five
He couldn't feel her touching him. Not really. But he could imagine he did.
"Tickles," the kernel observed.
The brush and poke of the woman's gloved hand did not tickle.
Ignoring the observation, he studied 'Kat'. Another human; female, tall and slender. In contrast to her companion, her skin was pale, almost translucent but for the two spots of high colour on her cheeks. Beneath the twin arches of slim, blonde brows, grey eyes widened and narrowed as she continued to test the barrier between herself and the panel. Patterns from the bubble of her helmet shaded the short blonde hair that covered her head. The boyish cut did not detract from her femininity. High cheekbones, full lips and the outline of her suit—out at the shoulders, rounded over her breasts, nipped in at the waist and out again over hips that drew his attention over and again—proclaimed her gender and a note of sensuality.
"She's definitely got appeal."
"Her appearance is of no consequence."
"So, you'd be just as happy to let a pod crab tickle your belly."
"I do not have a belly."
He'd had one, once. He'd been human, too. He remembered that…and an appreciation for the female form.
"Why are we protecting Sunshine?"
"I don't know."
Another ripple traveled through the inflexible skin of the ship, causing it to creak and groan. The woman turned and gaped at the wall behind her, then reached out to touch that. He was there ahead of her hand, a wisp of his being, insubstantial as the stuff of the universe, but hard and impenetrable.
"What the fuck?" she said.
"Don't touch it."
The woman didn't hear his voice; he didn't have a voice. She seemed to understand she'd been enveloped in a field of something, however, and as most compressed substances were want to do, she agitated. Around her, the walls of the corridor continued to flex. Without power to activate the expansion molecules, stress quickly overwhelmed the rigid structures. Cracks leapt along dim surfaces, darker than the dark grey walls. The sound of them rent the air in a series of breaks and pops. One wall emitted a shrill squeal before snapping along a jagged scar into two uneven pieces.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit."
Atmosphere began to rush through the breach, whistling, then howling as air pushed the wall apart and hammered against the struts and ductwork lining the inner hull. Slowly, the pressure equalized and clanks and bangs faded. The ship continued to flex, however, and stress fractures rippled across more of the walls. Bulkheads groaned and buckled, pipes bent and broke. Steam puffed out and froze solid, and then cracked into pieces, the plink of each hitting the deck muffled by the rumbling groan of the entire ship.
"Finch!"
Looking through the frigate, twisted bulkheads and fractured walls no impediment to his far-reaching gaze, he searched for the large man and saw him stretched in an implausibly lean line, half in, half out of the ship. His gloved hands were attached to a bent strut and his suited body extended outward at a ninety degree angle, the soles of his booted feet pointing toward the asteroid that spun below the Bataille. It looked as if the man skipped over a boulder in the blackness of space. Then the ship rolled, vented gasses providing enough propulsion to nudge it from the stable orbit it had occupied for a decade.
"Why aren't we protecting him?" the mote of self asked.
"I don't know."
The urge wasn't there, the instruction incomplete. If he was a program, the parameters did not include rescuing the large man named Finch.