One in Twelve Thousandth Percent

Chapter 11:

March 30, Intergalactic Spaceship Angel

I wake up with a throbbing migraine. A loud noise brings me to full alert. I look around to see where I am.

Oh, I'm on the balcony. How the hell did I get up here?

I look over the side and see the FTL drive pulsating red and purple and making horrible noises. Everyone down on the first floor is out. I go to stand up and get thrown down as the ship shakes violently. Several times I try to get up just to fall again. I crawl around to the ladder going down and slowly make my way down to the first floor. Once I get down there, I try to walk again only to get tossed like a ragdoll.

Well, walking obviously isn't the proper method of transportation right now. Ugh...

Crawling my way over, I see the main terminal for the drive. I climb up it to find it's shorted out. There's this weird green liquid all over it. I look over to see that tube spraying liquid everywhere. Coolant, right, I remember now. Looking over, I see a panel on the side of the drive. Crawling over to it, I pop it off and look inside. There's coolant all over everything in here too.

Suddenly the ship rocks again, throwing me away from the open panel and sliding me across the room. I hurry back and look inside. I see the wires coming from the main power supply. I grab and pull them loose. With one final violent shake, the FTL drive immediately powers down and the ship stops rocking.

"Parker to the FTL room. What the hell happened down there?"

"Craft here. We had an altercation that happened down here right as we were initiating a jump."

"Shit, I was afraid of that. What was it?" I look around and start helping wake the others up.

"You mean who was it? Hikari Bagley."

"Wait, what? She wasn't assigned to this mission. She should have still been at the station."

"I know." I go get Annabelle and a couple of the other science officers first. "Apparently, she snuck on the ship and came looking for me. She had a knife on her and had murder on the brain." Upon hearing this, the science officers remember what happened and get rope to tie Hikari up. I look over as they are tying her up. "That will only work so much. Until she duplicates, then she can get out. She needs to be locked up and away from me quickly."

They nod and haul her out of the room. That's when I see Misaki laying on the floor in the hallway. I run over to her. "Hey, babe. Come on, wake up." I shake her a bit until I see her eyes flutter open. "Mmmmm. OW. I feel like I got hit by a train." I help her sit up. "Yeah, me too. Several times." She looks around. "Is everyone okay?" She stands up with my help. "I think so. But the entire FTL room needs some work and the drive is out of order for a while."

I forgot that I still had Meira on comms. "Shit, really? That's not good news. But I know I can count on you girls to figure out what's wrong with it." Misaki perks up. "Absolutely, ma'am." We walk back into the room to see Annabelle frantically running around trying to see what's still working. "AHHHH!!! My project!!" She looks over when the door opens. "Kaylin, Misaki. I'm glad you're alright. Do you see what happened to the drive?"

I nod. "Yeah, I had to pull the main power in order to drop us out of the jump. I haven't even checked in to see where we are yet." Again, I forgot I still had Meira on comms. "Kay, we're checking our system maps now. I'll get back to you on that one. Just let me know if you have an update on the drive. And Kay, check on the main engine room too will ya?"

"Will do, ma'am."

"Parker out."

"Ok, first things first. Let's get damage control on these consoles." I start pointing at various places. "I'll go get my tools and see what's going on inside the broken panels. Babe, will you be okay?" She nods at me and limps over to a console to run a diagnostic.