Chapter 2 - The Cat's Out of the Bag
As it turned out, Kirito soon found himself regretting their new feline acquaintance's help in repairing the engines on the Centoria.
Mainly as Sinon had been a very effective hunter of rodents and other unwelcome pests aboard her previous ship… but in true cat fashion, had inflated that to mean "I can fix an engine", and that was why they were currently dealing with the most action they had seen in four years…
In fact, she hadn't fixed the engines… but she had managed to wire up half of the ship into the self-destruct mechanism during the attempt at fixing the engines; meaning that not only was there a risk that they would explode at the slightest provocation, but that they had no idea what might cause said explosion.
"Now, all we have to do is be extremely careful not to use anything electronic that might not be wired into the ship's mains." Kirito explained to Klein as they walked along the darkened corridor. "Absolutely nothing electrical, got it?"
"Yeah, we got it. Touch nothing, else we all go boom." Klein repeated, as they walked into one of the bedrooms. They needed to find Sinon now, and as they couldn't see in the dark, Kirito flipped the light switch…
"Ship self-destruction in 15 minutes and counting." Yui announced as sirens began to blare throughout the ship.
"Touch nothing electrical… which includes light switches." He repeated with a sigh, and his eyes shut in frustration.
"That was very dumb, you know that right, Kiri-dude?" Klein said blankly, and he nodded in agreement as he winced at his own stupidity there.
"What did you do!?"
"Why do you think it's my fault!" He asked Alice, taking offence with her assumption that this was his fault! This was squarely on Sinon!
"Because when things go explosively wrong, I tend to assume the person with technical know-how is to blame!"
"Hey, Sinon also has technical know-how!" No, she didn't, and that was very much why they were now in the situation they were in. Other than his little mishap with the light switch, but hopefully Klein would keep quiet on that one…
"And on that note, where is Sinon?"
"Err…" He and Klein exchanged nervous looks, knowing what was about to happen next.
"Oh good, not only are we about to be scattered for light years, but we have now lost the newest member of our crew." Alice sighed. "Why did I get stuck with you all? What did I do wrong in my previous life?"
"Never mind your previous life, Alice, we'll be looking to our future lives in a short time if we can't find and disarm that bomb!" Kirito snapped back. "Yui, any ideas where on the ship the bomb is?"
"Nuclear storm drive, papa."
"Ah."
"I admit, I am not technically minded… but that does not sound good, does it?" Alice asked. "In fact, I would say it sounds distinctly not good."
"That's the ship's core… and uninhabitable to humans for more than about 30 seconds."
"So, we're doomed then."
"Except we do have one non-human here." He thought about it momentarily, and exchanged a look with Klein. A hesitant look, especially knowing who it related to…
"We do?" Alice asked, before the realisation set in. "Me!? How am I not human… oh right, yes."
"With the exception of interfering with Miss Alice's projection, she could survive in the storm drive long enough to enter the disarming code, papa." Yui acknowledged.
"Fine… when you say, interfere with my projection, what do you mean?"
"Visual anomalies with your rendering matrix, Miss Alice."
Alice sighed in acceptance. "I suppose it beats being blown into a million pieces…"
"That's the spirit!"
/-/
Alice wondered what it said about her now that walking through a highly irradiated death trap that had last been repaired almost five years ago, and that was roughly 4 million light years past its due date for servicing, was almost peaceful to her.
If she ignored the howling of the fans, and the blaring of the sirens, anyway.
She supposed that it had to do with not being around people for a little while, especially when those people had possibly caused their current situation - why could Kirito not take his own advice sometimes… and not touch anything?
"I can talk there, I suppose…" She muttered to herself. "I moved a wet floor sign, and that is why I am here now…"
"You say something, Alice?" Kirito asked her through an earpiece that was being projected into her ear.
"No, just thinking aloud." She quickly pretended she hadn't said any of that. "Yui, am I nearby?"
"The controls are two metres to the right." Alice took a quick look to her right, and all she could see was a sheer drop that fell into the abyss that was the ship's cargo bay. "To my right, sorry, Miss Alice."
Okay, that looked more like it - a cabinet about as tall as she was, with a keypad on the exterior, and some kind of sockets for inputs and outputs, alongside a hatch of some kind.
"You see it Alice?" Klein asked her. "The code is 2022."
She tapped the keys to input the code, and waited for a few moments. Nothing came of her inputs, and she tapped the keys again, only for a message to flash up on a screen above her. "Incorrect input, please try again", it read…
"We have a problem, the code didn't work!"
"Crap!"
"Well everyone, it's been nice knowing you."
"Are we going to give up that easily?" Alice asked, genuinely insulted.
"Ten seconds to detonation."
"Oh." She sighed, and braced herself for death… again. "At least I die knowing I did my best to help this time…"
"Really wishing I'd fixed Yui now!" Kirito muttered to himself, and she nodded her head at his statement.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
Instead of an explosion the size of a small black hole, there was a small pop in the machine next to her, before two items fell out of the hatch - a strawberry milkshake and a chocolate bar.
"Kirito, is it entirely possible that, not only did you both wire everything wrong… but you wired into the detonation mechanism, and not the bomb?"
"What bomb?" Yui asked in confusion.
"The bomb that nearly scattered us to the icy veil of space, Yui." Klein stated, himself confused by her confusion.
"There isn't a bomb, I removed it during the last safety inspection as it didn't meet health and safety requirements."
"Oh, the irony is palpable…" Alice sighed. "So, we were never in any real danger to begin with?"
"No, Miss Alice. I would be rather useless as a ship computer if I were to allow you to die from faulty wiring, wouldn't I?"
Alice felt her eye twitch as she sat there, now drinking the complimentary milkshake and chocolate bar…
/-/
Having eventually found Sinon again - the catgirl really not doing much to dissuade them from stereotypes as she hid inside a box - it was unanimously agreed that she, much like Alice, was not allowed within a 2 metre radius of a toolbox.
Despite that though, she had found detailed repair manuals inside the captain's room, and with Yui guiding him through the repairs very, very carefully, they had repaired the engines in such a way that, whilst not at full power… they would at least allow for a limited maneuvering capability.
"Well, the good news is that we do now have a working engine." He said as he put the toolbox down in the control room.
"I sense a but there…" Klein said nervously.
"We have a top speed of… about 80 knots."
"So, at our new top speed, we will reach Earth in how long exactly?" Alice asked, hesitation clear in her voice.
"About 30 trillion years."
"30 trillion years." Alice said blankly. "Kirito, at that rate, the universe will have ended due to natural causes before we make it home."
"Miss Alice, if the time calculation is right, the universe will have ended, and we will have witnessed multiple universes before we are in the same solar system as the Earth." Yui added, handily adding a sense of scale to the sheer insanity of the situation.
"We're all gonna die out here aren't we?" Klein slumped back into his seat in defeat.
"Some of us already have." Alice remarked blithely.
"Except that 80 knots, slow as it is, will allow us to approach the derelict around a light year away, and see if we can strip it for parts."
"Couldn't we have done that before?"
"No chance, its self defence system was still active. It would've fried us, but the Centoria has its own inbuilt resistance to it…"
"How so?"
"It's massive." Kirito answered bluntly. "It's like ramming a car with an 18-wheeler. The car will come off worse…"
Klein looked at him anxiously. "Kiri-dude, if we ever get back to earth, we are never letting you drive."
"Agreed." Alice nodded vigorously.
"I did the maths, the Hull will hold up, but the first few floors may be unusable for a bit if we do this."
"Why?"
"Well, in simple terms, they'll have melted."
"Melted?!"
"Yeah, it uh, it kind of superheats the approaching objects."
"Won't that include us?"
"Probably not." He shrugged. There was an 80% chance they would be fine, and only the metal would melt, so it was only a 20% chance they would melt as well…
"Papa, if I can add some context? The ship's defence system is likely badly worn as well. It left Earth twenty years before us, and suffered a similar fate - no repairs have been undertaken in years. The defence system may not even be active anymore…"
"Hmm, it is still a risk though…"
"I say we take it. The thought of 30 trillion years with you idiots makes me wish you'd killed me by accident now…"
"There is still an airlock that we could use…" Alice warned with a smile.
"If it gets us moving, I say we take that risk." Klein agreed with Sinon's idea, if not her sentiment. "And no throwing anyone out of the airlock, Alice."
"Who died and put you in charge?" Alice asked, to the raised eyebrows of everyone gathered… including Yui, who all wondered whether she'd realise exactly what she had just said… "Shut up all of you, I know exactly what I just said…"
/-/
"We're approaching the ship now - Hull integrity is at 85%. Remember, don't go anywhere near the front decks for a while…"
"Or take Factor 5 million sunscreen if you do." Klein added. "And a bucket to melt into. I'm not cleaning anyone up afterwards."
"Okay, we're inside the self defence system's radius - Hull integrity is… huh, I think we're fine. It's not actually… ohh, that's not a heating system."
"What do you mean?"
"Umm, Kiri-dude, can you get St Elmo's Fire in space?" Klein asked, and Kirito looked out the window to witness the bizarre phenomenon.
St Elmo's Fire was an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by a corona discharge in an atmospheric electric field, and really shouldn't have occurred in space - with no friction.
Or you know, an atmosphere!
"Nope, that wasn't … it wasn't a ship, was it?"
"Then what was it?"
"It's a Mirage ship. They lure you in, then fling you across space - usually in millions of pieces."
"Papa is right - these ships are usually used as decoys during wars, but some were used as traps to drag high value cargo to a location where they would be ideally placed for an ambush by privateers. I believe we have stumbled onto one of those…"
"Oh good. I'm so glad we won't melt at least." Alice sighed as the ship reached light speed. "Just that we may be brutally murdered and sold off into slavery instead…"
"I don't think we have to worry about that last one if we are all dead…" Sinon added.
"Besides, we're that far out, maybe the privateers are dead too?" Klein added hopefully.
He had no idea where they were going, but at the very least, they'd get there quickly anyway. Besides, it wasn't the speed that would kill them… it was the sudden stop at the end.
"Then how do we stop this then, if we have not been provided with such basics as… coordinates?" Alice asked.
"Lithobraking."
"Doesn't that just mean burning up in an atmosphere somewhere?" Sinon asked, now regretting her rather cavalier tone earlier, before turning to Alice. "You were a bit premature with the "not melting" bit, I think…"
"Not quite, intruder. Lithobraking reduces the apoapsis height to zero instantly." Yui explained, with a smattering of confused blinking from the crew of the Centoria. "It does not, however, refer to burning up, but rather the sudden and violent stop at the end of the flight that would likely kill all but Alice instantly. As such, I would recommend against that course of action, papa."
Despite his adopted daughter's recommendation, he had accepted that would likely be their only real way of decelerating - even if it would cost them the ship… Hopefully, they'd crash onto a world of soft and fluffy cushions, and not razor sharp mountains made of jagged diamonds…
Or just crash anywhere, rather than being hurled across the infinite vastness of space at light speed for the rest of eternity. There had to be something on their current course in space that was big enough to decelerate the hurtling ship… hadn't there?
"Well, this is certainly a fine mess, is it not?" Alice gave a self-satisfied look of "I told you this would go wrong", and although the words "I told you so" weren't actually used… he could tell she was dying to use them.
"That should just be this ship's slogan, shouldn't it?" Klein asked, and he just nodded, as he tried to think of ways to decelerate the ship…
/-/
"Red One, I can see the Alliance ships, they've got fighter cover!"
Asuna was no slouch in terms of flying spacecraft - Mito had taught her well, but even she had doubts that they would succeed against the behemoth of a ship that was the Malevolent.
The ship was some two kilometres long, and packed enough firepower to bombard a small planet into submission; the name Malevolent truly fitting there.
The ship wasn't her priority though; the fighter cover was. The Birds of Prey they used for defence were dangerous fighters, albeit unmanned ones, and flew in large swarms usually.
Today was no different, and she found herself opening fire on the spacecraft in front of her when, in the blink of an eye, the comms burst to life with chatter as a streak of bright light passed nearby, absolutely vapourising anything in its path… fighters, debris… The Malevolent.
"The Malevolent, it's just exploded!"
Asuna blinked rapidly as she looked over at the loyalist fleet, now scattered into trillion pieces by the sudden… something. As she did, she had only one thought…
Okay then… that happened.
What that was though, she hadn't got a clue…
/-/
"We just hit something!" Sinon called out, as parts of metal fell away from the windscreen like raindrops on a highway…
"I figured that much! Let's hope their sacrifice slows us down a little bit!"
Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough to slow them down, despite the remains of what appeared to be a B-1 battle droid amusingly scattered across their windscreen. What on earth had they just hit that it had scattered battle droids across their path…
"Wipers on." Alice said, surprisingly nonplussed by the robot sprawled across their windscreen like a bird that hadn't quite spotted the incoming semi-truck…
Thankfully, the blood and guts in that case were oil and wires, so there was not as much wincing as would've been the case if they'd hit people…
It was then, as the remains of the battle droid fell away into the turbulence of light speed that Yui chimed in again. "Good news, we're on course for Earth!"
"That's bad news, Yui! We quite like Earth!" Klein told her.
"What happens if we hit the Earth?" Alice asked, clearly dreading the answer…
"End of all life on the planet, similar to the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Well, the supposed meteor - I believe it was actually a spaceship containing cybernetic lifeforms that killed the dinosaurs and not a meteor, but that is only-"
Now very confused by Yui's ramblings, Kirito cut in to get some clarification on their current flight path… "Is there anything else in our path first?"
"Yes, the mining colony of Io." Yui answered.
"What, all of it?"
"It is a rather small colony, Miss Alice." Yui added. "We have just passed the colony of Io."
"At least we didn't hit anything that time…" Sinon sighed, wiping her forehead.
As she said that, she was proven instantly wrong when a large piece of billboard covered their windscreen. A piece of billboard that contained possibly the biggest bit of irony they had witnessed in a long time…
A sign that read: Infinity welcomes careful drivers.
"Oops." was all Kirito could think of to say at that one.
"Who's going to pay them the bill for their board?" Klein asked, before getting a glare that could pierce even the toughest of body armour from Alice…
"We are about to crash into the Earth at light speed - quite frankly, I think the bill for minor property damage is the least of our worries…" Alice retorted as she checked her console. "We are slowing down!"
"I'm going to try something - hold on tight!"
"Kirito, what are you-"
He opened their maneuvering gates to act as a giant thrust reverser - they didn't need to stop the ship dead, but rather decelerate it enough to fall harmlessly out of light speed, and become somewhat controllable again…
Or at least, that was the thinking behind it as the gates opened, and the screaming commenced. He fell forward against his console as the ship did indeed fall out of light speed, though nowhere near as smoothly as he'd have liked.
Objects were scattered around the place - Alice's light drive had landed almost six feet ahead of where she was sitting, whilst Klein and Sinon had flown even further forward; Sinon sounding like a scalded cat as she flew forward in a frenzy of chaos and claws - and the ship was no longer on a collision course for the Earth anymore…
In fact, he didn't think they were in the same galaxy anymore.
"Yui, where are we sweetie?"
"Unknown. Reboot protocols in effect."
"Great, so we are now floating in deep space with a ship that can only barely move under its own power, and we are literally no longer on the map." Alice said, regaining a physical form from her sudden impact with a wall...
"So, we're back where we started then." Klein sighed in frustration. "Wait, weren't we worried about something else too? Y'know, besides the whole stopping us thing?" He asked, before a siren rang through the ship.
"Boarding action detected!" The automated voice called out.
"Oh yeah, that was it."
In response, Kirito simply decided on the only sensible course of action in that moment… he let his head sag, and bang against the console in front of him.
This was how his life was always going to be, wasn't it?