Look, I'm a simple guy. You give me silly little robot/automaton guys and gals singing silly little songs, I am going to be entranced. I am going to be lifetime supporters. I am going to be obsessed. AND, if they context and lore within their own little musical universe and produce interesting MVs...?
By golly. Homerun. Every single time.
Commander Peter Alexander Walter IV was just fitting his helmet over his head for the second of four scheduled space walks this mission when a shudder shook the Vulcan Space Station.
He looked up, puzzled. The station had point defense weapons to deal with micrometeorites and other space debris, so why-
"Fire! Fire!"
The light clicked red and the warning sirens began sounding as a second, more violent shudder shook the station. Commander Peter hastily stepped away from the airlock he'd been about to use and headed back further into the station with his heart beating a mile a minute. He was the Commander of the mission, and it was his job to figure out what the hell had gone wrong to try and fix it; worst came to worst, he could vent the air to sections triggering the fire alert and put them out that way, but that was an absolute last resort to use only if the crew in those sections were already dead.
Of course, step one was figuring out where the fire alarms were coming from.
Commander Peter jogged through the narrow corridors leading to the bridge as quickly as he could, desperation lending wings to his feet; there wasn't room enough for a flat-out sprint, or he'd run for it, but long experience in Walter Manor had taught him how to get up a fair head of steam even when running wasn't an option. Several cross corridors had ominous flickers at their further ends, but it wasn't until he fetched up against the doors that would normally lead to the commander center with a hollow thud that he saw the first real sign of fire.
Flames, mostly orange and yellow with just a few flickers of red, danced in the view offered by the double-sealed glass doors that lead to the bridge. He could see one form, ominously still, laying across the free-standing communications console and his heart clenched as he recognized Pvt Jennings, but nobody else was in immediate view. Peter gritted his teeth and slammed his fist against the controls that would open the door to let him in; there were some secondary control locations scattered through the station, but they were section-specific and too widely scattered to be of enough use when his crew was counting on him now.
The control panel blinked a stubborn red. "Fire! Fire!" shrieked the mechanical voice of the alert system, and Peter snarled in frustration.
"I know that! Commander override PA1896!" He snapped into the suit microphone, the system relaying it out the suit's external speakers in a somewhat tinny echo.
Whatever the hell had happened had affected the computer core. "Fire! Fire!" It continued to shriek, and the panel stayed stubbornly red.
Commander Peter pounded futilely on the glass; the stuff was more than three inches thick and designed to seal against the cold vacuum of space. Snowballs in hell had better chances than he did to break the stuff with just his fists, but dammit-!
Another figure staggered into view and slammed into the other side of the glass, and he jerked away convulsively. Peter watched in horror as his second in command, Mark Morrow, beat against the other side of the glass with both fists. Morrow's uniform was on fire, and most of his hair had burned away. He seemed to be shouting something, but Peter couldn't hear him, couldn't make out what he was saying through the damage to his face and lips. It didn't stop him from renewing his assault on the door, hands aching through his gloves and he pounded furiously on the damn glass.
"Mark!" He shouted. "MARK!"
Even as he watched, Morrow's movements grew weaker. His strikes grew sporadic, uncoordinated, and he slowly slid down the door. No matter what Peter did or how hard he slammed his fist into the damn door, he couldn't get the other man to move again.
With a final blow that left the bones in his arm ringing and a vicious curse, Peter shoved himself away from the door. If he couldn't get to the main controls, he'd just have to start going section by section to the backup control points. Turning, he sped away down the corridor to the last junction and threw himself down the left-hand hallway. He'd memorized the locations of the secondary control points on a schematic of the station, of course, but he hadn't actually been to most of them. He made a silent promise to visually confirm the location of every emergency protocol on his next posting; this could not happen again.
It seemed he wasn't the only one who'd had the idea of heading to the secondary control points. As he moved through the maze of corridors, he was force to detour several times as emergency depressurization bulkheads blocked the path - the whole time with that damn computer alert shrilling in his ears.
"Fire! Fire!"
Finally, he reached a bulkhead with a built-in airlock, and wasted no time in cycling through. From what he could remember, most of the secondary controls seemed to be down corridors blocked by the bulkheads; he'd have to get to the other side of them to find out what the hell was going on. As the air rushed out of the lock, the shrill computer warning attenuated until at last it reached the point where he could no longer hear it. The warning strobes continued, however, painting the walls and floor a bloody red as they flashed.
Stepping into the airless section was quiet - the kind of quiet that set the hairs on the back of his to standing on end. Peter had been out in the depths of space on a number of missions, and while it was equally silent out there in the black it was somehow...peaceful. Quiet, instead of silent; here the silence felt oppressive, like a predator that he hadn't seen yet was lurking nearby.
It was something of a relief, then, to see another white-suited figure in the corridor ahead of him. Without sound to get their attention, Peter ran forward to catch up to them - a task made easier since they didn't seem to be moving very quickly. In fact, they seemed to be almost slumped against the wall, and Peter slowed as he got closer. Strange flickers of light were playing over their suit - something Peter had never seen. He reached over cautiously and grabbed them by the shoulder to turn them around - and then immediately wished he hadn't.
The space suits they wore were designed to be airtight, and proof against the harshest conditions of space. Peter had worn his so often that it felt natural, like a second skin, and was one of the most mobile people in the service in the big clunky things. It had never occurred to him that the same things that kept him safe against space could keep other things alive, too.
Face caught in a rictus of agony, Johnson was burning alive inside his suit.
The flickers Peter had seen suddenly made a sickening kind of sense; wherever the seals had been too damaged by the internal heat, little bits of oxygen would escape and be immediately consumed by the combustion reaction. Johnson couldn't have taken off the suit even as he burned to death in it, because he couldn't have survived the vacuum in the corridors around them.
Peter had never wanted to vomit more in his entire life, but he pushed the bile down.
