with numb fingers, sealing the suit’s breach. A red stain was still spreading across the white fabric, but her professional medical opinion was that she wouldn’t bleed out, not before hypoxia got her.

”Practically a vacation.”

She forced herself up onto the skewered leg with a nasty string of curses, almost fell on her ass as blood bubbled from the edges of the tape, trickling down her suit. The whole limb was weak. Too early for blood loss to be doing that. Tendons? Didn’t matter.

”It’s so quiet up there, you’ll die of boredom.”

The oxygen was running out. The room’s air was getting soupy, empty. They must have shut down the ventilation. Fuckers were still out there. She could hear them. Not their voices, but every time they brushed against the wall, or when they tried to force the door open. It was holding for the moment, but she couldn’t stay. The air was running out, no one was coming to help.

”Vacation.”

She knelt on her good leg, wincing as she raked her bare hands across the floor, searching in the dim emergency light. There. Her skin caught on the sharp aluminum edge of the floor plate. Normally you need an impact driver to take the plates off. But normally you’re not suffocating. She drew her knife with frayed fingers and dug at the metal until one of the edges peeled up. Then she jammed the tip in and pried, pushing down with all her weight. The aluminum bent around the bolts. She dropped the knife and worked her fingers in, shifting painfully on her leg to lean back, back. She felt the soft metal wrenching, grit her teeth at the sharp edge cutting into her fingers, blood running down the curve of the sheet. She was really wishing she hadn’t taken her gloves off. The aluminum started tearing away from the bolts, the metal screeched, and with a grunt of effort the whole thing bent back like a tuna can. The maintenance crawl space underneath was packed with wires, cramped, went dark as pitch only a couple feet in.

Vacation.

Head for the Armory, get armed.

Head for the Docking Gates, get suit.

Get the suit. Breathing is more important than killing.

(OP image courtesy of CrossTheLine.)

Get suit, hope boot doesn't end up full of blood.

Suit up

Slow down. The stakes are way too high way too early. What's going on? Who is our enemy? How much risk of suffocation are we in?

Get suit, I guess.

Get the suit, run across the outer hull, infiltrate your way to the armory.
Let's see them track their prey in the vacuum of space.

you need to be properly dressed before you can start your day. Go grab a suit.

Any chance of killing them all, or are we just trying to escape? I'd lean gunwards in the former case, suitwards in the latter. Might lean suitwards regardless, depending on other factors.

The crawlspaces were the veins and arteries of the station. Cramped tunnels filled with miles of wiring, vents and piping. At the largest points maybe two feet high and three feet wide. They built them assuming whoever needed to use them would have a flashlight. Sam didn’t.

Her fingers grasped in the dark at a bundle of wires, and she drug herself a couple more feet. Her ragged breath filled the cramped space, warmed the stale air. She was getting too tired, too fast. Probably CO2 poisoning. Or blood loss. She felt a hand to her punctured leg: it came away wet. Was she still bleeding? Or had it just not dried? She couldn’t do anything about it either way. The tunnels stretched on and on. It was uncomfortably quiet, crushingly tight. The rhythm of her breath and her limbs thunking against the metal faded as she fell into a very dangerous place: her mind.

Your mind can kill you. And she’d been focusing a lot of brainpower to keep it shut-off. But things were moving too fast. Maybe she needed to take some time and think.

The first thought that occurred was to fight back. Kill them all. Good to see her Army training was still in there somewhere. It would be her and whoever else was still alive against however fucking many armed dudes. They were good, organized. No, not an option. Not the objective.

Suit. She’d get suited up. No telling how badly the station was damaged, the suit was most pressing.

Fuck but her arms were getting sore.

She found her mind wandering to the past. Not a great place to be when the present can kill you. Wasn’t sure thinking about what had happened would help her any. She was trying to keep it positive on her vacation. But maybe she needed to think it through.

Remember the beginning, or stay focused?

Retrace your steps, what went wrong?

Flaaashbaaa-
*slap*
Focus. Deep breaths. Think about fried pie. Think about how juicy their brains will be after you sever their heads and crush their skulls.

Do not flash back! No! Think about fried pies. Fried pies can't kill you, distraction can.

No. No! She had to stay focused. Look back later. Had to look forward. What was forward? Dark tunnel. What was she looking forward to?

Fried pie.

She slapped her hand down with the revelation, then winced at how much noise she’d just made. She’d heard the staff on station ate pretty good, even had a real cook. She’d been thinking about fried pies the whole ride up, looking forward to it. Just because the station was being stormed didn’t mean she couldn’t hold out hope for some Louisiana crab lanterns.

Solid third on the priority list. Suit, then gun, then pie. Look for other survivors after pie, so she didn’t have to share. Good deal.

She kept crawling, filled with new motivation.

*

Sam tried to keep her breathing quiet.

Light cut through little slats and slashed across her face. She shifted as quietly as she could, trying to check all the angles. The lockers in the docks, just behind the check-in office. Unless she’d really fucked up her navigating, that’s where she was. And there was a dude with a rifle between her and the rest of her suit.

Just one. She’d been listening out for fifteen minutes to make sure. He was obviously posted as a guard, guy hardly moved, just stood there menacingly in his black boots and beige fatigues. Well equipped: rifle, vest, helmet. Probably a radio.

The obvious answer was to kill him. It was the only answer, as far as she could see. She knew what to do. Well, she’d been trained what to do. Your standard “Brachial stun, throat cut.” Army Combatives manual, page 7-3. She saw the diagram in her head, told herself this would be no problem. Slip out of the floor and drive her knife into the soft hollow of his neck, right above the collar bone. She’d treated enough carotid bleeds to know exactly where that artery was. The real trick here was ignoring the part of her that remembered how shit she had always been at sneaking.

She needed the suit, and that meant she needed this guy dead. But maybe she could be clever about it.

Depends - only be clever if it's needed, if it helps. You're bad at sneaking, though? How far is this dude? Does he have a radio? You've not heard anyone else?

I'm tempted to e.g. chuck a pebble, but he may radio somebody if he hears something suspicious. So - describe the situation. You're in a room, with lockers? The other dude is...in an adjacent room? Facing away from you? Do you suppose you xould just nonchalantly walk out, refuge in audacity and all, maybe even call "hey", then stab him?

Or, on the side of secrecy, are there leftover towels, maybe you can wrap your feet in two?

Unsold, either way.

Okay, situation.

One dude, back turned, same room as her. Watching him through the slats of a drainage grate, she couldn’t actually see a radio, but there was a solid chance he had at least a walkie-talkie clipped to the vest. She was thinking about throwing something to distract him, but the risk was too high. He wouldn’t be distracted for long enough to actually get her suit. No, shwacking him was about the only option she saw. Pretty damn sure he was the only guy in the room. No matter how still you are, you still make a little noise standing watch, and she hadn’t heard anything besides him.

The idea occurred to wrap her feet in towels, but they were all too far from the grate to be worth it. Then inspiration struck. She unzipped her jumper as quietly as she could, wincing at the noise. Guard dude didn’t seem to notice. Then she pulled out her bra. It wasn’t very thick, but the padding was there. The knife rasped out of its sheath, she cut the pads apart, and shifted awkwardly in the crawl space to secure them, tying them to the balls of her feet with the bra’s strings.

Boom, field-expedient sneaking boots. She was as ready as she was getting.

The grate slid slowly out of place. She winced at the noise. Winced even harder as she sat up and forced her sore muscles to drag her sloooooooowly out of the hole. Her hurt leg screamed murder, arms buckled.

The boots were still too heavy, but the bra was surprisingly good at keeping them quiet. She crept forwards, holding her breath. Could feel the adrenaline, feel her pulse pounding in her raw fingers, clutched white-knuckle tight around her knifegrip.

He seemed completely oblivious, looking through the glass of the check-in window, watching the docks. His off-hand fidgeting on his AK’s forestock, was shifting his weight from foot to foot, like there was somewhere he’d rather be. There was a loop in the neck of his flak jacket, and that’s where she grabbed him.

She wasn’t exactly sure what she was expecting. Maybe that he’d fight a little, sure. She would too if someone tried to slit her throat. But she wasn’t expecting him to drive his elbow backwards into her gut. She gasped, knife didn’t make it to his throat. The kick to his knee was already moving though, and worked like it was supposed to. Till they both fell backwards.

She hit the ground first, and he collapsed on top of her, writhing and kicking, grunting like an animal. She grasped at his vest, tring to control him with her left hand as she stabbed wildly with the right. The knife was stopped by the vest until she stabbed low enough, her blade-hand started coming back slick with blood somewhere around his hip. He screamed and threw his head back, his helmet meeting her head, the back of her head meeting the floor. She reeled, and he slipped her grasp, rolling around to face her. She grabbed desperately for his rifle, wrestling for control. He took the higher position, looming above her, wrenching against her grip. At some point she dropped the knife. Controlling the gun was the only goal now. She wouldn’t let go, even as he bashed the flat of the rifle against her face. Felt her nose dent out of place, blood was welling up, getting in her eyes. Had to control the gun, but she could feel herself losing the struggle. He was stronger. This was it.

His face leered above her, his eyes burning wide and furious from ragged holes in his black balaclava. She slipped her left hand down, grasping around his hip, wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she felt the checkered wood. The muzzle scraped against his helmet— BANG!

Sam felt a spray of blood. Not her own, this time. Her ears were ringing. The dude’s eyes were bloodshot and blank, his balaclava was leaking…

It took most of what she had left to roll his limp body off of her. And the rest of it to stand up. Her nose was still gushing blood, her head was pounding. She just took a minute, standing there, breathing. A pool of blood slowly spread out across the floor, thick and dark. The puddle spread around her boots, and she remembered she was wearing a bra on her feet.

“Fuck this vacation,” she spat through a mouthfull of blood.

The dead guy’s radio squealed as someone keyed in, and she almost shot him again, the pistol shaking in her hand. “All stations, this is Bravo Squad requesting support, taking fire at the Armory.”

Try to stop your bleeding, if you can.
Also, see if this dude has anything worth taking. Maybe a badge or something for pretending?? They might be too small a group for that to work, though.

So, options.

1. You can put on a suit.
1.1. You can try to escape.
2. You can go to the armory to assist whoever's resisting, and be assisted in turn.