“What do you mean there’s more than one interference?” Mellasitox rubbed her forehead, desperate to push away the growing headache.

“Exactly that.” Maksha shrugged slightly, causing the captain’s headache to worsen with the slight movement of his shoulders. “We thought it was all one set of subspace interference, but there’s actually two separate problems.”

Mellasitox leant back on a nearby bulkhead, the thick arches of metal framing the entrance to the airlock where the away team were still preparing.

“With two different sources?”

“Yes, there are several wavelengths that are now dissipating. I suspect something left over from the improvised bomb.” Maksha tapped a nearby screen, summoning the data he had been working on at his station on the bridge. A myriad of interwoven waveforms wriggled across the chart’s axis, waving back and forth with slippery tidal motions.

“If you take a look at these,” he selected a pair of emerald waves that slithered across the screen. “3 hours ago, they looked like this.” Another press of a button caused 2 pale green waves to leap upwards to a significantly higher amplitude, forming Everest-like peaks above the lowlands of the current readings.

“They left something to disable us?” Mellasitox took a few steps closer to the screen, risking collapse as she left the sanctuary of her leaning post behind, stepping on tired and wounded knees.

“Perhaps not intentionally. Just before the explosion, we noted a number of minerals left in the containers. It’s possible the remnant interference was an unexpected byproduct.” Maksha offered an attempt at a confident hypothesis, but his words hung between the pair with an obvious stink of guessing.

“So the warp core?”

“Given the degradation of the interference pattern, Sima is hopeful she can get it started again in the next 12 hours.”

“Proper hours or Engineering hours?”

“She was making her way to the duterium injectors before I could ask,” Maksha smiled. “We’ll have to degauze some of the components, and there’s only so fast we can do that with hand tools.”

Mellasitox nodded as a short breath of air escaped her lips as she leant back against the bulkhead. Her chest still ached with a crawling ache despite the pain killers and Doctor Malax’s ministrations.

“So where’s the rest of it coming from?” she asked, rubbing her side subtly.

“That…” Maksha let out a frustrated hiss through his perfect rows of white teeth, a rare moment of defeat in the normally stoic officer. “That I can’t say; it’s everywhere. With no sign of a focal point or source. Initial deep space observations show significant interference in the Landeth range-”

Mellasitox waved a long arm across the man’s face.

“So warp Core, yes. warp field, no?” She implored him to be succinct.

“An accurate if somewhat reductive assessment, Captain.”

A whistle from the airlock antechamber interrupted the pair as the head of Commander Sehgali peeked through the cracked doors.

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Just a moment Indira,” Mellasitox held a finger up to the disembodied head, floating in the shadowed doorway. “Is it worth calling Icarus back if we’re going to have power back soon?”

Maksha offered another shrug of his sharp shoulders that threatened to tear through the fabric of his uniform.

“They set off 12 hours ago, even at impulse speeds, they’re well beyond the reach of real-time communications. They’re also approaching the edge of our short-range sensors.” Maksha stroked his chin thoughtfully as the equations were calculated and balanced in the big brain behind his eyes. “Maybe an hour’s delay to any comm signals, assuming this subspace… weirdness… doesn’t cause any other problems.”

“And we’re assuming Sima will be successful.” Sehgali offered from the doorway.

Mellasitox felt the ache in her chest rumble again, stretching down into her stomach as she considered the options. Calling Icarus back might be the safer option, but even with main power back, Daedalus would still be struggling to send subspace communications.

“Head down to the shuttle bay. Let’s send a message,” the captain instructed, deciding that a situation update wouldn’t hurt. “Even if it’s just to instruct them to carry on.”

Maksha gave his signature short raised eyebrow of acknowledgement to both women before silently disappearing into the shadows of the corridor’s emergency lighting, leaving Mellasitox alone with the floating head of Sehgali which was shortly joined by an enviromental suit clad body.

“Plan?” Sehgali probed as she struggled to align the cuff of the environmental suit.

“Icarus can carry on to the comms relay. If we get power back we’ll catch them up, we can’t take the risk that something else will go wrong and we are sorely lacking information.” Mellasitox stepped forward and twisted the glove with an expert flick of her wrist, a satisfying click confirming it was now coupled in place.

Sehgali offered her a look of surprise.

“I wasn’t great at the EVA exam. I spent a lot of time getting in and out of these things,” Mellasitox explained with a wry smile. “You should see how quick I can get that helmet off when my stomach starts turning.”

“So that’s a no to trading places?” Sehgali laughed.

“You were the one that cited Section 12.”

Sehgali offered a performative sigh of exasperation, her arms flopping to her sides as she rolled her eyes in great circles.

“It’s never too late to forget about the rules.” Sehgali reached across to her waist, feinting for the suit’s release mechanism.

“And let the crew know they could ignore the rules whenever it suits?” the young captain clapped Sehgali on her shoulders. “My XO would never allow that, she’s a real stickler for the rules.”

“What a bitch.”

Laughter fell from the pairs’ bellies, a clatter of schoolgirl giggles that bounced off the walls of the small airlock, ricocheting down the curving hallway. A moment of blessed relief in the darkness, for a moment the pair could have easily been sharing a dirty joke in the lounge.

Unfortunately, reality quickly caught up with the friends as a short chirp interrupted their laughter, the curt voice of lieutenant commander Encore following shortly behind.

“Bridge to Starboard Airlock, docking is complete. We have a hard seal on the Ho’Nang’s hull.”

“Understood, Encore. The away team is ready to board.” Sehgali replied, wiping away a laughter induced tear from her eye with a thick gloved finger.

“Please remember commander, that our thrusters do not have sufficient strength to manipulate the drift of the wreck as well as our own. If there is any sudden movement, we may damage the airlock and lose the seal.” 

“We’ll try not to jump to warp.” Sehgali replied, offering a nod to the assembled officers a short distance away beyond the doorway. The sounds of shuffling and rustling filling the air as the team began gathering their equipment, fitting helmets and checking each others suits.

“That would be appreciated commander. Good Luck. Bridge out.”

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t jump to warp too,” Mellasitoxx added, picking Sehgali’s helmet from the side and lifting it over her head.

As the clear visor descended, Sehgali caught a glimpse of worry behind the captain’s eyes, deeper than she expected. More primal. More desperate.

“Oh please, you wouldn’t miss me that much.” Sehgali joked, her voice tinny inside the confines of the atmospherioc suit.

“More than I care to admit,” Mellasitox replied quietly, her voice almost a whisper that was only audible through the suit’s sensitive external microphone.

Sehgali’s breath caught in her chest, and for a moment, she worried the atmospheric suit’s rebreather was failing. But as she looked into the young woman’s eyes, she realised its cause was something more biological, a pang of worry that reached up from a pile of romantic feelings the pair had agreed to box long ago.

“Bullwura, I – ” Sehgali began, unsure of her intentions as the words began to escape her heart that had been bound in mutually agreed chains.

“ – Will be fine.” Mellasitox offered a weak smile as her responsibility fell upon her worry, squashing it beneath the weight of the four golden pips on her neck.

“Understood?” she asked, the depth of her eyes now hidden once again.

“Understood,” Sehgali confirmed with an equally weak smile before taking several ungainly steps back through the open doorway into the airlock chamber.

“Then you are a GO commander. Good Luck.”

Sehgali turned, offering a tiny nod over her shoulder that shook her oversized helmet slightly.

The heavy doors bounced closed with jerking jolts as an ensign worked the manual controls before settling shut with a sharp bang of mechanical locks.

Mellasitox allowed herself a moment of panicked breath in the quiet solitude of the airlock’s antechamber, her heart pounding against wounded ribs with a force that threatened to shatter them again.

“You’ll be fine,” she repeated under her breath.