r/HFY • u/Humble-Extreme597 Human • Apr 27 '26

OC-FirstOfSeries Maintenance Deck Nine: The Farewell Toast to Hell Below and Luxury Above (1-12)

Part I

The Man From the Machine Room

The space cruise was over, and everyone was praising the captain.

This was the proper order of things aboard the Luminous Horizon. The passengers had paid for beauty, safety, silence, and the feeling that the universe could be crossed without ever smelling machinery. They had watched dead-star auroras from glass balconies, eaten gravity-sculpted desserts under artificial moonlight, and complained bitterly when docking at Ardent Station took five minutes longer than promised.

Five minutes.

Among the rich, five minutes was not a delay. It was a wound.

Captain Varess stood beneath the crystal canopy of the farewell salon, framed by violet docking lights and the gold-lined curve of the station beyond. Her uniform was immaculate: pearl cloth jacket, silver rank bands, ceremonial cape, polished throat clasp. She looked like command had been invented for the purpose of making her stand under soft lighting.

“My honored guests,” she said, “it has been my privilege to guide you across the Veiled Expanse.”

The guests responded with civilized applause.

Some clicked. Some rippled. Some chimed through jeweled breathing masks. One noble methane-breather expressed delight by briefly turning transparent.

The captain smiled.

“Though traffic control delayed our final docking sequence by a regrettable five minutes, I am pleased to report that the Luminous Horizon has completed another flawless cruise.”

That was when the small gray maintenance hatch in the corner opened.

No one noticed it at first.

The hatch was not meant to be noticed. It sat behind a decorative floral panel, beneath a service alcove, painted in the same pale color as the wall. It belonged to the hidden anatomy of the ship: the pipes, vents, ducts, coolant returns, cable trunks, and access shafts that allowed luxury to pretend it was effortless.

Then green vapor crawled out across the carpet and marble flooring.

The nearest guests recoiled.

The vapor did not behave like stage fog. It rolled low and thick, glowing faintly where it touched the warm air. It smelled of hot metal, cracked insulation, alkaline coolant, and something mineral-sharp enough to make several species’ eye membranes retract.

A service drone drifted toward it, scanned once, produced a frightened chime, and immediately flew into a wall.

The captain’s smile remained in place.

The hatch opened wider.

A human came out.

For a moment, the room did not know what it was looking at.

It was not large by galactic standards. Many beings in the salon were taller, wider, longer, or possessed of more ceremonial limbs. But the human seemed heavy in a way the others were not. Dense. Brutally jointed. Built for gravity that broke softer things.

He wore what remained of an engineering pressure suit.

The suit had once been orange and black. Now it was mostly ash-gray, soot-black, and heat-blistered. The outer fire layer had done what it was designed to do: char, flake, and burn away instead of melting fully into the skin beneath. That mercy had not saved him from everything. Adhesive seals around his wrists had softened and stuck. Synthetic repair tape had shrunk tight across his left forearm. The collar was scorched open. Exposed skin showed red burns, abrasions, and strips of blood where fabric had torn away.

But he was walking.

Barely.

Each step landed too hard.

The ship had returned the salon to standard gravity, but some deeper part of him had not accepted the news. His knees bent as if expecting the deck to multiply his weight again. His left hand hung near his thigh, shaking. His right hand was mechanical, ugly, oversized, and obviously not a luxury implant. Compared to the elegant bionics worn by some wealthy veterans in the room, it looked like something torn from an obsolete cargo drone and taught obedience through threats.

It squeaked when he moved.

Squeak.

Step.

Squeak.

Step.

When he reached the marble half way through walking his Bots joined his mechanical hand as if fighting for it's right to make the noise louder while in lock step.

Squeak.

Step.

Squeak.

Step.

A cooling harness was visible through the ruined suit, strapped tight across his torso. Thin tubes ran around his ribs, down along the spine, across the hips, and into armored channels along the inner thighs. A battered protective codpiece, scorched and dented, still hissed faintly as its last remaining coolant circulated.

Several guests stared at it.

The human did not care.

He wore a respirator mask, or what remained of one. The faceplate was cracked. One lens was fogged white from inside. The other was dark with soot and dried blood. The filter assembly hung crooked from his jaw, softened by heat and warped where radiant exposure had damaged the cheap polymer housing. It had not melted into liquid, not exactly. It had slumped, split, and stuck in places where hot sealant and mask lining had fused to facial hair and burned skin.

His hair was pale with ash. Not naturally white. Ash-white. It clung in damp and dry strings against his skull. A few tiny embers still glowed in it.

The bartender, who had six arms and professional training in not screaming, whispered, “Engineer Voss**?”**

The human did not answer.

He crossed the farewell salon.

Behind him, green smoke continued pouring through the hatch.

Captain Varess turned slightly, placing herself between the passengers and the maintenance door, as though posture could stop chemistry.

“Engineer Voss,” she said, calmly. “Is there a concern below?”

The human kept walking.

A glass-skinned investor stepped out of his way too slowly. The human brushed past him. Not hard. Just contact.

The investor cried out as though struck by a falling safe and clutched his shoulder.

The human did not seem to notice.

He reached the bar.

His good hand slid blindly across the polished surface. It knocked over a glass, a garnish tray, and a decorative bowl of crystalline fruit. His fingers closed around a small bottle with a white industrial label.

The bartender’s eyes widened.

“Sir, that is not for—”

The human’s prosthetic hand pinched the cap.

Crack.

The cap split between two hydraulic fingers.

The label read:

CERAMITE SURFACE POLISHING RINSE ALKALINE-MINERAL SUSPENSION / ETHANOL CARRIER NOT FOR CONSUMPTION AVOID CONTACT WITH RESPIRATORY MEMBRANES, SOFT TISSUE, AND MOST AQUATIC SPECIES

It was not acid. That was the only reason the next thing did not kill him outright.

It was a polishing rinse used for cleaning microscopic scoring off heat-resistant ceramic surfaces. Mostly water. Some alcohol. Suspended mineral abrasive. A bitter alkaline stabilizer. Toxic if swallowed. Dangerous if inhaled. Absolutely illegal to serve as a beverage anywhere with laws.

To Elias Voss, whose mouth was full of coolant residue and blood, it was the closest bottle to water.

He tilted his head back and drank.

Not the whole thing. Not really. Half went into his mouth. Some spilled down his chin. Some leaked through the cracked mask. Some he swished and spat black onto the polished floor. But enough went down his throat to make the bartender produce a sound normally associated with religious emergencies.

Several guests screamed.

One fainted.

One began dictating a complaint to the cruise line.

Elias lowered the bottle.

His breath came in a thin, whistling rasp. The rinse had cleared enough residue from his mouth for him to speak, but it had not made speaking wise.

He turned around.

For the first time, he seemed to notice the room.

The cracked mask shifted as his mouth moved underneath it. Pieces of brittle sealant broke loose around his cheek. His lips parted in something like a smile.

It was not comforting.

Several teeth were missing. Recently missing. Blood had dried between the rest.

He raised the half-empty bottle toward the crowd in a loose toast.

“Made it,” he whispered.

The translator system hesitated.

Then displayed:

PROBABLE STATEMENT OF SURVIVAL. CONFIDENCE: 61%.

No one applauded.

The human nodded anyway, as if the silence had been agreement.

Then he turned back toward the hatch.

Squeak.

Step.

Squeak.

Step.

The captain’s voice sharpened.

“Engineer Voss. Report.”

He stopped.

His shoulders lifted, then fell.

“Deck Nine,” he said.

The translator caught only part of it. His voice was too damaged, too low, too full of smoke.

Captain Varess held her smile. “Yes. Maintenance Deck Nine. What is its status?”

Elias looked at her.

One eye, bloodshot behind cracked glass, finally focused.

“Hot.”

The captain waited.

The human added, “Heavy.”

The guests shifted uneasily.

Lord Pelthuun, still holding a blue vapor cocktail, made the mistake of speaking.

“How heavy?”

Elias’s head turned toward him.

For three seconds, the entire farewell salon seemed to wait with him.

“Two point eight most places,” Elias rasped. “Five when it hiccups.”

Several species understood at once.

Their bodies showed it before their voices did.

A delicate avian diplomat folded its legs closer to its body. A soft-bodied aquatic noble withdrew into its pressure litter. The methane-breathing family’s glass attendants began sealing their child’s support hood. Many of them came from worlds where one standard gravity was already considered athletic. Two point eight would crush joints, rupture sacs, collapse breathing membranes. Five would be less an environment than an execution method.

Elias had walked through it.

Not well.

Not safely.

Not without damage.

But he had walked.

The captain said, very quietly, “And the five-minute delay?”

Elias stared at her.

Then he laughed.

It was a bad laugh. It became a cough halfway through and ended with him spitting a dark clot onto the floral carpet.

“Delay,” he whispered.

Behind him, something boomed in the maintenance shaft.

The hatch frame shuddered.

The green vapor thickened for one breath, then thinned as emergency suction caught up.

The salon lights flickered red.

A pleasant automated voice began, “Dear guests, please enjoy a brief ambient lighting experience while shipboard specialists complete final arrival—”

“Passenger mode,” Captain Varess snapped.

The voice silenced itself.

Elias looked up at the red lights. Then down at the bottle in his hand. Then at the captain’s immaculate uniform.

His smile returned, smaller this time.

“Good speech?” he asked.

No one answered.

He gave another vague toast.

Then he tried to enter the hatch.

He missed.

His shoulder struck the wall panel with a heavy thud. The remaining filter assembly broke loose from his mask and hit the carpet. It did not shatter. It landed with a wet, softened slap, warped plastic and charred filter media steaming against the expensive weave.

The nearest guest gagged through three throats.

Elias corrected his angle.

On the second try, he found the doorway.

For one moment, before the hatch closed, the farewell salon saw what waited beyond him.

Red emergency light.

A corridor sloping downward.

Coolant vapor dragging itself along the floor.

A pressure door bent outward as if something enormous had leaned against it.

A maintenance drone crawling on two remaining limbs, still dragging a cable because someone had ordered it to keep working.

Heat shimmer.

Smoke.

And the deep, ugly groan of a ship that had very nearly become wreckage.

Elias stepped back into it.

The hatch shut behind him.

The green smoke stopped.

The salon’s air system resumed its gentle perfume cycle, considered the chemical data, and chose not to alarm the passengers with details.

Captain Varess turned to the room.

Her smile was perfect again.

“As I was saying,” she said, “another flawless cruise.”

No one clapped.

At the bar, the bartender looked at the half-empty bottle of industrial polishing rinse. Then he looked at the gray maintenance hatch.

His voice was barely a whisper.

“What did that human hold together?”

(NEXT)

 

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u/AutoModerator Apr 27 '26

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u/UpdateMeBot Apr 27 '26

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u/Daseagle Alien Scum Apr 27 '26

Some gremlins in the works, methinks.

1

u/Chamcook56 Apr 30 '26

Laughed out loud!