Chapter Text
There was nothing on the radar and then:
'Blip E detected'.
This was not unlike his first run-in with Rocky, except this time they were nearly on top of the vessel before Mary's first warning.
Grace went to investigate via camera.
While Rocky's ship had looked like church spires, whatever was in front of him was... uncharacteristically small. A rusted iron can- a rover which didn't look at all capable of space flight, half-covered in some kind of dark... perhaps a liquid? He couldn't quite make it out. Whatever it was looked to be leaking out of the vessel, except in zero gravity liquids just sort of pool up into thick bubbles.
"Objects don't rust in space, rust is iron oxide. So where on earth did this thing come from?" He thought aloud. Some singing from nearby, then Grace responds. "No, Rock, its just a phrase- although I mean it could be from Earth! We don't know."
"Whatever is seeping out of it should really be more worrisome than the rust." Grace bit his lip and tilted his head as he thought out loud. And that's when he saw it- writing on the side of the ship.
"S-M-one--- maybe an eight? I can't read the rest. WAIT THAT HAS TO BE FROM EARTH!"
Grace asked Mary to open a line of communication while he began suiting up.
They had received no response from the vessel. Grace had shouted to Mary and Armando to be ready in case medical was needed. Rocky wanted to go with Grace and help, but he would have likely just slipped around whatever the brown-red liquid was. Grace stood on the edge of the Hail Mary and swallowed a bit, his eyes widening at the vast, endless amount of space below him, and leapt off of it. Then he floated a bit toward the rover, and when he reached it he held onto it for dear life. Yes, it was really that close to them!
He attempted to tether himself to it, but there wasn't much to tether to? Ladder rungs on the side were his best bet. Then he stood for a moment, looking around… well Jiminy Christmas, where was the entry-point? Everything was metal and bolts and there didn't seem to be a hatch. Grace did some further inspection and noticed what looked to be hurried- albeit decent- welding not far from the ladder. He pulled a big wrench out of his belt and gripped it tight and then started punching at the outside of the ship hoping to puncture it.
Nothing. It looked like he could crush this thing like a soda can, but it actually was pretty strong. "Mary," he spoke into his headset under his helmet. "Can we fit this into the ship somehow? I- uh, need a blowtorch."
"Negative." Was Mary's response.
"Well then we have to dock it… somehow."
Rocky was watching the cameras and had made sure to stay near the translator. At this point, Grace understood Rocky's language pretty well, but it was easier to use the laptop than give one more added stress to Grace having to translate in his head during the mission. "Rocky not agree- Statement. Who on ship- Question. No information. No communication."
"Well, we have to do something, Rock- w-we can't just leave this here."
Rocky was quiet and then let out a worried. "Okay."
There had been no easy way to attach the two ships, especially because there was no way to move this hunk of junk- and Grace didn't want to ram into it. Rocky built a tunnel much like the one they had used between his Eridian ship and the Hail Mary, and now they were finally sort-of attached to the unknown rover with unknown occupants. The tunnel got larger at the end and was built around quite a bit of the vessel.
Now that he was able to get a closer look, Grace could read that the side of the ship said 'SM- 13.' That meant nothing to him; he'd never heard of anything like that in his life. "I'm gonna call it Blippy." He said mainly to himself with a shrug.
"Okay." Grace let out a sigh as he started blow-torching the spot that looked like it once was the entry-point at the top.
Dank air began to seep out and then. "Oh look at that, more liquid! Because we didn't have enough already."
Rocky wasn't too far away in the tunnel, suspiciously watching this rover. Grace started muttering about how this might mess up the air systems in Blippy and that might not be good for whoever was occupying the vessel, but now that he looked at it there didn't seem to be much air in there anyway. Once the hole was big enough for him to fit through, he turned off the blowtorch and set it aside.
Grace turned to Rocky and said "Well, wish me luck" and then dropped right in from the top.
The liquid was BLOOD and it was everywhere.
It was also very hot inside. Grace couldn't feel the heat, what with having a space suit on, but he could see it rising up like pavement on a hot summer's day.
With a flashlight on, Grace floated and looked around, trying hard to hold it together. He felt sick at the blood he saw. He needed to find the occupant of the rover first and foremost- surely there was one right?
He had to swim through the blood, in a way, to get further inside and as he searched around he saw some branches and gore. An arm tangled with vines and something else (maybe just thicker blood?) hung from the rafters. A… chair? What looked to be some sort of rudimentary console table. Some more vines or branches, he wasn't sure. And then he saw it, within the pool of red which was rapidly turning brown and becoming less of a pool, was a dark figure.
"Hey!"
No response. No movement. They looked in poor shape from what he could tell. Not that he could see much even with his flashlight, as his helmet just kept getting covered in blood. Grace exhaled and then floated closer to the being.
Without there being gravity in the way, he kind of just wrapped an arm around them and began to carry them out.
"H-hey there friend, we're here and we're gonna get you help alright?" He said as he floated up and climbed out of the tin can.
Still no response. Grace hurriedly rushed them to the medical bay. In the light of the Hail Mary, he could see that the being was human.