Nebula Nine II

Written by niraD

EEEEE! EEEEE! EEEEE!

Judy's eyes shot open. The room was dark, and strangely unfamiliar. Her alarm clock seemed impossibly far away. A red light below the door cast a strange flashing glow. Her bed seemed to be floating above her.

EEEEE! EEEEE! EEEEE!

She blinked her eyes and shook her head.

"Lieutenant Hopps, please respond."

"Lieutenant Hopps here." Her paw had reflexively tapped her chest. She felt only the soft cotton of her pajamas rather than the cold, hard shape of her electronic comm badge.

EEEEE! EEEEE! EEP!

Silence. Darkness. And then a roar as the bed suddenly rushed towards her.

She bounced backwards as the bed slammed into her, then she bounced off the floor. Or was it the ceiling? Something...she bounced off something. And then something else, and something else. She grabbed onto... a desk lamp, it was a desk lamp. But moments later it came loose in her paws. She hit another surface, and then another, and another.

Finally, she was able to grab onto something solid-a hook, the coat hook by the door. She held on. She could feel the room's rotation as she maintained her grip.

She assessed her situation. She was wearing her pajamas. She had been asleep. The ship had been on red alert. The artificial gravity was offline. Something had happened and she had been thrown around-no, the room, the ship had been thrown around, with her inside it. Now she was in complete silence and complete darkness. No, not complete silence. She heard soft creaking sounds, and a voice-or perhaps voices-in the distance.

An emergency light came on, emitting a faint blue glow. She got her bearings and pushed off, drifting gently towards her bed. She grabbed it tightly, then pulled herself towards her closet. She quickly found a fresh uniform and pulled it on. She pushed off and floated back towards the door.

As the distance between her and the door diminished, she realized her mistake. Sure enough, there was no "whoosh" of the door automatically opening. There was only a dull thud as her soft padless paws and feet landed on the unmoving door.

A few twists and jumps later, she managed to land on the door's manual release. She flipped up the cover and pulled the lever. The door opened, and she sailed through in a smooth, graceful motion.

"Oof!"

Nick groaned as the gray bunny collided with him. He grasped her small body like a drowning mammal, desperate to hold onto anything that floats. They tumbled together, bounced off the ceiling, and hit the emergency bulkhead that now blocked the corridor.

"Sorry, Nick, you okay?"

"Yeah, Carrots, I'm okay. Did you sleep in your uniform?"

"Huh? No, I just changed." She noticed that he was still wearing his pajamas. "Do you know what happened?"

Nick looked around, worriedly. "Not exactly. But things look bad. Actually, they're worse than that. Bad would be a welcome improvement."

Judy nodded. "Then they need all paws on deck. How do we get this bulkhead open so we can report for duty?"

"The emergency bulkhead that's keeping us from being blown into space?" Nick said stoically. We don't."

The bunny's big violet eyes blinked slowly. "Wait… What?"

The fox sighed heavily. "Based on what I have seen, the ship is in pieces. This is one of the pieces. The holes in this piece are being plugged by emergency bulkheads: that one, and that one, and those over there, and, well, all of them. It looks like about a dozen, which is really, really bad."

"So… so… so, what about everyone else?"

"Look out the window, Carrots." She pushed off and floated in the direction he pointed, then stared out the window. There was no ship. There was only debris floating in space, like a jigsaw puzzle that had been carelessly thrown on the floor.

"Nick, what do we do?"

After a pause that seemed to last forever, he finally spoke. "I don't think there's anything we can do, Judy. We're stuck in here. If anyone else survived, they're stuck where they are. Unless… well, maybe… maybe someone can get to a shuttle and rescue the rest of us. Maybe."

They both stared out the window, silently watching the remains of the ZSS Wilbur.

"Took you long enough, Slick," the bunny said with a grin.

"I'm not used to getting dressed in zero-G, Carrots. And my stuff was floating all around my room, so first-"

"Wait… Nick, what's that?" His eyes followed the direction her finger was pointing. Sure enough, something was slowly moving towards them.

"It looks like some kind of shuttle," the fox said. "No, it's the captain's yacht. Look, it's bigger than a regular shuttle, and the configuration's different. It's definitely the captain's yacht. But look at it. It's drifting. No one is flying it. I don't think they're here to rescue us, Carrots." They stared at the approaching vessel for a few more moments before the bunny spoke.

"Then we'll just have to rescue them."

Nick grinned. "Sure, you take the helm and I'll run down to engineering and fire up the engines. When we get close enough, I'll use a tractor beam to bring them into the shuttle bay."

"That's the spirit!" Judy shouted. "I mean, we'll need to figure out some other way to do it, using stuff we actually have, but at least you're thinking about possibilities.

"Okay, you want to talk possibilities, let's talk possibilities. We can't fly this… this hunk of deck G. We don't have vacc suits, so we can't go on a space walk. Even if we did, we don't have an airlock. And, let's see-"

"Are you sure, Slick?" She had a grin on her face, a grin that made him nervous.

"Am I sure what, Carrots?"

"Are you sure we don't have an airlock? What about the one above my quarters?"

He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. "The maintenance airlock on deck F. How did you know about that? I thought only geeks in Engineering or Ops memorized deck plans."

Judy wiggled her ears. "It's above my quarters. Last night, when I was trying to go to sleep, I heard someone opening and closing the airlock over and over."

"Huh… so many questions, so little time. But back to the subject at hand, we don't have access to a lift, so we'll have to use a Geoffrey tube. C'mon, Carrots."

Nick floated down the corridor, followed by Judy. He reached an access hatch and shook his head. "Nope. That one's depressurized. Let's keep going."

They continued down the corridor to another access hatch. "Nope, not this one either."

Arriving at another hatch, Nick exclaimed, "Yes! Third time's the charm."

He opened the hatch, moved to the side, and waved his paw towards the open hatch. He graciously said, "Lieutenant Hopps." Judy floated through the open hatch and up the Geoffrey tube, followed by Nick.

They reached the hatch at deck F, and Judy paused. "Nick, can I ask a stupid question."

"Can I stop you?"

"Yeah, probably not. You know Geoffrey, the engineer these maintenance tubes are named after?"

"Only by name. What about him?"

"He's a Giraffe, right? They're tall enough that they wouldn't really be able to use a Geoffrey tube, right? So why would he invent them?"

"Yeah, that's interesting. And if we didn't have a yacht to catch, I'm sure we could figure it out." He opened the hatch and gestured towards it. "But we gotta go, Carrots. Now."

"Where are the rest of the vacc suits, Nick? There should be a lot more of them here."

"Good question," the fox said, as he helped the bunny into a vacc suit. "Maybe the mammals who were going in and out of the airlock last night can answer it. But the important thing, is that there's one here that fits one of us. And that's you, so you get to go get the yacht and bring it back here for me. You can fly a ship, can't you?"

"Of course I can. I think. I mean, it's been a while, but I think I remember how."

The fox looked out the portal. The drifting vessel was almost to them. "Good. That's reassuring. I'm totally reassured. One hundred percent. So, time to put on the helmet and get out there."

He helped her secure her helmet, then gave her a big forced smile and two thumbs up. Then he slipped out of the airlock and started closing the inner door.

Moments later, Judy was cranking open the outer door.

Judy stared through the visor of her helmet, watching the drifting vessel grow closer. The only sound was that of her own breathing, slow and steady.

She touched the hull with her paws first, then her feet. She engaged the magnetic boots of her vacc suit, then quickly walked across the vessel's hull to its airlock. She opened the hatch for the manual controls and started cranking open the outer door.

The handle didn't move.

Judy pushed harder.

It still didn't move.

She braced herself and pushed as hard as she could. Her heavy breathing echoed in the suit's helmet, and she could hear her racing pulse echoing in her ears.

It still didn't move.

She tried to steady her trembling hands, tried to remain calm, tried to think. What could she have done wrong? The airlock was the same as the one she had just operated. Why wasn't it opening. What was wrong?

She screamed incoherently and pounded the airlock door with her fists, just before the world went black.