Chapter 3

"Okay, so run me through this, one more time." Ginger said, lifting the mug of coffee to his lips. Partly to stay awake, but mostly to hide the growing smirk at Hat's ever increasing frustration.

They were still on the bridge, Ginger not being able to justify leaving with the current situation as it was. Hat had explained the repairs he'd made and the amount of patchwork he'd had to do in order to get the Quantum Drive functional again. Ginger had nodded along, asked questions and even hummed in understanding at certain points. And then when Hat had finished, Ginger had given him a blank look and asked him to dumb it down.

He wasn't stupid. Not by a long shot, but he wasn't an engineer. He hadn't spent years of his life shoulder deep in the guts of star ships and vehicles alike. And while he certainly understood the basics, he had been lost almost as soon as Hat had opened his mouth.

"I hate you." Hat growled as he ran his hand through his hair.

"Love you too, buddy."

"Look, I'll make it as simple as I possibly can."

"That would be appreciated." Ginger interjected quickly, bringing the mug up for another sip.

The look that Hat sent him could probably kill a lesser man. Definitely a small animal.

"The connections between the Drive and the Reactor were shot, burnt to shit during the attack, right?"

"Right." Ginger answered with a nod.

"Okay, so in order to get both the shields and the drive running at the same time, I needed to bypass the reactors failsafe."

"With you so far."

"There must have been some damage to the reactor that we missed, because instead of a gradual flow of power, it dumped everything it had into the drive. And I mean everything."

"So you overloaded to drive." Ginger stated bluntly.

"In simple terms, yes." Hat replied.

"Okay, see, that I understand." Ginger gestured with his mug. "Why didn't you just say that. Could've saved us an hour."

"If you knew anything about ship engineering then we would've been done an hour ago!" Hat almost screamed, but managed to keep his voice to a low roar.

"I fly, you fix. No sense fixing what isn't broken." The infuriating man turned away and strolled off to the command console, typing in a few commands while taking another sip from his mug. A large, holographic map was pulled up above the console displaying the Stanton system with a small green X showing where they had started.

"Now on to the more concerning issue." Hat stepped up alongside his friend, internally debating murder. "This is our original course."

The green X was situated over the moon Yela, green dashes formed a line to HUR-L1.

"At most, this journey should have taken us three, maybe 4 minutes." Ginger typed in a few more commands and the map zoomed out, showing a plethora of star systems with a green X over the Stanton system. "However, taking our speed and heading into account, rough estimates put our current location somewhere around...here."

A green question mark appeared over the entire map. Hat stared at it for a second before looking over at Ginger, waiting for the explanation that would probably make him kill the red head.

"Aside from our heading, we have no way of determining speed. And our heading is mainly based on the hope that the power surge didn't somehow shift us at the start of this." Ginger pressed a button and the map disappeared. His expression became serious when he looked at Hat, not a trace of the humor or amusement from earlier.

"As of this moment, we are..." His face broke into a broad grin. "Lost in Space."

Hat's fist flew out on instinct.

"What happened to you?" Nixie asked as Ginger and Hat joined their group in the recreational room. Ginger sported a darkening bruise on his cheek and wore a look that screamed 'worth it', while Hat looked as though he would kill the first person who crossed him.

"Minor disagreement in humor." Ginger answered while taking a seat on an open couch. Hat moved to sit as far away from him as he could while still being part of the group.

"Doesn't look minor." Bacon whispered to Itchy who sat next to him on a separate couch.

"From what Hat and I have figured out, this is one hundred percent his fault..." He swayed to the left as he dodged the half full water bottle that flew past his head. "And we have absolutely no idea where we are."

"What do you mean?" Nixie's face grew concerned. "We're still in the Stanton system, right?"

"We don't know." Hat said bluntly, drawing everyone's attention to himself. "We aren't sure of our heading and there's no way to determine speed. We've been in Quantum for over 2 hours now, even the slowest ships in the system would have crossed the system ten times over by now."

"It's not difficult to figure out that we are moving, incredibly fast, but the lack of visual stars or planets is...disheartening. the only thing we could come up with is being in dark space, but..." Ginger trailed off, looking down at his lap for a moment. "Look, we made an uncharted jump, going God knows where. We'll be lucky if we don't smash headlong into a planet or end up adrift in the middle of nowhere."

Silence overtook the room as Ginger finished speaking. Everyone either looking to each other or themselves as they processed what this could mean for them all.

"So what do we do now? Couldn't we do an emergency shut down of the engines? Drop out if Quantum?" Bacon asked, a tinge of panic in his voice.

"No, the damage we suffered during the fight made that an unsafe option. We can't guarantee the ship will hold together if we power down without going through the proper procedures and I don't think we'd be able to get the engines back on if we did shut them off." Hat answered.

"As for what we should do, I'd recommend enjoying these last moments. For as long as they last ." Ginger's tone held no warmth, it held little emotion at all, but there was a tinge of sadness. A faint crack in his voice that only Nixie had learned to pick up on. She knew that if left alone, he'd fall into a depression, but she also knew how to get him into better spirits and right now, that same remedy might help the rest of her family.

"Hey." Nixie's voice was barely above a whisper. "Yall remember our first mission together?"

There was a surprised pause as everyone tried to remember what she was talking about. Itchy started laughing as the memories came back to him.

"Ginger was so pissed when we came back covered in mud. He spent the next 2 hours cleaning all the mud out of the troop bay."

"You're lucky I let you in at all." Ginger chuckled, soon everyone else joined in on the laughter except for one.

"I'm a bit lost, being the new guy and all." Reaper stated as he leaned forward in his chair. "But if we're gonna be reminiscing about the old days, then i got some questions. How'd yall start out, I mean, how'd you all meet?"

"Huh, I'd honestly forgotten that you weren't part of the original crew." Itchy commented, glancing at Reaper.

"Well if you really wanna know, it's not really all that interesting." Bacon stated, getting up from the couch and walking to the mini fridge at the back of the room. "We met each other doing contracts and eventually made our own group."

"That's definitely a simplified version of it, but basically that's how it went down." Ginger commented, rolling his eyes at the simplistic retelling of their origins. "I started out as a shuttle pilot, ferrying people and cargo all across the system. Started saving my money and making upgrades as I went. Saw a few scraps every once and a while, but nothing serious. Not until some jackass, who shall remain unnamed..." He glared at Itchy. "Hired me to take him to Grim Hex."

"I paid you up front, so don't give me that shit." Itchy chucked a crumpled up wrapper from a candy bar he'd just eaten at Ginger.

"Sure ya did." Ginger swatted the wrapper aside as he continued. "Anyways, so we talk along the way, y'know, shoot the shit cause there's nothing else to do. So, we arrive at Grim Hex and I'm making my way through the asteroid field when all of a sudden, alarms start screaming about a target lock!"

Ginger was becoming more animated as he spoke, gesturing wildly with his hands and and even acting as though he were in the cockpit.

"I barely had a second to register what was happening when three missiles were barreling towards me. I kicked that bitch into high gear and rocketed toward the thickest cluster of asteroids I could find, launching flares the whole way."

"The single most terrifying flight of my life." Itchy added, leaning back in his seat and chuckling at the red head's antics.

"You and me both." Ginger replied. "So anyways, thanks to my fancy flying and a metric fuck-ton of luck, we managed to evade and hid among the asteroids. It's at this point, that Itchy-fucking-Psycho over here decides to tell me that there 'might' be some trouble with a local gang. Turns out that him and his buddy took a contract to bring in the gang's boss."

"For the record, it paid very well." Hat commented.

"Long story short, we manage to evade the gang patrols by darting from rock to rock followed by a very unsafe speed run to the docks. After slamming my baby into the deck, Itchy rushes off the ship and I'm left sitting there with my thumb up my ass waiting for these two idiots to come back. About fifteen minutes later, they come running into the hangar, the gang's leader strapped to a gurney that they're pushing between em and scramble on board. Before I can even close the hatch, I got thugs flooding the landing pad and firing at my ship with whatever guns they could get their hands on. Hat climbs into my Copilot chair and helps with the guns while I get us the hell outta dodge."

"I'm surprised we made it out of there, honestly. That gang had ships waiting for us right outside the dock." Itchy muttered to himself, but Reaper heard him anyways.

"How did you make it out?" He asked, leaning forward in his seat and giving the red-head his full attention.

"I fired every fucking missile I had in a wide spread. They could either shoot me and die or dodge and let me escape. Obviously they chose the latter. Hat got the Qunatum Drive ready and we were gone before they could recover. One short trip later and we were back on Thurston. They turned in their bounty and Itchy offered me full partnership with him and Hat. I'd fly them around and get an even share of the profits."

Ginger paused to catch a water bottle tossed to him by Nixie, who'd moved to get herself a drink.

"I have to admit, flying combat missions was a lot more fun than ferrying cargo, so I accepted and here we are."

"How'd you start flying?" Reaper questioned.

"Meh, served a few tours with New Babbage security flying gunships for them. After I got out, I'd saved enough to buy myself a Cutlass Black. Upgraded to the Steel when I joined Hat and Itchy." Ginger uncapped his water bottle and took a sip. "That's how I joined, I'll let the others tell their own stories."

Author's Note: Alright, for anyone who actually reads these things, I've got two things to say.

1) Please leave a review, I'm constantly trying to improve my writing and any feedback is greatly appreciated.

2) This is more of a warning, please read the descriptions of my other stories before you decide to follow ME instead of just following the story. a few of my other stories involve ADULT scenes and some people may not want to be notified when I decide to throw one of those out there.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the story. If there are any questions, please feel free to DM me.