FSE

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It felt really warm to Taylor as he struggled to pull himself up. The safety restraints did their job of keeping them safe, he knew that much. He wanted to really yell at Carlos for not warning him sooner, but considering the tiered service, he should have suspected something might have happened. His blurred vision came to focus, seeing red indicators on the navigation screen. Not good.

"Arrrrowwll." His voicebox wasn't functioning properly, probably due to the force of the engine. He sniffed, clearing away his nasal passages, and coughed as the sudden smell of smoke struck him. 'Argh! Shit. Strong.' They were currently at rest, so Taylor pushed the release button on his restraints, and floated out. It seemed that the gravity module had been deactivated.

Looking around, he noticed they were in open space. The jump had succeeded somehow, though he didn't know why they weren't dead right then and there. Nothing in space, other than the lights that were the stars in the sky. Carlos still looked unconscious, but he was still definitely breathing. He would probably come to soon enough.

Assessing the system, it seemed the ship was mostly functional. The Hypercharge drive was offline though, and the system reported it would be ready to use in 24 hours. 'It must have been one hell of a system if it basically blew up,' he thought. 'Oxygen's still on, our hulls battered but still in one piece... I guess we're fine... So long as we don't attempt another leap of faith...'

Just to be sure, Taylor left the cabin to see if their payload was still intact. Considering the massive leap in space, he wanted to know if they had anything left to deliver. It thankfully remained in place, and Taylor let out a sigh of relief.

Carlos was just waking when Taylor returned. "So, thanks for the warning."

"Glad you appreciated it." Even now, though he had barely been conscious, Carlos still managed to joke about the whole thing. Though he was visibly frowning, Taylor rather enjoyed the less serious moments with Carlos.

"I hate you so much."

Carlos smiled. "You're not serious. So, how are we?"

"Well, I assume you've checked the systems, since you're always doing that..."

Taylor nodded, "Yeah, nothing serious. That drive though is gonna be out of business for about a day. It's probably best if we didn't try a jump until then."

"I wasn't planning on it, Taylor."

"Well, there are a couple of service stations near. We might need a local FTL drive though, and I'm not sure about flying in this condition."

Carlos stretched out his sore limbs gently, to make sure he hadn't broken any of his bones during the trip, then followed after Taylor through the ship. "So, how much stuff do we need to fix by hand?"

"Not much, if the diagnostic systems are telling me correctly. I think we'd best look over everything before declaring it space-worthy, if you'd ask me."

"Okay. So, I'm going to assume you planned ahead, and also have a checklist on hand to go over."

Taylor had to roll his eyes at that moment. Of course he had a checklist, every ship was required by law to have a checklist of diagnostics to go over manually when it came to uses of experimental engines. He whipped it out from his pocket, and they went over each of the ship's systems to ensure absolutely nothing had entirely broke.

"...okay, that's all. We're still alive, and we're still operational," said Taylor.

"Well that's good, I could tell that. We should probably see a service station about the state of our hull."

Taylor nodded. "Yeah, we should. I've got a couple of places I'd suggest, but you're the one making the call here." He brought up the local starmap on the navigation computer. "Right now, there are two choices. Bryant's Stop & Service, or Parker Mechanics. They're both roughly about the same distance, so I don't think it particularly matters what works better."

"Right," replied Carlos. He queried for communications back to base for a moment, but switched it off when he heard static. "These systems love to fail, don't they..."

"Well, at least our impulse drive is still functional, and we still have the job. We should still be ahead of schedule even if we're delayed for every jump we make."

"Okay, plotting course for Parker Mechanics. Didn't realise we'd jump so far," Carlos remarked.

"Well, I guess we should get used to it then. We are going to keep using it, after all."

* * *

It took them a good half hour to get within local calling range of the service station. Navigation was a little tough with some lone asteroids floating about, which also happened to be where the station was. Carlos was glad to have made it, and that there also weren't any medical side effects of their engines. At the very least, not any *known* side effects, anyway.

"This is ship designation Carla Wallis requesting service from Parker Mechanics, do you receive?"

A robotic voice answered, much to Carlos' disappointment. "*-Welcome to Parker Mechanics, where we may service your damaged wreck of a ship! Please send your ship to Bay one where a mechanic will be with your shortly. Payment will be processed then.-*"

"Never mind how far we are, I can guess judging how rude everything is," mumbled Taylor.

"Come on, we don't need to be all formalised about everything here! This is open space, not some IPF base where anything you say is subject to censorship!"

Carlos guided their ship in, and watched as they entered a simple bay. It wasn't anything compared to the IPF bases they had ever seen, with technology and materials months, years even behind them. It still managed to look reasonable, and for what was essentially a mechanic, it was remarkably neat.

The radio came to life again as the automated system spoke, "*-Please wait, a mechanic will shortly be with you.-*" With that, it went quiet. There was no sound for a while until the doors shut, air being funneled in to pressurise the bay.

"Guess someone lives out here, huh," said Carlos. "I was sort of expecting the whole system to be automated or something."

"Well, I suppose part of this place would be automated," Taylor pointed out. "Sometimes these services get no business from anyone for months and possibly even years. It'd make sense for someone to have a cryostation to only wake them up when customers around."

"Heh, I trust you to make sense of all this stuff," smiled Carlos. "Looks like he might be coming around right now actually."

"Could be a *woman* for all I know," answered Taylor. "A mechanic is as much a woman's job as a man's one."

"Hey, I'm just speaking from statistics there!" defended Carlos, ears flattening. "I'm sure whoever it is can do a great job at being a third opinion for our ship, and fix it if it isn't."

The figure that emerged from it was much different from the stereotypes that they had been shown in the media in various dramas and comedy shows. Of course, they'd be foolish to assume that they were. A reasonably young looking lion appeared, slightly shivering, but otherwise ready to do his job.

Taylor frowned slightly at the sight, but shrugged it off as he pushed the button to open the airlock doors of their ship. The two made their way out of the ship. The lion spoke with a reasonably developed voice, something that Taylor would have guessed to be just out of the teenage years. "Hi there! Welcome to Parker Mechanics! I'm Darin Parker, and I'll be your mechanic for today! So, what are we looking at here?"

"I was wondering if you could give our ship a look," said Carlos. "We did a pretty big jump that's made our ship a little bit creaky in some places, so we sort of want a third opinion on the condition before we make another jump like that."

The lion looked up and down at the ship, then looked back to the wolf. "I must say, that's one fine ship you've got there. I'll take a look at it, but you'll have to forgive me since my brain hasn't fully defrosted just yet."

"Thanks very much," said Taylor. "Do you have any long range communicators we could use? We need to contact base and explain the situation."

"Uh? Yeah, sure. It should be just through that door." Darin pointed over to the door where he came from. "Should be pretty easy to find, since it's pretty much the first thing you'll see."

"Thanks again!" Carlos grabbed Taylor, and pulled him over in the direction of the door, who had not really wanting to part ways with their ship.

Being slightly out of the way of the work area, there was quite a few bits and pieces of scrap and components that could hardly be described as such. Neither Carlos nor Taylor knew what it was that most of the components were made of. The communicatior was recognisable, although it looked a bit dusted from non-usage. It was still usable, due to standardisation in communicator hardware technology.

"*Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep*"

"Wow, we must really be that far if we're jumping several communicator beacons," said Carlos, a puzzled look on his face. "Do we have anything yet, Taylor?"

"Nope. Too far. The signal just isn't holding far enough, so it gets drowned out in the rest of space. Bloody piece of trash."

"Hey, just because a business happens to be in a remote part of space-"

"I know, I know that!" cut in Taylor. "I just hate the fact that it's so useless out here!"

Carlos grabbed onto Taylor's shoulders. "Come on Lawrencev, Keep your cool! Being angry over something like this isn't going to help anyone, least of all yourself!" Their eyes locked on each others for a moment, but then Taylor looked away.

"Yeah, you're right." He sighed, letting his gaze fall to the ground. "I've been stressed out even at the slightest thing. Doesn't help with that hypercharge drive either."

"I should probably apologise for that, Taylor. I didn't know whether I should have warned you or not. I was being reckless at the wrong time." When Taylor looked up again, he could tell that Carlos was genuinely sorry about it.

"So, is this the point where we kiss and make up?" asked Taylor. Carlos' eyes widened and suddenly let go of Taylor, flinching backwards at the suggestion. "Oh hell, no! I wouldn't... oh. You better not start making jokes as well!"

"I don't plan on it, Carlos."

Returning back to the main bay, Parker was in the final process of examining their ship, typing away at an old holographic display. Carlos could guess that it was the technology used in the early days, as it flickered a lot and was quite a pain to use. That he supposed, was why the young lion had been wearing dark glasses.

"So, what can you tell us, Darin?" asked Carlos. "Are we still good?"

"There's a slight destablisation of the outer hull, you should be good after I apply some new reinforcing welds. But I've found something interesting about the reactor."

Taylor then spoke. "Hmm? What's interesting?"

"It looks like your reactor is outputting way more power than a ship like yours is bound to even use at all. If you'd ask me, your configuration is equipped to work with a pretty well armed weapons system."

"Huh?" both wolf and Shiba said at the same moment.

"Here, I'll show you." The two looked at where Darin motioned. "The configuration isn't standard, as there was clearly some tinkering going about here. Whoever was working on your stuff really knew their stuff."

Carlos realised what Parker was talking about when he saw it. The spaces where their standard defensive options were had been replaced with what could only be described as-

"Big guns..." Carlos shook his head knowing what he had just said. "God, that sounded stupid."

"You're right though," said Taylor. "Those weapons aren't standard. What in the world warrants theses?"

"Oh, you don't know?" Darin was a little confused. "Well, these weapons are pretty much military grade stuff, judging from the insignia and make. Pretty compact, considering you've pretty much got a cargo ship."

"I see..." mumbled Carlos. He had no idea that the weapons were in place until just then. The pre-flight checks didn't pick up anything odd. Did the IPF have something to do with their cargo?

"That's pretty much it. If you're doing any undercover work, I'd say you were doing it pretty darn well! Pity I was the one to take a look at it! Anyway," continued Darin, "I'll get all this stuff done in a few hours. The tools aren't the best, but I can guarantee that it'll hold better than ever! Not to mention we could probably reinforce those systems, since they took a slight burning."

"That's fine by us," said Carlos. "You don't mind if we watch? I know Taylor's excellent at this stuff, but I really need to learn a bit more about spacecraft mechanics."

"Feel free to do so!"

The two oversaw the work being done just out of the fact it didn't seem just right to leave their space craft unattended. Darin was quite skilled at his work, and though it had most likely been months since he last had a customer, the work was done quickly and with ease. For Taylor at least, the work done here was very quick compared to what he had seen closer to Earth. He shuddered slightly when he took their ship once to a reputable servicer, only to have a bodged job that led to their closure.

* * *

"Status on the package?" Anderson asked, the wolf looking over the shoulder of a cheetah, who was tapping quickly and expertly on the keyboard.

"They've gone on the blip, sir. My guess would be that the hypercharge drive temporarily took them off the locators, but they might be back soon," she said.

"Hmm, it'll be a few hours before we can tell if that drive didn't just make the universe implode on those two," Anderson spoke. "I was told by the reports that it was certainly stable and good to use, but this doesn't make me less nervous than already. Thank you, Ms. Allen."

Ruth shrugged off the thanks. "Don't thank me until I've gotten their beacon again."

The wolf returned to his office, a midway between neat and messy with some open files, others unorganised. It was Anderson's place of solitude when the outside environment got too busy for his liking and he wanted to be left alone. Checking for any messages of his own, he sighed when there weren't anything save for the many about company queries which were being managed by the support department, and a few bits of junk mail that still were on the move around the network.

A call got forwarded to his desk, which caught Anderson off guard. Calls never got forwarded to him, unless it was of absolute emergency. The other alternative was...

"It's me."

The voice at the other end of the receiver. A voice that he hadn't heard in quite a long time since he had left Earth to formulate a start up. "Calvin?"

"Yup. Calling all the way from the other end of the universe." Anderson could tell, what with the quality much like something from the previous millenium, sounding very much like an old radio. There was only so much technology could do to push the physical barriers of the universe. Then there was technology to break those barriers, though there hadn't been many cases.

"What's up?" Anderson asked. He hadn't been in contact for nearly a year, so his question wasn't at all a casual one. It asked plenty. "We haven't spoken in a while..."

"More or less the same old." There was a slight exasperation in his voice, time having burdened the rabbit's mind. "Kingsley's opened up his own store, Laura got married a couple of weeks ago, and Mara moved away from Arcticus on the reason of 'adventure'."

"That so, huh? Didn't think her of everyone would be the adventurous one!" he laughed, "but really now, why are we talking now? There has to be something up, else you wouldn't have called."

"I've gotten reports that you've got some people handling a job at top tier service." Calvin's tone wasn't one of enthusiasm, nor was it positive. "Good job on finally making history."

"It's nothing remarkable in all honesty," said Anderson. "Just that we got to test out the new hypercharge drive that we've gone and developed. Hopefully everything has worked out well. Is there a problem with that?"

"I certainly hope this is just an ordinary job, Anderson." The cold words made the wolf shiver. "If it's what I think it is, then trust me, it's not going to be good for anyone. It's only a matter of time before the camel's back is broken, and I'd appreciate it if the civilians were clear of it."

With that, the line went dead.