17th MARCH 7081, OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE

How many hours had it been now? Sorcha had lost track. She sat droop-eared and dejected in the ship's bunkroom, slumped against the wall next to her personal holdall. From it she had taken one of her treasured belongings, a pendant dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu, and held it reverently in her paws. Now and then she would run a thumb over its surface, as if willing the goddess herself to appear and put things to rights.

She yawned, blinking with heavy eyelids. She'd probably dozed off a few times, but she couldn't tell anymore. The others had made attempts to talk to her before concluding she was best left alone. She just didn't feel chatty right now.

A sudden pressure in her foxy head made itself known, and she sleepily recognized it as caffeine withdrawal. Coffee, she thought. Need coffee. As deep in her funk as she was, Sorcha still knew the importance of keeping up with her bean intake, and so she returned the pendant to her holdall, got to her booted feet, and made for the door back into the crew commons.

Everyone else was still up; Nia and Sylvester were at the table, deep in conversation and their cups, Jillian was at the entertainment console hollering along to whatever was blasting through her headphones, and Chesney and Boland were playing rummy on one of the couches. Sorcha ambled to the table, plonked herself down, and shoved an empty cup under the nozzle on the coffee dispenser.

"Well, look who's up," Sylvester said brightly. "Thought we'd lost you forever."

Sorcha stuffed the cup into her muzzle and downed it in one go, refilling it. "Well, you found me again." She sipped at this cup more carefully. Didn't want to overdo it.

"I'm sure the captain will give us clearance soon, Sor," Nia squeaked, her ears and whiskers twittering.

"You're sure? I'm not," Sorcha mumbled.

"Why don't you go and listen to some music?" Nia went on. "Makes me feel better when I'm blue."

Sorcha shook her head. "Nah."

"Really? Works on our team leader," Sylvester chortled, pointing at the headphone-wearing mutt, who was skirling about "being frisky when the tide goes out". On the screen of the console, which was obviously playing a music video, two female Riloan foxes were bounding through a city, presumably Sennett, their dresses fluttering in the breeze. Occasionally they would spin around and blurt the lyrics at the camera.

"Guess we can still pick up CoreMusic out here," Sorcha remarked.

"Frisky Boppa by Fox and Status," Nia said with a grin. "Riloan music rules."

"Haven't they got a new album coming out soon?" Sylvester asked.

Nia nodded. "Yeah."

"More of a Melon Collie girl myself," Sorcha said.

Sylvester nodded. "Oh, yeah. Summerkinian music is good too. That's all folksy stuff, right?"

"Melon Collie is," Sorcha said. "But hey, we've got a lot of rock as well. The Punchinellos are pretty great."

A sudden squeal of static from the ship's intercom put everyone's ears up, and Captain Gallagher's voice followed it. "Attention! Team Leader Toki to the bridge. Team Leader Toki only. Thank you."

"Team Leader!" Sylvester called over to Jillian. "Yo, Team Leader!"

Jillian kept on hammering imaginary drumsticks against an equally imaginary drum.

Sylvester sighed and strode over to the entertainment console and, with a deft flick of the paw, switched the volume control to maximum.

Jillian yelped, fur spiking, and ejected the 'phones from her ears with frantic paws, lobbing them halfway across the room. She recovered her composure and spotted Sylvester at the controls. "Yais?" she asked pointedly.

"Captain wants you," Sorcha told her, her muzzle quivering with the effort not to laugh.

Jillian grizzled, glancing at her. "You know, you could've just told me."

"We tried," Nia said. "Twice."

"Team Leader Toki to the bridge," Gallagher's voice announced again. "Soon as possible."

Jillian growled and got to her feet. "And I'm going alone." She eyed everyone present. "Don't anyone here follow me."

"We won't," Sorcha replied as she left.

***

On the bridge, Captain Gallagher let out a long-suffering sigh, his ears back and whiskers drooped. The fairly young Cat looked twice his age. "Team Leader, we, uh, kinda requested your presence alone."

Sorcha smothered another laugh as Jillian glanced wearily at her team standing in full force behind her. "Yeah... they kinda followed me up here," the mutt mumbled.

Gallagher rolled his eyes. "Well, I was going to give this update to you so you could brief your team, but I'll just let all of you know now, huh?"

"Would be nice," Jillian snuffled.

"We've been studying the nebula," Gallagher said. "Through analysis of the electrical disturbance, we have managed to track its source."

"It has a source?" Jillian asked him.

"Our sensor technician traced it to the nearest planet in the system," Gallagher went on. "And it seems to be getting stronger."

Sorcha felt uneasy, but an undercurrent of anger was rising. Something out there wanted to stop her doing her job, and that thought riled her up.

"So, if we were to take out this source," Jillian said, "it would stop whatever this is from happening?"

Gallagher put up his paws. "I have no idea. But it might be worth investigating. It's costing a lot for us to be out here on this operation, and if we can't continue with it, we will have to return home. It's a waste of resources to sit here doing nothing."

Jillian put a paw to her lip. "That's true. I would be in favour of investigating this source, and to be honest, I would be in favour of taking it out as well." A mad glint shone in her eye.

"I'd take her seriously, Captain," Nia giggled. "She blew up her sister's Wendy house as a pup."

"That was an accident," Jillian interjected.

Gallagher blinked. "Okay. I could dispatch a few of the guards on this ship to accompany you to the planet for some reconnoitring. We've studied the path of the disturbance and have figured that we'll be able to keep in contact with you while you're down there." He sniffed. "Bear in mind, though, while we do have a small security complement, we've no real backup besides that."

Jillian snuffled. "Well, I'm from Omaril. I believe in democracy, as I'm sure you do, Gallagher. So I'm gonna stay impartial and put it to my team." She turned to Sorcha and the others. "You lot?"

"Against." Boland was the first to speak. "We didn't sign on for this. I'm for getting the hell out of here."

"I'm with him," Chesney piped up. "We don't know what's out there and I'm not keen to know what is."

Sylvester was next. "For. Let's go check it out."

Nia was the next to voice her thoughts. "For. We're the OSA. We have to take these steps into the unknown. We'll never know if we don't try."

"O'Riordan, you?" Jillian asked Sorcha.

Sorcha met everyone's gaze, one by one. There was no chance of her saying anything else. "For."

"Alright, that's that," Gallagher mewled brightly. "I'll get an escort team together for you. In the meantime, I think your team needs to get ready. I'll leave the details to them."

Jillian flashed him a casual salute. "Captain."

Gallagher returned it. "Team Leader."

Nia smiled at Sorcha. "Right decision, Sor," she whispered.

Sorcha smiled back. "I know."

"We'd better be getting paid overtime for this," she heard Chesney moan as the team left the bridge.

***

"That planet's going to be absolutely freezing," Nia woofed as she sat in the equipment locker, fiddling with the temperature control system on one of the Sun Dog suits. "So, I'm recalibrating the climate settings on the suits to keep us warm."

"Great idea, Ni-ni," Sorcha complimented her. She and Sylvester had volunteered themselves to be the test subjects for much of the alterations Nia had made to the equipment.

"Can you believe this?" Sylvester snorted wryly as he tried out his modified suit. "We're supposed to be using these to keep ourselves from getting fried, and now we're using them to avoid becoming ice-pops."

Sorcha tried hers on. Nia had also stripped the plating from them, seeing as heat deflection was no longer a requirement. No need to lug about extra weight. "They're much lighter now." She flipped the temperature system on, and a warm flow of air filled the suit. "Wow."

"Woah, that's toasty," Sylvester cried, obviously having trialled his as well.

Nia giggled and stuck out her tongue as she finished up with her current project. "That's Boland's done. Whew, I think that's all of them." She dusted her paws off on her dress and got to her feet. "Let's go get something to eat before we head out."

Sorcha shrugged out of her suit, Sylvester doing the same, and they followed Nia out of the room.

***

The commons was a little more crowded than it had been earlier. Four new faces were present at the table, mounted on bodies decked out in black riot armour. "Think these are the guards we've been assigned," Sorcha whispered to her cohorts.

"That, or they're here for the coffee," Sylvester muttered.

"Hi!" Nia chirped, waving at them.

"Hey," one guard replied, waving his paw noncommittally. The others gave half-smiles.

Jillian was at the kitchen unit, chewing on a honey waffle. "Oh, hey," she mumbled through a muzzleful as she spotted Sorcha and company. "These are our guards. That's Palmer." She pointed to a young-looking female Wolf whose pretty face bore a nasty scar across her left eye. "And that's Joel." She indicated a male Lynx whose right ear was missing. The last two, who lacked any real distinguishing features other than their species, were a male Skunk by the name of Travis, and a male Akita called Blason.

Sorcha recognized all of them; she had seen them skulking about on the ship during trips to and from the bridge and hangar. She hoped they were as capable as they looked. She quickly broke away from the thin conversation that followed and heated up some honey waffles with the others, dumping the snacks unceremoniously on a plate, pouring herself a coffee, and heading to the nearest couch to snarf it all down. They were spongy and overly sweet, and Sorcha knew that she wouldn't be able to taste anything for a while afterwards.

She had to keep pounding on, though. If she stopped, hesitated for a moment, she would dive into bed and whimper. She knew where she was heading; this was off the trail now, going into the most uncharted of territory. Her foxy head was telling her to go home, to forget this, but her heart was telling her she had to do all she could to reignite this sun.

Even if she had to go against every sensible urge inside herself.

"Ugh, these suck," Nia grumbled as she nibbled on one of her own waffles beside Sorcha. "I miss Milk Maid Mary's."

"Still better than what you get in field rations," Sylvester said. "I don't know what's in that stuff, but it all tastes like dish soap."

"Think our guards can identify with that," Sorcha said. "They are all ex-military, after all."

"Hey, Goodwin," Jillian barked over. "How's the equipment coming?"

"Oh, uh, we're done," Nia replied. "The suits are finished and your auto-mapper's been recalibrated."

"Tubular. That's what I like to hear!" Jillian said grandly, waving her paws in the air. "Dropship in twenty, people."

"Aye," Sylvester said. "We'll be there." He turned back to Sorcha and Nia as the leader left. "Hope Boland and Chesney aren't going to get in the way."

"Oh, I know," Nia groaned. "How un-OSA are those two? So unimaginative. They're all 'let's just go drill stuff and that's it'. No sense of discovery or pride. If that's the way they want it, they should go blast rocks with Shiffrin Mining."

Sorcha sipped at her coffee. "They're just scared, Ni-ni. Not all of us see this as a holy duty." I do, though. "I think we should let them know we understand how they feel. I mean, we are a team, right?"

"Guess so," Sylvester said, finishing his last waffle.

Nia snorted. "Fine. I'm not putting up with any hooha from them, though."

***

Back on the dropship, Sorcha strapped herself in while Sylvester brought the engines up. Behind the seating area, Chesney and Boland were pan-faced, holding onto the safety rails but doing little else. The four guards were in the dropship's cargo bay, checking their weapons. Beside her, Nia tipped her a wink. "Doing okay, Sor?"

Sorcha nodded. "Great."

"Getting the flight plan from the bridge," Jillian announced from beside Sylvester. "Okay, got it." She tapped several keys on the pilot console. "There you go, Catterick. Take her out when ready."

"Alright. Here we go," Sylvester said loudly, raising the ship and hitting the afterburners. For the second time on this operation, but not going precisely where it was supposed to be going, the Roobarb lifted off and blasted into space, passing Carolyn M6 entirely and heading straight for the nearest planet.

Sorcha watched the sun's limp glow recede into the distance. We'll be back soon, Carolyn, she thought. We'll give you back your spark.