Marcus had seen corpses, but someone he knew dying in his arms was a new experience to him. He wasn't fond of it.

Mason was dead, his shock of blond hair now stained red by his own blood that had pooled on the galley floor. Marcus stood up, slowly, looking down at young Mason. His face looked somewhat content, and Marcus took some comfort fromt that. The young engineer didn't give much thought to afterlifes and the like, but he felt better imagining Silas Mason was with his brother, who had died here on the Methuselah. It sounded like the two were close. Marcus knelt down again and grabbed Mason's dog tags, wrenching them from his neck with a tugging motion. The thin chain snapped, and Marcus put the dog tags in his pocket for safekeeping. His next of kin deserved these.

"We should go," rumbled Deknost from behind Marcus. He turned around to see the big man turning around to leave the galley.

"Wait, what about the kid? Are you going to just leave him?" McCullagh, who normally seemed so gruff and uncaring, sounded almost alarmed at the idea. Deknost paused, coilgun in hand, and turned back. The trio had already tried to hail Locke and Brogers on the radio, but all they got was static, and Marcus was just as anxious as he imagined Deknost was to meet back up with them.

"Mission is priority. Mason knew this. You know this. Rhyne knows this. If we can, we will come back for his body." With that, the giant stepped out of the galley. McCullagh looked down at the dead gunner.

"Goddammit." She sighed and picked up her bag, following after Deknost with her rifle at her shoulder. Marcus looked back at Mason forlornly, but he agreed with Deknost. The mission couldn't be compromised. They needed to find out what happened to Locke and Brogers, and then continue with retrieving the impeller, and accessing the database to collect the last moments of the Methuselah. So he followed Deknost and McCullagh. The trio moved slow, weapons raised in case more natters were lurking in the shadows. In close quarters like these hallways, they'd be minced if they got careless.

"I imagine those natters got in via the open hold door," said McCullagh. "We should have closed more doors behind us, just in case." Deknost was silent for a moment, before speaking up.

"Could have been exit hole, too. Entry hole was up high, makes exit hole down low, where natters could get in." His thick accent sometimes made Workman Ginovsky seem like a dullard, but the idea that the natters could enter via the Methuselah's exit wound was a sound one. Marcus nodded at the idea.

"We should have looked for the exit wound sooner; I didn't even think about it." The young engineer, being at the rear of the group, kept his head on a swivel in case anything came up behind them. The trio eventually came up to the door leading into the hold, and after peering inside, Deknost walked in. McCullagh and Marcus followed him. Marcus saw a pair of figures in the hold, one prone, the other kneeling next to the prone individual. Marcus also saw debris, likely from the explosion he heard earlier, had fallen onto Gretel. Marcus winced. He began to walk over to investigate the fallen Ringlefinch, but realized he needed to see to the figures first. He turned back towards the figures in the hold, walking after Deknost and McCullagh. Walking closer, Marcus recognized the kneeling person as Brogers, based on her shoulder patch. Which meant the person on the ground was Locke. Marcus' heart lept into his throat. If Locke was downed, that was an extrememly bad sign. Locke was one of their best soldiers.

The trio approached to see Brogers performing first aid on Locke. His suit was ripped open low on his abdomen, and Marcus saw what he imagined was a small puncture wound just above his hip bone. Brogers looked up at the trio, feverishly trying to rip open the bandage she held in her hands, but her hands were shaking, and the gloves made it difficult.

"Fuck, where have you guys been, huh? I've been trying to hail you. What's up with the radios?" McCullagh knelt down, grabbed the bandage out of Brogers' hands, and applied it to Locke's wound. Brogers nodded in appreciation.

"Thank you. My adrenaline is still running high." She looked at her shaking hands. Marcus saw now that her hands were covered in blood, as was much of the front of her suit. Locke wasn't bleeding like Mason was, so the young engineer put two and two together, realizing they had their share of natter troubles. He opened his mouth to ask if that was the case, but Deknost beat him to it.

"Mason's dead," the big man said. Brogers froze a moment, before hanging her head and shaking it.

"Shit. Natters?" She asked. Deknost nodded. Brogers shook her head again. "I've never seen them this agitated before. You run them off once, they almost always stay away. Never heard of them coming back before." Marcus spoke up.

"Ginovsky and I find the bridge, but it had no power, so I went to turn on the generator." Brogers nodded. The strobe lights bathed the hold in blood-red light intermittently.

"Yeah, we heard the klaxons. I imagine that was you turning the generator on?" she asked Marcus. She spoke again before he could respond. "Maybe the klaxons agitated the natters. They could have been circling, waiting for us to leave to snap up any leftovers, and the klaxon could have pissed them off." She shrugged, looking at Marcus. "Not that any of this is your fault necessarily." Marcus nodded, appreciating the thought, though now he wasn't so sure. Marcus looked at Deknost.

"I imagine you turned off the klaxons from the bridge?" he asked the big man. Deknost nodded slowly.

"Yes, was a big red button. Not hard." McCullagh finished wrapping up Locke's abdomen. Blood slowly blossomed on the bandage. She looked up at the group.

"I imagine this was a natter wound?" Brogers nodded.

"Yeah, we were burning bodies one second, and the next we were surrounded. Before Locke could even grab his rifle, one of them got a lucky hit on him. He went down like a sack, and I killed the rest." The group was silent. I didn't know Brogers was this much of a killer, Marcus thought to himself.

"Same thing with us," McCullagh said, "I was patching up Mason in the galley, and the next thing I know, we're covered in fucking natters. Mason... was overwhelmed." The group was silent once more, quietly mourning Mason's loss.

"Are we going back to get him?" Brogers asked quietly. Deknost shook his head.

"Only if we have time," he said. Marcus held up Mason's dogtags, and Brogers nodded. She understood; she was a marine, and she was trained to expect things to get worse. She stood up, wiped the blood off of the front of her suit, which didn't quite work. She was coated in the stuff, and by now it had dried and grown sticky. She looked at Deknost.

"Is that a motherfucking coilgun?" she asked him. He hoisted the weapon so the group could see it better.

"Yes; I found it on the bridge. Compartment opened when power came back on. Very fortunate." Brogers nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, very fortunate. Rhyne, what's Gretel's condition? Can we get that stuff of her? We'll need her for the mission." she asked the young engineer. Marcus looked at Gretel. Even from this distance, he knew she was likely hosed.

"Even if she's operational, I doubt we can get that mess off of her. It would take too long to cut the beams free, and even with the other suits' help, it would take hours to do it safely." Brogers looked at Gretel's fallen form, and the Hrungnir cages behind that.

"Other suits?" she asked earnestly. She walked over to the Hrungnir suits, looking them up and down.

"Well goddamn, Rhyne, why don't we just take one of these, yeah? They're just as strong as Gretel, right?" She asked him.

"Yeah, they should be just as strong," Marcus said, "they're almost the exact same frame as Ringlefinch models, just with more armor and weaponry." Brogers whistled. But after a moment more of admiration, she turned back to Marcus and the other two.

"What the fuck was the Methuselah doing with these advanced combat suits? I've seen these only once before, on a brand-new tank running spec ops. This old codger should have Ringlefinches just like us." She walked back to Deknost, looking closely at the coilgun. "And coilguns? Those are rare, and fucking expensive. They penetrate most light armor, and they pack a hell of a punch even if they don't pen. Why does the Methuselah have access to such special weaponry?" She looked at each person in turn. Nobody said anything, until McCullagh piped up.

"We can do the guesswork later. Locke's wounded pretty good, and while I drugged him up a bit, he'll be pretty sore when he wakes up. He also shouldn't be moved if it can be helped. He's bleeding internally, and while I think the natter missed most of his guts, there's still a chance his intestines were nicked. He needs to get back to Thaler immediately." She looked at Marcus.

"We need to get that impeller and get the fuck out of here, Marcus. Understand?" The young engineer gulped and nodded. The stakes had been raised. Locke's life was on the line. Brogers stepped forward.

"Since Locke's incapacitated, I'm now the ranking officer. Deknost and I will go to the bridge and see if we can't glean some information. Rhyne, get that part we need ASAP. Cut pipes clean if you need to, I know Penske's a good welder. McCullagh, can I trust you to guard Locke and keep watch? We don't need more natter problems." McCullagh nodded in the affirmative. Brogers looked at the timepiece on her wrist.

"We have six hours to get back to the Enoch before she dips. Doubletime, folks, I don't want to spend the night here." With that, she spun on her heels and walked towards the hold door. Deknost shrugged and followed after her, coilgun now strapped to his back. Marcus looked at McCullagh who nodded to him, and went to check Locke's vitals. Marcus walked over to Gretel, and via one of the bags that somehow avoided harm, pulled out the tools he needed for the impeller extraction. He checked the oxygen levels he had in his o2 bottle, and saw he still had plenty left; the rest was on Gretel. He'd have to rescue those if they had to leave the downed suit, as he had about two hours remaining in this bottle. But the bottles were where he couldn't easily reach, on the rear of an arm that was pinned under wreckage. If the bottles were intact, he would just have to make do, or he'd have to look for more bottles later.

He left the hold, shoulder flashlight guiding his way. This was his turn to do what was expected of him. First, he checked the Engineering Bay, where spares would be kept. It was almost exactly like the one on the Enoch, with two workbenches and two bunks above for two engineers. He was worried he'd find the corpses of the engineers here, but thankfully the room was empty. He walked past the workbenches, which had components and such strewn about, just like home. He strode up to the reactor room's exterior control panel, and it glowed at his touch, awakening. He scrolled through the various menus and discovered what he had suspected all along: the reactor had entered shutdown mode after the tank took catastrophic damage. It would take at least twelve hours to start it up again, and that's if it wasn't damaged. Radiation levels in the reactor room itself seemed to be within normal limits, but Marcus wasn't willing to see if they were accurate; these old tanks were notorious for having unreliable radiation detectors in the reactor rooms. Most likely they had been swapped out for more accurate models, but Marcus wasn't willing to try, especially seeing that he had much less than twelve hours. He would just have to do with the power that the small generator downstairs could put out.

He opened up the engineering bay's small cargo compartment, where the engineers kept spares. After a cursory glance around, Marcus saw there was no spare oil impeller. I'm going to have to grab a used one, he thought to himself with a sigh. He checked another computer terminal, looking for the Chief Engineer's log. The terminal wasn't locked, which Marcus found incredibly lucky. After a brief search, Marcus found what he was looking for: which impeller was newest. The Chief Engineer here had documented when each major part had been received and installed. According to the terminal, the starboard-rear impeller was newest, having been installed four months ago. With that, the young engineer walked back downstairs and began searching for an accessway that would get him to his impeller. After a short time looking, he found what looked like an engineering passageway, and opening it indicated his hunch was correct.

He crouched and went inside, closing the hatch behind him just in case. No auxiliary lights lit his way down here, nor any strobing hazard lights. It was pitch-black, and for a moment, Marcus felt like he had entered the bowels of some dead beast. No heartbeat thrummed here. With the explosion earlier, any steam that had remained had been vented, leaving the last remains of warmth in the cadaver that had been the Methuselah to grow cold. Marcus crept forward, until he saw that his way was blocked. Debris had been knocked into his path, most likely from a pipe bursting from the explosion earlier. He set to work immediately, cutting through the pipes and girders with a hand-held torch. Suddenly, his radio burst to life.

"Looks like there was a radio jammer activated when the generator turned on," the voice over the radio said. It was Brogers. "We turned it off. Rhyne, McCullagh, you guys copy?" Before Marcus could respond, McCullagh spoke up.

"Yeah, and you guys need to hurry up. Rhyne, get that part out. I keep seeing shapes out in the sandstorm. I can't tell if we have guests or not, but make it snappy anyway." Marcus felt an icy hand grip his chest at the thought of more combat. Marcus Rhyne was no coward, and he wasn't afraid of fighting, but he didn't want to watch anyone else die.

"I'm almost to the impeller, McCullagh. This one is the youngest, which means it's our best shot. The others are much older." Marcus replied to the statement. There was static over the radio as McCullagh likely formed a response.

"Do what you have to do, then." She said. Marcus immediately got back to work, cutting through the beams and pipes that blocked his path. After a time period that felt far too long, Marcus was free, and continued on his way. As he went he visually inspected the railway that would hoist the impeller out of here. These tight corridors were far too cramped for heavy machinery to get in here, and many of the components were far too heavy to remove by hand. So the brilliant minds that designed these tanks installed a hoist rail to get heavy parts in and out of tight quarters. A small motor with a winch would slide along the rail, operated by a button remote, and it would lift a heavy part up, and then it could be pulled along via the rail. The rail extended all the way out of the passageway, down the halls of the Methuselah, and into the hold, where the part could be fixed in an open space, or removed for whatever reason.

Marcus found the rail hoist machine near the end of the passageway, and side-stepped it. Even if if the motor didn't work, the machine could be operated by hand if need be. Just past the hoist, he saw it: his impeller. He crawled over to it, and put his hand on it. It was cool to the touch, as he imagined it would be. He set to work disconnecting it from the oil lines that it was attached to. First, he needed to drain the oil. He found the oil line that had a drainage valve, but it required a key to function. Yeah, no, fuck that, Marcus thought. He raised his rifle, and shot the lock twice, and then kicked the valve lever. It sprung open, dumping oil onto the grated floor, into the engineering passageways and bilge areas below him. His radio cackled.

"I heard gunfire, is everyone ok?" It was Brogers' voice over the radio. Marcus keyed his radio to respond.

"Percussive removal, don't worry about it. Getting the impeller out now," he said. A moment of silence before Deknost's voice came over the radio.

"Please do not shoot holes in part we need, young Rhyne," he said. Marcus wasn't sure if he was joking or not.

"Don't worry about that, Ginovsky. I'll have it out in thirty minutes, bullet hole-free." Marcus slung his rifle to his back and continued working. He used his wrench when he could, and his torch when he had to. After twenty-seven minutes, the impeller had two mount brackets left. He pulled the hoist over, which thankfully was powered, and latched the hoist's winch onto the impeller's cargo hook, designed for this very purpose. With the winch pulled taught, he disconnected the last two brackets, and the oil impeller was free. He raised the winch slightly, so that the impeller, the size of a thirty-gallon drum, was suspended over the floor. He then began the slow process of moving it down the passageway. The hoist's wheels were motorized, but none of this was designed to be fast. It creaked along at a snail's pace, much to Marcus' chagrin. He was almost out of the engineering passageway when he heard it.

Or rather, he felt it. A reverbration that resonnated in his chest cavity, rising up from his legs and the floor he stood on. The rumble soon passed, but was followed by another shortly after. He was perplexed at first, but then he understood. It's a tank's cannon firing, he realized. The Enoch is engaged in combat.