Snipes tapped his foot impatiently on the dusty durasteel floor. The corridor was dark, the only light streaming in was from the door open behind him, the grey useless light of dusk on Osk 91. The hurried steps of twenty four people behind him streamed through, their flashlights lighting up the walls, floor, ceiling and the door in front of him. He waited for them to finish entering, then strode forward towards the opposing door.

He examined it for a moment, no power was reaching it, the great grey hulk stood in his way, the keypad next to it dim and covered in dusk. Definitely not ideal. He motioned to one of the people behind him, the blond woman made a quick jog to the control panel, opening a concealed panel above it and reaching in for the manual door release. It required a quick pumping motion.

“Not a word, Snipes.” She said, looking over at him.

He gave her a wry smile, “I’d never think of it Corlie.”

“Surree. . .” She said, the door opening slowly with each pump until it was wide enough for him to fit through, which he did.

The other room was dark, and a corridor. Snipes hated corridors.  He couldn’t tell much else until several more of the people behind him squeezed through, their lights playing haphazardly across the corridor, it was lined with various doors, but at this point there wasn’t much they could do, they had to find the power first.

Snipes took a step forward, followed by another, then confidently he strode into the darkness, the only sounds being the step of boots behind him and sound of his breath mask. The feel of it against his skin was enough of irritation, mixed with the obnoxious sound it became something Snipes really hated.

There wasn’t much to the installation, it was dirty and run down, signs of a prior conflict were still apparent, but covered in dust and neglect. Every intersection brought the splitting up of the two boarding parties, the main contingent followed Snipes, but at every fork in the road three people left the group to explore the other option. Snipes was following a red line on the floor, like many old installations lines painted on the floor in various colors mixed with writing to say what they were leading to gave the floor a little life to conflict with the dead building. Snipes was following the one to the command center.

It seemed like the best place to be when the lights turned on.  Not that Snipes had much faith in everything working, or at least not working right, but what did work would be welcome.  Snipes finally found it of course, a big door with a red light above it. The red light was broken. Snipes turned his head around to look at the four or so people still with him. It was, of course, four women. Snipes wasn’t sure how he felt about being surrounded by the Queens of Madness, the painted ballistic masks all but the leader wore seemed eery even to him. He grunt and motioned to the door.

Corlie slid her weapon around her back and moved forward, towards the door. She slid up to the panel and looked it over quickly. It was the type that required an identification card and a password. She pulled the front panel off and inspected it.

“Yeah, we’re not getting in here without power.” She said finally, letting the panel hang by it’s wires.

“Don’t these kind of doors usually have their own power source?”

Corlie answered Snipes question by stepping back and pointing at a hole in the wall, clearly where whatever power supply it had once possessed was supposed to be. Sadly the hole didn’t go all the way into the room.

“Ah, I see.” Snipes switched the frequency of his comm. “Visha, better send down a team with a generator, actually, make that two teams, going to need a few techs too probably. Tell them to follow the red line.”

“Aye, sir.” Was the only reply.

Snipes then switched it back to the previous frequency and leaned against a wall, tapping his boot on the ground impatiently. He wanted a cigarette. Of course several minutes of having morbidly painted masks staring at one in utter silence became rather uncomfortable. Snipes pushed himself off the wall and began pacing. It didn’t help very much, now the ballistic masks were following his movements. It was disconcerting.

Finally the gaggle of techs and two Skeleton Pirate teams arrived, jogging hurriedly. The techs were pushing a hover cart with a generator on it. They hurried towards Snipes and he stepped out of their way, letting Corlie shout demands at them. The three ballistic masks had found more interesting subjects to follow,  now Snipes was glad he’d brought them along. Even though the techs, and himself for that matter, knew what they looked like without them on, the masks were still creepifying.

The techs, making attempts to ignore the masks, hurriedly went about setting up the generator to open the door, it took them several minutes to get it hooked up before the whir of the generator whirred to life. Sparks flew out of several exposed connections, then quieted. The panel to the door lit up and sparked a bit itself before a tech pulled a pair of goggles over his eyes and went about playing with the wiring through thick leather gloves.

A miss step with a pair of pliers shot sparks into his face, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He yelled, jumping back and dropping his tools.

“Get a grip one yourself Belkov,” Corlie yelled.

“Yes ma’am!” He yelled with a smirk and mockingly going to attention and saluting before going about his work.

Didn’t take him much longer, although several more sparks flew before the door slid open. He stepped back and made a quick bow with a flourish, ushering them through the door. Snipes smiled and returned the cocky bow before stepping in.

The first thing that struck him was the smell, even through his breath mask particles of stench made their way to his nostril. Well, this is morbid. inside were about twelve bodies, or rather the remains of bodies. They were all decomposed, but that wasn’t the most morbid. The most morbid part was that some showed clear evidence of gnawing.

“Alright, so. I’m guessing somebody locked these poor bastards in here and they started eating each other. I can see that. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that it seems like this area doesn’t have any oxygen, so how did they not suffocate first?”

“Probably disconnected the power from the door then left the generators on until they died or ran out of fuel.”

“Ran out of fuel? I hate these bastards.”

Seconds later the lights, computers, the entire building, seemed to light up. Sparks and short circuits flew out of the terminals in the room, burning some out. The techs hurried past Snipes and the others, the soldiers, they were eager to be the first to find something of value, or get something working. It made sense, in a group where achievement denoted rank and pay being the first was very important.

Snipes made his way to the center of the room, it was arranged in two tiers, one on the same level as the door, with some terminals against the back wall and the front in a semi circle, the other tier was in front of the first, but about nine feet lower, terminals arranged around a panoramic transperasteel windows. Out side of the windows was a great view of absolutely nothing, just craters and barren, flat, ground.

Snipes sighed and leaned his head forward, blocking the windows with his right hand, “Somebody close the blinds, this planet is an eyesore.”