Even though surprised, he doesn't let it show on his face.

"Password to enter is..." He watches his phone to double check, "syrup 9-8-3 exclamation mark, box drawings up double and horizontal single. I'm Kendal Raines, Battles gave permission to enter,do you need to see ID?"

"Not with THAT one,"  The other guard says with a deep New York Brooklyn drawl once he taps it into his computer, "Plus I recognize ya.  I voted against ya, ya bum, but damned if I ain't glad you're there anyway."

He opens up the door for him, leading to an empty airlock.

"Mizz Wu gotta be on her way, she ain't checked in here."

Gibbles sniffs at Kendal's legs. "Sounds like this is deeper than we thought, minions, if Battles is involved."

"Then I want no part of it." Frank replies, "Senator Raines, did he give us any additional orders?  That's a hell of an unlock code."

"Well, it wouldn't be politics if we all agreed on everything, right?" He says to the first guard, "At least i'm a well dressed bum."

He nods to the guards as he walks to the airlock, but before he goes in he says to Gibbles, "He got involved when I asked him, this is something I'm doing from my own initiative so there is no need to get alarmed just yet, i just asked the PW from him. Anyway, thank you gentlemen."

"You said it pal, twice." Brooklyn remarks to him.

"No worries.  Welcome in," Gibbles says, "Frank, open the doors to him."

The airlock should be bare, bereft of a suit.  Instead once it cycle he sees a severe young asian woman, almost corpse-pale, with hair that's growing wilting leaves and with an unfortunate pinched expression on her face.  A small goatlike eye grows from her cheek.  She's wearing a heavy-looking suit, but it's likely she won't need it.  There's an empty suit next to her.

"Hey, that's not allowed!"

"Took... long way in."  Heather Wu tells them, "From the outside."

"You need to check in!"

"Not that way."  She looks to Kendal, "Suit up.  There's a... void gap.  Between the airlock and the Royet.  I'll need to... pull you in.  Take it you haven't done much voidwalking."

The small extra eye catches his attention, but it fades as he has seen more strangers things recently. He starts putting the suit on, should be simple enough.

"If the political theater doesn't count, then no." He replies to Heather Wu, "Would you be so kind and brief me what it means and what to do?"

It IS pretty simple; it's designed for just about any moron to throw it on and latch down to save themselves rapidly.

"We don't have... a direct connection,"  She tells him as she watches him dress critically, "So... when the air is cycled out... we have to push off.  Into an open port."  She explains- "A void gap.  Normally not... a big deal.  But you can die.  Always.  Hit it wrong.  Spiral off into space.  Get hit by a freighter... three times this month."

"Would be an embarrassing end for me, to misjudge a jump and spiral off into space... I'll follow your lead, Miss Wu."

This is the moment he wonders if Battles wound him a ship yet or not, could prove useful in times like these to have one perhaps.

"Relax.  Not very far... only a meter."  She tells him, "Just enough distance... to keep things honest."  She checks his seals, makes sure his helmet is on tight, and taps the top.  "Communicator on.  Test test.  Do you read.  Are you prepared.  Are you armed."

"Read you loud and clear. Yes and yes, I'm ready and armed. Ladies first." He gestures to the airlock.

"Good."

The airlock cycles, the precious air pumping back out into the station.  Kendal is left in the absolute cold silence of vacuum, only his breath filling his ears.  Then the airlock opens, revealing a meter-long void gap between them and the wreckage of the Maple Leaf.  The meter-long distance is short, almost too impossible to fuck up.

Heather tells him "Watch" and pushes off the wall, sailing neatly into the open airlock of the Maple Leaf.

It's Kendal's turn.

He feels the pull.

It wants him to jump through, but not into the Maple Leaf.

The void calls to him.

((Wu Wei attack on Kendal.  Defend with Wu Wei.  You can channel Chi to boost your roll as if it's an Internal Kung Fu technique at +5 / Chi, max 5.  Failure at any level- including a result of 0- means you miss the airlock.

Stealth roll is to see how Kendal interprets it.  Fail by 10+ and you won't realize it was an attack; succeed by 10+ and you will realize it as a deliberate, serious attack instead of low-level malevolence.  Defend against the Stealth component with Confidence or Wu Wei.
10, 9, 9, 9, 7, 6, 6, 6, 3 & 1
*Attack 39 + Wu Wei 20 + AB 10 = 66
*Stealth 36 + Stealth 20 + AB 10 = 66))

((Roll not to die: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 5 & 4.

Defend against Wu Wei attack
*5 chi: Boost own Wu Wei for +25
25 + 10 + 10 + 25 = 70 Without a set Kendal would have spiraled into space >_>

No chance to see through the stealth.))

Without knowing what happened or why he makes the jump despite the ominous feeling that the Void is calling, maybe it was just something everyone feels the first time they go out? He doesn't say anything, just nods to Heather when he reaches the other side.

She gives him a nod too.

Does she look haunted?  Because even though she's pale- a side effect of having bonded to a perroneles- she looks a little more stressed than she probably should be.

She grabs him and pulls him in, then closes the airlock behind them.  It's an empty gesture.  After all, there's no air in the ship.  But it does make them feel better all the same.  She pushes open the other airlock and they enter.

The ship is a wreck.  Little pieces of shrapnel float everywhere, from slivers of hull metal to the bric-a-brac of daily life.  A broken mug "UNIVERSES BEST DAD" hangs in the air just in front of the galley.

"So I'm here.  What... do you need." She asks him, "We're activating... the logs right?"

While looking around he tries his best not to hit anything that might puncture a hole in his suit and answers to her, "Correct, I need to see the logs. Actually best case scenario is we find nothing and we can all go home... But we are trying to find out what the first mate was up to..."

Then he actually turns to Heather and sees her a bit more stressed out than normal, "Everything OK? did you see or sense something?"

There's plenty in here that could puncture their environmental suit, so long as it's thrown or hit with sufficient bullet-level velocity.  In other words, he's very unlikely to puncture his suit unless he flings himself on a handy pointy surface.  The debris floating in the air bounces off of him ineffectually.

"I have... a battery pack.  Will need it... to boot up the computers.  Reactor's dead,"  She informs him.  "Miracle... it came back at all."  She looks around, "We may have... to check the reactor room first."

She pauses at the senator's question.

"Space has... not been kind lately.  We... are starting to dread it."

Kendal looks at the emptiness of the void and frowns, you better stay away you... darkness.

"Well, I just stated the objective and asked you to help, so since you are the driver in this bandwagon you decide the route we take. Just tell me if something seems... Off."

"Everything... does."

She leads them through the dead ship.  Everywhere he can see the evidence of the violence of the explosion.  Though the bodies are long gone, he can see strange indentations, splashes of blood that never quite fully boiled away, here and there a shard of bone embedded into the ship.  Little bits of everything continue to bounce off of them as they move towards the reactor, which takes them a good ten minutes.

He hasn't been on many ships but he knows a dead reactor when he sees it.  One part nuclear furnace, one part God, they're designed to run with little interference and in hard vacuum if necessary.

"Here," Heather whispers.

Ah.  A femur.  Someone's femur bone has apparently speared the command console.

"Will need to... hook up battery," She holds up a small box, "Very bad luck... a perfect shot to the ysal crystal.  Holds the god.  Kills the god if broken.  Very... very bad luck."

He rolls his eyes, of course there was a femur missile aimed at a god, obviously. "So, it's gone for good?" He says to her.

He takes a look at the small box, not really looking for anything, just pondering on the chances of that happening.

"Anyway I'm kind of a dead weight until I can get something out of the logs, just say of you need help with anything."

"Definitely... dead," Heather pronounces, "About as dead... as a god can be."

The chances are pretty fucking slim, especially since the rest of the reactor is in good shape.  Heather starts plugging the box into some cable ports at the bottom of the reactor.  It takes a while, and he starts to itch in his suit, but eventually a trickle of power courses through the ship.  This means mostly emergency lights go on, dim and tepid.

"There." She whispers, "... All done."

There's limited gravity, too.  He can feel it pulling on him.  He still weighs very little but at least he's not going to go flying off in a random direction if he hits something funny.

"Power is... mostly at the terminals," Heather tells him.

One of the terminals blinks nearby.  It's just started a reset.  Now it blinks, asking for the access code.

Assuming there is something to type with and this is not one of those "jack yourself with a cable to your brain" kind of engineering computers, he types the access code, assuming it was the one Battles gave earlier.

"Lets see here.."

Those sorts of computers are rare, and usually reserved for people like... well, Core.  Not many people want to do that.

The code works!

[ACCESSING]
The screen starts to waver as it starts pumping out lines of text.  Several options are displayed on screen for him.
[DAILYLOGS]
[CHIEFENGINEER:LOG]
[CHIEFENGINEER:MANUALS]
[CHIEFENGINEER:TEMPLATES]
[CHIEFENGINEER:BUDGET]
[ENGINEER:LOG]
[ENGINEER:MANUALS]
[ENGINEER:TIMESHEETS]

Well, this hopefully is able to provide at least some information, or information on where to find the actual information. He starts to scour through files in search of anything related to what Gerald said. Starting with the logs.

"Ok, so what we actually are hoping for is that I find absolutely nothing of interest, we can sign that old man as crazy and we can all go home early today..." He thinks out loud.

Very unlikely to find any video footage here to look for the assumed corrupted lunar or his doings. Well, they have time until oxygen runs out so there is no rush.

The [DAILYLOGS] are pretty unremarkable.  Kendal can no doubt feel his eyes glaze over as he goes over the minutiae of running a transport reactor.  This isn't a personal diary, it's more of a listing of the reactor's gauges, problems fixed, parts that need selecting, etc.

The Chief Engineer log, on the other hand, is more interesting.  Especially since, as Kendal might remember, Gerald was the Chief Engineer.  The last log reads as follows:

[He was in here today.

He touched the control panel, just over the Ysal crystal, while talking to Kennedy.  He always was sweet on her.  The steel blackened, just a bit.  Lemon juice and oil cleaned it off with the help of some steel wool.  Kennedy asked what was wrong.  I told her it was just rust.  Not to worry.  It's best if she doesn't worry.

I feel awful.

If anyone reads this afterwards I am so sorry.]

A previous log before that:

[He leaned against the wall during last night's lunch.  I saw the crack in the hull.  This ship will shake apart the longer he's alive.]

And a log before that:

[His skin is green.  Nobody sees it but me.  I asked Captain Borgnine if he noticed anything funny and the Captain told me he noticed I wasn't tending to the reactor.

This is day 6 of him in his room.  Why hasn't he been on deck?  Why is the Captain worrying more about me and not about him?  Everyone else thinks I'm a crackpot.]

Well, that isn't very useful in and of itself, this is basically the same rambling he said earlier. Better yet all of these people he is referencing are in no condition to give testimonies.

Kendal thinks he needs someone else's log, maybe the captains or better yet, Raishen's own if he had one. Without anything new added to this story there is not much to base any assumptions on, only one half-crazed murderers word to push the blame on someone else.

Unless there is something else of interest in the computer he turns to Heather, "Well, this alone wont mean much, any chance to find the first mates or captains logs? Like, is there a black box or something that could have survived." He shakes his head. "If this is the only thing we have this little trip is over really quick... If this space walk would turn into detective work it will be my time to bail."

"It... does mean something," Wu tells him from behind his shoulder, "... Though maybe not... what he thinks."  She points at the bone embedded in the Ysal crystal, "... Somehow it was... marked.  Before... the explosion.  Don't think he could have just... placed the bone there?"

The woman halts, considering her next words.

"... There is, in the bridge."  She murmurs for a second, "... It should be accessible.  But not everyone... keeps a diary.  Cameras, perhaps."

Kendal looks at her and back at the bone and crystal again, "It's not my style to ponder the meaning of puzzles before having all the pieces." he says to her.

He runs his hand on the bone and to the crystal, poor bastards didn't deserve such a fate.

"So, the bridge, how long for us to get there?" he asks.