Chapter 1

"Vexpack, Were gonna miss ya buddy" Harper said. A tear rolled down his cheek as he claspped the candle in both hands, and trying carefully not to extinguish the flame, handed it over to Beka.

"You were a great ES officer Vex" Beka said with a sigh, looking up at the ceiling "And a great loss to us all". Beka handed the candle over to RevBem, Who closed his eyes and said a prayer in his native langauge, and then all 3 blew the candle out. It was a cold day above the Maru, the three freinds had been pretty upset since the day that Vexpack died. Harper, who was paticuly close to the former Enviromental Systems officer was most affected by his death. After a few minutes of scilence, harper broke the trend.

"Hey boss" he said to beka "You know what this means dont ya... the death of Vexpack i mean.." Beka sighed.

"What Seamus?" she said.

"I hate to say it, err boss, but we need a new ES officer. I mean, somebody to look after our enviromental systems, our artificial gravitiy and whatnot" he replied.

"Yeah" Beka sighed "Your right. But nobody could replace Vex"

"Well somebodys going to have too" harper said "And im hoping its a girl"
"Why am i not surprised?" Beka laughed.

"A girl who... lets say, keeps herself in shape. And preferibly she would be about, 5 foot 6... and about my age" Harper said, his face lighting up. Beka and Rev smirked as harper day-dreamed of his perfect es officer. But he was soon brought back to reality by the sound of the maru's internal computer systems making an "Incoming Missile" announcement over the ships inter-com. Beka, Rev and Harper paniced.

"What? Who the hell is firing at us?" Beka cried, as she stumbled over and ran towards the pilots seat.

"I have no clue" Revbem replied "Who did we irritate this time?"

"I dunno but whoever they are they're pretty pissed off!" Harper cried as he looked at the maru's sensor screen "Those missiles are mark 3 kenetic warheads. Brace yourselves people, this is gonna hurt!"

The missile homed in and smashed into the side of the Maru, sending her tumbling out of controll. Rev held on tightly, as harper rolled onto the floor due to the sheer earthquake that was the missile impact. Beka clambered back up onto the pilots seat puffing and panting, squinting as sparks from the cockpit splashed down onto her skin.

"Harper? Turn of the godam autopilot!" Beka cried. Harper fiddeled around with a few switches untill beka had controll of the Maru, she brung the ship around untill the attacking craft was in view. Harper came running over to the front screen of the Maru and took a closer look at the attacking spaceship.

"Ogami" Harper cried "What the hell are they firing at us for..." the Maru was hit by another missile barrage. "Dam it, We lost our slipstream drive!" Harper shouted over the sounds of hissing pipes, sparks and fire, as he was thrown 20 feet into the air.

"Ive lost controll of the ship!" Beka cried. The Maru was spinning out of controll, heading down towards the atmosphear of a near-by planet. The attacking ogami ship shot of into slipsteam.

"May the devine protect us!" Rev cried as the ship spun out of controll. Harper threw his arms around Beka and screamed in fear.

"At this speed were gonna burn up in that planets atmoshpear!" Beka cried. Harper quickly ran over to his engerneering post and plugged his data port into the marus controll array.

"Harper what the hell are you doing?" Beka cried as they neared the atmoshear of the planet.
"Hang in there boss, Im just attempting somthing crazy" Harper replied. After a huge creaking sound, a ear-popping explosion and one hell of a shake up, Beka felt the maru starting to slow down.

"Harper? What did you do?" She cried. Harper stood up in exitment, feeling very proud of himself.

"I only saved our godam lives!" he cried "Mix a little protons with our AP tanks and you get an instant boost of energy from underneath the ship. Think of it as errr a flaming cusion!"

"Harper you mad scientist, Nice job!" Beka said. Rev thanked the devine as the Maru came crashing through the clouds and accelerated down towards the planets sandy surface.

"Brace for impact!" Beka cried "THIS is gonna hurt!".

Beka slowly opened her eyes. Her blury vision tried to focus on what was left of her ship. Her first thought was "find harper and rev", but when she had finally focused her eyes she noticed that rev was infact lying a few meters in front of her. He wasent moving. She dragged herself up from the floor and elevated herself into a seating position. The maru was a complete mess, with sparks ejecting all over her back as she did so. Pipes and electronics were hanging down from the ceiling, and every light was either of or flickering with damage.

" I think we crashed" Beka said sarcasticly to herself as she grasped her painfull head and crawled over to a very still rev.

"Hes been unconsious for hours" Harper said as he entered the cockpit area "And so have you, untill now, welcome back boss" he finished as he handed beka a sparky cola.

"I take it revs alive?" she groaned at harper.

"Vital signs seem pretty normal... for a maggog anyway" he joked "He should come around in a couple of hours". Beka smiled at him.

"We made it" she said.

"Miracle innit boss" Harper replied "Of course, it was me and my genies who stopped us from splatting like a bug upon entering this planets atmosphear, thankyou-yourwelcome" he took a bow.

"Damage report?" Beka said to harper, who approached her with a flexi. He bagan pointing at the techinal data on the flexi that reperesented the marus damaged systems.

"You see" he said as he pointed "We lost all controll over the key systems, here, here and ... here" Beka sighed. "And thats not the worst part" He continued "We lost the slipstream drive, we wont be leaving this system anytime soon. Luckily however" harper said rasing his hand "we still have standard engines, and no Anti-Proton's leaked out on impact". Beka looked annoyed, they were stranded.Then she noticed that there was a pile of empty cans on the floor, which made her even more annoyed.

"Harper? For all you know this planet is deprived of life, we could be stranded here for weeks, even months, we need to try to make use of what little food and drink we have... not use it all up in one god dam day. Sometimes i wonder about you..." Beka said. Harper thought about it for a second.

"Deprived of life? Oh no, theres life here, it may be pretty unitellegent life, but its life" Harper said with a smile.

"What?" Beka replied "Did you go outside?"

"Hell yeah, theres a near-by merchants town here. Loser city. Home of the illegal traders and land of the flash addicts. Like i said, theres is life here, if you can call it life... but then what do you expect? This is a desert planet in the outer-cluseter" harper said jokingly, Beka sighed.

"At least were not lightyears from any kind of civilization" she said.
"And the best part is, that merchant town sells engine parts, i ... err ... checked it out before you woke up." Harper replied with a smile. Beka let out a sigh of releif.

"Looks like we wont be trapped on this rock for as long as i first expected" she said. Beka went for a lie down and left harper to begin making repairs to the marus electronic systems and engines.

When beka awoke, she checked her clock. She had only been asleep a couple of hours, and she pulled herself out of bed. She still had one hell of a headache after the crash-landing, her head felt like a starship had rode through her neural-network like the strings of slip-stream. The first thing she noticed as she climbed out of the Marus sleeping quater was that RevBem was no longer unconcious on the floor, and upon checking the engine room she found him with his hands in an electronic system.

"Hey Rev, Glad to see your ok" Beka said smiling at the hairy maggog. He looked at her

"Well, i have a rather bad headache, and i appeared to have twisted my ankle on impact". Beka noticed that rev was using harpers nanowelder to sether some electronic wires together from a port that connected to the Marus controll systems.

"I dident know you were a dab-hand with electronics Rev" Beka smiled.

"Well... I am not... Young master harper has kindly provided me with this electronic flexi, showing me step-by-step what to do, a kind of tutorial if you will." Revbem replied.

"Let me guess, so he can go and sit on his ass in the local bar?" Beka replied. The lovable maggog nodded his head. Beka knew where he was, he was properly drunk and slobbering over some girl .

Beka scanned the tatty planet with her binocs, there were a lot of bars and casinos, and a large market with lots of crammed stalls in. The place was run down, people walking by were either drunk or wearing sunglasses to cover up that they were on flash. Not that the local police would care. Beka made her way towards the scummy little town, and walked in to the bar that had a neon'HOT, HOT, HOT!' sign outside, lightened in red, she knew Harper would either be in that Bar, or the one that had 'LADYS NIGHT!'outside in a green flashing lights.

As soon as she walked in, a lot of heads turned to her, their were a lot of people inside, there was even a drunken perseid. Beka noticed Harper instantly by the fact that he was the only human in the whole bar, and he wasn't wearing sunglasses . She was about to walk within the crowds to reach him when a man approached her, he looked as if he had been dragged through 10 bushes backwards and old enough to be her father.

"Hey Baby! What you up to tonight?" The man sounded drunk and miserable, Beka cringed at the thought of an old bloke coming onto her.

"Well.. I whatever ill be doing it wont be with you!" She said in a disgusted tone and walked away, leaving the man to go try and flirt with another girl.

She stumbled through the crowds towards Harper, as she finally reached him she pulled up a small brown and black stool.

"Hey Boss." Harper mumbled to Beka.

"Hey Kid. "Beka smiled to her engineer. Harper sighed deeply and banged his fist on the bar table he was leaning on.

"Ok, what is it this time?"

"Her name was Catherine, she was a beauty, but then Mr. Tall, dark 'n' handsome comes along and steals her, I mean, come on! She was practically mine, but 'oh-no' just leave poor old Harper here, he wont mind, he's just a freaking human!"

"Don't worry Harper, you'll get someone one day, everyone does sometime in life…BUT not me" Beka quickly added after one look from Harper.

Harper was miserable for the return journey to the Maru, moaning about how he wished he could go on a date without it going wrong and blabbing on about all the woman he had met had betrayed him. But Beka was not listening. to hHarper's drivelling made as much sense as a dog barking to ears, as her mind was far to occupied with getting of this rock and finding a new ES officer.

"…So then she goes 'Sorry Seamus, I have to go to now, don't worry, I had a lovely time', then I see her walking away with a another bloke! I mean, I might as well be a monkey, they attract way more ladies, I mean, at least they even get there photos took!. Boss, Boss, BEKA! You listening?" Harper waved a hand in Beka's face.

"Huh…oh, ya, monkeys, there cute, yeah.." Beka snapped out of her trance and came back to the real universe.

"I take that as a no." Harper mumbled sarcastically

"Harper?" Beka asked, He nodded his head to signify a yes.

"Would ya shut up?" She snapped and walked on ahead, towards her ship.

"What I do……?"He frowned and followed her onto the Maru.