Wrecked

The kits hobbled around, taking their first faltering steps. Orla watched over them, smiling as a grandmother would at little paws tripping over themselves. Cola took a break from the rather stressful task of Motherhood and called up the next chapter of Herbert's journal.

---*---

I like sunsets.

They don't have to be spectacular, they just give a wonderful feeling of closure to a day. This planet didn't have spectacular sunsets, they appeared to be pre-industrial, so the sky didn't have much in the way of particulate matter enhancements. Didn't matter, 'though, was a good sunset.

I took a munch out of a torrac. I'd spent the better part of the day digging up and testing the local flora and for nutrition and taste. I'd settled on this particular root as being sufficient for my bodily requirements and, luckily, the best texture, before I discovered that, when toasted over an open fire, they self-caramelised. Lunch and dessert all wrapped up in one pale white bundle. Yumm.

I tugged the remnants of the torrac off of my stick and speared another one. I'd named the root myself. Maybe, once I'd learned some of the local language, I'd give it a proper name.

I looked out at the sun setting and listened to the gentle crackling of my fire. I smiled.

My reverie was broken by a snoring that sounded so much like a motorbike starting that I thought that someone would start singing "The Leader Of The Pack".

"I met him at the candy store..." I hummed to myself and turned around and smiled at Malcolm, lying next to a pile of torrac top remnants sleeping the sleep of the just. It was good to see him eating again. My eyes, however, didn't stop at Malcolm. They raised, inexorably, towards the scene above and behind him.

About half a mile away was the wreckage of the Good Ship T.B. My smile flattened and looked ready to turn to a frown.

Only yesterday the ship had been in good shape and we weren't stranded on an unknown planet. And Malcolm was not eating.

---*---

In fact Malcolm was belligerently not eating.

We were in the mess hall and I was trying to make Malcolm take some solids. He hadn't eaten a thing for three days and I was getting worried.

I dislike trying to make recalcitrant kits eat things they don't want to - trying to feed a stubborn adult was worse for me.

Malcolm had not had a good reaction to our Translation into this system, he had been getting worse and worse since the implants and this time he had an absolute fit. He'd broken four chairs and a table, thrashing around before I calmed him down. I wasn't looking forward to the Translation out of here. I got the feeling he wasn't either.

I was trying to play "bunny needs to hide" with the food. You know, the spoonful of food is the bunny and the (normally) kit's mouth was a burrow. Malcolm wasn't playing ball, just singing his usual songs.

"I'm a cowboy, on a steel chicken I ride..."

It was with relief and trepidation that I heard Spiron's voice over the intercom.

"We're twenty-five minutes from a safe Translation point and I'd like everyone to get ready for the jump." His voice then skipped to my personal comms implant. "Herbert, I'd like you to prime the translation engines and, probably more importantly, get that excuse for an acoustic baffle of a friend of yours into his quarters in a Inertial Damping Field."

I okayed an approval and put down the spoon. "Hold on, Malc." I asked him. That started him off, singing again.

"Sunshine, shine on you." I could never tell whether he was making it up or quoting Yes...

"Pretty-fat-cat" I sub-vocalised. "Give me an engineering console, here." Saying this I traced a rectangle on the mess room table. The ship turned that rectangle into a console screen and I tapped on it a few times to perform my engineering task. I primed the engines - they would be up and ready to Translate us in twenty minutes or so.

I switched the console off and turned to Malcolm, "Time for bed!" I said with a fake spring in my step.

"Boing!" said Malcolm.

It took best part of ten minutes to persuade him that it was time for bed. I think he was being maliciously annoying about the whole thing.

Quarters.

Sleeping quarters on T.B. Are about the size of a broom closet. One wall is a soft mattress and the back wall is top-to-bottom cupboards. When you can turn gravity to be in any direction you want, you don't really need that much room - normal settings change gravity to turn 90 degrees so that the mattress-wall turns into the floor once you close the door. After persuading Malcolm that he should put all his paws inside the room I closed the door on him and requested that the ship bury him in an IDF as Spiron had suggested. Even if he didn't fall asleep, at least his movements would be subdued by the field whilst we Translated.

It was tiring being Malcolm's only friend. Spiron let me keep him on the ship because we were running out of crew members and Spiron didn't want to loose me - I could double as engineer or gunner. Vestock was giving me lessons in navigation - pretty soon I'd be able to run the whole ship! Malcolm was a lot of hard work, he never spoke, he quoted - and mostly they were perverse quotes. There was some meaning in all of his words. I think there was anyway - I often couldn't work out where he was going. He couldn't stand Translating. He hadn't handled it well before Gilchrist/Fader had implanted him and that process had accentuated his failings and dumbed down his positive points.

Really I was just being selfish. To me, Malcolm was a solid link to home; to the fields, carrots and cabbages of my youth, with no associations to the reasons I'd left. I'd really only known him a short while before our incidence with the evil black bunny, so I didn't really know him as normal.

I shook my head and found myself in the Engineering section. I opened a console and checked the state of the engines and smiled. I grabbed a hand-console and was walking across the floor checking numbers when a warning came out of the intercom.

"Warning! Three ships de-cloaking and..." the message was drowned out by a huge explosion behind me. I felt myself lifted up and carried out of the room into the corridor. A bulkhead door shut behind me. The computer thinking quicker than the paw could move. I was stunned. It took me a few moments to come to myself but it was to a lot of muffled noise. I'd obviously been partially deafened by the explosion, but could just make out Spiron's voice: "En... Wee... Esk... Wart.. Now!

"Repeating: Eng... Wep... Get... Esca... Dead... Water... Elves... Out Now!

"Repeating: Engines and weapons are hit! Get to the escape pods now. We're dead in the water and unable to defend ourselves! Get out now!"

I looked back at the engineering section, I felt so helpless what could I do?

The ship was rocking from side to side, without the engines the ship would be unable to generate a sufficient IDF to cover the whole ship. I raced up the corridor towards the escape pods to see Spiron's blue foot disappear into one and Richard, the Rat, about to step into another one.

"The rat's leaving the ship!" He said as he jumped in and with a large whoosh his pod disappeared off into the void. I felt shots hitting the ship and was about to jump into a spare pod when I realised something.

"Pretty-fat-cat!" I shouted, "Please locate Buck Malcolm!"

"Buck Malcolm is in his quarters." Came the reply as I knew it would. His quarters were over the opposite side of the ship. I could ask the computer to let him out, but I couldn't make him walk to an escape pod unless I took him.

"Bugs." I said to myself and turned away from the pods.

There was a hull breach between my position and Malcolm's quarters. The computer had played the safe card and brought the bulkheads shutters down on either side rather than plugging the hole with a force-field. I needed to persuade the computer to use a force-fields rather than the shutters and I needed to persuade myself that the force-field would hold for the time that I needed to pass through the section.

I took a deep breath and gave the commands. The air rushed past me and for a moment I thought that the force-field hadn't held. Then I realised that air from the ship was just filling the void that had been left by the breech. I ran.

Reaching the other side of the wounded section of ship I asked the computer to drop the shutters and forget the force-field. I think that the ship breathed a sigh of relief when it could use the spare energy to just keep the ship together. I reached Malcolm's quarters when the ship started spouting more warnings.

"Warning, unstable Translation Rift has opened. Ship is being dragged in." The warning repeated.

Realising I still held the hand-console I pulled up an outside view.

A measly few thousand miles away there was a tear in the universe. A black rip, miles wide with glowing edges was pulling things in. I tapped the screen to mark out any known points. I counted four escape pods and two other ships. All of their trajectories were aimed at the rift. The rift was growing, by that I knew that we were being pulled in too.

There was a thumping noise in my ears.

I stared at the screen as the rift grew larger and larger. I saw one of the ships attacking us pulled towards the rift and try to pull away. The ship nearly managed it. I saw it clip the edge of the rift and be cut clean in half, one half disappearing through to the rift to Bugs-Knows-Where and the other half staying here - venting fluids and gasses and toppling into some strange orbit of the rift.

I stared as the escape pods were pulled into the rift along with the other of our enemies.

I realised, as the rift grew nearer and nearer, that the thumping was my heart.

I pulled up the dimensions of the rift.

It was, at it's thinnest point, only three feet wider than T.B. was. And we were coming in at an angle.

"Pretty-Fat-Cat." I implored the computer. "Have we any engine power at all? Can we break away from the rift?"

"Manoeuvring jets only." Not powerful enough to do anything but spin the ship around.

That will do.

I've played Elite.

I sat down and configured the console to give me control of the jets and a view out of the front of the ship.

It took me ten minutes to align the ship so that the nose was pointed directly to the rift. The screen gave me four minutes before we hit the rift.

I pushed the ship clockwise around and nearly lined up, just a smidgen past the ideal with a little inertia. I smiled and hit the anti-clockwise jets just a touch to bring us to a perfect approach.

I lost my smile immediately that the anti-clockwise jets fired once then exploded, spinning me round much too fast.

Sweat dripped from my head onto the hand-console.

I had one shot, one chance, to spin the ship back and to stop the spinning. If I fired too much and we started to spin clockwise we'd get sliced by the rift.

---*---

I nearly got it right. The rear of the ship clipped the edge of the rift and we lost another section of Engineering.

The ship started shouting out as soon as we passed through. "Warning, atmospheric insertion. Uncontrolled descent. Ship will crash-land in three hundred seconds and counting."

I shut the count off.

I hadn't got Malcolm out of his bed. I decided that it was best to leave him. I jumped into the room next to him.

I shut the door. The smell nearly floored me. This appeared to be Richard's room. It smelt of rat. Wet rat. Yuck.

"Pretty-fat-cat: put me in a strong IDF until the ship has stopped moving!"

I surrendered to the strawberry-jam feeling.

---*---

I woke up with a start and moved my head. There appeared to be a metal beam passing though the wall next to my head. I yanked the door opened and stepped out. I fell. The floor wasn't flat! I yanked myself up from the bottom of the corridor as far as Malcolm's quarters and yanked the door open. Malcolm fell out, on top of me. Snoring.

We slid down to the end of the corridor and Malcolm started to wake up. Daylight poured over us. The ship was split in half. I pulled myself to the edge of the split and looked out. The drop wouldn't be more than a couple of inches and I dragged a half-asleep Malcolm behind me.

We had crashed into the side of a mountain. Well, large hill really, but the biggest hill around. The air was breathable and the sunlight was warm and pleasing on my face. I looked out onto a green land, maybe a bit too yellow a green colour compared to home, but still green.

Malcolm did his Julie Andrews.

He looked safe, so I asked him to wait.

I climbed back into the ship and made my way towards engineering. In a cupboard, outside of the broken rear of the ship I pulled out a large bottle filled with a faintly-glowing grey jell. Industrial Strength Nano. I looked at the bottle, reading the label. I pulled the noted small tab off the label and slapped it on my neck. The tab melted into my skin, the small amount of control nano worming it's way into my skull to meet the implants I already had.

I climbed out to find Malcolm picking flowers.

He looked safe so I sat down and waited for the interfacing.

A short while later, instructions rolled over my eyes.

This much nano could rebuild a ship completely. It would take time. There were two major settings, "Passive" and "Active". Passive would utilise inert matter only, Active would use any matter for the repairs, animal, vegetable or mineral.

Active could drop the repair time by a factor of ten, but it meant that the ship was off-limits for the duration of the repairs.

I took a little walk around the mountain we were on. The place was rife with flora. I was a country coney, in the countryside.

I could stand life without the ship for a few weeks.

I checked the calculations.

I could stand life without the ship's luxuries for a few months.

The nanoware wanted me to prioritise the repairs. I put Computer Systems above Structural, above Engines above Weapons. The nanoware warned me to keep a minimum safe distance of about three hundred yards. Any nearer and I was likely to be chosen as repair material. I shuddered.

I took Malcolm and hiked down the hill, triggering the Nano once we were a safe distance away.

---*---

That was this morning. I spent the most of the rest of the day looking for foodstuffs.

Below us in the valley I could see a town or village of locals. Once there was spare processing power for some scout 'sects and a new Verbal Translation Matrix I'd investigate.

---*---