James opens the rear hatch of the ship, and the racers head inside to survey the damage it's sustained. Tumbling down the cliffside did a real number on the ship's interior, as everything is thrown all over the floor, and everything's a mess, which makes James more annoyed by the second. There's a bunch of little bugs scattering across the floor of the ship. Gazelle listens to the minute sounds on the ship, and readies his gun, already knowing that something is on here with them.
James's fears are confirmed when they reach the cabin and see a massive gash in the hull of the ship, just above where the captain's seat is. "Ahhhhhhh hell…" is all he can muster as he sees those little bugs scurrying into his ship through that gaping hole.
"Yea, this thing's definitely not spaceworthy", Jody says, rather obviously.
"Eh, it's just a cosmetic scratch, you'll be fine", Zoda says with a little chuckle.
"You've got backup you can call, right?", Beastman asks. "This thing's definitely not gonna be flying anytime soon."
"Oh, it'll fly. I've got just the thing for this…", he says as he goes into one of the compartments, and pulls out a large vial of pink and purple liquid. "Same stuff they use for the recovery panels on the track. Costs me an arm and a leg, but it's gotten me out of more jams that I'd care to admit." After putting on some gloves, he stands up on the pilot chair and spreads some glowing liquid along the gash in the roof.
"Ohhhhhhh, so you guys must be a part of Black Shadow's racing crew. That's why you have the racing supplies, right?", Beastman asks, putting the pieces together, or so he thinks.
"Well, I mean it wasn't that important to go into when we were in the nest, but yea, we're at the track with Shadow", James says, technically not lying. He notices the others looking at him strangely, but gives them the "go along with it" look, and they all agree with his story.
The vial is full of nanomachines, and they take on the form of whatever it touches. When James pours the liquid out onto the ship, the exterior of it begins to close up like magic, and suddenly, the hole in the outside of the ship has vanished completely. He does it a few more times for each individual layer of the vessel, with the nanomachines turning into titanium, insulation, copper, whatever is around it. Before long, the ship is all patched up, and ready to go.
"OK, I think the ship's all good and patched, now we just need to clear out the ship of any bugs that're still on here. We don't wanna bring any of these strange things to other planets where they might throw off the food chain. Gazelle, can you make sure the nanomachines did their job and that the ship is properly sealed?"
"Okay…", Gazelle says as he nervously takes the nanomachine vial from James and holds it as far away as possible, as though he's holding acid. (With him being made of titanium, it might as well be.)
"Everybody else, spread out along the ship, check everywhere, make sure there isn't anything from this planet that leaves this planet. Oh, and try to be accurate, I don't want to have to patch more holes."
"No problem, shoot this ship into the afterlife. That's what I heard", Zoda says as he twirls his pistol on his finger.
"Aaaaaaand Zoda has lost 'being alone with a gun' privileges. I'll go with Zoda. Beastman, Jody, you guys search the rest of the ship. Let's go make corpses."
The four racers venture through the ship, looking for little critters wherever they could. Sometimes it would involve searching underneath the grating that made for the floor in the engine room. Sometimes it would involve searching inside the panels of the control board. Sometimes it would involve rummaging through their supply of food to see what they buried themselves inside. And all of this requires pinpoint accurate shots, in order to make sure the bugs get shot, and not the ship. Jody, James, and Beastman are all very accurate shooters, however Zoda always has more of a spray 'n' pray approach. He misses a few shots, and even puts a hole in the front windshield, just as Gazelle was about to finish patching up the ship, to his great annoyance. And it's at this point where Zoda finally has his gun taken away from him.
And these aren't like little cockroaches or any other small insect. Like the rest of the life on this planet, it's grown to match the size of its competition for food and resources. So these bugs are the size of a small cat, and they don't necessarily go down in one shot. Luckily, though, they aren't a threat to anyone's life, they're just big and icky, so it's a bit of an annoying, kinda gross journey. Each of them spread out to a different level of the ship to clear it out, and within a few minutes, they all report back to James with an "all clear", and the ship is cleared for takeoff.
Once everyone is finished, they all head to the cockpit (except Gazelle, who's still on telescope duty), and get ready to take off. Before James can get back to this seat, Jody pulls him aside to talk to him. "James, what're we doing about Beastman? Gen told us what you told Beastman in the nest back when he was linked with Dai, but he could literally do what Guster did at any moment, and go nuts on us. He's expecting us to take him to Black Shadow, so what do we do when he figures out that isn't happening?"
"Honestly, I don't know…", James says while scratching his head. "I was coming up with this plan with a knife to my throat, so it's not my most logical plan so far, but we aren't all dead yet, so it's a win for now. What do you think we should do, o' tactical leader?"
"Is that my actual title on this mission? Because I might steal that."
"How should we do this?", he says, giving up.
"Ok, well I'll keep an eye on him for the rest of the flight, but once we get him on the Wyvern, we lock him in a bedroom as soon as he goes in there, and tell him the situation over the intercom, since Guster snapped when you told him the plan back on Cryton. That way, if he snaps, he's secure. And if not, he'll at least understand what's up."
"I mean, we'll have to figure out a way to get him into the bedroom without him thinking anything's suspicious. But I guess we could just lock him in any room with a secure lock on it, and no way out. I'm gonna have to count on you to keep him from killing me or something on the flight to the Wyvern, so you know… don't let me die."
"If he does anything that looks suspicious, I'll tranq him and toss him in the bedroom, but I'm sure he doesn't want to kill us. They're trying to bring us back to help him with his mission, right?"
"That's what I thought too, before Guster gave me this little memento", James says while pointing at his scar. "Shadow either wants us on his team, or just dead; either way probably helps him. Alright, here he comes, showtime…"
Everyone heads to their seats and straps in. Once James turns on the engines, a little red light comes on, and tells him the vehicle is still at a dangerous temperature. "Damnit, I forgot about how the heat made us land in the first place."
"How the frick did you forget about the heat, McCloud?", Zoda says while still sweating, even in his cool suit. "It's like 200 degrees down here."
"I was counting on it being cooler on the surface, but down here is even hotter then up there, so my amazing plan to cool down the engines didn't quite work. I'm gonna try to get us out of here anyway, but if this doesn't work, we can still call for back-up."
"Why don't we just call for back-up first then?", Beastman asks, not too keen on chancing it when there are seemingly viable options out there.
"Um…", James says, trying to quickly come up with a line that lines up with what their story is. "Because Black Shadow is cranky, and things aren't going great for him right now, and if we can get off this planet without diverting any more funds to your rescue, then he'll be less likely to want to throw us into lava on a whim. Ok? Ok."
The other racers were a little skeptical of this, especially Jody, who realizes that James is now three-for-three when it comes to doing something super risky and dangerous just to make these missions easier. She's gonna have to have a long talk with him about this, and neither of them are going to like it.
"You might be overestimating a little just how 'evil' Shadow is", Beastman says, which makes everyone in the cabin look at him like a crazy person, especially Jody. "Like, he's done some bad stuff, but he's not like a supervillain or anything."
This is all too much for Jody to suppress, and she stands up in a rage. "I watched that man KILL A WARPGATE WORKER FOR GIVING HIM BAD INFORMATION! HE IS ABSOLUTELY THAT BAD!" Neither James nor Zoda stop her from going off on him, because this still sounds like something a disgruntled worker of his might say, but it leads to an unfortunate follow-up question.
"Then why are you still working for him?" Jody freezes for a second, but luckily for her, Zoda is there with a quick reply.
"Dental."
"Ohhhhhhhhh…", Beastman says, seemingly satisfied with that answer. Jody's blown away by this, not just because Zoda defused a potentially dangerous situation without blowing something up, but also, if Beastman agreed with that option so fast, it might just be true.
James softly revs up the engines, and as gently as he can, lifts off for the surface, trying to ease this thing up and get off this rock with as little damage to the ship as possible. However, as soon as they make it up past the hole that the ship fell through, problems arise instantly.
Gazelle comes on the intercom as soon as what's on the surface is visible. "The Warbat's still there! It must've been waiting for us the whole time!"
As soon as Gazelle says that, James guns the thrusts and tries to fly off of the planet's surface, while outrunning the beast. James mutters little swears to himself as he pushes his little ship to its limits with a couple more warning lights flashing as the ship pushes through each layer of the atmosphere. Eventually, the Warbat abandons the chase, but now they still need to be flying fast enough to achieve escape velocity.
"The engines are starting to glow, James", Gazelle says from the back.
"It can make it, we're almost in space", James says as everyone holds on tight, just waiting for that moment when the engines sputter and die. "Come on, come on, come on", he says to himself through gritted teeth, only barely believing what he just told his crewmates. However, another light comes on, and thankfully it's not red or accompanied with alarms. It says that they've reached outer space, a much colder place than the planet's surface. He immediately kills the engines and lets it coast for a little bit while they drift towards the Wyvern.
"See, never a doubt."