40

The little repair drone talked incessantly and Demi wished she hadn't worked out a way for her implant to translate it. It trundled forward, nudging her foot as it almost mechanically screamed at her not to connect the wire, in her hand, to the connector under the console. She connected it anyway, because what did a repair drone know about winging it and bodging a job? The spark that blackened her fingers and sent her head jerking upwards to hit the underside of the console did nothing to make her listen the next time, either.

"I know, alright! But if we don't get navigation up there's no point in having the port side thrusters aligned!" She scuttled out from under the console, rubbing her forehead with one hand and reaching for a switch with the other. The repair drone squeaked again. "Yes, I do appreciate you. Your advice is valuable. You are loved. Now, reboot the navigation systems. What?"

That last question she aimed towards Briyun, sat upon the captain's chair, gawping at Demi. She had made few attempts at helping to repair Zapasnoy and had been no help, whatsoever, when she had. Since they had reappeared from the wormhole, every system on the ship battered and broken, Briyun had spent much of her time in that chair, staying out of Demi's way.

"Nothing? It's just, I get it now?" Briyun waved a long-clawed finger toward Demi that took in her, the repair drone and the console. "I see why you always had that look every time Frissa talked to Lapo? One-sided conversations are weird?"

Demi couldn't deny that. She blew a strand of hair from her face, shrugged and stood to look at the navigation console's displays. It would take a few moments before the system would come back online and they could finally work out exactly where they had emerged within the galaxy. Emergency Wormhole travel was a game of chance at the best of times, let alone from within a black hole.

Everything on the ship had died. Life support, engines (both normal and wormhole), communications, in fact every system that they would need to return to civilisation and find out whether Friss, Lap, Bognrd and Lodka had survived. She hoped they had. Somehow. But, until they had got Zapasnoy working there was nothing she could do. Even the entirety of the repair drones had lost function, except for this one. The one she had named Zelda, for no other reason than it was the first name to pop into her head. The drone hated the name.

The first thing Demi and Zelda had fixed was life support and only just in time, too. Apparently, Briyun's species used a lot more oxygen than humans and had collapsed soon after reentering normal space. That had given Demi added incentive to learn the requisite engineering skills in record time and she praised her own stupidity for ever getting the implant in the first place. Everything she needed to know, she found in the memory of Zelda. That little drone was a legend in Demi's eyes. Though very annoying.

"Coffee. I need coffee." She slumped back against the console as the progress meter for the reboot edged up. "We should have all systems up and running by the end of the day and I want coffee!"

"We've got tons of Water Plus? So much better than ordinary water?" Briyun slid from the captain's chair, expecting Demi to snap at her again, but gained confidence when she didn't. "You've done good, Demo? Ship's as good as new? Almost? Well, not as good as new, but ... You've done good?"

"Thanks." Demi accepted the can of Water Plus, that absolutely was not any better than ordinary water at all. "Engines are on restart countdown. We'll be on our way soon."

She could sense the progress of all the systems, now. After some repairs, she had found a little backdoor within Zapasnoy's computer. Placed there when the original designers had made the first Gal-Navy corvette. It was to be the first in a fleet of ships exclusively made for DWAIt Corps and, with that in mind, the ship had been made so that people with implants could interface with the ship. When DWAIt Corps decided to simply buy the navy, it made that particular feature obsolete. Why, DWAIt Corps had pondered, would they need to pilot themselves when they had perfectly good Gal-Navy personnel to use as chauffeurs?

Zelda ran into Demi's foot, beeping and squeaking and Demi couldn't believe what she heard. A dozen repair drones filed onto the bridge and began making repairs to Demi's repairs. It had taken a while, but Zapasnoy had finally repaired it's self-repair system, sending out repair drones to help with ship-wide repairs that were already repaired. Or close to being repaired. Demi reached out with her implant and sent the drones elsewhere to perform their repairs. Like to the kitchen to repair the coffee machine. She only needed one drone on the bridge. That drone may even be Zelda.

Over in the corner, Demi saw the long, safe deposit box. She hadn't had the time to open it and now she wondered whether she should. Friss had all but said that he'd lied to her, that the box did not contain a way of clearing her name. She couldn't even say she was disappointed. She had, after a fashion, expected as much from the man. He was not, in any definition of the word, reliable. Still, he had said it was something she should open when she was safe. She wondered if she could consider their current situation 'safe'. A ping informed her that the navigation system had rebooted.

"Well? Are we, and this is important, anywhere near Shahalladral Epsilon?" Briyun caught Demi's questioning look. "I, kind of, owe a lot of money there? And, sort of, may have killed some things that looked like rodents but were, in fact, the Royal Family's favourite pets? Kind of?"

"No, we are ..." She tapped the screen and frowned before widening the scope of the navigational area. She frowned again. "This can't be right."

She had no option but to dive into the navigation systems using her implant. It always felt slightly wrong. Like Friss' Matryoshka dolls, the navigation systems felt like the universe compacted within a tiny thing within the vastness of the universe. It was more than a little disconcerting, but she had to do it. And what she found was odd. Very odd. Disconcerting and very odd did not mix well. She checked the findings again, rejected them and checked again. They remained disconcerting and odd.

Navigation systems on ships were among the most complicated and powerful computers ever devised. They had to account for drift. Not only the drift of the ship, but of the universe, of the galaxy, of planetary systems, of each planet and moon and object. Everything drifted, constantly, at great speeds. A consequence of the ever-expanding universe. But, according to the data Demi read and rejected again, the universe had not expanded, it had contracted. Or, at least it looked that way at first.

"Is there anywhere local we can restock on beer?" Briyun looked at the navigation screens and understood nothing. She tapped at the representation of a little blue-green planet with a large moon orbiting it. "I hear Banks Station has some great brews?"

"No. Not for a while. Not for ..." Returning to looking at the readings with her eyes, Demi made navigation calculate the date. "Not for another five hundred years, give or take a hundred years. We ... we've gone back in time. Somehow."

"So? No beer?" With a look of despondence and great disappointment, Briyun looked around, scowled at nothing and then looked back, tapping the screen again. "How about ale? Wine? I'm desperate here? I need alcohol?"

Oh, there was alcohol, alright, but none of the brews that Briyun would know. Demi looked at the display and that blue-green planet in the nearby system. She knew it. Or, at least, she knew what it would become. A burned, cracked, blackened wreck of a planet, but, to look at it now, no-one would suspect what would happen to it in the future.

The future. It surprised Demi how fast she had adapted to that idea. Right now, here, the Galactic Republic wasn't even a trace of a thought in anyone's mind. There were no trans-luminal ships. Not one, anywhere, except here. In this time, DWAIt Corps had not even started in anyones garage with a dodgy old computer, duct tape and money borrowed from several parents. Or stolen. They were alone. Alone in a vast universe of disparate peoples that probably didn't even know other races existed. They had nowhere to go. No-one they could talk to.

She moved away from the console and flopped against the wall beside the safe deposit box. With nothing better to do, she opened it, expecting something horrible to jump out, like a vampiric Meep. Nothing jumped out, but she now sensed technology within. A little data chip that held a lot of information. Curious, she connected her implant to it and her jaw dropped as soon as she saw the information within.

It was a cure. Not only a way to care for and minimise the symptoms. A cure! Her brother and sister could live their lives free of the disease that cost so much to keep them healthy. DWAIt Corps had calculated that they could get far more money through treatments than they ever would through releasing the cure. Demi didn't know if Friss knew the cure had lain in that vault all this time, or whether he had found it by accident as he had searched the database to keep Demi happy. It didn't matter, either way. Demi had the cure now.

"I know where we can find beer! But we're going to have to go back." Demi jumped up and began setting coordinates into the navigation console. When the engines came back online, they would be on their way. "Back to the black hole. Because, and I hate using clichéd, copyrighted and trademarked phrases, but we have to go back to the future."

"You had me at 'beer'?" Briyun moved to the captain's chair to stay out of Demi's way.

Demi didn't know how she could do it, but she had to try. She had the cure to the illness her brother and sister suffered. It couldn't make up for what Demi had done, bringing her family name into disrepute, but it was a start. Who knew, perhaps if Demi arrived back in the future a few years early, she may even be able to stop all of that from happening.

The world, nay, the universe, was her oyster!

Well, perhaps not her 'oyster'. Shellfish brought her out in a rash.