Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

Max didn't sense anyone, but they could be unconscious or even in stasis, depending on what had gone on before he arrived. The Alliance's top-tier medical pods put the patient into a long-term stasis state while they healed, so if the person inside had lost a limb, they might be in a healing pod and chemically unconscious.

"I have a tool for that. It's not pretty, but it will get us through the door.

No, scratch that. We have Nico. She will have a Tech Adept Harness with her, and it includes a cutting torch as well as tools to disassemble the door assembly. We will wait here until they have finished the job in the bays, and then she can join us for the last room." Max decided.

[Nico, once they clear everything out, come and join us at the front of the ship. Close the door behind them as well, and make sure that Annabelle is outside. There is a chance that there are more of the Klem Swarm here that we haven't detected hiding in the ventilation systems.] Max informed her.

[Got it. They are nearly done, and I have cameras from the station checking the entire exterior of this vessel to make sure that nothing passes from one vessel to the other.] She replied.

They only had to wait a few minutes until Max sensed that everyone was retreating from the ship, and their trusty little door guard was distracted by the promise of coffee in the staff room down the hallway after the doors were sealed.

At first, she was unsure of the proposition since Max and Nico were still inside with the big boss, but it was only three doors down the hall, so they could still see the bay from the employee lounge, and the assistant convinced her that she could still do her job from there if anything managed to break out of the contaminated vessel.

All of the cargo pods were sent for decontamination to be completely sure that nothing hazardous was brought onto the station except what they intended to, and Nico jogged up to join them at the door.

"This is your specialty. We suspect that they have welded the door shut for an unknown reason. We're still looking for where they picked up the Klem and where else they may have contaminated afterward." Max reminded her.

"I think I have the answer to that, but we can go over it afterward. I have camera feeds from inside." She replied with a smile.

The power was out in most of the ship, running only on the emergency backups after they cut everything to prevent the Klem from moving around as easily. Max checked her thoughts to see how she had still managed to get camera feeds after that and realized that she had rerouted a bit of emergency power to the security system's cameras, which weren't normally deemed essential.

They were on a related circuit to the electronic locks on the doors, though, so it only took her a few minutes to bypass and get everything working to her satisfaction, an idea that had slipped Max's mind, despite having the ability to do it himself.

He relied too much on his mind-reading sometimes, but with the Cameras, they could see that the other side of the door was much worse than this one. The whole bridge was full of Klem Pods, with a single Healing Pod in one corner smashed open and covered in blood.

The Swarm bugs had gotten into the barricaded bridge and had massacred the hiding crew members to use as biomass for their reproduction.

"What do you suggest?" Max asked.

"Let's bring the wireless network back online and see if any of the devices come online. It was offline when we got here, so I haven't been able to access them if any of them survived." Nico offered.

"If there were any hidden documents that you two haven't managed to get from the ship's computers, this would be where they are. We searched everywhere else, and there were no signs of any data tablets left behind in the crew quarters." The Station Boss agreed.

"Do it. Let's see what we can get. If we get the data that we need, we can be a bit less gentle with our clearance methods." Max added, bringing a happy smile to Nico's face.

She had a portable Fusion Flamer in her storage space that she hadn't gotten to test in a live fire situation yet, and this would be a perfect time, assuming that they could get the data from the portable devices.

Max sensed when the wireless connections came back online, and dozens of devices joined the network, all in one room. He did his best to download them all so he could sort them later and then started to go through them with keyword searches to look for any data about the Klem.

Ten minutes passed while the two tech-adept Reavers searched through the devices, and then Max found what he needed.

"I've got it. Commission for alien biomass, picked up three stops ago at another Alliance planet. They've been on the ship for nearly two months now and were supposed to be kept inert with gas in the storage room." He informed the others.

"So, what went wrong?" The Valkia asked.

"They're Klem. Two months is over a month longer than they would have needed to adapt to the gas and wake up to start preparing for the next stage in their infestation. Nobody noticed until they got here, and the Klem sensed new life forms on the ship, indicating that they were docked or on a planet, which was their trigger to attack.

"So there are two more stops that might be infested?" Max pondered out loud as he read through the data on the tablet.

"Three. Including the one that they picked the Klem up from. No, scratch that. That planet is on our intervention list. They're already facing a planet-wide invasion. Two possible and one confirmed. I have the contact information for the transfer. It's a biotech company that researches medical technology." Nico told them and sent the relevant data to both of the others' devices.

"Check the wireless logs. Are there any other devices unaccounted for?" Max asked.

"Twelve. All belong to minor crewmembers. They might be among the ones that were mangled in the rear cargo bay. Those devices didn't survive. The ones that were used by the senior officers are all safe in their storage cabinets within the bridge.

It looks like they were preparing to transfer to an escape pod but didn't have time before the Klem found them." Nico confirmed.

"There is no Escape Pod attached to the bridge of this vessel." The Valkia reminded her, somewhat confused.

"It is the escape pod. The bridge module is designed to survive heavy bombardment and the destruction of the vessel. They were preparing to detonate the forward sections and jettison themselves into space. With the ship destroyed, they could compensate you for damages if you came after them, but eventually, someone would come to rescue them from the flotsam of the explosion." Nico clarified.

"Pardon?" The Valkia asked, offended that someone would destroy even a portion of his station.

"If they overloaded the power conduits near the bridge, the ship would explode and break the bridge away from the main structure, which would remain mostly intact. It would look like a tragic failure of a power relay, and the destruction would likely be too heavy to prove otherwise."

"Let's finish here and send this ship to a fiery funeral for her crew. I've seen more than enough of these Klem things to last a lifetime." The Valkia announced, then turned to Nico for the solution.

"Oh, I am so glad you asked. Watch and learn. This is how you breach a door."