Tom sat up suddenly in his seat, focusing hard on a patch of sky behind the Hathaway. Was that another ship? Was it Federation? He didn’t really want to be a sitting duck out here to find out, so he tried to clear the fog from his mind, and come up with a plan. His fighter was still pressurized, so he could put his helmet on and blow the seal, use the remaining battery from his EVA suit to try and make contact with the ship, but if he miscalculated, he would certainly die, which was unacceptable outside of combat. His other choice was to tear into his ship, and use his power pack to attempt a jump start of his systems, but if that failed, he would again, die suffocating.

‘Not the best of circumstances’ he thought to himself, ‘but I probably stand a better chance if I stay here. Plan B it is’.  He took another look at the access panel where his power conduit ran, and started working his way around the cramped space, trying to trace them to their source, at the small M/ARA reactor.  After a few minutes of wriggling around, he found the end, where they connected through the bulkhead. He lifted the handle that locked them in place, and gave the power conduits a pull. They resisted at first, but a moment later they came free, and he spun back around to examine the end. He was sweating now, and breathing more heavily than he would have liked, but at this point, he had resigned to putting everything he had left into getting his fighter powered up again.  His attention was momentarily pulled to the sky, however, and his situation managed to somehow become worse.

He knew what he had seen. He knew, yet he couldn’t believe it. It was the unmistakable sight of a ship going to warp. Not the Hathaway, of course, as she still seemed to be dead in the water, no, this was another vessel entirely. Smaller, like his own Valkyrie, and obviously headed somewhere in a hurry. Tom hoped intensely that it was a Federation ship that went for help, but were there any others out here with us? He couldn’t remember, so rather than spend time worrying about it, he tore his mind away from the idea, and refocused himself on the task at hand, deciding his little fighter may be the only chance everyone had if that ship turned out to be hostile.

His hands found the power cell, and with a small click it came free from his suit. At this point he decided to ditch the suit altogether, as these modifications would render the power cell unusable in it anymore, and it was dead weight. Now sitting in half a EVA suit and black undershirt, he checked the connector to the power cell. It looked close enough, he held the two together to see if they would connect. Not quite, but it was close enough to give him hope. All he needed was a jumpstart to the system, then the reactor could take over. Scavenging some length of wire from the EVA suit, he started carefully testing the connections to see if he could get a reaction.