Leo pulled himself hand over hand down the corridor outside the cockpit. Zero-G made it easier to crawl around the ship, but it was a bitch for hand-to-hand fighting. With the ventilators offline, silence ruled the ship. He rubbed at his ears, distracted by an odd sensation, like they were full of cotton wool. Each tiny sound echoed back at him from the metal walls. He pressed his hand against the walls, reassured by the tiny vibration of the engine. The Honour's Blade wasn't dead, and neither were they.
He opened the hatch into the hangar. Bright, white-yellow light flooded through, blinding him. He squinted until his vision cleared. Donnie's little light pets clung to the wall along one side of the hangar, pulsing in unison. Blasted pests, but they had a liking for gamma-radiation, and targeted any hull breaches, no matter how tiny. Leo grimaced at the mass of them crawling across the starboard wall.
Well, now he knew where the leaks were.
He pushed off and floated over the little skiff they used for planetary drops. Their space suits hung in a cupboard beside the skiff. If they couldn't get the life support back on soon, they might be wearing those, but even then, they had maybe four hours of breathable air. Not enough. More problems to add to the list.
He reached the other side of the hanger and slipped through the door into their tiny cargo bay. More light pets huddled on what would be the ceiling if the gravity was on. Leo ran his gaze over the row of crates strapped and netted to the walls, a whole lot of weaponry that would get them killed if the Kraang caught them. He snorted. They had avoided that problem, but now had a dozen more. A twinge at the back of his head warned of an imminent headache.
Focus, focus. What would Master Splinter say? Concentrate on the problems you can solve. Do not waste time on what you cannot control. Leo bit his lip. Was Donnie even a problem he could solve anymore? He needed to find the right words, the words that would make everything okay between them again.
He collided gently with the wall above the hatch into the engine room. Leo paused on the threshold. The engine room glowed super-nova bright, and he had to wait a moment for his eyes to adjust. The light pets scuttled across the walls, the floor, crawled in an amoeboid mass over the curve of the fusion reactor, which took up most of the room's starboard wall.
He pulled himself into the room, looking for Donatello. His gaze fell on a hatch, tethered to the floor by a magnetic strap to stop it floating around. Donatello's shoulders and head were buried in the hatch opening, his long legs floating free. Something went bang in the depths of the access port.
"Fuck," snapped Donnie. He shot out of the port upside down and pushed over to the console on the reactor. His gaze fell on Leonardo, his expression closing in. "What?" he snapped. He started typing without waiting for an answer.
Leo focussed on the cold rail under his fingers, rather than the cold ball in his gut. "I came down to see how repairs are going. Life support is still offline."
Donnie shrugged his shoulders. "I know that."
Leo waited for more, but Don kept typing, his lips pressed into a thin line. "We have limited oxygen reserves Don, we-"
"I know that too," he snapped.
"-need that system back online."
Donnie pushed off from the console back toward the hatch. "I don't have time to sit here and explain why the system is offline." He pulled himself into the port opening. The clink of metal filled the silence.
Leo pretended he wasn't talking to Donatello's legs. "I'm not asking for an explanation. I would just like some indication of when, because I need to know how much time we have before our reserves run out."
"Stop worrying," Donnie said, his voice muffled. "We've got enough reserves to get to the nearest base from here, once I get the reactor under control."
Leo sighed. "That would be great, except I have no idea where 'here' is." Leo's shoulders jerked, sending his body on a gentle upward trajectory. He pulled himself back to the rail. "Something went wrong with the jump. We're lost."
The rattle of tools stopped. "What do you mean lost?"
"I mean lost. The nav comp can't find a known star within local range."
Donnie's hand reached out of the port and felt around until it gripped a spanner, which disappeared into the port. "Well, extend the range."
"I have. But it's going to take time, and thus use up reserves, and therefore we are in very real danger of running out of air before we find somewhere we can jump to. I was hoping you might have some ideas to speed up the search."
Donnie shot out of the hole again, the momentum sending him up to the ceiling, disturbing a cluster of light pets. He pushed back down to the deck. "You only had the acceleration calcs to do, Leo. How could you fuck those up?"
Leo bit down on his cheek, swallowed his anger, crushed the desire to snap back, knowing that Mikey and Raph would be hearing all of this, as they had heard all the other fights over the last few months. "I don't know if I did. There was an impact just before we jumped-"
"Great plan, Leo. Jump us into an ambush, let the engines take a direct hit and then get us lost. You're really maintaining your reputation for bad decisions here." Donatello turned his back on Leonardo.
Leo's gut spasmed as if he had been punched. He sucked in a ragged breath. Getting into another fight with Donatello wouldn't help. It didn't matter that Donnie's words weren't fair. They cut just as deep.
He should fight back. He should find the right words, and get Donnie on his side. His shoulders ached, his arms hung down, too heavy to lift. What was the point? He couldn't change the past. He let go of the rail, kicking off with his legs through the hatch. An aching hollow settled between his ribs.
Proximity alarms screamed. Leo turned and hauled himself back into the engine room to the nearest systems console. "What is it?" Leo shoved Donnie away from the console. "Raph, Mikey, do you have a visual?"
Raphael's voice crackled over the commlink. "I can't see a damn thing out there. There's no heat signature and no mass."
Leo's fingers flew over the panel as he called up the external visuals. Nothing. But the klaxons still blared their warnings.
"Wait, there's something on the radar," said Mikey. "Coming in fast!"
A thump reverberated through the hull. Leo grabbed for the panel as the force lifted him off the deck. A screwdriver floated past, set into motion by the impact against the hull. The visuals on the starboard side blacked out.
"What...was that?" said Raphael.
Leonardo stared at the video feed from the starboard side. Nothing but static. What had hit them? "I have no idea."
A warning light flashed on above the engine mass. Donatello hauled himself across to a control panel on the other side of the room. The engine shuddered and died.
Emergency backup power flashed across the screen. "Donnie, what-"
Donnie, upside down and tapping madly at a control panel near the reactor, threw up his hands. "Engine's shut down. Something has blocked the exhaust."
"What could have-" Shadows flickered around him. Donnie's light pets streamed away from the engine, over the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and out the door in a mass. "Where are they going?"
"Away from here, obviously." Donnie's fingers danced over the console, the light from the screen casting harsh shadows on his face. "Maybe you should, too."
Leo noted the you rather than we but didn't comment. "You focus on getting the engine back on line. I'll figure out what hit us."
"I planned to anyway," said Donnie, turning away.
