Chapter Text
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The engine room of a starliner isn’t what most civilians might expect it to be. Instead of a cramped space washed in ominous red lights, filled with bursts of steam and exposed piping and wires, the engine room of The Beacon is pristine and well lit, plenty of room to walk around and even to sprawl if you wanted to and had nothing else to do.
Laying on her back with her uniform jacket bundled underneath her head as a pillow, Yang Xiao-Long played air drums in the direction of the ceiling in-tune to the music playing over the engine-room speakers, her scroll plugged in at the nearby terminal that was supposed to be used for official maintenance and diagnostics. But The Beacon was such a new and state of the art cruiser that there were massive periods of time where there wasn’t anything for the engineers and technicians to do.
But that didn’t stop the engineer closest to Yang from fiddling and tinkering regardless, and Yang was snapped out of her daydreams of musical fame when a wrench hit her on the leg from where her sister had carelessly tossed it without looking once she didn’t need it anymore.
Yelping at the unexpected sting, Yang sat up with a glare, but Ruby Rose hadn’t even noticed that it had happened, the younger girl already half-inside of the engine hatch she’d been tinkering with for the better part of two hours, doing routine maintenance just like she’d done twice a day since the liner left port three weeks ago, the third stop of a four month voyage.
“Ruby! Careful! Geez.” Rubbing the sore spot on her calf, Yang grumbled and gave a sigh, glancing at what her sister was doing now that she was back paying attention.
“Hmm?” Ruby pulled back out of the hatch and raised her eyebrows, seeing as Yang rubbed her leg, and when Yang tossed the wrench back to her she ducked out of the way with a squeak. “Hey! Those things are heavy!”
“Oh I am aware! ” Narrowing her eyes, Yang slid her way over until she was next to her sister and peered in to see what was being worked on, frowning.
While her sister might be a bit...obsessive...with the work, Yang also knew that Ruby didn’t do anything without purpose, so the sight of one of the heat vents almost completely disassembled had her drum her fingers on the wall and glance over at her sister, who was spinning the wrench around in her hand in thought as she studied her own work.
The two sisters shared a look, and when Yang raised her eyebrows in question Ruby grimaced and gestured to where she’d removed a cracked pressure modulator.
“Third starboard afterburner’s still flooding coolant a bit. The pressure keeps straining the vents.”
“Seriously? We worked on that for hours at the last dry dock.” Yang groaned, shuffling her own way into the hatch and forcing Ruby to move aside to let her, since she had a far harder time of it due to her extra height. “Do they know in Command? If they do and they’re straining it anyway, I swear…”
“I’ve filed it, promise. But they ignored the last billion reports we’ve filed.” Sighing, Ruby began the tedious process of taking apart the modulator to replace the damaged components, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed instead of using one of the many workbenches in the room.
Getting looks from a lot of the more senior technicians and engineers in the room, she either ignored them or didn’t even notice, Yang had never been sure, but with the tip of her tongue poking out of the side of her mouth as she managed to pry the warped metal open it was entirely possible that Ruby had forgotten there were even other people in the room. This wasn’t Yang’s first flight out, though she’d certainly never been this far from any of the core systems, but Ruby hadn’t even been off their home planet of Patch apart from small jaunts to Vale in the same system before this voyage.
She wasn’t just the youngest staff in the engineering bay, she was the youngest staff member on the ship entirely, and Yang was getting tired of staring down any of the older techies who had been making judgemental remarks behind her sister’s back. But Ruby’s test scores spoke for themselves.
Giving a victorious cackle when she finally pried the damaged segment from the rest of the modulator, Ruby found it almost too easy to replace it with a fresh one and click the entire mechanism back together, passing it to Yang as the older girl stayed inside the hatch doing her own examination before getting to work getting the modulator back into place and then opening the valve again slowly, wincing at the hissing sound before nodding in satisfaction as it held.
“And we are back in business!” Yang held her hand out behind her and was satisfied when Ruby giggled and gave her a high-five, Yang grinning and then wriggling back out of the hatch so she and Ruby could close it.
Standing up into a stretch, Yang let out a bored yawn as she looked around at the rest of the rather massive engine room where plenty of other engineers were doing their own work in their assigned areas. Technically Yang and Ruby both had duties they were supposed to attend to every day in their small corner, but between the two of them they always got them done at record speeds, leaving Yang with nothing to do except nap and Ruby nothing to do except tinker.
“God I could go for a drink.” Yang checked the time on the terminal and groaned, seeing there was still an hour until shift change. “And a shower. I’ve been sweating like a pig all day.”
“I fixed the climate control, didn’t I?” Whining in annoyance, Ruby poked Yang in the shoulder, the taller girl cupping her hands so Ruby could step up and reach the roof, running her hands over the air vents. “I mean...it feels like it’s working?”
“Sure doesn’t from down here.”
Whining in annoyance, Ruby hopped down and brushed herself off. “Another report to file. Goodie goodie gumdrops. Is it always like this? They never mentioned the paperwork back at school.”
“Yeah I know, you get used to it.” Pulling her gloves off and tossing them down onto a nearby workbench so she could run her fingers through her hair, Yang gave Ruby a sympathetic grin. “You’re the one who wanted to work on the core-jumpers.”
“Well, yeah!” Ruby grinned, before tapping on the terminal excitedly to access the external cameras, showing the view currently visible from the bridge windows. “We’re in space, Yang! We’re not even in core space! Chances are nobody has even been to any of the stars we can see!”
“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir, trust me.” Laying back down, Yang folded her arms underneath her head and stretched out her back.
Nodding, Ruby kept typing away on the terminal, sweeping through the recent diagnostics across the entire ship. While The Beacon was state of the art, with few other starliners in the system that were its equal, it...hadn’t been performing flawlessly since its last docking, at the Amity Exchange dock to drop off some Dust that it had been shipping. The engineers were on top of it, but it felt like the most random malfunctions and errors were occurring with no relation to each other.
While there hadn’t been anything that would interrupt the experience of the passengers, like a blackout or a blip in the artificial gravity, there had been enough smaller problems to keep them all very busy.
Something was wonky, and despite how much time the two sisters had been tinkering they hadn’t managed to find any sort of relation or source, and no matter how many maintenance reports that Ruby lodged it always seemed to be passed off. When Yang had been forced to admit that it was pretty normal for the larger ships to overlook smaller problems, Ruby had ranted loudly and energetically enough that Yang had been forced to close the doors of their small shared quarters so they didn’t get any noise complaints, forcing Ruby to pace in a small radius than she had been.
Opening her eye to look up at her sister who was still typing away at the nearby terminal, Yang gave a small smile at how adorable yet proper Ruby looked in her engineering uniform, which was already covered in grease stains and small tears from crawling through the hatches, which she’d made sure to stitch back together.
Not that Yang could claim her own uniform was in any better condition. But still, she felt a small sense of pride as she looked at her sister.
Spending months at a time away from home when she’d been out on the ships had been hard for Yang primarily because she’d been away from Ruby, so to have Ruby by her side and getting to enjoy the tedium that was the actual life of an engineer for a major commercial star fleet was a novelty that was yet to wear off.
A hissing behind her snapped her out of her thoughts, and she glanced over to the hatch they’d just been working in. Raising her eyebrows, she rolled back up and shuffled her way over, snatching up the right tools nearby that Ruby had left laying out, and getting the hatch open again in short order to peer inside.
When she saw the pressure modulator practically vibrating in place, her eyes widened as she checked the readout on the dial and saw that heat levels had reached danger critical, and without even hesitating she hit the valve to deactivate it before the pipes burst entirely.
“Y-Yang?...”
A tentative voice from behind her, spoken in a tone Yang had only heard a few terrifying times, had her rapidly shuffle out from the hatch and look up at her sister, who was looking down at her hand. When Ruby noticed that Yang was looking at her, she showed her that her glove was slick with perspiration, and to prove a point she wiped it on her pants before running her glove over her forehead again, which was shining with beads of sweat.
Rising to her feet, Yang noticed that her own skin, which had been sweating all day anyway, was practically soaked, and without the two of them even needing to communicate Yang cupped her hands again and Ruby rose to check on the airvents, running a hand along it but immediately pulling her gloved hand away with a yelp at the intense heat.
A light and alarm on their terminal began to flash and sound, and they both glanced over at it as the temperature in the second and third afterburners threatened to burst the pressure limits of their coolant from how rapidly they were trying to draw in and then expel it to disperse intense heat. Ruby glanced down at Yang with wide eyes, and Yang dropped her so Ruby could dash to the screen and study the readouts properly while Yang whipped her head around to study the rest of the engine room, only to see every other pair of engineers either prying open vents or at their own terminals.
She spun back around to face Ruby. “Well?!”
“I...nothing’s filtering! The valves aren’t syncing up!”
“Which ones?”
“ANY of them!” Ruby looked over at Yang with terrified eyes, and Yang quickly stepped over and placed her hands on Ruby’s shoulders, guiding her gently to step away from the terminal so she could take over.
“Breathe, Ruby. Just catch your breath for a second.” Giving her sister as reassuring a smile as possible for a moment, Yang took over reading the diagnostics, her lips moving slightly as she read.
As she was close to finishing her reading, the terminal sparked and blipped dark for a moment, the electronics misbehaving from the intense heat building up in the miles of vents, pipes, and cables that made up the circulatory system of the ship, and when the ship gave a sudden lurch she had to grab onto the edge of the terminal just to prevent herself from being launched off her feet, with Ruby managing to spin and grab a railing at the last moment with her almost unnaturally impressive reflexes. Meanwhile across the rest of the engine room other workers were knocked from their feet, and tools and belongings were sent sprawling as the thrusters fell out of rhythm and the afterburners began to fail, rocking the ship and the artificial gravity warping everything’s momentum.
The ceiling lights of the engine room flickered, and a much louder alarm began to sound as the sisters felt the floor beneath their feet rumbling and shaking. One moment Ruby was near Yang, hanging onto a railing, the next she was on the other side of the engine room smashing her hand into the ‘Critical Alert’ button, causing the ships main generators and engines to SCRAM and kill the power, cutting off the heat at the source but keeping vital systems such as oxygen and the artificial gravity intact.
Nothing happened.
Ruby’s eyes widened as she looked around before hitting the switch again, but still nothing changed as the rumbling and the hissing began to grow louder and more prominent. Looking into the emergency casing containing the ‘Emergency Evacuation’ button, she hesitated for a handful of moments. If she pressed it and it turned out to be a problem that could have otherwise been fixed without such a panic, her career as a starline engineer was over right as it began.
But if she didn’t press it when she needed to, people were going to die.
“To hell with it!”
Bringing her elbow back, she drove it into the glass protecting the button, but it only resulted in a crack and nothing more, so she tried again for similar results. Whining in panic as she bashed into it again and again, a hand was suddenly on her shoulder and pulling her away as Yang suddenly appeared and brought her fist back, giving a growl as she drove it into the glass and shattering it into shards, before slamming the button herself.
The malfunction alarm continued to blare, but a second alarm joined it, and they both knew that in the bridge the captain and other crew were being told to make an emergency jump, the ship's computer picking out the closest system with a planet and preparing to soak up the last amounts of energy the ship might have in order to engage the emergency jump drive. As the drive whirred up and prepared, every terminal in the ship began to flash with warnings to head to the escape pod stations.
Ruby gave Yang a look and jerked her thumb in the direction of the doors, before starting to run her way towards the bay containing the jump drive, other engineers moving past her as they all prepared to evacuate. Yang grabbed her hand to yank her to a stop, and when Ruby looked back at her Yang was giving her a worried and confused look.
“What are you doing?!”
“Get to an escape pod, Yang! I’m going to make sure the jump drive doesn’t fry.”
“Like hell you are.” Growling, Yang yanked Ruby in the direction of the door. “Come on!”
“Someone has to look after it to make sure it doesn’t burn out, if it does we won’t get anywhere and everyone might die!” Trying to pry her hand from Yang’s grip, Ruby looked back over in the direction of the jump drive.
“You’re a Junior Engineer, it is not your job!”
“ Yang! ”
“Dammit Ruby!” Growling again, Yang heaved Ruby up until she was carrying her over her shoulder, and began to jog in the directions of the escape pods. “We both get out of here. I am not dad and you are not mum. Now stop squirming!”
“Wait! Wait! Can we at least grab Crescent Rose from my locker?”
There was a pitch of desperation to Ruby’s voice that was reserved only for the fear of losing the things that brought her happiness or comfort, and it was heart wrenching enough that Yang almost stumbled in her step as her sisterly instincts engaged.
“You’re not going to run back to the engine room when I put you down, right?”
“I won’t. Promise.”
Sighing, Yang dropped Ruby from over her shoulder and watched as her sister sped off in the direction of their shared living quarters, and Yang took the opportunity to check all of the nearby rooms to see if anyone was loitering or in any sort of trouble. It was less than a minute later when the sound of running footsteps from the hallway got her attention, and she stepped out in time to catch a small briefcase that her sister tossed to her, the younger girl already wearing her custom rifle on her back and having found the time to snatch up her red cloak from home, throwing it around her shoulders, and she was holding Yang’s own coat by her side.
Looking down at the briefcase in her hand, Yang couldn’t help but give Ruby a smile of gratitude as she set off at a run again, Ruby falling in stride beside her easily.
“Thanks sis.”
“Like I was going to make you leave ‘em.”
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As far as starliners go, Weiss Schnee would concede that The Beacon was...acceptable. There was no denying that it was a beautiful craft, with the usual green and white colour theme that all the ships of the fleet had. And while she preferred blue, she couldn’t deny that the green was soothing to look at, as she gently ran her delicate fingertips over the polished green countertop of the VIP bar, slowly spinning her almost empty glass with her other hand.
While the business associates of her father that were on the voyage with her prattled amongst each other nearby, alternating between talking business with each other and hitting on the waitresses and cute bartender, Weiss was content to slowly sip drinks and pretend that she wasn’t even there, and none of the men were interested in interrupting that endeavour. They’d been more than happy to have her in the room back on Vale during business meetings where they needed her family name in order to get things moving with the new merger her father was gunning for, but now that the job was complete it was like she ceased to exist.
And she liked it that way. Most of these men were insufferable in the highest way, as they were either lecherous oafs or snide snakes that reminded her of her father. The sooner they were back at Atlas and she could go back to her nice and quiet isolation the better. If she’d known that finally caving to her father’s demands and starting to work at the Schnee Dust Company would mean essentially being used for her white hair and last name, instead of actually being allowed to do much serious work, she would have resisted for the rest of her life.
Winter had scolded her for being naive. And she’d had a point.
As per usual.
Sighing, Weiss finished her drink with a final gulp and placed the glass on the counter, where it was immediately taken to be washed with a charming smile from the girl working the bar. While she was definitely cute, Weiss knew that if she...entertained any indiscretions...while even slightly under observation by her father’s associates then the man himself would inevitably find out about it. And some secrets about herself she was going to take to the grave.
“Would you like another, Miss Schnee?”
Flicking her eyes up from the countertop when the bartender gave her a polite smile, Weiss thought about it for a moment as she checked the time on her scroll. It was getting into the early evening according to her sleep cycle, so there was nothing stopping her, and if she was sipping a drink it meant she wasn’t simply sitting around pointlessly. But if she left to return to her own room too early, it would be considered poor manners and bad form.
So she gave a nod, risking a small smile of her own.” Yes, please.”
“Same as last time?”
“Yes thank you.”
“Excellent taste, ma’am.” The bartender’s smile widened for a moment before she turned to prepare her drink, and Weiss found herself sighing again.
Why had she been so naive.
Even General Ironwood himself had told her that all she’d have to do is ask and she had a place in the Atlesian Navy alongside her sister. She could have had a life where she could truly do what she loved. A life where she could be herself. A life her sister had been training her for since she was twelve.
But no, her father had gotten inside of her head, as he always did.
Made her think that her place was to ‘prepare to take the reins’ at the family company, a chance she’d seen as an opportunity to start to fix the thousand wrongs that haunted the name.
It had been a flawless trap.
When her fresh drink was placed in front of her, just a small amount of whiskey from one of the outerworld systems, she immediately took a deep sip of it and closed her eyes as she swallowed slowly.
As the two men closest to her laughed at a shared joke, there was a tone to the sound that had Weiss feel something inside of herself clench, and she glanced over as both men clearly leered at the bartender as the woman was working down the other end of the bar, despite the fact both men were easily old enough the woman could have been their daughter.
Seeing in their eyes what was likely coming, Weiss was only able to look away and stare down into her glass as one of the men made a passing comment to the girl that Weiss forced herself not to hear, because if she did she doubted her own self-control.
But there was nothing she could do. The very power of her identity paralysed her, around these men. Every word and action would find their way back to her father. And...some punishments over the years had been enough to leave her frozen at the thought of incurring his wrath for even the smallest slight.
‘Probably for the best I’m not a soldier. I don’t have it in me to protect...anybody.’
Knowing the night was only going to get worse, she was relieved when she checked her scroll for the time and saw that it was finally late enough she could excuse herself without it being too rude, and she finished her drink in two quick gulps before standing, still entirely sober despite her short stature. But a lifetime of wining and dining had given her a tolerance that could make some hardened soldiers green, so she gave one last smile to the bartender as she stepped away, but didn’t speak a word to any of her father’s associates as she quickly made her way out of the VIP lounge and back through the hallways towards her cabin.
The moment she stepped inside, she deflated.
Walking further into the rather spacious suite, she unclipped her jewelry piece by piece as if she were a medieval knight removing their armour after a day of battle, placing each piece where it belonged in the delicate carry case she brought with her for it all. Even though they’d been in transit for over three weeks, she still had to dress to impress every single night. During the day she could get away with spending time in her cabin, claiming to be doing work, but at night she had to entertain.
Which usually just meant meeting up with her associates for a formal dinner full of polite and shallow conversation, going to the VIP lounge afterwards and having a few drinks, trying to resist the way that one bartender’s eyes sparkled when looking at her, and then hurrying back to her cabin to lock her door and peel off her mask. Unclasping the snowflake brooch holding her shrug together, she neatly folded the dark blue material and returned it to her suitcase, before pulling the tiara from her hair and letting it cascade down where it belongs.
She’d been growing it out. It was longer than both Winter and her mother’s hair now.
At yet another thought of her sister, she pulled her scroll out from her clutch and looked at it in temptation. But even if it was a temptation she gave into, there was little chance Winter would answer, not when she was on deployment. Not only that, but The Beacon was currently core-jumping, passing through a region of space almost completely devoid of any civilisation but happened to also bridge between two core systems. There weren’t any satellites or signal boosters out here to allow a message to get to wherever Winter was regardless, unless she used the ship’s signal, but if she did that then there was no guarantee of privacy.
Changing out of her dress and heels, it’s still too early to get into her sleepwear, it wasn’t unheard of for some sort of business to arise at this hour that required her presence in one of the small private meeting rooms onboard, so she instead pulls on an outfit she always found strangely comfortable and familiar, even though she was never sure why.
Comfortable white trousers, a specially made black belt that had been a gift from her sister, a sinfully soft long-sleeve button-up in a deep dark blue, finished off with black boots. It’s similar to an outfit she had seen her sister wear to a military event when she was younger, and in typical little-sister fashion she’d mimicked her as soon as she could, only to immediately find it more...comfortable.
She loved her dresses and skirts, but there was a power in dressing like this, and it was an opinion that both Winter and her mother shared with her.
It was only Weiss that was still paraded around in pretty dresses and nice skirts, the very image of propriety as the heiress to one of the largest corporations in civilised space. But she’d made the dresses and skirts her own, they were hers, not his. They protected her.
Behind closed doors, she didn’t need protection.
Tightening her belt to buckle it, she frowned as she noticed that she had lost even more weight, not having much to lose in the first place. But she always had trouble eating when she was away from Atlas, always ending up picking at whatever food was put in front of her no matter how delicious or fancy.
And she’d been gone for too long this time.
To finish off her need for strength, the need to convince herself of her own authority, she grabbed a reinforced case from her pile of luggage and laid it on the bed, looking at it in silence for a moment before unlocking it and opening it to gaze at the rapier inside. All Schnee’s were trained how to fight with a blade, despite the fact wars had long ago evolved past that point, but it was a tradition that had held on for centuries, so despite the fact she was simply a representative of the Schnee Dust Company she still felt almost a warmth bloom from her fingers as she reached in and gently grabbed the hilt, lifting it out.
Myrtenaster was one of her few luxuries, one of the few things she owned that was completely and entirely hers, and the blade held more memories than anything else she owned. Memories of afternoons spent being trained by Winter, memories of fencing tournaments back when her mother still left the house to celebrate her children, memories of sitting on the balcony of her room back at the family estate and polishing and sharpening the blade until it gleamed and reflected the starlight above.
Stars she would look up at and decide, every night, that she was going to end up escaping Atlas, that she’d go out there. That she’d find her own way, on her own terms. And she would stand and raise her arm, picking a different star each night, pointing at it with the tip of her blade.
‘That one first.’ She’d whisper to herself, always barely audible above the Atlas winds and the sounds of the planet-sized city. ‘Definitely that one first.’
Sliding her rapier into its sheath on her belt, she sank down into the chair at the small vanity in the room and templed her hands in front of her face, closing her eyes.
She’d been to quite a few planets, since those nights.
This hadn’t been what she’d had in mind.
With her eyes closed, she perked out of her thoughts when she faintly picked up the sound of an alarm on the edge of her hearing, and her eyes clicked open as she stood and quickly made her way over to the door of her cabin to stick her head out and look up and down the hallway. As more and more alarms began to sound, the hallway bloomed with activity as people in the surrounding cabins seemed to have the same idea as her, some stepping out entirely to go and ask the crew what was going on.
Just as she was about to do the same, the ship lurched violently, and she barely managed to catch herself on her door frame just before she was sent sprawling down into the hallway, which plenty of people were knocked off their feet.
Without hesitation, she stepped out at a hurry and knelt down to assist a man who had fallen, helping to pull him to his feet, and as he gave her a quick thank you before rushing down the hall. She followed, her curiosity winning out.
On the edge of her awareness, she could pick up the rhythms of the ship beneath her feet changing, having been on enough ships in the past couple of years to know when one wasn’t behaving correctly. The corridor beneath her vibrated strangely as the thrusters spluttered and the artificial gravity pulsed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please report to your designated muster point in an orderly fashion.”
The calm voice of one of the chief stewards came over the speakers, audible in every room through every terminal, and all it did was cause more of a scramble, the first pulses of panic beginning in the increasingly crowded hallways. Her own heart hammering a few beats before she swallowed down her own panic, Weiss was forced to stick close to the wall, in danger of being trampled due to her much smaller stature if she was caught up in the main flow of people.
Hopping up on a display counter, she peered around to see if anyone was struggling or trouble, Winter’s words echoing in her head.
‘There are three kinds of people in a crisis, Weiss; those who help themselves, those who help others, and those who suffer from too many people being the first and not the second.’
Nobody seemed to be struggling or falling, so with a nod of satisfaction she hopped back down and began to hurry her own way towards the muster point just as she heard the telltale hum of the emergency jump drive revving up, the entire ship vibrating as the powerful core drew in as much power as the generators were still producing. Knowing what that meant, she prepared for the nausea and tensed, but she still wasn’t entirely braced for the twisting the ship did during the jump, and she was sent flying down a nearby corridor, landing hard when she crashed into the door of one of the emergency stairwells, rattling her senses.
Coming back to herself a few minutes later, she saw as the walls of the corridors were warped and bent out of shape, the stabilisers failing to engage properly during the jump and twisting the ship almost to the point of breakage.
Smoke had begun to fill the air as the air filtration began to fail on the level she was on, meaning there was every chance oxygen might decompress, so with nowhere else to go she scrambled to her feet before kicking open the stairwell door and making her way down to escape the smoke.
Already feeling dizzy as oxygen on that floor had begun to burn out, she eventually crashed into the stairwell wall coughing and out of breath without any conscious clue of how many floors down she’d descended.
Leaning against the wall to try and regain her breath, the surface was hot and growing hotter, and as she grabbed the door and gave it a yank it was clearly bent and jammed, not budging underneath her strength, but that didn’t stop her from trying over and over again. The sound of numerous footsteps running up from the levels below caught her attention, and she glanced over her shoulder and saw as a group of engineers were conducting their own evacuation, clearly meant to muster out of the same door that she was fighting with.
When she stepped aside at a man’s gesture for him to grab, it groaned under his effort but failed to come free, and a groan from the crowd had Weiss snap her head around as another engineer, a wild-haired blonde woman around her age who was far too muscular for the uniform she was wearing, pushed through and pulled the man back before grabbing the door herself and giving it a heave with every inch of her impressive build, the door screeching on bent hinges as it came loose and flew open.
The woman didn’t hesitate or even acknowledge it as she put a hand on Weiss’s arm to guide her through.
“What muster point is yours, miss?”
“Uhh, seven.” Blinking in surprise at being practically pulled along, Weiss raised her eyebrows when the woman scowled and shook her head.
“Ha! Good luck with that. Fourth level’s toasted. Come on, we’ll get you out of here. And you better still be behind me, Ruby.”
“I am!” Another young woman stepped up on Weiss’s other side and put a hand on her back, flashing her a reassuring smile. “We’re going to get you to safety, okay?”
“I...thank you.”
The ship groaned under their feet and threatened to give another lurch, but Weiss recognised the rhythm enough this time to put a hand on the hilt of Myrtenaster and throw a gravity glyph on the ground underneath their feet. It jerked them to a stop, but less then a second later the ship gave its violent lurch, but because of the glyph they all remained standing. The moment the floor was stable again she banished the glyph, and when the blonde woman gave her a nod of thanks she nodded back, immediately starting to walk again.
“What was that? ” The younger girl on her other side glanced in surprise at her even as they walked.
“I’m Atlesian, and we don't have time. Let’s get out of here first?” Raising an eyebrow at the other girl, Weiss gave a small smile when the girl suddenly seemed to remember what was happening around them, and the trio sped up, still walking at the front of the group.
Turning another corridor, the blonde woman swore in a language Weiss didn’t recognise at the sheer level of destruction, the corridor impassable from collapsed patches in the roof and floor, and plenty of the walls in disarray.
“We need another path, Ruby!”
“On it!” The younger girl, ‘Ruby’, whipped out a handheld engineering pad and began swiping through schematics for the ship at a speed Weiss stood no chance of keeping up with. “Third door on the right, then a left. Then you get to break a glass floor so we can drop down to the second level escape pod bay.”
“Sounds like a blast, are you able to walk faster, lady?” The blonde woman glanced over at Weiss, and when she got a nod in answer she began to jog instead of power walk, Weiss able to keep up with her despite not being in anywhere near the same league of fitness, while Ruby seemed to practically be taking it easy.
A powerful kick from the woman almost blew the door off its hinges when she found no resistance when she expected it to be jammed, and both Ruby and Weiss grabbed the back of her jacket to stop her falling over, Ruby flashing Weiss an amused grin right before they set off running again, turning the correct corners until they were going down one of the display corridors.
The floor was ornate glass instead of carpeted, allowing those walking along it to be able to look down into the on-board gallery below and catch glimpses of the art within as they passed over it. As the blonde woman stopped and had Ruby hold a briefcase that had been in her other hand, unlocking it and sliding some sort of bracelets onto each wrist, Weiss took the moment to look down at the scattered wreckage of the columns and art from the gallery, frowning at how difficult it was going to be to navigate it.
“Step back and block your eyes, ladies. There’s about to be some shrapnel.”
A hand on her shoulder pulled her back yet again as the blonde woman stepped over, the bracelet on her right arm expanding into a gauntlet that she then seemed to cock like a shotgun, if the sound Weiss heard was accurate. Widening her eyes at the sight, Weiss didn’t block her eyes in time before the woman drove her fist into the glass and fired at the same time, shattering it underneath them and throwing up lethal shards of glass that would have likely blinded Weiss if the other girl didn’t whip up the cloak she was wearing over her uniform, providing a curtain to protect the both of them.
Marvelling at the girl’s reflexes, Weiss barely managed more than a blink at the intense and focused look on her face.
“Th-thank you.”
“No problem!” And just like that, the serious look was gone, replaced with the same easy smile she’d been wearing the entire time. “Think you can jump down? Or would you like me to go first and I can catch you?”
Raising her eyebrows at the question, Weiss scoffed and pushed past her before easily dropping down into the gallery below, and when Ruby followed less than a moment later and landed on the loose wooden chunks of what had been a chair and threatened to slip and crash into the wall, Weiss caught her arm and pulled her back to her feet, giving a small smile at the embarrassed look on the other girl’s face.
“Should I have caught you? ”
“Hey! That’s-”
Weiss gave a smirk, shrugging casually and turning in the direction they had to head. “Try and keep up.”
The blonde woman was already moving around anything blocking the path ahead, only having trouble with a few of the larger collapsed pillars that some of the other engineers with them helped her with, before the path ahead became manageable and the group quickly made their way to the escape pods, the blonde woman turning the corner first and then skidding to a stop, causing Ruby to almost crash into her from behind while Weiss stopped at her side, blinking in confusion. The escape pod bay was practically empty, only a handful of other guests and a few of the staff, and the blonde woman immediately stormed over and grabbed one of the officer’s shoulders to get his attention.
“Where’s everyone else?? Two restaurants muster here.”
The officer looked at her in frustration for a few moments before a well-trained composure went over his face, and he guided her away from where the passengers were grouped together, coincidently close enough that both Ruby and Weiss could overhear.
“The second and fifth sections depressurised. This is all that’s left.”
The blonde woman’s face paled and her eyes widened, and Ruby gasped while Weiss put a hand over her own mouth in shock. Two full restaurants, one of the casinos, and the VIP bar that Weiss had attended that very night, all exposed to the vacuum of space. Ruby and Weiss looked at each other, Ruby’s face open in its horror while Weiss had composed herself as best as possible.
Another alarm blared, loud and agonising to the ears, as the pad in Ruby’s hand flashed and she checked it quickly, her eyes somehow getting even wider as she ran over to the nearest window and looked out, trying to catch sight of whichever planet the emergency drive had guided them to, mumbling to herself. Weiss didn’t hesitate to join her, gazing down at the planet as well. It was clearly temperate, if the lush green visible from the ship windows was any indicator, and if it didn’t have a sustainable atmosphere the jump computer wouldn’t have chosen it.
“What’s that alarm, officer?” Weiss glanced over at Ruby, who surprised her by blushing slightly and shaking her head.
“Oh, I’m not...uhh, whatever.” Ruby waved it off to dismiss it with a sheepish smile, immediately going serious again and straightening up slightly as she entered professional mode. “More compartments are depressurising, the infrastructure of the ship isn’t holding up to the heat now that the coolant flow has seized up and the pressure is exponentially feeding back into itself.”
“I...see.” Frowning as she interpreted it as best as she could, Weiss glanced over at the other people in the bay. “And what does that mean for us?”
“It means,” The blonde woman joined them, grabbing each of them on the shoulder and yanking them in the direction of the pod doors. “That we’re getting the hell outta here before we lose oxygen as well.”
“Yang, I can walk on my own!” Ruby struggled against the woman’s grip, and when she was released Weiss took the opportunity to slap the hand holding her aside as well.
“As can I, thank you. Though I do appreciate the assistance.” Straightening out her shirt, Weiss glanced around at everyone.
None of her father’s associates were here. There was every chance they had still been at the bar when the systems failed.
It meant they were…
Closing her eyes as the revelation and acceptance hit her system, Weiss held her composure as she had been raised to do, and folded her hands behind her back patiently as ‘Yang’ got the bank of escape pods open and ushered Ruby and Weiss into one of them, joining them a moment later along with two of the other passengers.
Each escape pod held five people, with large rows of them attached to each side of each level of the ship, but despite being designed for five people it still felt like a tight squeeze. As Weiss settled down in her seat and buckled herself up, fighting with the strange locking mechanism until Ruby reached over and easily clicked it for her, giving her another of her reassuring smiles as she did so, they both whipped their heads towards the still open door as another series of cracks and booms sounded.
Glancing down at the pad in her hand, Ruby’s eyes opened in a panic.
“Everybody breathe out NOW! Empty your lungs!”
Both Yang and Weiss immediately did so as Ruby unclipped her own straps at an insanely rapid speed and lurched over to smash her hand onto the manual eject button at the exact moment the world was suddenly eerily silent as the level of the ship was depressurised from a final rupture and the oxygen was sucked out. Ruby’s quick thinking and acting made sure that their pod doors were clicking closed barely a moment afterwards, but it was still enough that Weiss’s entire body felt as if it was lurching and crunching in on itself.
One of the two other passengers had obeyed Ruby immediately upon hearing the order, and was only swaying in her seat dizzily with what appeared to be a pair of black catlike ears on her head flicking in discomfort, but the other was in far worse shape, the air still in his lungs having expanded and ruptured when the air around them depressurised and became a vacuum, and Weiss didn’t have to look at him for more than a second to know that he was either dead, or soon would be.
As the escape pod filled with its own air and stabilised just as it detached from the ship itself, Weiss took in a deep gasp of air and coughed violently, the other passenger doing the same, while Ruby and Yang seemed either prepared for it or used to it, and Weiss was willing to guess they’d been trained in vacuum exposure. Ruby had immediately pulled herself back into her seat and buckled herself back up as Yang sat across from her flicking switches and keeping an eye on the pod's diagnostics.
From the expression on her face, they weren’t good.
“RCS systems are shot.”
“You’re kidding me!” Giving a shout of stressed frustration, her patience finally snapping, Ruby slammed one fist down into the palm of her other hand, the tablet on her lap. “Everything works perfectly for two and a half months, then we stop at Amity Exchange and suddenly everything -”
“Easy Ruby, easy. Save the energy for holding on for dear life.” Giving her sister a steady look, Yang nodded when Ruby calmed before looking at the two other living people in the craft. “Ladies, I would hold on. Tightly. And if your homeworld has a god or two, now would be the time to ask for a favour.”
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