Stopover

The ground rocked as yet another section of the prison exploded.
Jay hauled Artemis back up onto his shoulder and noticed his eyes were drooping.
“Come on buddy, stay with me” Jay said. Artemis said nothing, just rolled his head forward.
“I said stay with me, that’s an order!” Chrysler barked.
Up ahead, another explosion and their path was blocked by a falling beam, cutting across the corridor.
“Dammit…”
The nearby time gate was kicking up a lot of interference, and Jay if he and Artemis didn’t get out of it’s vicinity then when Cass activated the time drive, chances were, they’d be pulled off course again, just like the last few times – and right now, Artie couldn’t afford the diversion.
“Artie…” Jay said “Is there another way out of here? A way back to the core, to the others?”
No response, Pritchard was barely holding it together.
“Smeg it…” Jay said, and shuffled over toward a wall mounted comm panel.
“Cass?...Jamie? Jaxx?...anyone?” No response
“Plisken, Jade do you copy?”
Nothing.
“Only one thing for it Artie…” Jay said and he turned and went back in the other direction, deeper into the centre of the engineering section.
Entering the vast central chamber he set Artie on the ground near the time gate and studied the controls.
“..do…do you know how to….” Artemis managed to utter.
“I was STCP.” Jay said without looking up.
“Doesn’t answer my quest….”
“How hard can it be…”
His fingers flew across the control pad, programming in time and space coordinates.
The gate purred into operation, it’s frame filling with a bright white light.
“..one way trip…” Jay mused, as he heaved the scientist onto his shoulder and stepped through…

The whiteness faded.
Jay looked around.
It was the promenade! “What did I tell you?!” he said, smugly. “Wait whats…”
The promenade was bustling with people.
The red alert lamps were flashing.
“Emergency, emergency” Hollys voice filled the air. “Lethal Cadmium II leak imminent. All personnel to escape pods or stasis chambers”
“Christ!” Jay spluttered. “It’s three million years ago!”
“How do we get home…” Artie managed to stutter.
“Good question…” Jay replied “But we need to work it out fast or you’re not gonna make it…”
“Oh my god!” someone yelled “It’s Captain Chrysler! But you’re….DEAD?!”
“YOU WILL BE TOO IF YOU DON’T GET TO A ‘POD SOON!” Jay found himself snapping. He looked up and caught a glimpse of the person who’d spoken. It was Jenny Wildflower…he knew she wasn’t going to make it to stasis.
“JENNY!” he yelled “Don’t head that way…take the escape pod..” he nodded toward the nearest pod hatch. It was a pod he knew was still present in the future…if he could save just one of them, he could live with himself that little bit easier.
Seeing her actually gave him an idea..
“The medi-bay!” he said outloud.
There was no time machine on the Dwarf, save for the time fridge, which was packed away in the – already heavily irradiated cargo bay, but, there was stasis.
Sure, most of the stasis chambers would, by now, already be full, Cass, and the others occupying them and those that were empty were deep in the radiation zone.
There was one other place where they could go into stasis, and he knew, no-one would find them in there before time....

The medi-bay itself would be gone in…3…2…1…the ship rocked as the medi-bay ejected from the ships frame and Dr Keto fled the ship inside it…but next door was, the morgue.
A few minutes later he burst into the room, slid out a drawer and hefted Artemis into it, slamming it shut before climbing into the adjacent one himself.
“Holly…set my stasis field for 3,000,002 years…set Artie’s to manual deactivation, I’ll get Jade or Phi in here before we shut it down.”
“You what?” Holly asked
“Just do it!”
He slid his drawer shut from the inside and…
Before he realised it, kicked it open.
He heard a scream. Phi was white as a sheet seeing a morgue drawer sliding open on it’s own and a man climbing out.
“Phi! It’s me! Listen…Artie….” He paused mid-sentence. On the table lay Katrina.
Phi looked between Jay and Kat’s body.
“Plisken brought her back…they arrived a few days ago…we…..we wondered where you’d got to.”…
“…Artie needs help…drawer next to mine…” Jay said weakly, before walking out.
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