Karmic Balance

The Scanner finished its readout of the tentacle monster, and Jade looked confused.

"What is it?" Cass asked.

"It sounds like it's made up of several humans, just without the chemical composition of the bones." Jade replied, still confused.

"Are you telling me the skeletons we found had their skin ripped off and it formed a giant tentacle?" Tanaka asked, shocked.

"Well, not really..." she began, then shook her head. "more or less." she conceded.

"Hey." Jamie said. "has anyone else noticed the Karma field doesn't affect us in here?"

There was a moment of thought between them.

"Tanaka. Man up and stop being dead." Jamie said, testing it.

"Hey! That was uncalled for!" Tanaka replied, sounding hurt.

"Thankyou for pointing that out." Cass said. "That is most interesting."

"Sounds like the field is pointing out, rather than in." Jamie concluded. "Perhaps we can use that to our advantage. Let's get to a control room, and see what we can do."

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cut to control room
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"Here. I think this is the one you want." Plisken said, spinning a monitor around for everyone to see.

"Great." Jamie and Cass said together. Jamie stepped up to the readouts. "It looks like it has a linear power output." He said after a moment.

"How did they manage that?" Cass asked, incredulous.

"No clue. But it works in our favour. We ramp up the output, and it lowers the range."

"Does that mean the karma field is what pulled the asteroid field in?"

The conversation between the two got more and more high-tech, until they both nodded.

"I'll ramp up the karma field power, you see what you can find about the anomaly. Perhaps we can kill two birds with one stone." Jamie said, and the two of them got to work.

"well, I feel useless now..." Jade commented as the group watched the engineer and... reverend... working to destroy the space station.

"At least you're not dead, or being abused." Tanaka responded.

"How do we know this is the right thing to do?" Jade asked them all.

"We don't. The worst that happens is we end up dressed like our future counterparts. The best is that we get out before that happens. Alternate future theory." Cass responded, pushing some more buttons.

"The only thing we need to worry about is getting out of the karma field when we leave." Jamie piped up.

"Karmic Balance." Jade responded. "We just make sure we're balanced when we leave, and do nothing to break that."

"What, so we stand on one leg?" Talon asked, confused.

She sighed. "No, we stick to our jobs, and don't do anything else. We don't do the work of anyone else, and we don't say anything until we're out of the field. Karma can't do anything to us if we don't give it anything to work with."

"Ok, done here." Cass said a moment later.
"Me too." Jamie said.

They all nodded to each other, and headed for the shuttle.

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shortly
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Talon punched the controls, and the shuttle shot forward, past a large chunk of rock that had suddenly changed direction. The asteroid field all began to converge on the station, peppering it with asteroids. A moment later, and there was a flash of light.

"That's it. Karma field is gone." Cass said, and breathed a sigh of relief.