Nick skidded across the angled nose of a sporty, red personal transport just large enough to carry a single passenger as he closed the distance to his giant, grey brick of a cargo-hauler. He launched himself off the other end with a thrust of his hips and resumed sprinting across the empty metal of the station's tarmac.
Glowing blue spikes of ignited C12 were already reaching down from the engines affixed to the top four corners as Leru threw the man-door open and smiled at him. Wind fought against him with increasing force as the thrusters displaced the station's artificial atmosphere, larger spikes shooting from the engines in an overlapping, crescendoing rhythm.
Nick threaded his wiry frame through the gusts, angular jaw, eyes, and nose the front of his own sporty transport with a caramel paint job. His ship was already beginning to lift off the tarmac, but he was less than five meters away-
And then it was gone, replaced by spots and darkness. He blinked as the tarmac quickly came up to meet him, oddly disassociated from his own extremities as something heavy and roughly the size of a fist ricocheted off the back of his skull. He came-to lying face-down with the wind rushing over him.
He'd barely been able to get his bearings when someone grabbed his hand and began dragging him into the rushing wind. The direction he was moving combined with the worn but well cared-for combat boots pounding the tarmac in front of his face told him Leru had come to his rescue.
She placed his fingers on the slowly rising grating of Perseverace's floor and jumped over him, boots barely missing his hands as he pulled himself up over the edge, the engine's roar a deafening tear violently shredding any sound they made. She knelt by him with his right hand in hers as his feet left the ground, pulling his dangling form the rest of the way when a pair of thin arms wrapped around his waist. They were both nearly pulled down to the tarmac, but Leru slammed a palm on the door frame as the jagged grating tore at the skin on Nick's other hand.
Teeth gritted and biceps swelling, blue skin paling with white ohma blood, Leru pulled Nick's hand up to her chest, tendons taut against the skin of her neck as she transitioned onto her back. Pressing her boots against the doorframe, she dragged him over the grating with his hanger-on still stuck to his waist, his torso saved from the grating's teeth by his thick, industrial jacket.
She placed his hand back on the grating, checked that he had secured himself, then returned to her feet. Jarret shouted over the intercom to shut the damn door as she stepped over him to the open portal, lifted the interloper off his waist, and deposited them on the grating next to him. Nick pulled himself over the edge into the safety of Perseverance's maintenance hall, and Leru slammed the door behind him, cutting the engines' roar down to a mild hum.
He rolled up into a sitting position, leaning against the wall between the two doors as he examined his hand. "You…" He stared past his fingers at the panting form of a child on the grating before him. She was rail thin and so pale he'd thought her an ohma at first, despite her nearly black hair. She wore a pair of sporty running shoes that were utterly free of scuffs, but still at odds with her skirt and sweat-soaked, button-up shirt.
She swallowed air with her face pressed to the grated floor, shivering and wheezing with each inhale. She placed a palm flat next to her as if to push herself up, linking her fingers into the grating but otherwise remaining where she was. She remained like this for a number of minutes.
"Should we… Do something?" Nick looked up at Leru, who knelt by the child's side.
"Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Try and take full breaths, it'll-" She frowned as the child's hand folded into a familiar gesture that informed her the advice was unwanted.
Nick coughed a laugh, "Yeah, she's fine."
Leru returned to her feet, addressing Nick over the child's continued wheezing. "Did you get it?"
Nick grinned as he pulled the datachit from his pocket and tossed it to her. "Think you can wire a reader into the pilot's seat?"
"I think there's one already installed." She cocked her head. "It's an interfaced mechanism."
"Makes sense. Could you ask Jarett to check it out for me?"
Leru nodded as she exhaled through her nose. "You're going to have to explain what we're going to do with whatever he finds, though." She stepped over the child and him to reach the cargo bay door. "It'd better be good, you're halfway to a mutiny as it stands."
"We're halfway to a mutiny." He called after her as she left him and the child in the hall.
"Oof." The kid managed to work her way into a sitting position perpendicular to Nick's, legs extended as far as they could across the hall. Her heart-shaped face practically glowed in the shadows from all the red splotches and sweat.
"Yeah," Nick narrowed his eyes beneath a lowering brow. "Good choice of ship to stow away on."
She closed her eyes, head tilted upwards as she breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth.
"Why?" Nick nudged her with his foot.
Her brow twitched. "Why what?"
"Why me, why this ship. Why run away at all?" Nick crossed his legs, dragging them across the grating. "You seemed pretty adamant about not leaving when I pretended-... When I met you earlier."
She frowned, nostrils twitching as she squeezed her eyes shut. Ten long, calming breaths later, she spoke, "I don't want to be handed off from owner to owner." She opened her eyes and rolled her head towards him. "And I knew you couldn't just turn around and put me back, 'Captain Hacron'."