Another Fine Mess

Posted on Sun Apr 14th, 2019 @ 11:21am by Ensign Fiona O'Dell & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Ensign Briaar Gavarus

Mission: Detours
Location: Kabul system asteroid belt, outer ring
Timeline: 2396
Tags: Odd Couple, Below Decks

The lights in the cockpit of the small 2-man craft flicked with the light of a soldering gun, as thick-fingered hands in EVA armor attempted to do fine detail work that required a workshop and tools. The bright red craft with the modern Starfleet delta on the wing tumbled slowly on an elliptical arc, ever so slowly moving toward the denser-packed field of asteroids.

"So how's it goin back there, aye?" came a cheery voice across the comms.

Hunched over in the backseat of the small, Cyclone-class vehicle dubbed 'the Cherry Bomb', engineering assistant Briaar Gavarus let out an irritated snort from inside her gold clad EVA suit. "Well, it could be going better in that LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS BROKEN!!"

The oversized, pig-like Tellarite woman dramatically shook the fried circuit board in her hands. "This god damned contact is completely useless. Another dead end in figuring out WHY we're floating out here in the middle of nowhere. But thank you for ASKING, Fiona!"

Letting go, the circuit board floated away in the canopy of the powerless craft while Gavarus sulked in the backseat.

"Maybe... we could boost the comm signal, take apart one of our comm badges to... oh, right, vacuum. The engine's still back there makin power, aye? S'just that all the systems blew when she shorted, so she sparks when she powers up. An we canna bring up simple controls cuz Gonadie routed everything through one master system, and that took a hit, so now we're..." Ensign Fiona O'Dell held up her right hand, some of the EVA interior still scorched. Her fingers twitched, then her hand began to shake spasmodically.

"Boot we'll figure it oot, Gavarus. We'll git outta this somehow'r another, aye?"

Generally, the porcine engineer's default setting was to be argumentative, but she choked back a sarcastic come back as, instead, her attention had been taken up as she watched O'Dell try to not draw attention to her injury.

There was a brief few seconds of silence as Gavarus tried to force herself to calm down, which only served to ramp up her growing frustration. "The engine has power, but we can't get it to our systems! The power flow regulators are fused, life support is limited to our suits, the main computer seems to be exploded and the power feedback fried the HUD's of our EVA systems."

As Gavarus spoke, resuscitating the laundry list of their woes, she got more wound up. "Add to that, everything went tits up at warp throwing us so far off course that the Hera won't even know where to look for us once we've missed the next check in! I can't see the systems to even TRY and diagnose the problems and to top it all off, we're SLOWLY DRIFTING INTO AN ASTEROID FIELD!!!

Sitting helplessly in the back seat, Gavarus groaned loudly. "UUUGGH! Sorry. Needed to get that out."

"I know ye love a good argument but I canna argue inny a'that," O'Dell chuckled, a bit of a forced sound. There was silence for a moment, then she spoke again, her voice a bit stronger. "We're nae g'win ta die oot here. I dinna escape from Mariposa to die in a coffin oot here in deep space wi' you. Alla them stupid boys who only wanted one thing, all cock an' swagger wi' nae a brain amongst them- hey!"

"Ye said... ye said the engine and the power plant's intact, right?" When she spoke, there was some excitement in the compact copilot's voice. "There's joost no brains, no way ta direct it since everything up here took a shite. But what if we went EVA, hooked me suit directly into the engine? We could use it to start the engines and navigate, e'en joost at impulse, maybe find a way to use it to boost the signal from our armor through the deflector? Rig it oop like a Ferengi Dabo table on a cruise ship!"

Looking down at the compact computer rig on the forearm of her EVA suit, Gavarus thought over O'Dell's idea. O'Dell's suit was damaged, but her own wasn't, aside from the inoperable HUD. "Are you insane? I mean... Aside from just the danger of micro-meteors from the asteroid field penetrating you suit, we have... there's... No, that's crazy. That's a crazy idea."

“Ah know tis not a very elegant solution, but… we have ta do something. I’m wee, I kin hide behind her while she flies and if ye bolt me onto the back of the hull I willnae lose me grip. I’ve got maybe two hours of oxygen left, prolly less. We have ta try something while we still can. I’d rather die tryin’ than just freeze ta death while I hyperventilate and turn the same color as the hull.” The cheery enthusiasm that was usually her hallmark faltered a bit at that, and the little leprechaun’s voice quavered. “Please, Briaar. I canna do it alone.”

Biting her fleshy lip for a second, the anxious engineer was looking around the cockpit, trying to avoid the he topic until she couldn't anymore. "You can't do it at all!"

"You're... your suit's damaged. Those burns fried your EVA's on board computer, so you'd have no way to link the engines to the ships systems or control them." Briaar was talking almost as fast as O'Dell's usual speed.

"You're idea is good. I've been thinking about... It would... AAAGH!! the angry Tellarite yelled in frustration. "I would have to go out and do it. You need to be in here to actually FLY!"

“I kin… I kin navigate by the stars and their positions. I kin do the math, I think. If our suits be close enough to the hull we can e’en try a warp hop, get back to the right neighborhood, methinks… we should be alreet. I kin do it, I can. I dinna need to be in here ta fly, the cockpit’s naught but fried components and parts after that power surge, so I kin be back there with ye so we kin work together. Or we could try to boost a comm signal to send an SOS to the Hera or innyone listenin’. Or… or…” the voice of the desperate ensign tapered off, the only sound escaping her a rather small sniffle.

"Look... Just... You're tiny, turn around and scootch up here. I need to see your suit." Frustrated, Gavarus was trying to work through the problem.

“Alreet… alreet…” came the reply as O’Dell struggled with the flight harness, unbuckling herself from the Cyclone’s pilot’s couch with some difficulty. As the fried crispy flight yoke was inactive, it didn’t hinder her as she turned around, then grunted as she maneuvered to get most of her upper body up and over the seat. Her hands were still curled into twitching claws, a few of the fingers of the suit melted together by the electrical surge that had coursed through the little pilot in the accident, which had fried most of the ship and her armor's systems. More than a few perfectly spherical droplets floated inside her helmet, even as more had attached themselves to the interior of her faceplate. The tiny test pilot summoned up a smile.

Trying not to look at O'Dell's hands, Gavarus felt her stomach flip over out of concern.

“Bet yuir glad ye signed on ta be a test engineer wi’me now, aye?” The laugh that followed the statement was not at all convincing, but the Mariposian maiden was trying to maintain good spirits.

"Of course. Who else is going to put up with all that obnoxious cheer. C'mere." Gavarus kept a purposefully straight face as she reached forward and began looking at O'Dell's helmet.

Grabbing the soldering iron from her tool kit, Gavarus used it as a light source to examine the comm relay panel located behind the right ear area. "That's what I thought. That same surge that knocked out everything shorted out our A/V connections. Hold on."

Popping the panel out, Gavarus held it up in front of the light. "I need both hands to do this. Can... can you hold the light?"

Taking the light from the thick-fingered hand, O’Dell wedged the cylindrical flashlight between her thumb and forefinger, not stoic enough to do it without a sound but she was definitely biting her lower lip to stifle any recognition of the pain. The light was unsteady, as was her hand, but she had it held, and she was doing her best to maintain her grip and hold the light source steady.

“Herself is gonna be awfully mad we scratched her bebeh. After we trashed her so thoroughly, we might joost be on deck scrubbing duties from here on out, aye?” Giving the Tellarite engineer something to grumble about might help keep her mind off the situation, and make her annoyed at something other than the flickering light source.

"Not if we can get it up and running again. We hit... something... while at warp. Before the computer exploded, I saw a massive spike in the lower band of the EM wave and a powerful gravimetric distortion. Maybe a cosmic string or even a quantum filament. You hit a pothole in space, Fiona." Gavarus wasn't particularly good at being comforting, but she was making her best effort.

“Well, that explanation’ll go over a whole lot better’n ‘and then everything kinda exploded, ma’am’, so at least when we get back she can only be so mad,” Fiona chattered, still looking on the bright side and trying to keep the engineer distracted with her usual patter.

"Pulled the interface chip from the waste reclamation pathway circuitry. It can be used to reroute power to your HUD." Gavarus plugged the circuit panel back into place on O'Dell's helmet. With a click, the circuit began to hum.

"So, if you have to take a piss, I'd hold it in." After a second, there was a flicker as O'Dell's EVA suit hummed back to life and the visor began to give off a slight glow to replace the torch for illumination.

“Way too late fuir that, I emptied meself doing the St. Elmo’s Fire jig when the feedback surge came through the controls,” the impish astronaut joked, although it was the truth. Right now she was grateful no one else could smell her, particularly her Tellarite partner in crime, whose nose tended to be sensitive to such odors.

"There we go. You've got internal power running again. No computer linkage as your control is fused, but life support should be stable, so you'll live to annoy me another day." Gavarus let out a sigh.

“Let it nivver be said ye’re only good fuir shade,” the pilot declared trying to needle Gavarus to keep her mind off the situation. “So what’s next? How kin we rig her to run? What do we have ta do?”

"Well... first thing I need to do is get my suit's systems up an running. If my on board computer is fried too, then we're just whistling in the dark, here." Briaar replied, flumping back in her seat.

Reaching up with her thick, three fingered hand, she gently popped the control panel out of the side of her own helmet. Using the glow from the pixie pilots helmet's internal lighting, Gavarus began reworking the fused pathways to get her system active again.

"So, you... 'escaped' Mariposa? That sounds needlessly dramatic." Gavarus started talking to hope and distract from the task ahead as she worked.

“Weeeellllll… I may have been a tad dramatic aboot it,” O’Dell admitted, watching Gavarus work intently while she relayed her tale, still holding the light as best she could to help. “All me brothers went off to marry, and as I was growing up, it was pretty evident I was the runt of the litter. By the time the other girls were blossomin’, I was still joost a wee thing. Turns out I had a hormone deficiency, nobody ever thought to check. S'a form a' dwarfism. Least I didn't get a webby neck or weird ears. Technically I'm a dwarf, but I prefer 'little person'. By the time the other girls were headed off to find themselves a bonny lad, I was still built like a 10 year old boy, and aboot the same size. So most wanted nae to do wi’me, and the ones who did… well, ye dinna want to be spendin time wi’fellas what get turned on by the likes a’me.”

Scrunching her face while she listened, Gavarus was annoyed. She and O'Dell insulted each other playfully, but the young Engineer found herself unexpectedly upset listening to O'Dell put herself down.

“So, I joined Starfleet. They said it’s always easier ta have smaller pilots so they fit in the cockpit, but it’s… well, I dinna have any advantage bein wee, that’s fer sure. But I made it in and I made it through flight school and I made it to the fleet, so here I am, livin’ the dream, aye?” The petite pilot started to try to do jazz hands, winced in pain and regret for the action, then she turned the question around.

“What aboot ye? No great strapping hunk of pork on yuir planet ta keep ye tied down?”

"No." Gavarus replied brusquely as she worked. "Everyone that showed even a little bit of interest was an idiot."

“Aye, that sounds familiar enuff,” O’Dell agreed.

Holding up the circuit board to the light, Gavarus smiled a bit. "And I can't stand idiots. So, Starfleet seemed like the place to go to reduce the ratio of idiots I'd have to suffer. There we go. Let's see how this works."

“Seems that idiot ratio’s workin for ye, aye?” The Mariposian pilot knew that the Tellarite had a low threshold for fools, and did not suffer them gladly- present company excluded.

The young Engineer pushed the board back in place and locked it down and waited. "Remember? Nine brothers and seven sisters at home. I couldn't get away from that nightmare fast enough."

Quickly, the systems rebooted and Gavarus' suit was alive again. Relaxing for a second, she took a long, deep breath. "My HUD is up and my system is... Yes! Working. Full sensor readings, including the flight recorder. We DID hit a quantum filament. Took out the ships electrical systems with concentrated EM bursts."

Suddenly, her tone shifted from excited right back to a deflated anxiety. "Shhhhiiiittt."

“That dinna sound good. Did ye poop yuir suit? Did the lieutenant already find us and she’s pissed? What’s wrong now?” The portable pilot’s heart sank at the words, but she was determined not to paint the situation worse than it already was.

"We're not falling towards an asteroid field, we're already in it." Gavarus pointed towards the steadily advancing chunks of rock ahead of them. "Those are the babies. We're well and truly surrounded, so I'm going to have to rewire the ships power to use my EVA systems as the circuit and my HUD as the interface. Which means... Ugh... Going out there."

Going pale, Gavarus gulped loudly. "I can get the systems running and reroute power to the helm, but I have to do so on the o... outside of the ship."

“Well, that’s nae so…” O’Dell began, then she stopped, eyeing her porcine partner. In a conspiratorial whisper, the midget Mariposian asked. “Are you… nae soo fond of EVA, Gavarus?”

At which her tension finally popped, "What's to be FOND of, O'Dell?! Floating around with zero control where micro-meteors, cosmic rays and an infinity of unknown particles can kill you instantly? Looking into the void through a sheet of transparent aluminum a centimeter thick that would boil you where you floated with the smallest crack? Freezing to death if your EVA suit malfunctions?!"

Snorting out an awkward laugh, Gavarus finished her rant. "No, not fond of it at all. Nope... not a bit."

“But… ye work in space…?” O’Dell replied, still a bit confused.

"In a space SHIP!" Gavarus replied, frenetically. "I don't work IN space. I work on a massive ass ship with huge, thick walls and multiple layers of force fields and pretty carpeting to not make you remember how close you are to DEATH!"

"That's what my parents said..." Gavarus took on a forced, sing song intonation as she spoke. "Oh, Bre Bre. You'll come running back the first time you hear a deckplate creak."

As she continued, her tone shifted from panic back to anger. "Well, this is one hell of a CREEK, isn't it! But I'm an engineer! I specialize in flight systems! Where the hell ELSE was I going to go! This is my shit! This is what I do! BUCKLE YOUR ASS BACK DOWN, FIONA!! I'm going the hell out there!!!"

A hero would have known what to say and what to do to calm the frightened engineer, and motivate her to embolden her for the task. But Fiona O’Dell was no hero- she was a newly-promoted test pilot who was in a tremendous amount of pain, whose heart had skipped a few beats already today. A test pilot who was very afraid that the electrical surge she had suffered might have irreparably damaged her hands, taking away the one glimmer of something good in her life, which might be measured in a few more hours at this point, given their dire circumstances. Trapped out here in a desperate situation with seemingly no hope, yelled at by her best friend, she faced a simple choice- fight or flight.

“Well if’n yuir so ascared of the great beyond, then I’m goin witchye,” she yelled back, her own voice a squeaky piercing that carried no threat, and if anything sounded a bit comical with her rolling brogue kicking in full force. “Ye kin strap me to yuir back and I can hold tools and help and we’ll git oota here tagether or nae a’tall. And that’s what’s goin’ ta happen, so doan ye be tellin me ta buckle me arse down ya dunderheaded goabashite!”

Locking the tool kit down and fixing it magnetically in place, Gavarus tugged on her own safety belt and yelled back at O'Dell, "There's still residual atmosphere in the cockpit, so I need you to buckle down or you'll be blown out when I pop the canopy!! It's a SAFETY PRECAUTION!!"

“Fine. FOINE! I’ll strap meself back down so’s I wilna bloow oot inta space and leave ye here stranded wi’ noo way ta navigate!” Fiona yelled back, wriggling back over the top of her seat to start fighting with the seat harness.

At which, Gavarus scrunched back in her seat and knitted her eyebrows as she put her hand on the hatch release and half-whispered to her friend. "Oh my gods, I'm going to soil myself, Fiona. Are you secure?"

“Nae, Ah’m… m’workin’ on it, joost… straps are all tangled, I’ll git it…” Under ordinary circumstances handling the big straps and buckles tended to present a challenge to the small hands of the dwarf-sized dynamo. Fried, twitchy, partially melted and unwilling to move doll-sized hands much made it that much more difficult for her, and she fought to try to get the straps over and around her then fit the buckles into the clasp. It took her a long few minutes to perform a task she could ordinarily wrestle through in her sleep. But today was no ordinary day, and this wasn’t sitting on the flight deck.

When she finished, the little flyer was panting, out of both pain and exertion. “Okay… alreet, I’m buckled in. S’gonna be… s’gonna be okay, Gavarus. I’ll be… I’ll be right here witchye, alreet? Yuir nae goin’ alone. I’m right here ta back ye up, aye?”

Now actively showing her anxiety, Briaar Gavarus's voice dropped to a low gravel. "I... I'll need you here. Letting me know if what I'm doing is working. The first thing I'm going to try and do is reconnect power to helm control, so I need you at the helm. That's how you'll be with me, okay?"

It was clear that the thickly-built Tellarite was terrified, but trying to marshal her courage as she spoke. "I can... I can do this, right?"

“Ye can. Ye kin do this, and I will nae let innything happen to ye,” O’Dell promised, as ludicrous as it seemed for her to say. What was she going to do, gnaw space off at the ankles? “We git oota this together or nae at all. So aye, ye can. Joost remember, one hand for the ship, one hand for ye. Always be thethered. And ye kin attach a line to me too, aye? Because I will nae let ye get away. Yuir me mechanic, and someone has to take the blame fuir alla this wreckage, aye?”

"R... Right... okay. We're both buckled in. Tool kit is secured. Asteroids getting too damn close. Tether... Tether, where's the damn..." As Gavarus fumbled around her EVA suit, her HUD called up the information as she called for it, showing her a schematic of her suit and a retractable tether on her right hip.

"Tether... Got it." She attached the cable to the latch on the edge of the cockpit rim. "Okay. Opening the canopy in three... two... one..."

There was a momentary pause as Gavarus's hand was frozen in place, unmoved as she sat, trying to work up the nerve to actually do it.

“Ye kin do it, Gavarus,” the chirpy voice of the shrimp in the front seat said, trying to encourage the big woman to push past her fear. “Ship’ll be here, I’ll be here. It’s alreet ta be scared. I’m bluiddy terrified. But ye have ta fix us if we’re nae to die here, and I believe in ye. Please, Briaar?”

Taking a deep breath, Gavarus girded herself as she gripped the handle tight. "Okay. Fine. Let's do this then." With a click, she turned the handle.there was a pop and a hiss as the canopy raised and the remaining atmosphere hissed away.

"Well. The atmospheric seals totally work. Heh." Gavarus chuckled awkwardly as she began biting her lower lip. The Cherry Bomb began to drift down from it's prior course, moved by the venting air.

"Okay... Here I go." Which her hands shaking like crazy, Briaar fumbled to release her harness would a click the vibrated through the EVA suit. Immediately she began to hover off of her seat up towards the stars. "Oooh... I'm going to vomit."

"Ye vomit ye swim in it. S'like a bloody rainforest in me helmet from all me blubberin, but that's nae puke..." the tiny twerp thought about it, and her own fear finally got the best of her, and she started yelling at her compatriot. "Suck it oop, ye great chicken-livered swine! Ye dinna hae time fur alla this distraction! Look at the ship! Don't pay you no mind to them rocks gettin closer alla time, doan look at the vastness of space, look at the bluiddy ship and fix the bluiddy ship or yuir wee upset tummy is g'win ta be the least a'yuir problems! Git oot there, noow!"

Crawling slowly out of the Runabout, Gavarus activated the gravity boots of her EVA suit and took a hesitant step onto the exterior hull of the Cherry Bomb. "V... Very inspirational. Ooohhh my gods..."

Pulling the tool box out, Gavarus slowly clomped to the rear of the Cyclone and unlocked the rear panel to show the ships engine. "Okay... This... This isn't that bad. The core... The core is intact."

Taking a breath, the shuddering engineer pulled the retractable cables from her arm mounted computer and plugged them into the engine casings and called up a diagnostic. "O... Okay. Main power coupling is fused. I can re re-route that through the ships secondary... No. That will overload the eps taps and..."

As Gavarus worked, a small chunk of rock floated slowly past her face and she jumped back, almost jerking free of the Cyclone. "AAAAHH!! UH.."

"Wha? What is it?!?" In the cockpit, O'Dell struggled to free herself from the flight harness she's just spent five minutes getting into.

After a few seconds, Gavarus pulled herself back to the engine, wincing slightly. "Ah hells... Really wish the waste reclamation system was working. Damn."

In the pilot's seat, the terrified picayune pilot tore and tugged at her restraints until a hissing began between two of her knuckles, and an alarm went off in her suit. Scrabbling at her suit, she pulled out the patch kit, fumbled it, grabbed it with both hands and a whimper of pain, then reeled it back into herself. Fumbling to work the patch kit with her crispy fingers, O'Dell muttered to herself.

"Shut oop, shut oop, stop it wi'yuir bawlin or yuir g'win ta drown yuirself in yuir helmet ye daft cow. Joost do the thing. That's all, joost do the thing and yuir suit won't leak out and ye get to live a few minutes more I dowanna die I dowanna die oh lord jaysis I dowanna die." She didn't want to be broadcasting either, yet as she patched the leak in her glove, the panicked pilot was babbling, the situation far more than she was prepared to handle.

"I'm okay, Fiona! I just got freaked out. I'm okay. Everything is okay! We're gonna be FINE!" Gavarus called out from the rear of the ship. She could hear O'Dell over the comm but couldn't disconnect yet.

"I'm almost done. I think I've got it...figured... out." Gavarus looked up to see a massive asteroid slowly rolling down towards their position. On her HUD, the computer tracked it's ETA at sixty seven seconds to impact.

Looking back, the terrified engineer began scrambling to finish re-routing the power to helm control. Half the Cyclone's circuitry was fried and it was a frantic race to complete a direct connection that wouldn't short out under the required power. With thirty seconds to go, the engine hummed back to life as the ships exterior lights kicked back on. "I... I think that's it, Fiona! Is... Is the helm active? Is there power up there?!"

"Aye... aye, there's power! There's no computer boot it's nae shorting oot either, ye bypassed it. So..." Shaking her head to streak the tears that were accumulated in her helmet out of her line of sight of the HUD, O'Dell flipped through the menus looking for where her jack port was located on the suit, then realized it was fried, as the engineer had mentioned earlier.

"I've nut all to do wi'it, but she's got power." Studying the stars ahead, astrogation in your head wasn't the easiest task. But they were probably still somewhere in the Kabul system. "Trill is over there, Cardassia is over... there? There... which means Bajor is there... mayyyyybe? So Kabul 3.5 is likely there, which at warp 2 would get us there in twenty two minutes... maximum warp of the Scorpion is eight for 8 hours, so half that for safety is warp four, which cuts down travel time to 5.5 minutes But warp three would be a safer play, travel time 11 minutes."

"Okay. Alreet, we kin do this! Punch in the coordinates on a timer to give ye a chance to get back in the ship, aye? 185 mark 47, warp 3, 11 minutes."

As O'Dell was taking, Gavarus was scrambling to disconnect from the ships engine and seal back up the side of the ship. Once complete, she grabbed her tool kit and rushed back into the cockpit, panting. "Okay, Go! Gogogogogogogogo!!"

Scrambling to plug the a/v leads into the port by her seat, Gavarus was in a mild panic as she linked her suit's computer to replace the ship's. With a chirp, the proximity alarm went off.

=^= Impact in 10 seconds. =^=

On the newly restored screens, the feed from Gavarus' sensors revealed the asteroid right on to of them as the frantic engineer slammed the canopy shut, still unbuckled in her seat.

"I CANNA GO, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SET-" O'Dell squealed from the front seat, even as the stars smeared around them, and the little ship went to warp as both women screamed.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHH!!!!"

Said screams changed to hysterical laughter and shouts of triumph as it sank in that they were liable to survive.

"Ye did it! Oh, ye great bundle of bad attitude and back bacon, ye did it! Ye saved us! I could kiss ye!" O'Dell hysterically laughed from the front seat, emotionally wrung out but relieved.

"Well then, let's all be happy we're wearing helmets!" Gavarus snorted a laugh as she released her death grip on the seat ever so slightly. As she did, her comm system chirped through the ships restored computer connection.

"...une to Cherry Bomb, Runabout Selune to Cherry Bomb, do you read?!" Came the voice of Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox.

"This... this is Cheery Bomb! Cherry Bomb!" O'Dell scrambled to work her comm unit, which was picking up the signal from the Cyclone's transmitter. The computer was still trashed, but the interactive technologies were designed to work together, which enabled the suit comms to control and interact with the transmitter. "We read ye! Aye ma'am, we're here! We're takin' a blind warp hop to the following coordinates... we had a wee bit of mishap and hit a space pothole, and saints alive is it good to hear yuir voice, Lieutenant!"

After a brief moment of comm lag, Dox replied. "Good to hear you, too. Miss. O'Dell. I trust your Engineer is still with you?"

"Aye, Lieutenant. We're still... essentially... in one piece. Looks like we may have hit a quantum filament at warp and blew most of the systems. Ensign O'Dell is going to require Medical assistance ASAP, but we're still here," Gavarus called back over the comm.

"We're en route to the co-ordinates now. Evac and medical standing by. We've had every Runabout and shuttle out sweeping the quadrant for you two. Very good to hear your voices. Dox out."

As the comm went silent, Gavarus slumped back in her seat and sighed. "We're not dead. I can't believe we're not dead."

“We’re nae dead because you saved us, aye? Ye got oot there and fixed the engine and got her some instructions so we could not end up splattered like a boog on a windshield. I’m g’win ta put ye in fuir a bluiddy medal, Gavarus,” the pipsqueak pilot chirped from the front seat.

Rolling her eyes from the back seat, Gavarus shifted in her suit, feeling the warm wetness still present. "I don't think engineers who piss themselves in their space suits because a rock floated by... I don't think they give out medals for that, Leprechaun. I'm just happy to be not dead."

"And... ew... I'll be happier to be dry. Ugh... it went down into my boots." Gavarus groaned from the rear of the cockpit.

“Ahhh, I been sittin in me own bastin’ since we wrecked, so I promise not to tell innyone if you don’t. At least it han’t foated back oop, aye?” With rescue on the horizon, the good cheer that was her hallmark was rapidly returning to the diminutive doll. “Yuir secret’s safe with me, ye great leviathan.”

"Fine with me." Gavarus grunted, uncomfortably. "We will live to hide our mutual shame. And speaking of 'mutual', don't think you're getting out of this. If it wasn't for you we wouldn't be here, either. You charted our course without the computer, looking at the god damned stars and flew us out without your hands AND talked me off the proverbial ledge."

“I guess it wasn’t the stupidest idea that’s ever crossed me mind,” the starfaring sprite agreed. After a slight pause, she added, “We make a pretty good team, aye? Thanks for… thanks for believin' in me, aye?”

From the rear, Briaar Gavarus sighed audibly. "You're quite welcome. And... Ya'know... thank you for... for... well, you know!" She was clearly having an emotional moment herself, but preferred to express that as irritation.

"Just... No hugs." The irascible Tellarite added, "At least until we're no longer... marinating. Ugh "