I'm currently hosting an Among The Stars contest on my tumblr page. I've designed five outfits for Jack in ATS, and posted the line arts for you guys to color. For each outfit I'll pick one winner, and that will become the official color scheme for the outfit. There are other prizes too, so go check it out – after you finish this chapter. Go to tumblr and search for the ATSContest tag, the rules and such are there, along with links to the line art.

So, as may become pretty obvious in this chapter – I know nothing about computer programming. I know corrupted files are bad, but I have no idea what causes them, and no idea how to fix them. But we're going to just pretend this plot twist works – because my Star Wars mentor (who knew a whole lot more than I did even at my best) didn't get back to me when I asked for help.

So, The Stormfly II is supposed to be smaller than The Night Fury, since the latter is supposed to be an upgrade… but while in chapter 3 I said that The Night Fury's cockpit was crowded with all four of them in it, my mental image for The Stormfly's cockpit is huge; complete with different stations for the pilot, co-pilot, and navigator. But maybe I shouldn't be too surprised. When I started this story, I was thinking Star Wars, so I imagined the cockpit on the Millennium Falcon. But lately I've watched so much Star Trek (multiple versions), that I'm eschewing more towards the bridge of the Enterprise. XP

Anyway, this chapter is dedicated to Disneydame88, for cheering me up so I was able to get this chapter done.

Among The Stars

Chapter 23

Jack's throat ached.

Merida's arrival on The Stormfly had brought a drastic increase in the volume onboard the ship. The girl had a set of lungs that Jack wouldn't almost find admirable, if she didn't put them to full use whenever she was mad – and she seemed to be mad more often than she wasn't. Hence the ache in Jack's throat, from trying to get a word in edgewise

And Hiccup, who seemed to be physically incapable of raising his voice to anywhere near half of what Jack and Merida reached, was stuck with pulling them apart, and occasionally throwing blows of his own to at least get their attention. (Blows normally aimed at Jack, since Hiccup was unwilling to hit a girl – which didn't make the read head any more endearing. Hiccup may not look like much, but there was some force behind his punches.)

He tried to be sympathetic, remembering how moody he had been when he had first started at the academy. He had spent the first few weeks avoiding everyone, and the fuse to his temper had been shorter than usual. But she was pushing his sympathy to the limits, and he doubted her attitude had so much to do with regret at leaving as home as it did that she was just spoiled. Not that he would say that out loud. He was doing his best to just stay out of her way. Hiccup had more patience, and Merida was almost civilized when talking to him.

But the day, so far, had been blissfully quiet. He didn't know where Merida was, and as long as she stayed out of his way he really didn't care.

In the back of his mind, a voice whispered that maybe this was just the calm before the storm, and he should be suspicious… but he was too glad to have a little peace for the first time in almost a week. So he ignored that nagging in his mind as he walked down the now familiar halls of the ship, the fingers of his right hand skimming the smooth wall as he headed for the cockpit.

There were four places on the ship that Hiccup had marked out as off limits to Merida: Hiccup's room, Jack's room, the engine room, and the cockpit, since he had no reason to go to any of those places. The gun turret hadn't even been mentioned, and Jack got the feeling Hiccup didn't want her to know it existed. A wise choice, in his mind.

Considering Jack spent most of his time in two places that were off limits to her, he didn't understand how she ended up in his way so often. It seemed like she was everywhere at once, in his way the moment he stepped out of his room or the cockpit. If he went to the galley for something to eat, she was there. If he went to the ship's library to use one of the computers, she was there. And in every other hallway in between.

Jack told himself to keep breathing, and chanted over and over in his mind that she would be off the ship as soon as they reached Atlantis. He chose to ignore the little voice in his mind that told him she wasn't going anywhere any time soon. She had made it clear she wanted off this ship as much as he wanted to kick her off. So why in the universe would she end up staying?

He told himself he was just being paranoid.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts as he reached the cockpit. They would be shuddering out of hyperspace in a matter of minutes, and he preferred to set the next jump in himself, rather than just leaving it to the navcomputer, on the off chance something went wrong. (It also gave him something to do.)

The door of the cockpit slid open smoothly, as they usually did. But what wasn't usual was that the lights, which were connected to the door, didn't blink on as he stepped inside, because they were already on. And the slick swish of the door faded quickly enough for him to hear a catch of breath that wasn't Hiccup.

Biting his tongue, and squeezing his fist to resist breaking something, he turned toward the sound and saw Merida sitting at the navigator's station, a star chart from the holo-projector hovering a few inches above the console. Her fingers were frozen over the controls as she looked at him.

Her aqua eyes couldn't seem to decide if they wanted to challenge him, but they seemed reluctant to look away in shame either, so her gaze darted between his eyes and the floor several times as he stood just inside the doorway of the cockpit.

Jack considered physically lifting her out of her chair and throwing her out of the cockpit, and the thought was satisfying… And Hiccup had made it clear she wasn't allowed on the cockpit. Both because she had no reason to be there and probably so Jack could do his own job in peace. So, if he did throw her through the door, his friend wouldn't give him a hard time for it – just for the way he did it. But she would probably fight back, and he wasn't in the mood for that. He wasn't in the mood for a fight period.

So he was the first to move, shaking his head in disbelief at her audacity as he headed down the steps to flop down into the pilot's seat and turn his attention instead to the controls.

He checked the readouts, which were all exactly as they should be. The screen that connected him to the navigation computers told him he had timed his arrival perfectly. They would drop out of hyperspace in a few minutes – just enough time for him to set the next jump into the computer so they wouldn't be sitting in space any longer than it would take him to adjust the ship's angle. And they were only two jumps from Atlantis. Two jumps, and Merida would be off the ship.

He could afford to be charitable this one time, provided she do anything to provoke him.

After a moment he finally heard her chair as she turned back to face the navigation console, and the sound of the controls as she went back to work at whatever she was doing.

"Just don't break anything," he said, unable to bite it back.

He thought he heard her open her mouth, and start to say something. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw her close her mouth and her eyes, and take a deep breath.

"I won't," was all she said, opening her eyes to turn all her focus back to the star chart in front of her.

Satisfied, Jack turned his attention back to his own console.

The computer was currently set up so the nav controls ran through the pilot's computer. Since they didn't have a navigator, there was no point in Jack having to go back and forth between the two seats in order to send the ship through space. So whatever Merida was doing, she couldn't affect the ship without inputting the control code (which only Jack and Hiccup had)… or doing something truly stupid. (It would also be possible to hack into the system, but Jack doubted that kind of skill was in the girl's repertoire. And the computer was set to alert him and Hiccup if anyone tried to get into the system through a back door, so he wasn't too worried about that.)

There were some things that required the full nav computers. But a simple hyperspace jump, when he had already input the final destination, wasn't one of them.

Jack was just inputting the last string of coordinates into the computer for the next jump when the ship shuddered, and he looked up through the viewport just in time to watch as the molten colors faded away, and the star lines snapped into steady pinpricks of light in the black walls of the galaxy.

When the ship and its surroundings were still, and he had made sure there was nothing in the way, he turned back to the computer and continued inputting the coordinates. Once he had entered them, he took the yoke of the ship and adjusted the angle of the nose. The computer chimed when he was lined up to make the jump he had inputted.

With one final check (North always demanded one final check, even when he was sure everything was in place), Jack engaged the hyperdrive. For a moment it felt as though time had stopped. No matter how many jumps Jack made, he never got used to that agonizing moment. Then it ended as fast as it had begun – the ship jumped forward, pressing him back into his seat as the stars brightened and lengthened and they were thrown back into the shifting light tunnel of hyperspace.

He took a deep, shaky breath, refilling his lungs. The jump always seemed to pull all the oxygen from him.

A muffled moan made him look back.

Merida leaned over the console, her hair inside the projected the map, so one of her wild red curls was in the midst of the Sophanta Star Cluster. When she lifted her head enough for him to get a glimpse of her face, he saw it was so pale it was almost green.

Jack chuckled sympathetically. "You get used to it."

"If ye say so," she said, frowning as she sat up slowly, groaning again as she rested a hand on her stomach. "I'll be glad t' get off this ship. I'm not sure how much more o' this I can take."

"We only have one more jump," Jack said, standing up from the pilot's chair and stretching his arms over his head. He yawned before adding: "And that'll be in the middle of the sleep cycle, so you probably won't even notice it."

"Hope so," she muttered, leaning back. It didn't look as though she would be getting up out of her seat very soon.

A little voice in the back of Jack's mind began to whisper that maybe Merida wasn't so bad, when she wasn't yelling, or throwing punches at his face. And it was possible their initial meeting had made him biased.

But that thought was cut off when a red flash caught his eye, and he jerked his head over to the computer screen in front of Merida – the source of the light. His stomach plummeted in dread as he ran over to the navigator's station, pushing her aside and closing down the star chart so he could get a better view of the screen.

"Move!" he snapped, elbowing her out of the way when he got a glimpse of what was happening on the screen – his dread hadn't been an overreaction. If anything, this was worse. He slammed his fist against the comm next to the computer – thankfully Vikings were known for their beefy hands, so the ship was designed to take more of a beating on a daily basis than jack could give it in his worst moments. "Hiccup, get up here. Now!"

Computers weren't his specialty, but he sat down in the seat he had just pushed Merida from, fingers racing over the keys as he tried to call back everything he had learned from North and the Academy.

He recognized what he was seeing – the rapidly changing lines of code could only mean that something in the computer had been corrupted. Merida had probably hit just the wrong keys in her moment of space sickness after the jump.

It became obvious very quickly that he was out of his depth, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He couldn't even remember how to go back and find out exactly what part of the intricate programming had been corrupted.

Standing up, he rounded on Merida.

"This is why you were supposed to stay out of my cockpit!" he snapped, glaring at her.

Her surprise faded in all the time it took her to blink, wide eyes narrowing as she returned his glare measure for measure.

"It's not your cockpit!" she said. "It's Hiccup's ship!"

"Hiccup's ship, my cockpit," Jack said. "It's perks of being a pilot. Whereas you, on the other hand, are an over glorified stowaway, who may now be responsible for killing us all."

He sidestepped the punch she aimed at his face, rolling his eyes. Her temper made her rash, and she was too easy to read. This was saying something, since Bunnymund had never been pleased with Jack's skills when it came to reading an opponent (his own impatience made it next to impossible for him to focus on the nuances).

Another swing, another step out of the way.

"Say that again – I dare ya!"

"Why?" he asked. "I'm pretty sure you heard me. Now get out, before you break something else!"

She threw another punch, and this time Jack raised his right arm, so her fist collided – hard – with the unforgiving metal of her gauntlet. He saw the flash of pain in her eyes as she reeled back. But there wasn't even a flash of sympathy as he spun, shifting his weight to his left heel as he swung his right leg up and around, in the general direction of her side.

Merida managed to duck under his foot, somersaulting out of the way.

But as soon as she was back on her feet, Jack lunged forward. He had one goal in mind, and that was to get her out of the cockpit, and out of the way, so Hiccup could work on the computer. He could only hope that the problem either wasn't too big, or that Hiccup would be able to fix it – preferably before it started affecting the ship.

He grabbed her upper arm, to drag her towards the door of the cockpit.

But as he'd predicted earlier, she fought back. Merida wrestled against his grip, grabbing the collar of his shirt, forearms braced against his chest to keep space between them, using it as leverage to fight his pull toward the door.

Jack got a hold of her other arm as well, and spun toward the door. He was still stronger, and aimed to get her out the door. But she used the momentum of their movement against him and slammed him against the doorway with bruising force.

Jack grimaced as pain shot through the back of his left shoulder.

He grit his teeth, digging his feet in and preparing to push back, aiming for the opposite side of the doorway.

"Enough!" Hiccup gripped Jack's wrist, twisting it until he let go of Merida's arm, then pulling it back over his shoulder, just far enough that it hurt. "Let go."

He pulled Jack's arm a little more when he hesitated, and Jack got the point – he let go of Merida's other arm.

"Don't get blood all over my ship – seriously," Hiccup said, going over to take a seat at the computer and looking over the screen. After a moment his fingers began racing over the keys, with a cool surety that helped Jack relax in a strange way.

Jack went back to the pilot's seat, watching his friend work at the computer. There was no sign of panic on Hiccup's face, so it felt safe to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. If they were about to die, he was fairly sure Hiccup would say something, or it would at least be visible in his expression.

Finally, after what felt like hours (but what the chrono told him was only a few minutes), Hiccup's fingers stilled and his green eyes looked up, his gaze moving between Jack and Merida.

"Some of the auto-pilot programming was corrupted," he said, letting out a deep breath and leaning back in his seat.

"What parts?" Jack asked.

"The landing program is pretty much shot," Hiccup shrugged, and looked up at Jack. "Hopefully you're as good as you say. Think you'll be able to land us on Atlantis?"

"Shouldn't be too much of a problem. As long as you keep her out of the cockpit while I'm trying to concentrate." He jerked his head toward Merida, who had taken a seat at the communication station.

For the first time in the week she had been on the ship, her head was bowed, and she looked penitent, not as though she owned the ship. The over confidence that had grated Jack's nerves was gone.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"It's… fine," Hiccup said with a sigh. "It could have been worse."

He looked at Jack. "I don't have the skill to rewrite the programs – and the only way to rewrite it without a programmer is—"

"A reset disk," Jack muttered, rubbing a hand over his forehead as he exhaled and leaned back in the pilot's chair.

"I don't understand," Merida said, her voice quiet, softer than jack had ever heard. "If ye just need t' run a reset disk, it doesn't seem like that's so bad."

"No," Hiccup sighed. "It could be worse. But I don't have the reset disks anymore, so we have to hope they have one on Atlantis – and they're not cheap."

"And the reset disks will rewrite the whole system – we can't specify it to just the corrupted programs," Jack said. "This isn't a datapad, or something. The programs are so expansive and complex, it will take almost two days to take everything back to original settings, then another day or so for Hiccup and I to reconfigure it back to the way it was, so I can pilot the ship myself."

"Looks like we'll be on Atlantis for a few days," Jack said, standing up.

#

The bruise, and the sore muscles, made it harder to scrub down as Jack stood under the hot water that rained down on him from the shower head a few days later. He grimaced as he tried again to raise his left hand to the right side of his chest and shoulder with the soapy rag. He ignored the pain as he quickly rubbed the skin before he had to return it to his side.

The past two days had been almost silent, all three of them staying in their rooms. The few times he had seen Merida she had refused to meet his eyes, and tended to leave the room quickly. Hiccup just looked tired.

The computer problem wasn't that big of an issue. It didn't touch the life support systems, and Jack was capable of making a landing without the assistant of the computer. It was more the principle of the issue, and the fact it could so easily have been something so much worse. If it had been the life support systems, or the weapons systems, they would all be dead now.

Jack sighed.

But still. How she had managed to corrupt the program was beyond what either he or Hiccup could figure out. The odds of her accidentally hitting the right keys, in the right sequence, where almost a million to one.

"This is my life we're talking about, though," Hiccup had muttered as they had sat in the cockpit, running a full diagnostic on the computer.

They would likely be in orbit around Atlantis by the time he got out of the shower. Thankfully, Hiccup would probably understand, even if they sat in orbit for a few minutes.

Wringing out the cloth, he draped it over the bar on the wall of the shower unit and stepped back directly under the stream of warm water, so the soap was washed off by the water pressure. He did his best to rinse the conditioner from his hair exclusively with his right hand.

Once that was done he was clean, but he wasn't ready to get out. So he turned and rested his forehead against the back wall of the shower, and let the water run down his back, heating his skin. Rivulets of water slid out of his hair, down his forehead.

His eyes drifted to one side, to the small shelf in the corner, where his bottle of body wash sat. He took in the logo on the front, and the name of the scent – neither of which meant anything to him. Idly he wondered why there were five hundred different brands of body wash. Even in a galaxy this big, were that many options really necessary?

Familiarity with the ship allowed him to hear the subtle shift in the engine just in time to brace himself as the ship shuddered and dropped out of light speed.

They had reached Atlantis.

There was no reason for him to stay in the shower. The heat of the water had penetrated his skin, and would probably radiate from him at least for a few minutes after he got out. Which he would have to do eventually, so he might as well get it over with.

Once they landed, he could get Merida off The Stormfly, and go looking for a set of reset disks that would be compatible with a Nadder 10-21. His moment of charity toward Merida had ended solidly, and he highly doubted it would be returning any time soon.

There wasn't even a guarantee that there would be a set of disks on Atlantis. But he hoped. He really didn't want to go running across the galaxy searching for them.

Jack shook his head, glowering at a random point on the wall. But after a moment he just sighed and shut off the stream of water. He stood there for a few moments, letting the excess water slide off his skin, to spiral down the drain, to where it would be recycled back into the ship's system. It would be filtered and boiled down before it came back through the facets. Though they would probably dump and refill the tank with fresh water while they were on Atlantis. They might as well – they were going to be there long enough.

That was another thing. The disks would be expensive enough. But then they would have to pay the docking fee for at least three days.

He wiped his face of excess water and pushed open the door of the shower, reaching for the towel that hung from the ring on the wall. Pulling it down, it wrapped it around his shoulders so it caught the excess water off his back and arms.

Heat radiated from his skin, the opposite of what he would be radiating if he were on Warren. But he tried not to think about home as he wrapped the towel around his hips and folded in the corner so it would stay in place as he stepped out of the shower unit.

He made a mental not that if they ever upgraded to another ship, or if he ever went off on his own, to make sure the shower units were large enough to allow actual movement. He'd had this thought as long as he'd been on the ship, and it was renewed every time his elbow collided with the wall – as it did now.

He started toward his closet, to get at least a pair of pant before he headed for the cockpit. The air around him seemed frigid after the hot water/

"Well, well. I couldn't have planned this better if I tried."

The voice made him freeze, his fingertips inches from the handle of his closet door. And slowly, his hand returned to his side.

Even slower, he turned to face the figure that had materialized in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed. He was reluctant to call her a woman, despite her figure, which was clad in a dark purple dress. The body was human. But there was no mistaking her for human. Not with the way her long, dark hair was in constant motion – floating and billowing around her angled face in pure defiance of gravity (even if it was the artificial gravity of a ship).

"Jack." She smiled, purple painted lips pulled tight. Though the expression didn't reach her calculating, cat like eyes.

This really wasn't his week, was it?

"Eris."

Chocolafied and Daydreamersmile on tumblr got me to watch DreamWorks's Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas for the first time a few weeks ago, and I think Eris is my favorite villain ever (I normally don't like villains, but her design was just so well done). So, when I had the idea to include her, I couldn't say no. I tried, but I couldn't. And she's still a DreamWorks character, so at least I'm not leaving the Disney/Pixar or DreamWorks universes… right? (Plus, you guys seemed to like the references to Tiana and Naveen and The Croods in the last few chapters.)

Writing Hiccup in this chapter also made me pull out HTTYD – watching it made me very happy. I don't think I've watched it in more than a year! It's kind of sad that he's my favorite of the four, yet he gets so little page time in this story. Part of it is that I'm afraid of not doing him and his clever sass justice.

Don't forget to review (I love to hear your thoughts), and then take a look at/enter the ATS contest on tumblr. (Tag: ATSContest)