Time to Leave

Jamie straightened himself up. He had been thrown against the wall of the block of machines he was caught between by the force of their increase in altitude.

Checking the computer again, he swore.

"Still decaying..." He said. He was used to situations like this though, a station this old, this unfamiliar, and in an orbit so decayed, it would take half the fuel reserves of a new station to get it to a safe orbit. This station was far from those qualities.

"Ok, we're safe for now." Jamie said through the comm system. "We've got the best part of a day before the orbit decays to a point that there's nothing we can do. Time to leave." He said, and just before he turned to walk away, he said "I'll meet you all at the docking bay."

He turned to leave. Then turned back to the computer as he swore again. Their ship was gone. There was nothing attached to any of the docking clamps aboard the station. Perhaps Queeg had removed it, or the force of the exhausts emptying tore it from the connections.

"Change of plan. We need a new way off the station." He said, again into the comm system. "Check the docking ports, there's no ship there."

His brow furrowed as he heard no response from anyone, and looked down. The switch was jammed.

'Oh' he thought, mentally putting into place why he had never received a reply from anyone during this. He jammed a screwdriver into it, and ripped it out. The lights went dead, but so did his methods of communication.

"Well, Jamie. An excellent job of removing your only communications with everyone else. Time to find a new comm panel." He said out loud, and headed back into the ship, leaving the engine room.

-----------------------------

"Is everyone OK?" Cassandra asked, The comms units had gone quiet since Jamie had removed the switch, but that meant they didn't know what was going on.

"Our ship isn't there." Katrina said. "But there is something showing up in one of the landing bays. It could be a ship we could use.

"It's probably a survey ship." Cassandra replied. "It'll be small, but spaceworthy."

"As long as it can get us out of here in... 11 hours." Katrina said. The computers on the bridge gave more detail than those in the engine room, giving them a more exact time to evacuate.

"Everyone out, then. We need to find a way to transport the unconcious, and something to secure Phil slash Queeg." She said, almost taking command again.

----------------------------

Jamie took his time over returning to the docking area. He had stopped several times to tear mechanical pieces from the walls, and had them in an anti-grav carriage, normally used for lugging heavy gas cannisters around. It slid noiselessly across the floor, hovering inches above the solid metal that his boots clunked in contact with.

Mentally, he was drained. He knew that he had to go on though, and that rest was around the corner. The pieces he had taken were important, difficult to get hold of, and normally prohibitively expensive. Someone would appreciate them back on the 'Dwarf, whether they would be useful components for the robots, something for installation in their own engines, or just a can of that specific kind of oil that is needed for one single door hinge in the place, where nothing else would work. No one would be able to put up with the squeal if they had run out of THAT oil.

"Jamie, can you hear me?" Katrina's voice said. Jamie spun around, and looked for the source. Another comm panel! Rushing towards it, he hit the buttons on it.

"Yes, I'm near the docking bays." He said through it.

"Good. There appears to be a survey ship there. Computers show it needs repairs, but We're on the way."

"I'll get there first, and see what I can do about that." Jamie replied.

"Good luck. The reports up here say it was left when they abandoned the place - wouldn't work enough for them to get away, so they had to lose it."

"Why did they abandon the place anyway?" He asked.

"No idea. The report ends with 'we have to get away from the Aaaaargh.'" Katrina said, reading the report. "It trails off at the end."

-----------------------------

A few hours later, and the survey craft limped out of the landing bay, and out into space. Barely able to move, it crawled through space, and back towards the Blue Dwarf. Everyone cramped on board in the small space of the cockpit.

"Annoying how all the parts I'd scavenged from the ship were needed to repair this thing." Jamie mused. Almost like life had become episodic, and he wasn't allowed to keep anything from one to the next.

Behind them, the station began to glow as it hit the outer atmosphere of the gas giant. It's gravitational pull dragged the station down further, giving it a bright orange aura as the outer hull became super heated. Over the next hour, parts of it would fly from the back, shearing from the rest of the ship and burning in sparks to the gas below. By now, the power systems would already have given up, and the rotation they'd given it to escape this very same thing would be its downfall.

Before they could watch it collapse into the gas, it exploded in a fiery ball of metal, sending shrapnel in all directions.

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<Tag all. So, we escaped. If you want to write more about it, you've got chances to write what happened in the 11 hours up until this point. There are a few chances in my post for you to add something in - or you can be recovering back on the 'Dwarf. Up to you!>