12th AUGUST 7062, TIGRIS PRIME

Madison giggled as she clambered up the pile of scrap. Batteries, pipe sections, transformer components... there were no shortages of holds here. She dared herself to look down, feeling a fuzzy tingle as the height caught up with her. One slip and she'd fall down the pile, with a messy landing awaiting her. She hauled herself up over the top and rolled onto her back, staring up into the cloudless sky – taking care, of course, to avoid looking directly at the sun.

"Madison, c'mon!" she could hear one of her friends yelling, and she got to her booted feet. Jeff and Taylor were already waving to her from the mound opposite, brandishing the long steel poles in their paws.

Madison smiled and produced her own pole from the sling on her back and sized up the gap between the two mountains of waste. Doable. She grabbed one end of the pole, aimed it forward, and ran to the edge, aiming the pole down into the gap and making sure to wedge it into the scrap below. She leapt into the air and sailed in a balletic arc towards Jeff and Taylor, the grace of which was lost when she lost her footing on the other side and smacked into a discarded thruster housing, ricocheting off it and landing in a messy heap. "Ow."

She could hear the others laughing; Taylor was already helping her up. The irrepressible Labrador giggled as she studied Madison's face for injuries. "Nope, no more ugly than usual," she teased.

Madison kicked her playfully in the left shin. "Shut up." She recovered her pole from the edge of the mound where it leant. "I'm still beating Jeff."

The Tabby Cat chittered irritably. "Only 'cos I slipped on that grease back on Fridge Mountain." He rubbed his furry elbow morosely.

Madison chortled. "Yeah, well that's the risk we take when we play Tremors." They'd named their game after a scene in the movie of the same name, where the actors had used poles to jump from rock to rock to avoid disturbing the monster worms. "Least there's no worms here."

"None that we know of," Taylor said in a spooky voice, ticking the back of Jeff's neck; he yowled.

Madison was sighting up the next jump when something caught her eye. It was sticking up out of the junk at her feet, and it was glowing. She stooped to pick it up, teasing it out, and took a good look at it.

"What is it, Maddie?" Taylor asked her.

Madison stared at the object, enraptured. The power light was on, but she could tell something was missing. "I know what this needs," she breathed. She turned to the others. "We need to start looking."

"We need to start looking," Madison mumbled, sitting up. The hazy fug of sleep dissipated quickly, and she recognized her surroundings as the rec centre on the Laika. She moaned and rubbed her head; what was she doing here, lying on a gym mat?

Someone was snoring. Madison scraped sleep gunk away from her eyes and located the source; it was the young-looking mutt in the pilot's uniform less the jacket, slumped on the mat next to her. He was pretty cute, Madison thought, with his creamy fur and dark patches, particularly the one around his left eye. He could really snore, though. Brewster – that was his name.

Madison put a paw on his shoulder and shook him. "Hey, wake up."

Brewster snorted and smacked loudly, opening his eyes and yawning. "Hey." He rubbed his muzzle. "Why'd you wake me up? I was sleeping."

"Because you snore like you've got a bung up your nose," Madison told him.

Brewster sat up. "Muh, you sound like my girlfriend," he muttered. "At least you didn't pour water on my face. I hate it when she does that." He yawned again. "Wow, how long were we playing basketball?"

Madison stood and stretched. "No idea. Well, we're already in our boots, so at least there's no cold deck to contend with." She tapped a foot on the floor.

Brewster chortled as he followed her up. "That a problem for you? I just pack a pair of flip-flops."

Madison sighed. "Yeah, well I didn't get much time to pack anything."

Brewster picked up the ball and dribbled it. "Yeah, you're one of the stand-ins, aren't you? From what I had to hear, the OSA had to throw this together pretty sharpish." He looked to Madison. "Look, I don't know much about the mission, either. I just fly the ship."

Madison nodded; it wouldn't do to pressure him. "All I know is, salvaging needs doing on Pomatta." She grabbed the ball from him and tossed it into the hoop overhead. "Oh, and you can add 'suck at basketball' to your list of duties."

Brewster rolled his eyes.

His reply, if there had indeed been one in the offing, was curtailed by the opening of the rec room doors, through which a silver-furred Raccoon was poking her head. She noticed Brewster and smiled. "Oh, there you are, Brewski. Uh, Milan's looking for you. Says you know when Wooang Prime's Princess Imogen came to power." She sighed. "He thinks it was after the Battle of Drasgoth, Rori is saying it was before."

"I don't know, Whitney," Brewster said bluntly.

"Ah," Whitney groaned. "Damn, I was hoping you'd know." Her gaze switched to Madison. "This one of the newbies?"

"Not a newbie," Madison snapped, feeling that good old twinge of frustration.

"She's one of the salvagers," Brewster informed Whitney. "She'll be working with you. Didn't have time to pack flip-flops, apparently."

"Ooh," Whitney squeaked, grimacing at Madison. "I feel for you, girl."

"Thanks for the support," Madison told her pan-faced.

"Oh, hey," Brewster said suddenly, "go get Milan. We could use two more in here." He motioned to the basketball, which had rolled to a stop near the door.

Whitney nodded. "Yeah, okay. That sounds..."

Once more, a reply was curtailed by an announcement coming in loud over the PA system: "Attention all crewmembers. Briefing on the hangar deck. No exceptions."

Brewster clucked. "Guess we'll save it for another time, huh?"

Whitney grimaced again; Madison had the feeling she did that a lot. She hopped off the mat and made for the door. "Guess we'd better do what the disembodied voice tells us."

Brewster sniggered.

The hangar had been empty when Madison had first set foot on the Laika a few days before, but it wasn't now. It was packed with equipment; Madison was somewhat taken aback as she entered with Brewster and Whitney and noticed the dark grey WooMatic Saiga-77 light freighters, generators, black-and-yellow Volvo excavators and dump trucks, transport vehicles, and fuel drums for all of it.

"Guess this explains the stop-off at Summerkin the day before yesterday," she muttered to the others.

Whitney nodded. "I think this is gonna be big."

Madison didn't disagree.

A sizeable crowd had made it to the hangar before them. Crewers of different species in different uniforms had all congregated at the only available wide-open space near the front of the hangar, chattering quietly. Madison drifted to the outer edge of the assemblage, slotting herself neatly between a female Fox in engineer's uniform and a male Akita wearing the orange jacket of a vehicle operator. The latter caught sight of Whitney and turned, his fur rippling as he recognized her. "Hey, Whit. Where you been? Rori's made everyone think it was..."

"Not important, Milan," Whitney interrupted him. Madison jumped a little as Whitney's paw went to her shoulder. "This is Madison, one of the salvagers they got to replace Jen and Donny."

Milan smiled and extended a paw. "Nice to meet you, Madison. I'm Milan Irglova. I see you've met Arkwright and O'Keeffe."

"I'm Arkwright," Whitney told her.

Madison nodded, shaking Milan's paw. "And Brewster's O'Keeffe."

"You catch on quick," Brewster piped in from behind her.

Madison's eyes went front before she could say anything. A slender Spaniel in bridge uniform was making his way to the front of the crowd from behind one of the Volvo excavators. "Captain on deck," he announced, silencing the crowd. From behind the same excavator came a young-looking Ginger Tabby in captain's jacket, the clumping of her boots especially audible in the quiet. She ambled to the spot beside her subordinate and faced the crew, her whiskers twitching.

Madison snorted to herself. The captain looked younger than her.

"Good afternoon, everyone," the captain was saying, her voice enhanced by a tiny mike slung choker-like around her neck. "I'm Captain Hunsiker, and I will be your commanding officer on this expedition." She produced a vid-pad and tapped at it, and a large viewscreen began to descend from the ceiling. "I'm sorry we didn't have time to brief you, but this mission is of much importance to the Outworld Scientific Authority. I'm also sorry to the crewers who were drafted in late. We were unable to secure all required crew slots, hence the need. Be assured that we chose the best."

Madison felt flattered despite herself. The captain's words were genuine.

"I'm new here myself," Hunsiker went on, "so trust me, I'm a little nervous too. But we're the OSA. A new world within our reach and all that, huh?"

A susurrus of polite mirth rippled through the crew; Madison couldn't help but chuckle.

The viewscreen stopped behind Hunsiker, and she tapped her vid-pad again. A side-on schematic of the Laika popped into view, reeling off information that confirmed its class as a Howler-class salvage and retrieval vessel built by Mog-Link Corporation, its mission, and various other tidbits. The schematic zoomed out to accommodate a wire-frame representation of a planet, which Madison assumed to be Pomatta. "We are about to revert from drive-space in the Pomatta system shortly," Hunsiker informed everyone. "A short while ago, one of the OSA's research vessels experienced a malfunction near Pomatta and had to go into geosync around it. We managed to get everyone off, but couldn't recover any of the equipment or data before it lost orbit and went down."

The Pomatta image zoomed in, and a set of coordinates flew into view, stopping on the edge of a large continent. "Based on our triangulations, we calculate it landed quite messily near the shore of this landmass," Hunsiker continued. "Judging by a quick scan of the terrain, it's highly likely that access points into the ship will be difficult to reach. Luckily, we can land quite close." The view rotated slightly, showing a small collection of buildings near the shore. "There's an old smugglers' outpost nearby which will provide an ideal landing zone. We are going in to retrieve the equipment and data."

A paw went up from the crowd; Hunsiker paused to address its owner. "Yes, uh..." She consulted her 'pad. "Henriette Wojewska?"

A canine voice replied. "What is the nature of the research carried out on that ship?"

"Need-to-know," Hunsiker said smoothly. "But from what I've heard, it's nothing dangerous."

The paw retracted, and Hunsiker went on. "Any other questions, not that I was planning to have a Q and A just yet?"

Nobody replied. "Good," the captain beamed. "Now, we've not got long until reversion, so we need to prep." She flicked her pad a few times. "Engineering, you logged a few concerns about one of the dump trucks. Moora Schroeder?"

The Fox next to Madison spoke up. "Yes, Captain. I think it got bashed about during the flight from Summerkin's surface, and a few connections got knocked loose. We're fixing them as fast as possible."

"You've got eight hours," Hunsiker told her. "We also need to organize the salvage teams; I need every operative to remain present so we can do that."

Whitney turned to Madison. "I'll get you on my team," she grinned.

Madison grinned back.

"Also," Hunsiker was saying, "as we're near reversion, I need all piloting staff at their stations. Not that I'm saying we're going to fly out of drive-space and hit Pomatta while I'm talking, but we need to be ready." She tapped her 'pad and the screen behind her began to retract upward. "Get to it, everyone."

Relevant crew began to disperse, Brewster included. "See you guys planetside," he told Madison and the others, and left.

Madison felt a little saddened at his departure, but reminded herself that she had someone else to talk to now as she turned to Whitney and Milan. "You ready to party?" the Raccoon asked her.

Madison nodded. "Yeah. Let's do it."