Adrift (Steamhardt)

[Mikael Dorony]

Darkness surrounded him. The black threatened to swallow him. It wasn't exactly the way that he had planned to go in the end. The imminence of death loomed over him, poisoning his every move. Mikael was afraid, really. He had never seen this coming. The delivery had been as advertised, a simple crate placed in the right place, covered with branches, and left. No Feds, no law of any kind whatsoever. Not even any curious civilians, not on a moon where the terraforming had never been completed. There was air to breathe, and gravity to walk in. There were trees, yes, but the terrain was unable to support a proper settlement. Too many hills, valleys, crags. Not enough level ground for a single building to be placed. It was a problem, but it allowed the moon to be used as a smuggling area. The feds couldn't see the worth in it. Only the people that had the necessity to use the moon even knew about it. For all other intents and purposes, it was buried in the federal records so deep that most people didn't even know the moon had ever existed. After that, sadly, the entire thing had simply gone...to hell. He hadn't seem them coming, hell, he hadn't even known they were there until the first shot hit the hull. It had smashed him against the control panel, TwoStep screaming at him, in his head. Then the second shot, then the third. The hull breach indicator had flashed, and he had remotely shut off all of the affected spaces.

Jerking on the controls, he had snapped TwoStep to the side, watching three more projectiles speed past the wing. Only then had he bothered to check the rear vid. The ship behind him... He had spat out a string of vile curses, and punched the throttle as hard as he could. TwoStep had vibrated so hard with the intense and sudden acceleration that he had feared that she could break apart. He had held the hard burn as long as he dared, with the ship's shaking growing more and more violent until she broke out of atmo. The ship had sped on into the black, while Mik tried to assess the damage, and calculate repair costs. Then, without any warning, everything had gone black. The lights had died, and even the alarms hadn't sounded. No power...no air...nothing. He had shrugged on the only suit he had, opening it to the remaining air on the bridge for as long as the air would hold out.

Time passed, and he sat there, watching the stars drift slowly by as the ship spun idly. No power... No signal... No signal meant almost no chance of a rescue, unless he had somehow managed to drift into one of the routes between the rim planets and moons. That was unlikely, but it was possible. He had seen the plotted course... Hope still remained.

[Sebastian Gates]

“What do we have here?” Bastian asked the empty room as he reached over to the comm panel and flicked a few switches to hone in on the distress signal he was picking up. Looking over at his nav screen, he took note of the area they were in. The sky wasn’t very safe these days, and although travelling through this area was costing him an extra four days to reach Dardania, it meant avoiding alliance effectively. It was familiar territory to him, which is why he hesitated to change course. More than one ship had fallen to scavengers out by this moon, and Steamhardt wasn’t exactly the best boat for maneuverability, or at least not in his hands. They had no weapons to speak of attached to her either.

Luckily, Bastian was in a relatively good mood. Not so good that he was willing to fly Steamhardt straight into a trap, but good enough that he parked her and headed down to his shuttle. On his way down, he let Cassidy know what was up so he could watch the ship while he was gone and then hopped into his shuttle and set route for the source of the distress signal. Bastian always preferred flying his shuttle to Steamhardt. It wasn’t that he couldn’t fly the big ship, but he knew that he was never meant to actually be a pilot. He was meant for leading a crew and making a family. Over the years, he had to sacrifice many friendships to get where he was now. It had been one of his biggest regrets. So if he had to pilot a ship himself to keep in the air with the crew he’d managed to build, then so be it. It was worth it. It was that same sentiment that kept him from flying Steamhardt straight to the signal. If need be, his shuttle could tow a smaller ship that short distance, and the signal seemed to be coming from a single transport, so if he didn’t end up in a fire fight, things would work out.

As he approached the ship, he sent a wave to let whoever was on board know that help had come. He was close enough for visual, so he waited impatiently for someone to pick up on the other line as he cruised slowly towards the ship. There was still a chance that this could be trap, after all.

_{OoC: I’m sorry this is total crap. >.> I’m bad with first posts on a thread when there isn’t really room to just strike up a random conversation or a bar fight or something. xDD}

[Mikael Dorony]

He knew that it was a long shot that anyone would be out here. Hell, that was why the package had come here in the first place. Nobody there to find it, not until the actual target of the drop showed up. There would be a problem if the Reavers were still there, of course, but that was none of his business. Right now, his business was surviving, and that would be difficult if he couldn't fix TwoStep, or at least her distress signal. She was small enough that she didn't have any shuttles to go off in, so he couldn't rig together a distress system from spare parts, either. With a sigh, he pulled on the helmet, checking the seals three times before opening the emergency service hatch that led down to the engine room. The tiny amount of atmosphere that had remained in the bridge rushed out through the hole. There was a breach somewhere down there... Maneuvering his weightless body through the hatch, he shoved off, speeding down through the ship, dropping out of the overhead in the engine room. Usually, he hated using the service tunnels, but right now, he needed to get around easily, and they did present the best opportunity for that. What he saw when he straightened up on the deck made him freeze. The bulkhead that had made up the port side of the engine room was completely gone, open to space. The melted metal extended to the engine, half of it torn away and missing. Quietly, he swore. No way he was moving anywhere. He anchored his boots to the deck and took a few weary steps before he saw what he was looking for. Praise be to a gracious ship dealer. The man he had bought it from had seen fit to include a small back up generator. Not enough to bring life support back online. He was pretty sure that the entire system had been on the port side anyway. Fortunately, it was enough to power a Comm system.

Working as fast as his caution would let him, he tied the generator into the communications circuits, twice having to make a bypass around missing parts of the system. It wasn't a pretty fix, not by a long shot, but it would allow him to send out a signal. That gave him some hope. Kicking off the deck, he floated back up the service hatch to the bridge, checking the comm lights. They were on, and he gave a thankful sigh as he settled into his custom pilot chair. With a wince, he flicked on the distress signal, watching as the light began to blink red, indicating that the signal was, in fact, getting out. He checked his suit. It was still working fine, but he had a finite amount of air. Sooner or later, even if someone did show up, he would be dead, and TwoStep would be scrap metal for scavenging. He hated to think of it that way. The ship was his life, and if he was going to leave her... There had to be another way.

To his surprise, there was a signal return. There was another ship out there. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of it through the viewport. It looked like a cargo vessel, which could be good, or bad. It might be a smuggler, in which case his luck might have run out, as many smuggler captains had few hesitations about eliminating small problems that stood in the way of a score. On the other hand, it might just be a regular cargo hauler. As it swung by the viewport again, he saw a small shuttle break off from the ship. The comm buzzed, and a blurry picture appeared on the monitor. Apparently, the generator wasn't powerful enough to give him a clear enough signal for real visual. He could see the basic shape of a face, but nothing definate. "Hello?" He said, speaking through the suit's Comms, tying it into TwoStep. "I think I might need some help here, though I don't know if there's anything I can do for my ship. Half my engine's been melted away, and the life support system is no longer part of the vessel. If it's not too much to ask, I'm running out of air here, so I'll open the airlock for docking..." He swung himself out of the bridge, falling back through the service hatch into the engine room, then through another to the bottom level, into the small cargo bay. There, he waited until he heard the sound of a ship coupling with the airlock, punching the button to open it as soon as the light flashed green.