SoSE – Drones! In! Spaaaaaaaace!

a crash – the scream of a klaxon – a rushing sound of air like someone pulled the plug on the universe – head whiplashing in helmet – pain – void – pain – silence – silence –

Weethao's blurry vision cleared a moment later to find herself floating outside the ship. Before her, beneath her, above her slowly corkscrewing form she could see she was utterly surrounded by empty space.

This wasn't as scary for her as it might've been for others in the crew. Wini had always loved space. Space was beautiful, perfect, endless, both a genuinely infinite opportunity and a continual challenge. Its beauty was gated by constant danger, danger that demanded every second of an engineer's attention lest she and all her crew be lost to it.

Wini loved a good challenge, and she'd always wanted to be closer to space.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered that the static in her ear meant her comm was damaged, which meant the crew didn't know where she was and she couldn't call out to them. Somewhere else she recognized the large robotic cargo-loader floating off away from her, the same one that had smashed into the bulkhead and caused the explosive decompression that had sent them both careening into the void moments prior. Distantly she recalled that space was dangerous, and her EVA suit would eventually run out of oxygen or decay under solar radiation.

Still, she felt she could've stayed there forever, drifting through the solar system, watching the delicate traceries of the cosmos cast their nets of ephemeral fire across the empty blackness of infinity.

That was odd. Weethao wasn't really given to poetry–she preferred to work with her hands, to build machines whose meaning spoke for themselves. But something about the beautiful yellow patterns of space made her...artistically inspired.

So she drifted, and she waxed poetic in the recesses of her mind.

Suddenly, a jolt pulled her back to reality as C.H.E.P.I.'s magnetic grapples latched on to the back of her suit, and the little drone began straining its ion repulsor as hard as it could to drag the pair back towards the Tatterdemalion. Wini had built the little hovering bot out of spare parts and a dream, and it loved its creator and best friend with all that which passed for a machine's heart.

C.H.E.P.I. scanned for an entrance. The Cargo Bay would've been sealed off to prevent the rest of the ship experiencing explosive decompression; no good. An airlock, then. C.H.E.P.I. overrode the airlock controls and pushed its repulsor to the limit, and moments later it and Wini tumbled out of the bridge airlock and fetched up hard against a command interface.

Wini opened her suit vents and breathed heavily of the ship's recycled air. Slowly reason came back to her–she had almost died out there! Groaning, she turned her head to smile at C.H.E.P.I., which was hovering anxiously nearby. She raised one hand and the drone gave her a fist bump with one stabilizing arm.

"Saved my life again, little buddy. I'm beginning to lose count."

Somewhere, another explosion rocked the ship. Wini heaved to her feet and patched into the comm network using a nearby console. Minh was shouting orders–like always–and she could hear the familiar sound of the captain's knives and humming personal shield.

"Looks like we're back to fixing everything, my friend. Makes you miss good old Turtle Island." She grabbed the Virtual Access Key from its port nearby, pocketed it, and began running towards the rear of the ship, little C.H.E.P.I. humming right alongside.

She almost forgot about the strange patterns she had seen out there, mapped upon the yellow stars.

Hey folks! Welcome back to Secrets of Somewhere Else, and I'm here today to introduce to you U.C.S. Engineer Weethao "Wini" Habbamock and her personal assistant, C.H.E.P.I.! That's short for Computerized Hovering Engineering Protocol Intelligence, by the way. Wini is the engineer on board the Tatterdemalion, the spacecraft at the center of Axolotl's custom campaign Dark Matter, which transports the familiar horrors of Arkham onto the dramatic backdrop of outer space!

Wini serves as a dedicated fighter for the most part, making use of her quick wits and C.H.E.P.I.'s adaptive AI to dodge enemies and then light them up with her precision targeting and C.H.E.P.I.'s on-board weaponry. Against really tough enemies, she can line up a powerful ion discharge from C.H.E.P.I.'s power core–but there's always a risk of backfiring! Additionally, between her brilliant engineering mind and C.H.E.P.I.'s portable scanners, she's able to handle clue-gathering when necessary.

On board the Tatterdemalion, tinkering supplies are scarce. To keep her gadgets and jury-rigging supplied, and to keep C.H.E.P.I. continually upgraded, Wini is always in the market for spare parts. She's not above cannibalizing ship systems or snagging components from the mechanical enemies she and her best friend take out. Life in space is pretty brutal, and she relies on stimulants and patches to relax–for better or worse, odds are good the addiction won't kill her before cryofailure, explosive decompression, or malicious AI do.

Or something worse.

Wini's main playline is as a combat evader, knocking enemies down and putting the hurt on them with her Automatics, then leaving them helpless for the rest of her combat-oriented teammates to clean up after. Even without the help of her Pickpocketings and Lucky Cigarette Case she will draw rapidly through her deck, relying on her ability and basic draw skills to get a full setup into play and ready to go. She's also able to supplement her team's clue-gathering and generally round out whatever offensive and defensive roles her allies need her to perform–always with C.H.E.P.I.'s help, of course!

For particularly dramatic maneuvers, may I suggest grabbing ahold of C.H.E.P.I. and allowing the drone to carry you through the ship–or harvesting spare parts as they're blasted off your foes by your weaponized friend!

Good luck out there in the black, my friends. At least with a top-notch assistant, toolkit, and friend like Wini has, you might stand a chance of surviving the horrors of space...