FIREFLY Mk2.1: PANDORA'S BOX

Puncture Repair

"Oh, for fuck's sake..." Alan snarled.

It had been a mere fifteen minutes since the Firefly-class transport ship, Serenity, had parted ways with the Sangheili assault carrier Shadow of Intent. For fifteen minutes, the crew had been testing the new slip-space drive which they had acquired in a deal with the Sangheili, and had been speeding through the swirling vortex that formed a slip-space passage. Even though the technology allowed them to travel at speeds beyond any science on Earth, it still took time to get anywhere of any significant distance.

Now, apparently, those upgrades had come at a price, for alarms sounded all over the ship, and red lights flashed on the pilot's console. For the Godzilla mutant known as Alan Tyler, the new captain of the Serenity, he felt that he should have known his stroke of good fortune in acquiring the slip-space drive was too good to be true.

"Tell me it's not as bad as I think it is..." he said, in a pleading voice to his android pilot, Bishop, who even now was wiping his lanky brown hair back as he surveyed the console.

"The engines are beginning to overload!" Bishop said gravely. "If we do not drop out of slip-space now, there is likely to be an explosion!"

"Well, drop out of slip-space then, damnit!" Alan barked. Bishop nodded, and within seconds the vortex had faded, returning Alan to the familiar view of twinkling stars suspended in the blackness of space that had become so commonplace to him for over a week. The mutant snarled in frustration, trying to keep his temper. He could not believe that this was happening to him; after his mission had got off to an incredibly bad start, he could not believe that his one stroke of good luck was now metaphorically spitting him in the eye.

"Woah, take a few deep breaths, Captain," came the Cockney-accented voice of Alistair, the gargoyle first mate. "You'll give yourself a heart attack, at this rate; if your lot get them, anyway."

For once, Alan did not feel inclined to argue. He knew that he had to keep a cool head and set a good example, something which he was certainly not used to doing. He tried to steady his temper before going to the intercom and opening a channel to the engine room.

"Rachel," he said. "How's the engine holding up?"

"That was too close, Captain," came the female voice of Rachel Tam, the ship's engineer. "If we had gone any longer in slip-space, I'm pretty sure something would have gone kaboom." Her tone was unusually grave.

"What happened?" Alan asked.

"From what I can tell," Rachel replied, "our conductors started overheating. They just aren't up to transferring the insane amounts of energy these new drives require. I guess the Elites just didn't have the right parts to hand."

"I can just picture the look on José's face now," Alistair said, his beak twisted into a sneer. "He'll probably rant on about it being sabotage on the Sangheili's part."

"Yeah, well," Alan muttered. "With any luck he'll have the sense to stay in his cabin, unless he wants me to go through him like a dose of salts." He turned over to Bishop, who was poring over a star-chart on another screen. "In any case, we have no idea where the Shadow of Intent would be by now, so we can't count on them for replacement parts. Any ideas, Bishop?"

"I heard what Rachel said," Bishop replied. "I've been scanning for sites with suitable parts. If it's any consolation, the drive itself works, for we have covered a much greater distance in our short time in slip-space than we ever did in the whole week we were flying on our own power. We could feasibly match the speed of any Sangheili vessels in slip-space. Unfortunately, all of the nearest colonies where we can get suitable parts are three months' flight away on our own power..." He paused for a moment, peering closer at the screen as it displayed a small, Earth-looking planet in orbit around a vast blue gas giant. He scratched his chin, looking at the screen thoughtfully.

"Now this is interesting..." he said, thinking aloud.

"What is?" Alan asked, leaning in to get a look at the display.

"Pandora, Captain," Bishop replied, pointing at the small moon.

"What's Pandora?" Alan asked. He was unfamiliar with the planets beyond Earth's own solar system, having being frozen in suspended animation during the decades of space exploration which led to the peoples of Earth charting and terraforming many planets in the Milky Way, many of which had been destroyed by the Covenant during the war.

"It is a moon of the planet Polyphemus, in the Alpha Centauri system," Bishop explained. "It is the site of an old mining operation which took place before and during the early years of the Earth-Covenant war, and the only known planet in the galaxy where the resource known as Unobtainium can be found."

"Unobtainium?" Alan asked, his tone full of scorn. "You got to be fucking joking. Whose bright idea was that name?"

"It was a completely unknown element, Captain," Bishop explained calmly. "The name is merely a placeholder which was never removed. What we managed to discover about it, however, was extraordinary. It may be just the substance we are looking for."

"How do you figure?" Alan asked.

"As it turns out," Bishop said, with a tone that sounded almost like excitement, "Unobtainium is the galaxy's most powerful superconductor. Even in its raw state, it is capable of transferring incredible amounts of energy without ever coming even close to overheating. Naturally, such a substance was highly sought-after in the early years of the war. It would have enabled our scientists to fashion slip-space drives just like the Covenant's, allowing for near-instantaneous space travel without the risk of overheating the engines, and would have put us on more of a technological footing with them. The war would likely have been resolved much sooner, and more of Earth's colonies could have been saved, had we been able to acquire sufficient amounts of the material."

"So why didn't that happen?" Alan asked. "Why does it still take years for Earth ships to get anywhere?"

"I was getting to that, Captain," Bishop replied. "However, accounts from those who returned from Pandora are conflicting and imprecise. The most that can be ascertained was a disagreement with the indigenous peoples of Pandora, which led to bloody conflict, and eventually the exile of the miners. There are those who maintain that, with the loss of Pandora, we nearly lost the war."

"Just as well we didn't, then," Alistair chimed in. "We were damn lucky that the Sangheili got some sense into 'em and came over to our side. Mind you, that's not stopped people like José from holding a grudge; not without reason, like."

"You think he's ever going to tell us what happened to make him like that?" Alan asked.

"Not bloody likely, Captain," Alistair said, shrugging.

"Anyway," Alan said, turning back to Bishop. "So this Unobtainium can help us get the slip-space drive working again, and keep it working?"

"It is a distinct possibility," Bishop said. "With the size of the Serenity taken into account, we should not need a lot of the substance. If we are careful, we can get the amount we need and leave Pandora before we attract the attention of the Na'vi."

"How long until we reach Pandora?" Alan asked. "We can't risk the slip-space drive again, that much is obvious."

"It is not a long journey from here, Captain," Bishop replied. "Only a few hours under our own power."

"Right," Alan said. "Get us there as quickly as our engines will allow."

"Roger," Bishop replied, steering the ship in the direction of the distant planet. Alan headed back to his cabin, still not believing the stroke of bad luck that he had just suffered. It seemed that, no matter what he did, fate seemed determined to trip him up in every way possible. He sighed as he rolled over onto his bunk, figuring that he might as well try and get a couple of hours worth of sleep before he had to tackle this latest problem.

0

Hours passed, and Alan found it harder to keep himself occupied. He was eager to get to Pandora, not just for the necessity of the Unobtainium, but also for the chance to explore a new world for the first time in his life. He had been to Io very briefly prior to the end of the war, but he had not seen much of it, and there had not been much to see anyway. He was excited at the prospect of stepping onto a genuinely alien planet.

Eventually, the crew gathered in the cosy mess area and galley in the middle of the ship. With its wooden dining table and chairs, as well as the yellow walls with paintings of ivy creeping up them, it would be easy to assume that these rooms were part of someone's house rather than a spaceship. Even long after the previous crew had handed the ship back to Lofwyr, the décor had remained untouched. Now Alan, Alistair, the Hispanic mercenary José Lovano and the cheery engineer Rachel Tam were sat eating what looked like pieces of toffee cut into different shapes. Bishop was the only crew member absent; being an android, he did not need to eat.

"Please tell me we can get some real food on Pandora," Alan lamented, picking at the chicken-shaped pieces morosely. "I'm sick to the back teeth of these protein bricks. No amount of shaping and flavouring can convince me that it's actual food."

"Oh, I dunno," Rachel shrugged. "I find that if I close my eyes and put plenty of flavourings into it, then it tastes somewhat like oatmeal or tuna or whatever it is I was after."

"Nah, it doesn't," Alistair replied. "It really doesn't. It always tastes to me like bricks of snot." At this, Rachel made a gagging noise. She had been on the verge of swallowing another piece of protein substitute, and was now looking slightly creeped-out by the direction the conversation was going.

"What makes you so sure of that comparison?" Alan asked wryly.

"Well," Alistair replied, ruffling his brown hair, "let's just say that I learned from a very early age not to take anyone up on a dare."

"Is this regular dinner conversation among non-humans?" Rachel asked, now looking a bit nauseous.

"Hey," Alan said, pointing at Rachel with a sharp claw, "there's no need to be all polite around me. It's safe to call me a monster; I won't bite you for it."

"Nah, mi amiga," José suddenly chimed in. "He's just going to slash you open and feast on your guts."

"That I'm saving for you," Alan retorted, showing his rows of sharp teeth with a grin.

Rachel rolled her eyes and tutted disapprovingly. She stood up and walked back to the engine room, muttering "Men".

"Okay..." Alan breathed, turning back to José, "now that we've managed to completely disgust our engineer, I've been meaning to talk to you about what happened on the Shadow of Intent. It's best we sort this out now."

"Just forget it, boss," José said, dismissively. "As long as I don't see another Elite in the next hundred years, you won't get trouble out of me."

"That's not good enough," Alan said sternly. "I don't know if you've been paying attention, but a pretty big part of this mission is meeting with a group of Elites who are on the same mission as us. I need to know that I'm not going to get a repeat performance from you."

"Well, I don't know if you've been paying attention, puto," José retorted spitefully, "but we were almost made extinct by the split-faces. Maybe you just slept through it all, but I didn't. You're making your own funeral if you trust an Elite."

Alan could kind-of see where José was coming from; he was sure that he would find it difficult to trust a race that had tried to exterminate him in the past. However, he also knew that José's blanket dismissal that no Sangheili could be trusted was simply not true. As he was about to forcibly point this out to his argumentative crewman, Bishop spoke over the intercom:

"Captain, we have almost arrived at Pandora."

Both Alan and José were silent for a moment, peering at each other with identical looks of distrust.

"We'll discuss this later," Alan finally said, in a low tone. "Get yourself ready and meet us in the cargo bay."

"Yes, sir," José replied, in a tone of equal contempt. He headed towards his cabin to pick up his favoured weaponry. Meanwhile, Alan and Alistair made their way onto the bridge.

"I'd watch out around him, Alan," Alistair said quietly. "Don't forget he's just a hired gun; someone will come along with a higher offer at some point, and then what will happen?"

"I'm not going to take any of his bullshit," Alan snarled. "He's got to know that I'm in charge of this ship, and I won't tolerate this crap he's been spewing out."

"I know how you feel," Alistair said, as the pair stepped onto the bridge. "Just be careful, or you'll have a mutiny on your hands."

Alan sighed, and looked out of the windows towards the small, lush-looking green and blue planet ahead, orbiting serenely around the huge blue gas giant Polyphemus. As Alan looked out of the window, however, he saw something else that caused feelings of alarm to pass through him. A large purple battleship, roughly three kilometres long, was in orbit above Pandora, which would be an intimidating sight for anyone on the planet's surface who happened to be looking up and saw the shape looming over them.

"It's a Reverence-class cruiser, Captain," Bishop calmly explained.

"Covenant," Alistair chimed in. "I'm just glad José isn't here to see this. We'd never get him off the turret controls if he did."

"Is that right?" Alan asked. "But what's it doing here?"

"I have no idea," Bishop replied, analysing a scan of the ship on one screen. After a couple of seconds his expression brightened. "I can tell you that this particular ship does not belong to either the Covenant or the Sangheili." He pointed at the scanner readouts. Looking at them closely, Alan could see UNSC markings on the hull.

"I wonder..." Alan muttered. "Otto told me that Telek gave a ship to the UNSC, the Transcending Vigilance or something like that. It left Earth to join Telek's fleet on his mission. That might be it. Makes me wonder where the rest of the fleet is though."

"You think we should give 'em a buzz, Captain?" Alistair asked. Alan looked thoughtful for the moment, before shaking his head.

"Not at the moment," Alan said. "I want to make sure we get the Unobtainium safely on board first. We'll try and speak to them later once we're done down there. Maybe they can help us fix the slip-space drive."

"We'll have to keep an eye on José," Alistair said. "From what I saw on the Shadow of Intent, some of the controls on those ships are too tall for humans to reach. There'll almost certainly be Sangheili on board that ship to operate them. If we come across any Sangheili down there, our mutual acquaintance is going to go crazy."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Alan said. "Is there a place we can land?"

"The safest place at present would be the site of the old command centre," Bishop replied. "The colonists used to refer to it as 'Hell's Gate'. We can find out more about what exactly happened here, and can locate any Unobtainium deposits from there." He looked over at Alistair, looking concerned. "I am afraid that the site will still be in daylight for another two hours."

"Marvellous," Alistair said wryly. "Looking on the bright side though, I might actually get a decent kip. I haven't had one since we started this trip. Space has thrown my body-clock out of whack."

"Bishop," Alan said, "how do you feel about going out on the surface?"

"I have no qualms, Captain," the android answered. "I am the only one who knows what to look for when seeking Unobtainium anyway. I am afraid I will not be of much help should we come across the Na'vi. I may be a synthetic, but I am no fighter."

"Like you say," Alan said, with a sly smile, "hopefully we'll be gone before they spot us."