Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, except The Wilde and her crew.

Author's Note: This fic is completely out of the context of the SeaQuest series'. This is my first SeaQuest fic so minimum flames please!!

Chapter One

The Wilde was at a complete standstill and miles from its destination, it had been that way for over an hour. The research submarine had been built especially for its current mission and the small crew had been handpicked by the Ecological Foundation for their expertise in their specific areas but nobody on board had any idea what was happening or what they could do to fix the problem. The Wilde was dead in the water and as far as anybody could tell, there was absolutely no reason for it.

Scarlett stared blankly at the screens and dials and gauges of the navigation station but nothing was registering. Kyle's words were making sense but they didn't seem to be sinking in properly, to some extent she was still convinced that The Wilde could get back underway. When she had been approached to head a scientific team aboard a research submarine she had not really been enthusiastic about the idea, two months away from land was not her idea of fun but the Foundation needed her talent aboard and she certainly could not afford to refuse the money they were offering her for the position.

"Kyle, I don't get it. Just tell me in simple terms what's going on," she said, snapping herself out of her fleeting haze and listening intently.

"The engines are dead; completely and utterly dead. I've been down there to take a look but there's nothing we can do, nothing I can see anyway,"

"Can't Tom or Mona take a look? It's their job to fix all that technical stuff, it's not like any of us know what 's going on down there and even if we did, we couldn't fix it," she sighed.

"I know but Tom's been down there for over an hour and he can't work it out, he hasn't even got a clue where to start. We're stuck here, Tom's reported that the navigation and propulsion systems are totally shot but other than that, we're working blind," said Kyle. Scarlett sighed heavily and collapsed into her chair, running a trembling hand through her long red hair. She groaned and threw her arms up in despair, hoping that Kyle had an idea but both of them were silent.

"Okay, what now? What the hell are we supposed to do?" she said, finally taking charge of the situation. "Base control are gonna wanna know what happened to us, right? We should call them first and see what they advise,"

"Scarlett, Rich has been trying to contact base control since we lost propulsion, they're ignoring us," started Kyle, Scarlett covered her face with her hands, not wanting to have confirmed what she had already assumed. Searches for new forms of energy were always in danger of being attacked by larger companies, usually the oil giants who had stolen their supply from the oceans. Despite her initial reluctance, she had been so excited when she heard about the mission, the new geyser that had sprung up beneath the waves; the gas it was producing was non-toxic and highly saturated with electrical charge from the Earth itself. It was the safest energy source that had ever been discovered and she had been chosen to head the team investigating its liability for supply. The idea that one of the large companies wanted her work erased was not improbable, neither was the idea that they had paid the Foundation a large sum of money to conveniently forget about The Wilde and her crew until it was too late. "Mona's convinced this was an inside job. Whoever got to the engines knew exactly what to take out to leave us stranded in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go,"

"This is a total nightmare," groaned Scarlett. "Okay, I guess we should put out some kind of general distress call and hope someone's close enough to hear it. We should also send up the distress beacon or are we too deep?"

"Scarlett, calm down. We've got plenty of time before our situation becomes critical," frowned Kyle.

"I know that but I don't want to sit around waiting for it to get critical, if we're not going anywhere then I want off this sub now,"

"I'll organise a distress call but we do have one more option before we go that far," he said. Scarlett raised her eyebrows at the suggestion but something in Kyle's voice told her that she wasn't going to like it; she looked up at him expectantly. "Well, I don't want to come off as presumptuous or anything but doesn't your ex-boyfriend serve on a sub? I mean, they left the docks about the same time we did, maybe they're still in the area,"

"We didn't exactly part on the best of terms, Kyle, he'd probably enjoy the fact that I needed his help. Besides, I haven't spoken to him in over a month," she sighed but the look on Kyle's face told her how trivial her words sounded. They needed help and if that meant asking an old boyfriend then she would just have to bite the bullet and make the call. "I suppose I could check where he is,"

"Excellent," grinned Kyle, Scarlett smiled back and nodded before leaving him to study the bridge controls again. She headed for her quarters and slammed the door shut behind her, she was absolutely furious at the idea of the Ecological Foundation being bought out. She couldn't believe that they had dared to put a price on their heads; they were the best scientists in the Foundation and they were killing them for cash; it was utterly mercenary.

She collapsed into her comfortable chair that sat in front of her desk and reached out for the comm-pad. She moved her paperwork aside and sat with her hand resting over the keypad and her mind racing through all the different things they had said to each other on their last night together; she was going to have to make the call she had been avoiding for weeks. Her hands instinctively moved to cradle her stomach, it had only been eleven weeks so far and she wasn't even starting to show yet. She knew that half of the reason she was dreading the call was the same reason she had failed to call him for the past month; she was going to have to tell him he was going to be a father and she was terrified of his reaction. She had weighed up the pros and cons of letting him know but she wasn't the kind of person who could lie about something so important. With a deep breath, she selected a secure line, hearing the low frequency buzz as the link waited for the numbers to be input. She tapped in the comm frequency of his submarine followed by his identification number. She waited patiently for the video screen to flicker into life and his face to appear but there was nothing, she was about to hit the cancellation button when the blank screen became an empty bedroom.

"Hello?" called a voice. Scarlett frowned as she waited for him to move into the view of the vid-screen. There was a pause as he moved into view and looked up to see who had called him. She smiled at the recognition in his eyes and the smile that played on his lips as he said, "Scarlett?"

"Hey Lucas, surprise!"