Zero Degrees
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The launch went surprisingly smooth, especially the fact that it looked like it could barely stand on its grounding pads. The lerat rods tilted the ship in a 45 angle and the sirpods lactched onto slots on the ship, using thier engines to make a vertical "tugboat". They broke away when the Zero Degrees had built up enough speed to break away from Geeza's atmosphere. We bee-lined for the first jumppoint. After the uneasy stomach-churn, we were plowing through hyperspace.
There was a vast differance between the Zero Degrees's and the Great Fox's velocity geometry. The Great Fox's hyper-space engines were designed to jump on-the-fly without a portal, because the engines were more vastly expensive than the ones on our souped-up rowboat. Also, the Great Fox's engines would use up most of its fuel stores when it jumped, but it was normal because Great Fox would jump near a planet and refuel. Though this was done in a star system, and jumps were just a way of saving time. If the Great Fox and Zero Degrees would do a quirky race in hyperspace, the Great Fox would win, but by a small margin.
Falco was just lounging in the co-pilot's seat while Slippy was doing a few checks on the three arwings that he stored. Katt was off duity and re-configuring her quarters. As for Taris, Fara, and Lance, I presumed that they were trying tp get familiar with their equipment. Though Fara was also off-duity. Jeff told me earlier that he was going to find more about the other crewers by doing little, annoying interrogations.
"Falco, what's for dinner?" I humored.
"That depends, do you like Oodles of Noodles?" he chuckled.
With a good meal's future crushed, I changed the subject, "What do you think we're carrying to Corneria?"
"A cure for the common cold," Falco replied without missing a beat.
"How long did it take you to think that one?" I asked with a smile tugging at my lips.
"A good five minutes. It was either that or a prototype arwing, a new type of pulse-cannon, or many other things. But the cure felt like a good hunch."
The intercom speaker that was embedded into the pilot console beeped on.
"Fox, are you here?" I recognized the voice. It was the rough one of Jeff's.
"I searched the entire ship, and noticed that the ship's interior is smaller than the outside."
"A double-hull ship?" I said. "That's not unusual."
"But this is rediculous, this ship is as big as a football field. But the interrior is as big as seven mobile homes put together."
I thought for a moment. This ship was in strange shape when we found it. Then I replied, "Well, the ship's design is strange, after all."
"I suppose you're right," the voice chorted back. The intercom beeped to signify that it was off.
"What's with that Schider wolf? He seems to know actually less about this ship than we do." I said a moment after the intercom shut off. Thinking out loud around Falco actually gets him thinking as well.
"Then why did the defense send him here? I mean, why would they send an intel who knows less than the pilots?" Falco said.
"To get intelligence, probably," I said. "That probably shows how much the Defense knows."
"This means we're going into this headfirst, blind, and deaf," Falco said. "Whatever we're shipping, better be worth this."
The metal automatic door hissed open behind us. We shifted in our seats to greet Katt who dropped in. "Just looking around the ship." Her eyes looked around our space. "Wow, cramped in here."
"Have you talked with any of the new crewers?" I asked. She nodded.
"Not really, but I have been talking to Taris. He's an interesting guy."
"How is he interesting?" I asked, trying not to be rude-sounding.
"He loves his job, being a hull repair. He says it's like a job where you have fun too," Katt explained. "He likes to travel as well."
"Hmm, his papers say that he's been doing quite a lot of jumping around star systems. But didn't he just leave jorneyman status a month ago?" I said. "Did he say anthing about where he learned?"
Katt shook her head, "No, nothing really about that." She looked down at Falco. "Why are you just laying around?"
"I'm not on duity for a few minutes," Falco said flatly.
"Why don't you talk with the new people?" Katt asked, gently shaking the chair the falcon was in.
"Why? I think a 'hi' and 'bye' is plenty of conversation between two people," Falco replied, not looking at her.
"That's just like you," Katt said. "Then only exciting thing you ever did was dead-stop a bogey and blew his tail off when he overshot you."
Falco opened his mouth, as if to say something smart, then resorted to, "Shut up."
"I thought so," Katt said while she left the room. After her tail trailed out of the room, the door slid closed. I sat back and laughed at Falco.
"What's so damn funny, Fox?" he asked with a dramatic change in expression after Katt left.
"I can almost see the clothes fly off when you two argue like that," I chuckled. He frowned at me. But it's hard to frown with a beak, I saw drooping of the red feathers around his eyes.
A moment after I said that, a loud, half screech, half moan rumbled through the ship. It sounded like an elephant with its testicles ripped off. I disengaged the hyperdrive and the ship went through the same warping as it did. I pressed a button on the intercom for the computer room to contact Fara.
"Fara, can you pinpoint the...."
"Dream on, this dinosaur of a calculator couldn't figure out where the front of the ship is, let alone where pressure fractures are," Fara said in a harsh tone.
Falco and I left the room and traversed through the spiral stairs down to the supply hold to find Jeff, Katt, and Taris suiting up in spacewalker suits, talking as they geared up.
"Jeff can take the anterior end of the ship while me and Katt take the other end," Taris said.
"Alright," Jeff agreed.
"Just you and me, baby, and we'll be off in no time," Tairs said to Katt.
"Sure, and about that 'baby' thing. I like it. Sexy," Katt replied, strangely muffled by her helmet.
I swore I saw Falco twitch.
They finished locking the seals on their suits and proceeded to the airlock, that served as the main hall through the ship. Falco and I took our seats back in the pilot's helm and I began to switch on screens. The diffrent camera angles show many corners and nooks throughout the outside of the ship. The white scales of the ship contrasted greatly with the darkness and emptyness of space. The intercom beeped on. Not the same one from earlier, but one that was attached to the console with screws. Falco flipped over a small, hinged black box on the pilot console that revealed a blue switch. I nodded and Falco tossed it. Soon after, the artifical pull of gravity was lifted-and a row of lights on the controll board lit to signal that the airlock is open.
"This shouldn't be too hard to finish," Jeff said in a let's-get-this-over-with tone. He must be annoyed to be surrounded by a bunch of crew members half his age!
"Hey Taris, I think I found something," Katt said. The middle monitor blurred as the camera swung to view whatever was nearby, showing a floating Katt using suction cups to spider her way over to an invisible point on the ship. Taris also came into view, swimming through the vaccum.
"A hairline crack? That's pretty good for a beginner like you," Taris said as he gently tugged at her fly-line to bring himself closer.
"Is that the fracture?" I heard Jeff's voice through the intercom.
"No," I heard Taris. "But we need to seal it up anyway." Right after, Katt pulled a cloth box that was velcro-ed to her left thigh. Using a controll joystick, I made to camera zoom in to see what she was going to do.
"Fox?" I heard Falco mutter.
"Relax, I want to know what she's doing next," I replied.
"Make sure Taris stays in view, we can't trust these people yet," Falco said. I let the camera shift out to see them both. I saw Katt unzip the box and pull out a strange device. She pointed it like a gun to the crack and-
-damnit. I guess all of the recent confusion made me forget what a zero-o welder looked like.
"I found it," I heard Jeff's voice. "Nasty sonofabitch."
"Need help?" Taris said.
"Sure kid," I heard the wolf reply. The door hissed behind Falco and I and we turned to see the lanky form of Lance swimming through the doorway.
"Eveything's almost useless back there," he said. "Most of the eqipment is outdated and hasn't used of a long time. And I found some stuff we don't need at all!"
"Like what?" Falco said.
"What good would a jackhammer do us out here?" Lance replied. Suddenly, Lance fell face-down on the floor.
"The gravity!" Falco yelled. A brief moment after, a low yell crashed through the attached intercom. Jeff's scream. I moved the angle of the camera-the one where I saw Jeff last-and nothing was found.
"Hhheelllpp!!!" a femenine scream bounced through the room. It sounded like Katt. In a panic, Falco and I repositioned the cameras to find the source. Falco rotated one just to see Katt hanging off into outer space with Taris holding her spacewalk line. When I saw the picture, I noticed that Katt was hanging off into space by the artifical "down" the ship's grav generator-something that never, ever should have happened. I saw that Taris pulled back on Katt's line and reached over and pulled her up.
"Katt!" I yelled through the line. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I think so," she replied.
"Taris, go get Jeff," Katt said to the falcon. I saw a wave of his hand as he trekked across the top of the ship.
"Damn," I heard Taris say. The last monitor showed a white figure looking down to where the left air-entry wing would be. "I don't think he's councious-or one piece." I saw him bend over and click a spaceline into a notch on the ship's surface and slide off the side of the ship, out of view.
Soon after, we had Jeff, Taris, and Katt back in the ship.
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The launch went surprisingly smooth, especially the fact that it looked like it could barely stand on its grounding pads. The lerat rods tilted the ship in a 45 angle and the sirpods lactched onto slots on the ship, using thier engines to make a vertical "tugboat". They broke away when the Zero Degrees had built up enough speed to break away from Geeza's atmosphere. We bee-lined for the first jumppoint. After the uneasy stomach-churn, we were plowing through hyperspace.
There was a vast differance between the Zero Degrees's and the Great Fox's velocity geometry. The Great Fox's hyper-space engines were designed to jump on-the-fly without a portal, because the engines were more vastly expensive than the ones on our souped-up rowboat. Also, the Great Fox's engines would use up most of its fuel stores when it jumped, but it was normal because Great Fox would jump near a planet and refuel. Though this was done in a star system, and jumps were just a way of saving time. If the Great Fox and Zero Degrees would do a quirky race in hyperspace, the Great Fox would win, but by a small margin.
Falco was just lounging in the co-pilot's seat while Slippy was doing a few checks on the three arwings that he stored. Katt was off duity and re-configuring her quarters. As for Taris, Fara, and Lance, I presumed that they were trying tp get familiar with their equipment. Though Fara was also off-duity. Jeff told me earlier that he was going to find more about the other crewers by doing little, annoying interrogations.
"Falco, what's for dinner?" I humored.
"That depends, do you like Oodles of Noodles?" he chuckled.
With a good meal's future crushed, I changed the subject, "What do you think we're carrying to Corneria?"
"A cure for the common cold," Falco replied without missing a beat.
"How long did it take you to think that one?" I asked with a smile tugging at my lips.
"A good five minutes. It was either that or a prototype arwing, a new type of pulse-cannon, or many other things. But the cure felt like a good hunch."
The intercom speaker that was embedded into the pilot console beeped on.
"Fox, are you here?" I recognized the voice. It was the rough one of Jeff's.
"I searched the entire ship, and noticed that the ship's interior is smaller than the outside."
"A double-hull ship?" I said. "That's not unusual."
"But this is rediculous, this ship is as big as a football field. But the interrior is as big as seven mobile homes put together."
I thought for a moment. This ship was in strange shape when we found it. Then I replied, "Well, the ship's design is strange, after all."
"I suppose you're right," the voice chorted back. The intercom beeped to signify that it was off.
"What's with that Schider wolf? He seems to know actually less about this ship than we do." I said a moment after the intercom shut off. Thinking out loud around Falco actually gets him thinking as well.
"Then why did the defense send him here? I mean, why would they send an intel who knows less than the pilots?" Falco said.
"To get intelligence, probably," I said. "That probably shows how much the Defense knows."
"This means we're going into this headfirst, blind, and deaf," Falco said. "Whatever we're shipping, better be worth this."
The metal automatic door hissed open behind us. We shifted in our seats to greet Katt who dropped in. "Just looking around the ship." Her eyes looked around our space. "Wow, cramped in here."
"Have you talked with any of the new crewers?" I asked. She nodded.
"Not really, but I have been talking to Taris. He's an interesting guy."
"How is he interesting?" I asked, trying not to be rude-sounding.
"He loves his job, being a hull repair. He says it's like a job where you have fun too," Katt explained. "He likes to travel as well."
"Hmm, his papers say that he's been doing quite a lot of jumping around star systems. But didn't he just leave jorneyman status a month ago?" I said. "Did he say anthing about where he learned?"
Katt shook her head, "No, nothing really about that." She looked down at Falco. "Why are you just laying around?"
"I'm not on duity for a few minutes," Falco said flatly.
"Why don't you talk with the new people?" Katt asked, gently shaking the chair the falcon was in.
"Why? I think a 'hi' and 'bye' is plenty of conversation between two people," Falco replied, not looking at her.
"That's just like you," Katt said. "Then only exciting thing you ever did was dead-stop a bogey and blew his tail off when he overshot you."
Falco opened his mouth, as if to say something smart, then resorted to, "Shut up."
"I thought so," Katt said while she left the room. After her tail trailed out of the room, the door slid closed. I sat back and laughed at Falco.
"What's so damn funny, Fox?" he asked with a dramatic change in expression after Katt left.
"I can almost see the clothes fly off when you two argue like that," I chuckled. He frowned at me. But it's hard to frown with a beak, I saw drooping of the red feathers around his eyes.
A moment after I said that, a loud, half screech, half moan rumbled through the ship. It sounded like an elephant with its testicles ripped off. I disengaged the hyperdrive and the ship went through the same warping as it did. I pressed a button on the intercom for the computer room to contact Fara.
"Fara, can you pinpoint the...."
"Dream on, this dinosaur of a calculator couldn't figure out where the front of the ship is, let alone where pressure fractures are," Fara said in a harsh tone.
Falco and I left the room and traversed through the spiral stairs down to the supply hold to find Jeff, Katt, and Taris suiting up in spacewalker suits, talking as they geared up.
"Jeff can take the anterior end of the ship while me and Katt take the other end," Taris said.
"Alright," Jeff agreed.
"Just you and me, baby, and we'll be off in no time," Tairs said to Katt.
"Sure, and about that 'baby' thing. I like it. Sexy," Katt replied, strangely muffled by her helmet.
I swore I saw Falco twitch.
They finished locking the seals on their suits and proceeded to the airlock, that served as the main hall through the ship. Falco and I took our seats back in the pilot's helm and I began to switch on screens. The diffrent camera angles show many corners and nooks throughout the outside of the ship. The white scales of the ship contrasted greatly with the darkness and emptyness of space. The intercom beeped on. Not the same one from earlier, but one that was attached to the console with screws. Falco flipped over a small, hinged black box on the pilot console that revealed a blue switch. I nodded and Falco tossed it. Soon after, the artifical pull of gravity was lifted-and a row of lights on the controll board lit to signal that the airlock is open.
"This shouldn't be too hard to finish," Jeff said in a let's-get-this-over-with tone. He must be annoyed to be surrounded by a bunch of crew members half his age!
"Hey Taris, I think I found something," Katt said. The middle monitor blurred as the camera swung to view whatever was nearby, showing a floating Katt using suction cups to spider her way over to an invisible point on the ship. Taris also came into view, swimming through the vaccum.
"A hairline crack? That's pretty good for a beginner like you," Taris said as he gently tugged at her fly-line to bring himself closer.
"Is that the fracture?" I heard Jeff's voice through the intercom.
"No," I heard Taris. "But we need to seal it up anyway." Right after, Katt pulled a cloth box that was velcro-ed to her left thigh. Using a controll joystick, I made to camera zoom in to see what she was going to do.
"Fox?" I heard Falco mutter.
"Relax, I want to know what she's doing next," I replied.
"Make sure Taris stays in view, we can't trust these people yet," Falco said. I let the camera shift out to see them both. I saw Katt unzip the box and pull out a strange device. She pointed it like a gun to the crack and-
-damnit. I guess all of the recent confusion made me forget what a zero-o welder looked like.
"I found it," I heard Jeff's voice. "Nasty sonofabitch."
"Need help?" Taris said.
"Sure kid," I heard the wolf reply. The door hissed behind Falco and I and we turned to see the lanky form of Lance swimming through the doorway.
"Eveything's almost useless back there," he said. "Most of the eqipment is outdated and hasn't used of a long time. And I found some stuff we don't need at all!"
"Like what?" Falco said.
"What good would a jackhammer do us out here?" Lance replied. Suddenly, Lance fell face-down on the floor.
"The gravity!" Falco yelled. A brief moment after, a low yell crashed through the attached intercom. Jeff's scream. I moved the angle of the camera-the one where I saw Jeff last-and nothing was found.
"Hhheelllpp!!!" a femenine scream bounced through the room. It sounded like Katt. In a panic, Falco and I repositioned the cameras to find the source. Falco rotated one just to see Katt hanging off into outer space with Taris holding her spacewalk line. When I saw the picture, I noticed that Katt was hanging off into space by the artifical "down" the ship's grav generator-something that never, ever should have happened. I saw that Taris pulled back on Katt's line and reached over and pulled her up.
"Katt!" I yelled through the line. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I think so," she replied.
"Taris, go get Jeff," Katt said to the falcon. I saw a wave of his hand as he trekked across the top of the ship.
"Damn," I heard Taris say. The last monitor showed a white figure looking down to where the left air-entry wing would be. "I don't think he's councious-or one piece." I saw him bend over and click a spaceline into a notch on the ship's surface and slide off the side of the ship, out of view.
Soon after, we had Jeff, Taris, and Katt back in the ship.
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