"B- burn us up?" asked the Pixie of Insects.
"Yeah, so let's all hope not. Now excuse me, I'm busy," said Timmy, giving his complete attention to the ship.
Zing left the control cabin for the bunk room. She slipped into one of the backpacks lying there, and found a comfortable spot to wait. She felt horribly lost and useless. Tears welled in her eyes. She just had to trust the human and Fairy and Witch to get them through.
For a few minutes the hull of the Red Fountain ship glowed cherry-red from the heat of reentry. It faded away as they shed orbital speed and approached the surface. Nothing happened, proving the hull integrity.
"Space drives offline," said Timmy finally, "Switching to atmospheric controls. Status report?"
"Targeting computer still offline," said Lucy, "The weapons seem to have frozen as well. I was lucky to get that one shot off. Main screens on standby, debris screens up."
"Primary power plant at 38 percent capacity, secondary plant shut down, batteries on standby. Internal systems okay, but there are some minor shorts. All in all, we're in pretty good shape," said Mirta.
"Acknowledged," replied Timmy, "The controls are sluggish, but the ship is responding. I think we can make our landing target."
Soon they were flying less than a mile above the trees, heading for their planned landing point. They had continued to lose speed as they flew.
A couple of miles, now," said Timmy, "Can I get an environment report?"
Both Mirta and Lucy tapped keys, causing the screens around them to change.
"Outside the magic-distorted area, there's nothing bigger than monjuu moving around," said Lucy.
"We're cutting it a bit close, Timmy," said Mirta, "Local sunset in five minutes."
"That's okay, we'll be there in two," answered Timmy.
Just as he said, two minutes later the ship was hovering above a clearing in the woods not too much bigger than it. Cautiously the landing gear extended, and the ship settled down safely. The passengers heaved a sigh of relief.
"Mirta, shut down the primary power and go to batteries. Those witches won't find us without an energy signal," said Timmy.
"On it," said Mirta, as she hit keys.
"Shutting down weapons systems, going to minimal defense screens. Anything else?" asked Lucy.
"I think that will do it," said Timmy. He hit some keys, and the lights suddenly went out, to come back on a bit dimmer, with a reddish tinge.
Timmy turned in his seat and heaved a huge sigh. "That was some excellent teamwork, everyone. We just might be able to pull this off."
"Yeah, yeah," said Lucy, "Enough with the pep talk. Since it's getting dark, I'm guessing we won't be searching for the house tonight?"
"It's probably too dangerous, seeing the kinds of creatures out there," said Mirta.
"Yeah, we need some time to recover, so we'll go tomorrow," said Timmy.
"Good. I'm hungry," said Lucy, standing up and heading for the galley.
"I could go for a bowl of manntah soup," said Mirta, releasing the seat belt and standing.
wcwcwc
As they ate, Mirta looked around. "Where's Zing?" she asked.
Lucy snorted. "Probably hiding, hoping the ship won't burn up."
"I think we'd better find her. That reentry was pretty rough; I hope she didn't get hurt," said Timmy, standing.
Lucy rolled her eyes and muttered to herself, but went with them to look.
They spent the next twenty minutes looking everywhere in the confines of the small spacecraft, but had no luck. Mirta and Lucy went into their cabin to discover their backpacks had fallen off the bunks.
"Uh oh," said Lucy, "I hope you didn't pack anything dangerous in anything breakable..."
"No, my potion ingredients are in plastic," said Mirta. She reached for the pack and stopped. There was an odd noise coming from it.
"Do you hear that?" asked Mirta, pulling her hand away.
"Yeah," answered Lucy, "Let's see what it is." She gestured. "Levetatus!" The pack rose into the air, the main flap falling open. Lucy made a pulling gesture, and out floated Zing, sound asleep.
Mirta caught her gently, without waking her.
"Good work," she whispered to her best friend.
Lucy nodded, and whispered back, "Thanks. Now put the bug somewhere, and let's go." She magically returned the pack to its resting place.
Mirta put Zing on the pillow of the top bunk, and thought to herself that Lucy was being kinder than her words about the Pixie.
The two friends left quietly and reported their find to Timmy.
"Well, I'm glad you found her," said Timmy. "Now lets go make some repairs."
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Many of the repairs were minor, and took only a few minutes to do. The casing on the secondary power plant had suffered a crack. They had no way to repair it, so just left it shut down.
"When we leave, we'll have to run everything from the main," said Timmy, "It will handle the extra load, and we'll keep the batteries in reserve."
"I still want to know why the sensors didn't pick up the witches ship," said Lucy, sitting down at the weapons console. She ran a diagnostic, but found nothing wrong. She pursed her lips, thinking. Suddenly an idea hit her.
"Maybe..." she muttered, as she checked the databanks. What she was looking for suddenly became very visible.
"I found it!" she called to the others, who came over to see. "Someone inserted this extra program into the sensor data to keep the other ship's identity beacon from alerting us, and rejecting their ship's configuration." She shook her head. "I just bet..." She looked at the code. "Uh huh, thought so. This is a Microwitch Software product. Somebody knows about this mission, and doesn't want us to succeed."
"We'd better alert Alfea!" exclaimed Mirta.
"We can't," said Timmy, "We've been in comm silence since we got halfway here. We'll worry about who did it when we get back."
"How did that program get into the computer?" asked Mirta, "Is there a traitor at Red Fountain?"
Timmy looked indignant. "Of course not!"
"Don't look at me," said Lucy, "Griffin really wants this mission to succeed. And since I'd love to get out of finals, I do too."
"And nobody at Alfea would do it..." said Mirta. She added, "It couldn't have been Zing, she doesn't know or understand anything about computers. Now, if Digit was with us, I might be suspicious."
"Now, just... wait a minute!" said Timmy, snapping his fingers, "Just before we left Red Fountain, we got that last file on Bekisan. Saladin commented he thought it was strange, since his contacts had already sent him what they had."
"So it might have come in with it," said Lucy. She pulled up the computer log files. After some looking, she said, "Yep, here it is. It was set to run when we looked at the file." She directed an anti-virus program to isolate the extra program, so they could keep it as evidence, but it couldn't interfere any more.
"There's no way for us to know where it came from or who sent it, since it was routed to the ship through the Red Fountain net," said Timmy, adjusting his glasses.
"So it's out of our hands for now," said Mirta, and yawned. "I vote we get a good night's sleep."
"Seconded," said Lucy, standing up.
"Sounds good to me," agreed Timmy. "I'm setting the wake-up for seven. Good night." He headed for his bunk room.
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After changing into sleepwear, Witch and Fairy climbed into their respective bunks. Mirta found Zing still asleep.
When they were both young, Lucy had learned a Mental Instant Messaging spell, and taught it to Mirta. They had both gotten into trouble with their parents staying awake and "IMing" for hours. Its range was limited to less than a mile, but still had been useful. Now it came in handy so they could talk without disturbing their third roommate.
MIRTA?
HMMM?
IT'S BEEN GREAT BEING WITH YOU AGAIN. I'D BEEN WONDERING IF THERE WERE ANY CHANCE OF A Fairy AND Witch WORKING TOGETHER LIKE THIS.
YEAH, LOOKS LIKE WE FOUND A WAY.
There was a minute of silence.
MIRTA, I NEVER TOLD YOU, BUT WHEN YOUR FAMILY DISOWNED YOU, THE PIXIE IN THE RED DRESS WHO WEARS ROSES TOLD ME THAT YOU AND I WOULD BE FRIENDS FOR LIFE.
Mirta smiled to herself. WELL, IF ANYONE WOULD KNOW, IT WOULD BE AMORE. SHE'S THE PIXIE OF LOVE. AND FATE'S FOUND A WAY TO KEEP US TOGETHER.
YEAH...
Another minute of silence followed.
I HOPE OUR "LIFELONG FRIENDSHIP" WON'T END TOMORROW.
ME TOO, LUCE! G'NIGHT...
NIGHT...
And the mental airwaves fell into silence. The quiet of the cabin was broken only by the regular breathing of three very different people.