Do Unto Others

[Rusty]

The first sign that things were really screwed came when the Captain eased the hyperdrive levers back, hoping to drop the Wicked Grace out of hyperspace. They would be stuck adrift, but Rusty was reasonably certain he could reach someone with that fancy hypercomm system. It might take a few days for someone to get out there, but they had supplies enough to last.

If they couldn't translate back into realspace, however, things were a lot more dire. It would take less than three hours to overshoot their destination. In a day they'd be halfway across the sector. If they couldn't translate back at all, it was only a matter of time before they either brushed up against a mass shadow or hit the turbulence at the edge of the galaxy that had spelled doom for many a ship. Only the Vong had ever crossed the emptiness between the stars, and not even they remembered how they did it.

Depending upon what the problem was, they might have no choice but to drift. There were spares for vital components, but it could just as easily be something too large to carry a spare for, or too unimportant to have paid much attention to until it broke.

"Well, [bleep]."

 

[Malia Afredane]

Everything she tried to get them back to realspace failed and the faint gleam of panic took hold behind her eyes. She flew out of the cockpit, running a dead sprint down the corridor to engineering where the hyperdrive was. As the door opened, the faint scent of ozone filled the air denoting that something electrical had sparked and burned. This was turning into a nightmare scenario.

She bolted to the nearest console and tried to start a disagnostic, the systems were scrambled and still trying to reboot themselves. In the meantime, she was yelling about not having a proper astromech on a ship this old.

"RUSTY! Get in here!"

He had tools she didn't, and he was used to talking to the systems on Gracie better than she ever could. If internal systems were down, he most likely had an external that could at least give them an idea of where to start looking.

[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

"Right behind you, Captain!"

The Shard had raced off to his workshop in search of his toolkit. The detour had cost him precious seconds in getting to the engineering bay, but it was well worth it. It had everything a mechanic needed to fix a problem, and more than a few things he'd want. He squeezed past the Captain to get a look around. First thing's first: prevent any further damage.

"Mal, I need you to flip the breakers and kill power to the hyperdrive."

His voice was calm, authoritative, and confident. Rusty trusted the Captain with his life, and he had no reason to doubt that they'd pull through this. And even if he didn't, letting panic creep into his voice would have just reinforced any thoughts of panic or despair lurking in the Captain's mind.

"Soon as you do, I should be able to get in here and see what went wrong."

[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Malia Afredane]

She was off as soon as he said it, her movements smooth and fluid as she crossed to the panel and shut down the power to the hyperdrive. The thud of the switches and the silence that followed in its wake was eerie, and the interior lights flickered as the drain on the generator changed. She looked back to him, the console next to him still blank as the system froze without input from the offline hyperdrive.

"What's your thoughts off the bat? We get too near to something? I wasn't detecting another mass shadow when it happened."

[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

As soon as the power was off, Rusty dove in and began pulling things out.

"There shouldn't have been anything in our flight path. Anything large enough to do this sort of damage would have yanked us out of hyperspace."

It was clear that there was a power surge somewhere along the line. The null field generator was in a state of shutdown, with its own breakers clearly having been popped. Fortunately, it looked like the power surge hadn't damaged it much. The breakers would need to be reset, and the Shard would eat the Captain's shoes if every fuse on the thing wasn't blown, but the safety mechanisms had done their job. Unfortunately, it looked like the generator's on backup power was still on, meaning the field would stay in place and wasn't about to shut off any time soon. Its sole purpose was to keep them in hyperspace, and if all the failsafes were tripped and it wasn't getting information about the rest of the hyperdrive, it didn't know to deactivate.

"I think I found what's keeping is in hyperspace," he called back to the Captain. "If I can get the null field generator into shutdown without destroying it or us, we should be able to drop out and call for help."

[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Malia Afredane]

A brand new hyperdrive was the kind of thing that put a serious dent into a smuggler's pocket. It could spell the end of a particular venture unless you could find someone to finance the replacement. This is how people ended up indebted to Hutts. She looked into the inner workings of the hyperdrive and nodded at him.

"Do it."

It took a few minutes of screwing around with the null field generator and a string of colorful words and beeps from Rusty before the ships shuddered and crossed back into realspace. With the hyperdrive offline, she was able to get into the nav controls and try to figure out where they were. The sensors were working a little clunky, so the calculations for trajectory took a few moments.

Nav's chewing on where we are. Gonna be a few minutes before we can call for help. Gotta figure out where we are and who to call."

She looked over at him, still not completely used to him having human features. For years, he had been in a robot chassis. Now, he had fleshy bits and yet the filter that bleeped out his curses was still intact. It was one of the only ways to tell that he wasn't an organic.

She decided to go for blunt. Figured he would appreciate it.

"You enjoy that body?"

[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty sat back and breathed a sigh of relief as the ship transitioned into realspace. They weren't out of the woods yet, but at least they could call for help. Assuming, of course, that the hypercomm wasn't fried.

While the Captain tried to sort out where they were, the Shard started diagnostics on their best chance of getting help. It was clear after a few minutes that the device hadn't been affected by whatever incident had taken out the hyperdrive. The trick now was figuring out where they were and who they call. Kairon would probably come running if asked, and the Shard network could prove useful as well. However, that was the Captain's call to make.

He chuckled at the pun, and went into the cockpit. It was clear the Captain had something on her mind, something other than the hyperdrive.

"It's...different," he said after a few minutes. "I've got to stay in it for a few more weeks to properly calibrate the thing, at which point I need to decide whether or not to make it permanent or have it modified for storage when I'm not using it."

He shrugged.

"There are parts I like. Food is nice, and so is alcohol. Sex is amazing. It's harder to keep my emotions in check though, and I'm not terribly fond of pain."

 

[Malia Afredane]

When he mentioned sex, Mal froze in place, her fingers hovering over the keypad as her mind tried to process what he had just said.

"Sex...? You've had..."

She shuddered herself out of the shock and refocused on the screen in front of her.

"I don't need to know, that's your business."

Still...she was confused on who or what he was having sex with. He was not the kind to seek out hookers, superfluous extravagances made the Shard annoyed. Not to mention, his read of people was so glaringly off sometimes, she wondered how he managed to flirt and then succeed in bedding a partner.

The entire mental exercise nearly shut Mal's brain down and she very consciously made the effort to take care of her task before continuing the conversation.

"Which way are you leaning? With the HRD? Gonna keep it or shelve it?"

[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty chuckled at the Captain's obvious befuddlement. He had actually sorta halfway learned to read emotions, and he had an idea of the cause of her consternation.

"I was sure we had this conversation. You know, while you and Captain Rees were off together, there was that thing on Bastion with the shapeshifter...no? Not ringing a bell?"

The Shard knew he shouldn't be finding this funny. But, after years of not getting the jokes or understanding how or why the Captain would react to certain things, it was kinda nice to be in on it. Of course, it only lasted a few seconds before it was his turn to shudder. She and Kairon had been alone together. Did they do that stuff too? He suppressed a shudder at the thought. He doubted their tastes were as, um, varied as Laguz's, but up until this moment, the Captain had just been the Captain. It had never occurred to him that she might have tastes. Sure, he knew she was fond of the opposite sex, but he just hadn't made the connection.

It was like a little piece of the universe had suddenly shifted, and the Shard didn't know whether to be exhilarated or saddened by it. Certainly a little embarrassed by it. No more walking around the ship without a shirt.

"I think the robot life is a lot simpler" he said, after shaking off the realization that the Captain was, in fact, a woman. "Much, much simpler. But there are enough perks to this that I honestly don't know. I mean, it's not like it would be forever. This body will age and die, and it's only rated for 50 years. That's not a whole lot of time on my scale, so it wouldn't be much trouble to keep it around. If you want me to, that is."

Left unspoken was something they had come to terms with years ago: she would grow old and die, and he would not. That had been something they had both struggled with when they first started working together, because no matter how you looked at it, it would suck for the both of them as years went by.

[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Malia Afredane]

"Your appearance is up to you. No me or anyone else. Just wonderin', that's all."

She felt it too, something changed in that conversation. She treated him like family, but she had never ascribed anything like real gender or sexuality to his actions. Now, as much as he realized she was a woman, she realized he was a "he." The computer quit chewing on the calculations and spit out their current location, and Mal breathed a sigh of relief, somewhat.

"We're sitting somewhere in space near Umgul. We're not too far from Alliance territory so long as we can raise someone. We're a little close to the TU borders for my tastes and I'm not sure I would like the help I could get from them."

She turned away from the console, looking over at him.

"Whaddaya say? Who do we call for help?"

[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

"You're no help," Rusty muttered.

The temptation to stay in the HRD was strong, and he wasn't making any headway. Oh well. They'd get drunk and hash it out at some point. There were more pressing issues at the moment.

"TU space is bad. We do not want them involved. Between the arrest last time and uh, some stuff that went on after, I do not want them getting their noses stuck in."

He hadn't yet told Mal what happened to the Techno Union officer that had tortured them all. He kept tabs on the Zabrak from time to time. Apparently, she was in intensive care at the moment. Something about trying to jump off a building. The fall hadn't killed her, but she was even more messed up than ever.

"Alliance is probably our best bet. I've got enough cash squirreled away to pay for the part, and they're not likely to jump on us about this particular cargo. It's mostly legit, right?"

 

[Malia Afredane]

She shrugged off his comment. His life was his business and she felt distinctly lately that she had less and less right to comment on it. He was older than Gracie. He was a big rock, he could make his own decisions. Her comfort level about his appearance was not his problem and she would get used to the HRD or he would switch. Either way, he was still Rusty.

"It's all legit. I checked and double checked this one."

She was not dealing with another potential headache or any Hutts any time soon. She was still getting Sempra's slime off her tongue and that was months ago now. She tried to access the coms panel from the console in engineering and that earned another round of curses as she punched the keys hard with her fingers. If she had nails, she probably would have broken them.

"The coms are acting squirrely, can you tweak them and get a message out or do I need to take this to the cockpit?"

[member="Rusty"]