Aftermath

For a few tense moments, everything was silent.
"Jaxx did it" Holly swam back into view on Cassandra's terminal "The core's been safely vented"
"Yes!" Cass yelled, exuberantly punching the air as Jade screamed in delight and threw her arms around her.
"Oh God, that was so close" the doctor groaned hugging her tightly.
Warmly returning the embrace, Cass took a few deep breaths to try and calm herself; the tension of the last few minutes slowly draining from her. She held up a hand "Look, I'm shaking"
"Adrenaline" Jade nodded as she relinquished her hold and pulled away "I thought we were going to die" she shook her head and blew out a long, low sigh of relief
"Another couple of minutes and we would have" Cass murmured as she checked her terminal "Did you get him, Holly?"
"You might be missing a minute or two of memories, but yeah - I got him"
"Excellent"
"What's that then?" Jade frowned
"A backup of Jaxx" Cass explained "I can model his neural structure from his mind state and then use that to reengineer his brain using nanites"
"That sounds really bloody dangerous"
"Probably" Cass gave her a wan smile "I'll need your help to keep him stable"
"Sure" Jade shrugged and made a show of looking around the dimly lit lift "We'll need to get out of here first – I don't know why, but I thought this thing would start moving again once we'd got the reactor sorted"
"Well..." Cass swiped her way through a few schematics on her terminal "Holly and the comms are all on emergency power. Gravity's failed in a few places; the reactor's not even responding to diagnostic requests and life support's down" she paused to look up at Jade "The drives are offline, the defence grid has failed completely..."
"Okay, I get the picture" Jade retorted testily "We're in bad shape. How about we just get out of here instead?"
"Yeah, you're right" Cass sighed "I'm sorry; this bloody hangover's not exactly helping my mood" she ran a hand back through her hair and gazed up at the ceiling "There's the escape hatch" she nodded upwards "Do you want a leg up?"
Shorter than Cass by quite some margin, Jade eyed the recessed panel above her "Do I get a choice?" she asked
"I can maybe try on my own; I should –" Cassandra's terminal chimed, notifying her of an incoming call "Give me a sec... Jay! Are you alright?"
Their conversation was brief and concise, the relief that each other was okay, awkwardly evident in both their voices.
"We'll come down there and find you" Cass started wrapping things up "Tell Eve that we've got a backup of Jaxx just before he died, and that I'll reintegrate his mind in a day or two, once we've got the power back on"
"Sure thing" Jay replied "I've got Jamie checking the damage inside the core at the moment, so we'll probably be here a while. After that I guess we should sweep for survivors. I'm not getting anything from Boyd, Artemis, Herbie or Plisken. I’m getting pretty worried"
Cass took a deep breath "About Plisken..."
"Is he okay?"
"I don’t know. He's not with us anymore"
"Shit – He's dead!?"
"He could be – It turns out that he was an advanced mechanoid of some sort. Someone switched him while we were in Old Vegas and it's apparently vitally important that we find him"
"Jesus. When did you find out about this?"
"Last night"
"And you didn't think to tell us?"
"We were all pissed" Cass protested "Would it have made any difference? We needed to mourn the death of yet another of our friends and to enjoy being alive; not worry about yet another emerging catastrophe"
"Yeah, but all the same" Jay persisted "You could have told us. What happened to this mechanoid?"
"It would have spoiled the evening!" this really wasn't how Cass had envisaged this exchange "The mechanoid just keeled over and started dissolving after it showed me the five hundred cyborgs it had somehow managed to bring aboard"
There was a moments silence "You what?"
"Yeah. Five hundred cyborgs from that sodding planet we were just on"
"Cass..." Jay was almost at a loss for words
"Yeah, I know - I'm not happy about it either. Plisken bought them aboard and then 'died', leaving us to deal with the frigging consequences. There's nothing to suggest that they're dangerous at the moment, but we're really going to have to be careful when the food starts running out"
"Did you not think for one minute think that this was worth telling us!?"
"There was nothing to tell. I wanted us all to have a nice night" Cass said unhappily "What would you have done anyway? Used the time drive while we were pissed to create another paradox? That's the sort of thing that got us into this predicament in the first place!"
She winced at the realisation of how bad that must sound "Look, I'm sorry" she said hurriedly "I didn't mean it like that"
"It’s fine" Jay said stonily "We'll talk about this when you get here"
He ended the call, leaving Cass to close her eyes, her shoulders slumping as she breathed out a long, low sigh.
"That man..." she murmured, blinking rapidly and looking away from Jade, trying to avoid meeting her gaze.
"You really do like him, don't you?"
Cass folded her arms defensively in front of her "That must be the worst kept secret aboard this ship" she grumbled sullenly "He's.... He's this wonderful part of the tiny bit of me that's me and not Brittany" she sighed and shook her head "Not that it matters anyway - The guy just lost his wife"
Jade gave her a sympathetic smile "All the same, try and see it from his point of view" she said gently "Maybe you should have mentioned Plisken earlier?"
"I had instigated processes to mitigate the risk, and I was going to discuss it all later on today when we were sober" Cass said defensively "I just didn't expect the STCP to attack, okay?"
An odd metallic twang echoed down the lift shaft above them, making the lift cabin creak alarmingly
"That really doesn't sound good" Jade glanced upwards in the nervous silence that followed
"Agreed. We should get out of here"



Elsewhere...
"That bloody woman!" Jay aimed a kick at a piece of soot covered detritus as he stalked back into engineering, sending it skittering across the floor and away into the gloom.
"I assume this is Ms. Jones you’re talking about?" Phil wearily rolled his eyes at Eve "What's she done now?"
"It's what she hasn't done this time" Jay threw his hands up in exasperation.
"There's really no pleasing you, is there?"
"You'd think it was worthwhile mentioning that Plisken had been abducted, wouldn't you?" Jay continued, ignoring Phil's less than helpful attempts at winding him up "Or that there are five hundred cyborgs that his now deceased mechanoid replacement has bought aboard?"
"When all did this happen?" Eve was shocked
"She said she found out about it last night. It would have been nice if she had told us"
"To be fair to Cass," Phil shrugged "that would have put a bit of a downer on the night"
"Oh, come on" Jay protested as Jaxx's badly charred remains clunked onto the floor next to the rim of the reactor core.
"I got him" Jamie called, interrupting the discussion, as he hauled himself up out of the shielding pit, covered from head to toe in soot and grime
"Jaxx!" Eve wailed, crumbling into tears as she ran across the room to throw her arms around the almost unrecognisable lump of twisted metal and plastic "Oh baby," she bubbled miserably "you were so brave"
Jay grimaced "Shit. I'm sorry Eve, I should have said: Cass got a backup of Jaxx before he died; she says she can use it to reintegrate his mind back into his body"
"Really?" Eve looked up with hope in her tearful eyes
Jay nodded "Yeah. Really"
"Oh, thank God!"
Cassandra might well be a pain in the arse, but that sort of thing was well within her remit.
Probably.
"We'll need the power back on before she can do anything like that" Jamie grunted
"What are our chances there?" Jay asked "How bad is it?"
"It's bad" the engineer replied "I've a plan to get power back on to life support and a few of the other essentials, but we're dead in space - The fire damaged a whole load of systems and we're going to need source some parts before we can get the drives back online and actually go anywhere"
"Crap" Jay frowned "Can't auto-repair just manufacture new ones?"
"Auto-repair’s one of the systems that got damaged" Jamie shook his head "Those are the parts we need"
"Jesus," Jay sighed, taking his own name in vain "that's all we need. I - Whoa!" he dodged to one side to avoid a Huzard spear as it whistled out of the gloom, into the midst of the group.


<tag>
Jade: What’s with the lift? – Does anything happen during the journey down to engineering?
Phil, Jay, Eve and Jamie: Who threw that spear? – What happens next? Are the natives getting restless?
Jamie: The reactor’s screwed and life support’s offline, so what’s the plan to get power back on and stop everyone dying?
Everyone else: What are you doing while this is all going on? – feel free to get in touch if you need any suggestions
</tag>