Havita: To disappear, vanish; to get lost; to disperse, dissipate, clear; To die out, fade out/away, pass away, become extinct; to lose, suffer a defeat.
"Is there any tea on this spaceship?"
Apologies for the semi-terrible short story. Inspired by Pinterest. (I hope you get a small amount of enjoyment from this.)
...
Merlin was pretty certain that he was going to die.
Not that he wanted to die. After so many years of travelling through space with warped time and hours of cryosleep, he did feel thin, sort of stretched (people back home could tease Merlin all they want for reading such an old book as Lord of the Rings, but he still considered it to be one of the greatest works of literature ever written) as though he had been around for too many years.
But that didn't mean he wanted to die.
Unfortunately, it looked as though the rest of the universe was pointing him in that direction.
"Come on." He jabbed at the buttons on the dashboard of his ship. "Work."
The ship beeped sadly.
He was supposed to be scavenging, but he hadn't seen a scrap of metal on the trajectory course he set after hearing a signal from an outward angle.
Normally, that part of the galaxy was void, empty. No one ever went there because it was said to be cursed by some ancient sorcerer or whatnot. They didn't want to mess with magic, and Merlin couldn't really blame them after some of the things that he'd seen in space.
So, naturally, because he was Merlin, he had redirected his ship to head for it without thinking.
Now, he hadn't seen another soul (magical, malevolent, or monstrous) for thirty days, and he couldn't turn around and head back because the heap of junk he lovingly called his home away from home was exactly that - a heap of junk.
He had been stupid for thinking he could get away with making such a detour.
Now, the only thing keeping the craft from simply breaking into pieces and drifting away was his magic.
If his mother had been there, she would have probably given him a good piece of her mind.
Thinking about her, Merlin winced.
Oh, if he survived this one (and right now, that was looking like a very slim if), she was going to kill him.
Another alarm rang out from somewhere in the ship behind him.
"I know, I know!" he yelled, ignoring it in favor of peering out the dash.
Black, in every direction. Off to the left, he could maybe see the faint glow that would be a star, but he wasn't anywhere close to need to worry about it.
The intercom system beeped.
"Processing data," the ship's AI announced.
Merlin rolled his eyes. Kilghar only told him information if it felt like it. Half of the time, Merlin couldn't understand the gibberish it "wisely" spouted off. The AI unit was supposed to help him, but it only made him feel like tearing his hair out.
Perks of buying his own ship from a scrapyard.
"Ship up ahead. Shall I prepare for docking, young warlock?"
"Yeah, sure." Merlin highly doubted that a ship would be floating out there in the middle of nowhere in space, something he should have realized earlier. Since he didn't want to repeat the last time Kilghar mistook a meteor for another spacecraft, he started preparing the ship for a manual override of the AI.
"Preparing for docking. Approximate arrival is one minute and six seconds."
"Thank you, Kilghar." Merlin pressed the last button to initiate the override.
Nothing happened.
Frowning, Merlin pressed it again.
Still nothing.
"Hey, Kilghar, is there something wrong with the main panel?"
"Docking apparatus is ready."
"Kilghar! The panel, is there something wrong with it?"
Up ahead, Merlin could see a slightly glowing shape.
Unless they were infested with magic, meteors didn't just glow.
As the ship drew nearer, it slowed.
Merlin fumed. "Kilghar, check the main panel. Kilghar!"
As they came upon the object, the AI continued to ignore him, but Merlin had other things to worry about.
Like the fact that for once, the AI was correct and that the object they were about to attach to was another ship.
Compared to Merlin's humble craft, it was a giant, making Merlin wonder how in the ninety-nine planets he had missed it in the first place. Soft red warning lights flashed against its hull and siding, illuminating the silver metal.
Whoever owned that ship was worth a fortune.
Merlin did not want to meet the person. Even if his ship was set on course for destruction, he would rather pass on by than deal with whatever Purge-supporting snob was on board.
"Kilghar, stop the connection. Don't dock on that ship."
"Initiating docking."
"Kilghar!" Furiously, Merlin began jabbing buttons, running through every sequence he could think of to stop the AI. "Don't do that! I'm warning you - I'll pull your plugs."
"Docking successful. Wait for the green light to indicate air before passing through."
Pushing himself out of the pilot's seat, Merlin swore and grabbed the nearest pulse rifle.
What was the use in having ruddy magic if he couldn't even force an uncooperative AI to do what he wanted?
As Kilghar announced, "The airlock is tight," Merlin mentally cursed himself for not radioing over first to see what they wanted (besides rescue from being stranded wherever they were) and made his way through the ship to the airlock.
From outside the ship, he heard knocking on metal and the muffled sound of what could have been swearing.
If those idiots ripped the tube connecting their airlocks, he was going to be angry.
"Kilghar, how many of them are there?"
"Three, young warlock."
Three?
Merlin could understand maybe one dollophead being stranded so far away from a civilized planet, but three?
"Are they armed?"
No answer.
"Blast you, Kilghar."
This was it. If Merlin survived this encounter, he was going to scrap the AI. He could run the ship without it.
Probably.
The airlock light was green.
In preparation, Merlin aimed the pulse rifle at the door.
"Opening the outer door."
"Oh, no, don't ask me. I only own you."
Without Merlin's permission, the lock clicked.
From the outside, the door was pushed open with force.
"Hold it right there," Merlin ordered before the leader of the group could speak, aiming his pulse rifle at his head.
"What in the blue blazes are you doing?" Even though it was against standard procedure since the airlock was still connected and the door was open, the figure ripped his helmet off.
Blonde hair, blues eyes - bureaucratic Purge-supporting snob, Merlin could already tell.
"Drop your weapons on the floor and kick them over here," Merlin ordered.
"Are you out of your mind?" the leader demanded. "Do you know who I am? I'm Arthur Pendragon."
"I don't care if you're the emperor of planet Camelot - drop your weapons."
"Arthur, you should probably do as he says," one of his cronies urged, already reading to drop his weapon.
One by one, Arthur's companions kicked their pulse rifles over to Merlin. When he saw that he had lost their support, he followed suit, sighing dramatically as he tossed it onto the floor.
Keeping his own pulse rifle on them, Merlin kicked theirs further down the hallway.
"Happy?" Arthur snarked. "Now, is there any tea on this spaceship?"
"Excuse me?"
"Tea," Arthur enunciated. "Do you have any?"
"Look around. Do you think I have any tea on this death trap?" Merlin retorted. "Now what were you idiots doing out here?"
"Idiots? I'll have you know-"
One of Arthur's friends stepped forward. "I'm Lancelot. Thank you for letting us on board. We ran out of food a day ago, and we didn't think anyone would be coming."
"What were you doing this far from another planet?"
"Our radios picked up the sound of some...creature. We were hoping to intercept it before it reached a planet and caused harm to anyone."
"Unattaching airlock," Kilghar announced, cutting off Merlin's opinion before he could get it out.
The third person grinned and shedded his helmet. "Guess you're stuck with us for the moment, mate. Got any booze on this tin can?"
"No alcohol, Gwaine," Arthur snapped, moving forward to brush past Merlin. "Where's your kitchen? I want some tea."
"Well, you're not going to get it. There isn't any." Since it appeared that they weren't intent on forcefully taking over the ship, Merlin lowered his pulse rifle.
In the doorway that led to the hallway, Arthur halted. "What?"
"I'm short on supplies. I heard your distress signal but didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to venture this far out into the galaxy."
"I'm Arthur Pendragon," the snob repeated as though Merlin cared about that. "I'm not stupid."
"Perhaps he hasn't heard of you," Lancelot said, offering Merlin an apologetic smile.
Arthur was now walking up and down Merlin's halls, inspecting them. "Where's your commanding officer?" he demanded, coming back to Merlin. "I want to speak with him."
"I'm the commanding officer."
After blinking at Merlin, Pendragon shook his head. "I'm sorry, I thought you said you are the commanding officer."
"That's what I said."
Lancelot, Merlin noted, desperately tried to keep his professional expression as Pendragon looked at him.
On the other hand, Gwaine was grinning like a cheshire cat as he leaned up against one of the outer walls.
"You can't be serious?"
"If you have a problem, you can take it up with the management. I'm the only one on board."
Lancelot's half-smile turned into concern. "What happened to the rest of your crew?"
"I was the only one." Merlin did not want to explain that his magic was the only thing keeping the ship together and was the reason no one else was on board.
"Are you serious?"
Merlin was getting plenty sick of this Arthur Pendragon fellow, whoever he was. "Yeah, I'm serious, and if you don't like it, you can go back to your ship until I figure out what's wrong with it."
Pendragon's mouth opened.
"We'll stay!" Gwaine announced. "Thanks for picking us up, mate."
"Yes, thank you for your...hospitality," Lancelot also piped up.
Pendragon was turning red in the face. "Excuse-"
Cutting him off, Kilghar crackled to life. "Incoming foreign sound. Would you like me to transmit it for you?"
"Yeah, sure." Even though he was positive the three of them were well-meaning lunatics (well, at least two well-meaning lunatics), he scooped up their pulse rifles.
Static filled the hallway.
Merlin frowned. Yet another thing he was going to have to fix. Turning his head to the side briefly to hide his eyes turning gold, he tried to prompt his magic to fix whatever was going wrong.
Lancelot and Gwaine were too busy trying to hush Arthur's loud complaints about the rust to notice.
"Sound interpreted."
The static cleared.
A low, unearthly groan filled the ship.
Arthur shut up.
The hairs on the back of Merlin's arms stood up.
"What in the galaxy is that?" Arthur whispered, horror in his face.
"I don't suppose your pet...space worm or something woke up from its cryonap?" Gwaine asked.
Merlin's life had just gone from "bad with a chance of dying" to "bad with a certainty of dying."
Although he felt like banging his head against the nearest wall, the poor spaceship had been suffering enough.
Kilghar cut off the noise.
Unlike other AIs would have, he did not offer any advice.
"What are we going to do?" Lancelot asked with a hush voice in the emptiness that was left.
"I think we should-" Arthur started, squaring up.
"Didn't ask you." He needed to get back to the cockpit of the Havita to see what was going on instead of dawdling around the airlock. On his way, he attempted to brush past Arthur, but the blond remained as solid as a stone in the hallway.
"What's going on?" Arthur demanded. "Who are you? Why were you out here? There's something strange about this ship. I don't like it."
If he didn't like it after only being aboard for five minutes, his opinion was only going to worsen.
If they survived.
"Listen, friend-"
"We're not friends," Arthur was quick to correct, crossing his arms.
"Oh, yeah, because I'd never be friends with such a prat. If you want to live and possibly get back to whatever planet you're from, I suggest you move. This ship is about to fall apart, and I'm sure whatever magical creature is out there is going to want to finish the job."
At once, two alarms started blaring.
Kilghar crackled to life, but the words coming out of the speakers were garbled and glitchy.
"What's that?"
Merlin used the distraction to duck under Arthur's blocking arm.
Fie, Merlin didn't know what he had gotten himself into. If the left engine had gone out again-
They were space junk.
When he entered the control room, Merlin was met with a lit-up pulsating monitor and dash.
"Oh, for the love of-"
A third alarm went off.
Merlin couldn't tell from where it was coming. No matter what buttons he pushed, the control panel wouldn't cooperate.
Out before the Havita loomed the heavy presence of nothing.
"What in the name of-"
Arthur and the others had followed him.
"Get out," Merlin barked as he jammed more buttons and switches, hoping that anything would work. Nothing was responding to him. Kilghar was still offline.
Another groan shook the ship, this time without the help of the intercom.
A cold terror crawled its way up Merlin's neck as the ship began to shudder.
From where he was, he could see a humongous shadow on Pendragon's ship. The Havita began rocking back and forth as it was suspended in space.
Something was outside the ship.
"What was on your craft?" he demanded, turning around.
"What?"
Arthur was out of words for once since he had set foot on board.
"What was on your craft?" Merlin repeated with more force.
"Nothing," Lancelot said. "Nothing. We don't capture. We kill."
"Blast it."
Even though the ship's gravity program was still running, Merlin almost smacked his head into the wall as he lost his balance.
It was as though they were on a rough sea back on Earth or another planet.
"Do something!" Arthur yelled. "Stop it!"
"You're hunters!" Merlin threw back, latching onto his chair. "Why don't you do something?"
It wasn't his job in the first place to come rescue them.
Now look where he was.
The ship began groaning, creaking.
More alarms went off.
"We're going to be crushed!"
The ship shuddered.
Outside the Havita, Pendragon's craft was propelled out of view by the unseen creature.
"The airlock has been destroyed," the AI informed him.
"Kilghar!" As the others lost their balance and crashed into things, Merlin fought to stay attached to the chair. "Can you give me anything?"
"You have all that you need, young warlock. How do you think you have gotten this far?"
Despite the noise of the ship breaking, Arthur still managed to bark out, "Warlock?"
"Thanks, Kilghar!" Merlin snapped.
"You have magic?!"
Arthur's voice was filled with disgust and loathing as it whipped across craziness of the control room.
Panic shot through Merlin.
They would kill him, but if he didn't do anything, they were going to die anyway.
"Where's my pulse rifle?" Arthur demanded above the noise.
"You gave it to him!" Gwaine reminded him.
"Shut up!" Merlin yelled. "All of you shut up!"
"Gravitation system failing. Do you wish for me to initiate a reboot?"
"Yes!" Lancelot called. "Yes!"
"The reboot has failed."
Merlin's body began to rise. As the rest of the paraphernalia in the control room began to rise, he clung onto the chair.
He needed to think. His magic was the only thing holding the ship together, so he couldn't expand it further than that...could he?
Whatever monster out there was large enough to crush one, possibly two spacecraft. It was foolish to think that he, a drifting scrap collector from the small planet of Ealdor, would have magic powerful enough to fight it.
He closed his eyes.
Arthur, Gwaine, and Lancelot were calling to each other, to him, but he tuned them out, feeling for his magic.
Words poured out of his mouth, scraps that he remembered from the one magical book his uncle Gaius had given him.
He opened his eyes, and magic shot through the ship like a force.
It gave a shudder greater than the last one.
Off in space, something screeched in pain.
The pressure in the ship went up.
Letting go of the chair, Merlin plugged his ears.
"Gravitation system online."
With a thud, he dropped.
The ship was rapidly moving through space, but because he was on the floor, he couldn't tell in which direction.
"Oh, for the love of moon rocks," Gwaine groaned.
"Kilghar, report." When the world felt stable enough, Merlin rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his feet.
Behind him, Arthur was retching, but Merlin ignored him as he looked out the Havita's main window.
"The creature is dead. The second craft has been destroyed. The right engine needs realignment, and the left has been crushed. The glasshouse has been disconnected…"
Kilghar's report went on, but Merlin was distracted by his three passengers.
"What-" Arthur stumbled forward, turned to the side, and then retched. "What do you mean, the second craft has been destroyed?" he demanded, looking up at the ceiling. "What in the blue blazes was that?"
"It means," Merlin ground out, as he tried to get the more important systems back online while ignoring the throbbing in his head, "that I'm stuck with you."
"You're not going to kill us?" Arthur's voice was colored with surprise.
"Could you be any more of a turnip head? Why would I want to kill you?"
There was a reason he'd been living on the Havita alone.
"Because you're a sorcerer. Every sorcerer we've come across has tried to kill us."
"Maybe because you've been trying to hunt and kill us," Merlin pointed out grouchily.
Gwaine started laughing. Arthur must have given him a look because the laughter died out.
"Pod three has been sealed to prevent further oxygen leaks."
After snagging his emergency tool kit from the compartment under the control panel, Merlin turned around. "Listen, if you try to shove me off my own ship, you'll end up failing. If you don't like my magic, then you can grab one of the suits by the airlock and try your luck at getting back to civilization out there alone. If you decide your chances are better on board with a sorcerer, you can keep yourself alive by mopping up your vomit and then helping me repair the ship. How about it?"
"I'm in," Gwaine said before Arthur could stop him.
Although Lancelot looked as though he wanted to accept Merlin's offer, he looked to Arthur to make a decision.
A vein was bulging in Arthur's forehead, and his cheek was twitching.
"Fine," he agreed. "Fine. We'll stay."
"Excellent decision."
Although Merlin wasn't thrilled at the prospect of being stuck on board with such a prat, he also wasn't heartless.
Worst came to worst, Arthur would be there for two months, tops, and in the meantime, maybe Merlin could get it through his thick skull that magic wasn't as malevolent as he had been led to believe. He would just have to watch his back until that happened.
If it happened.
"I'm going to regret this," Arthur groaned. "I never imagined I'd be stuck on such a trash heap run by a peasant without tea."
Lancelot clapped on the shoulder. "I'm afraid you'll have to get used to it, Arthur."
"The engines require attention," Kilghar grouchily informed him.
"I can help you with that," Gwaine offered. "I know a thing or two."
"Sure." Merlin hated engine repair.
On his way out of the control room, he snagged a mop and dropped it into Arthur's hands.
"What's this for?" As though he didn't know what it was, Arthur turned it over in his hands.
"Mopping up your vomit, remember?"
"You don't have a droid for that?"
"Nope."
"Magic?"
"I thought magic was evil. Now, this peasant has to fix the engine before we explode or get sent to even farther reaches of the galaxy. Get mopping, sire."
Arthur groaned.
Gwaine laughed.
Another alarm went off to join the chorus.
(It would be fine. Merlin was only fairly certain that he was going to die.)
