****
Beka walked down the corridors of the Maru, glancing around corners and looking up the ladders. Where the hell was that kid?
She shook her head. Finding Bobby had always been easy. He wasn't as scrawny as this kid, who could fit into every nook and cranny imaginable. She'd even seen him crawling around her circuit tunnels, into which only repair bots were supposed to fit.
"Harper?" she called.
"I'm in here, Miss Captain." Came the answering call from somewhere within the walls.
She frowned. "Harper, why the hell are you in my walls?"
A snicker answered her. "What a fancy thing to call it."
She closed her eyes and ran her hand through her hair. "Get your ass out of my walls and over here, now." She commanded. She felt a headache coming on. Having an extra crewmember was always draining. Having a scrawny kid from earth as an extra crewmember was...she couldn't find a word for it.
Seconds later, the panel beside her was abruptly ripped from the walls and flung across the room. She stared as a blond spiky head appeared from the hole and Harper pulled himself out of it. He saw her staring. His eyes widened.
"I'll fix the wall, don't worry about, Miss Captain. I'll fix it right quick." He stammered, already walking towards the piece of wall which was lying beside Beka.
Beka shook her head. "It's okay, kid. Don't worry about."
He gave her a small nod, but from the fear in his eyes, she knew he didn't believe her. She had seen his former employer once, and she knew that he hadn't been the type to be very lenient about his employees vandalizing his property. The guy had given her the creeps. She glanced him over. Skinny as hell. She'd have to feed him more. And those clothes too. They looked about five sizes too big for him and were so filthy and torn that she guessed he'd been wearing them for a long time. Then she saw the earring. Man, she had a lot to fix on this kid.
She sighed. "Alright, I've been meaning to have a little talk, but running away from Dragans and kicking Bobby off the ship took up my time. But now, we can talk."
He gave her a slow nod, his eyes still nervously glancing all around the corridor, probably looking for the quickest way to run in case she tried to hurt him.
She rubbed her eyes. "First of all, quit looking around as if I'm going to kill you in a few seconds. You're my engineer and a part of my crew and I don't kill either."
He gave her a weary smile but the tension evaporated from his eyes and he relaxed a little bit.
She gave a small smile when she saw him ease up a bit. The kid was too damn paranoid for his own good. Not that she blamed him.
"Secondly, you're a part of my crew and I get most of my business because of people's impressions of me. If that impression sucks, I don't get business and we don't eat. That means you lose the earring and starting now what I put on your plate, you're going to eat, understood? And furthermore, tomorrow we're going to go shopping and you're going to pick something decent to wear and I won't hear any complaints about."
He smiled nervously. "But, Miss Captain, I don't got any money. None at all. I ain't ever gonna be able to pay for new stuff-"
"I forgot to mention that I'm paying for everything."
He shook his head. "You don't gotta do-"
"What part of no complaints don't you understand?"
He abruptly shut his mouth. Good. At least the kid knew when to keep his mouth shut. He wasn't so bad after all.
"And next, we're dropping all formalities right now. We're a crew now, you and I, and we're going to be the only two living things on this ship for the time being."
He stared at her. "What am I supposed to call you?"
She shrugged, then smiled. "How about calling me Beka, like everyone else?"
"Just Beka?"
"Uh huh. That okay?"
He nodded his head and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess, Miss-" he swallowed. "Beka." He nearly choked on it. He glanced at her. "It sounds too weird."
"Weird?" she raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I mean, you're my boss. I ain't got any right to call you by your first name."
She was going to ask who the hell told him he didn't have any right, but she let it go.
She sighed. "Alright, Harper, what do you want to call me then? I refuse to be called Miss Captain."
He thought about it for a second. "How about calling you boss?"
"Boss?"
He nodded.
She shrugged. "Fine with me." She saw a faint look of relief flicker across his face. She glanced down at the ground. Now came the tough part.
She cleared her throat. "Okay, now comes the last part." She looked up and stared him straight in the eyes. She saw him flinch back a little and that tension crept back when he saw her staring at him, but he held her gaze.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my ship, right?"
He nodded, still nervous.
"And you're my employee, right?"
He nodded again, swallowing hard. Obviously he had no idea where this was headed. His gaze was staring to wander down the corridor again.
"That means you do what I say. Always. And also, you don't ever screw up. Ever. Is that understood?"
He gave her a quick nod, as if he was afraid that if he wouldn't agree quickly enough she'd throw him off her ship.
"By screwing up I'm including everything from smuggling illegal goods using my ship, to damaging my ship in any way, to trying to stab me in the back. On a lighter note, it also includes not being a pain in the ass, and not being a liability. I personally define a liability as being someone who damages my reputation, not that I have such a great one, but I'm working on one, and as someone who makes my life unnecessarily difficult." She said, still holding his wandering gaze. "And lastly, the biggest way you can possibly screw up with me is by breaking my trust. Granted, I don't trust you right now one bit, but you don't trust me either. But later, after we get to know each other for a little bit, I'll end up trusting you. I always do. And if you break that trust, you'll have screwed up. And if you screw up, I promise you right now, I'll not only throw you off this ship, but I'll throw you far enough until you land on that trashpile where I found you. Is that understood?"
His wandering gaze abruptly stopped and his blue eyes stared at her.
She waited. She saw him trying to weight his chances with this. Finally, he gave her a nod.
She still stared at him. "I mean it, Harper. You screw up, you're gone."
He nodded again. "I understand, boss." He said quietly.
"Good. So, you promise not to screw up any time soon?"
He gave her a small smile. "Yeah. I promise."
"Good." She grinned at him and abruptly turned on her heel and marched towards the kitchen.
"I'll have dinner ready in half an hour, but if you want you can come and help me now." She called over her shoulder.
She heard the crunch of metal behind her. She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. Harper had picked up the metal sheet of wall and was carefully carrying it over to the hole.
She sighed. "Harper, I told you not to worry about it. Come eat dinner and fix it later."
He gave her a small smile as he fished his nanowelder out of his toolbelt that she had found for him in one of her dad's old boxes.
"I'll be there in a second, boss."
"Harper-"
"Boss," he smiled at her, his eyes brighter than they had been all day. "I just made you a promise that I won't screw up, didn't I? That includes cleaning up my junk."
She laughed and turned around and headed towards the kitchen.
She shook her head as she walked. What a kid.
****
Harper slowly picked up his nanowelder off the floor and put it on the cluttered table in Engineering. Taking the time to make sure the nanowelder was lying perfectly on the table, he slowly bent down and picked up a dusty flexi which was lying among the junk on the floor.
Carefully blowing the dust off it, he placed it beside the nanowelder, fussing around with it until it was lying perfectly beside the nanowelder.
He sighed.
Just then, Trance's impatient voice came over the intercom.
"Harper, come on! It's been twenty minutes! Get up here, or I'll send Tyr down there to carry you up here by force."
He glared around the room through which Trance's voice was coming.
"Oh, go to hell." He muttered quietly. But not quietly enough.
Andromeda's hologram flickered on beside him. She crossed her arms and tilted her head as she looked at him.
"Harper, Trance has been waiting in Medical for the past twenty one minutes."
"Yeah, well, tell her to make herself comfortable. I'm not going up there." He glared at her.
She blinked at him, staring at him with her usual patience.
"Harper, it took Trance nearly a month to make an appointment with the doctor, and it took her five more days until she convinced him to take three minutes to take a look at your blood samples. If you don't want to look for your sake, then you owe it to her to go up there and at least thank her for trying."
Suddenly, he interrupted her by slamming the soldering wand he held in his hands on the table.
"For trying?" he yelled. "Trying to do what? I already know what's going to be on that damn medical report. The same thing that's on it every year. The fact that my immune system and my body both suck and that sooner or later, they're both going to give up on me. I don't need to drag myself up three decks just to read that." He spat.
"Harper, calm down." She ordered. Surprisingly, he did. His little spats of anger never lasted long. She was used to them.
"Please go up to med deck now and look at the results." She said. She couldn't remember the last time she had said 'please' to a member of her crew. Ignoring that last thought, she added. "You might even find some good news on there."
He rolled his eyes. "Good news? Yeah, and you're the Vedran Empress." He muttered.
She didn't answer but just continued staring at him.
Finally, he dropped the soldering wand onto the floor and walked up the ramp towards the door, still angrily mumbling to himself.
Shaking her head and praying for good news, the hologram flickered out of existence.
****
Harper walked through the door, only to find Beka and Trance standing there, both annoyed.
"Harper, it's been almost half an hour and some people have things to do." Beka said. She'd spent ten minutes arguing with Dylan over letting her take a break and run up to the Med deck to see the report. They were in the middle of flying a relief mission to Schoppenhauer where a famine had been plaguing the planet for months already. Dylan had not been happy, but after a few frowns had let her go, but not before yelling after her to tell him right away if something important was on that report.
Beka crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.
Harper glared at her. "Yeah well, I never said you had to stop doing whatever you were doing."
She shook her head and glanced at Trance. "Every year in the past five years, we've been through this and the idiot still doesn't understand that looking at that damn report is more important than flying stupid food supplies to a starving planet."
She glanced up at Harper, who was still glaring around the room. She nodded her chin at the flexi lying on the table beside him. "Well, get on with it already. Read it. I don't have all day."
Harper sighed and slowly edged closer to the table. God, he didn't want to read it. Really didn't want to read it. More crap about the doctor droning on that he had to eat better and drink less and take better care of himself. He was so damn sick of it.
He picked up the flexi and turned it on. Well, might as well get it over with.
Dear Mr.Harper,
Upon looking at your blood sample, I have made the usual disturbing discoveries.
'Disturbing discoveries'. God, how he loved this guy.
You have obviously not taken my advice about eating right and not drinking quite so heavily, since your liver has still deteriorated since last year. If you keep this up, your liver will fail in a few years and you will die.
Why the damn guy always had to be so straightforward about things was beyond him.
However, the state of your liver and your eating habits worry me much less than your immune system. As you undoubtedly know, your immune system is not optimally efficient--
Yeah, no shit. What a genius.
-however, over the past few years it has not been deteriorating as badly as I thought it would. Being in a relatively clean environment has kept it from collapsing. However, your recent infestation from the Magog larvae have been very taxing on the remainders of your immune system. Even though you were cured (by means which still elude me and your physician, Dr. Gemini refused to elaborate on), the larvae did serious damage to it before they were removed. To put it bluntly, Mr. Harper, you no longer have an immune system. Whatever was left of it, is now destroyed. Needless to say, if you catch as much as a cold now, your body won't be able to fight it or recover from it, and you will die.
I hope this news wasn't too distressing, and I still urge you to eat lots of vegetables and get daily vitamin doses.
Until next year, Dr. Tellany Harper stared at the flexi. For a second it didn't register. All that kept on going through his head was the doctor's last words about eating vegetables and the vitamin doses.
Then it hit him.
Just like he had feared for years already, his immune system had finally given up on him. He always knew that this would happen one day, but he hadn't expected it to happen so soon.
Shit.
He briefly closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, he found Beka and Trance both staring at him.
Beka raised her eyebrows. "Well, what did he say?"
Harper found two emotions nagging at him. One was despair. All he wanted to do was collapse on the floor and start crying about how he didn't want to die yet, how this wasn't fair and how there had to be something they could do.
The other emotion was anger.
Anger won out.
He stared at Beka, his blue eyes suddenly glistening with anger. Beka nearly recoiled when she saw his eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen him this angry.
"Here!" he hissed, throwing the flexi at her. It missed her and landed on the floor. "Read it yourself." He spat and turned around and ran from the room.
"Harper!" she called after him, a worried frown creased with confusion on her face.
But it was too late. He hadn't heard her.
Beka bent down and picked up the flexi. Flicking it on, she quickly skimmed over the doctor's letter.
She didn't even get to the part about vitamin doses.
Her eyes widened in shock. "Oh, God." she breathed.
Trance looked at her. "What? What does it say?"
Beka stared up at her, fear in her eyes. "Oh, God." That was all that she could get past her lips.
Inwardly, she felt as if someone had punched her.
Harper was going to die. Somewhere, deep inside of her, she always knew that this day would come and that she'd have to face it. She just didn't know it would come this soon.
"Oh, God." she whispered again.
Trance gently pulled the flexi out of her grip. She turned it off.
"Beka? Are you alright?"
Beka slowly nodded. She forced herself to get a grip on herself.
"Yeah, yeah. Everything's fine." She nodded absentmindly, trying to think clearly. She had to get to Harper. She had to find him. Before he did something stupid. God, he was
going to do something stupid, she just knew it. Something very stupid. And that something stupid could kill him.
She set her jaw. No way she'd let the idiot get himself killed.
Quickly, she looked up at the ceiling.
"Rommie, where's Harper?"
"On Hanger deck 7. He's boarding the Maru."
"Shit." Beka swore as she quickly pushed past Trance and ran out of Med deck.
Flying down the corridor, she ran towards the hangar, praying that her ship would be slow in starting up.
It wasn't.
She was still two decks above the hanger decks when she heard the whine of the doors opening.
"Rommie! Shut the doors! Don't let him go!" she yelled.
The hologram flickered on beside her. A surprised frown crossed her face. "I've lost control over the hanger bay doors. I can't open or close them. Harper must have tweaked something."
Beka ran a hand through her hair. "Damn him." She swore, then turned and ran up towards command.
****
Harper opened the airlock and leapt through the door. Slamming the door shut behind him, he ran through the corridors towards the cockpit.
He couldn't stay here. He had to get away. Get away from that flexi, from the doctor's words. Get away from all the concerned faces filled with pity. Get away from the vitamin doses and vegetables.
Get away from everything and everyone who would constantly remind him that he'd never live to see his thirties.
As he ran down the corridor, his shirt suddenly snagged on a jagged piece of metal sticking out of the wall.
He swore as he felt the fabric tear. He angrily glanced at the wall. In the back of his mind, a memory nagged on him and he suddenly remembered that this was the spot where he had torn the wall to pieces and had talked with Beka so long ago. He'd promised her he'd call her boss.
He'd promised her some other stuff too, but his mind was too frantic and angry to remember. Ripping his shirt off the metal he kept on running until he reached the cockpit.
He leapt into the chair and revved the engines. He grabbed hold of the controls.
"Rommie, open the doors." He commanded.
The doors didn't budge.
He swore. Okay, he'd have to do this the hard way. "Andromeda, override the commands of your main AI, authorization: Doing-this-the-hard-way-because-Rommie's-being-an-idiot." Andromeda's voice carried through the hanger deck and through the ship to him.
"Authorization accepted. Overriding commands of my main AI." A small pause. Then: "Opening hanger bay 7 doors."
The heavy doors swung open. Not even pausing to pull on the seatbelt, Harper shoved the control forward.
With a small groan, the ship fired up and shot out of the deck and into empty space. He didn't stop to look back if the doors were closing. He just pushed the control further, forcing the old ship to go even faster.
"Come on, come on, you damn old bitch. Hurry up." He muttered between clenched teeth. He had to get away from the Andromeda. And quickly too.
He quickly opened the nearest slipstream portal and flew the ship towards it.
As the flickering chains of the slipstream grabbed hold of him, he tightened his grip on the control and started steering the ship through the silver strings, not really caring or knowing where he was going.
He spied an exit and jerked the ship over to it. When the stream threw him out, he was nearly thrown out of the piloting chair, but he grabbed the armrest and gritted his teeth. Without stopping to look behind him, he shoved the control further and shot through space. Suddenly, he noticed his hands were shaking. Damn. He needed a drink. Badly.
He switched on autopilot and started rummaging around underneath the chair.
His hands detected nothing but mothballs. Shit.
He went over to a nearby wall and pulled out his nanowelder. Well, if Beka had decided to clean up, he'd just do this the hard way.
Turning it on, he sliced a part of the wall off and then threw it behind him, letting it hit the floor with a clatter.
Suddenly, the viewscreen above his head turned on. A very angry Beka appeared on it. "Harper, what the hell do you think you're doing? Get your ass back to the Andromeda right now!" she commanded.
He glared up at her. Without answering her, he rummaged around the cables in the wall until he found the box. He pulled it out and carefully let it drop beside the piloting chair.
Dropping himself into it, he reached into the box and pulled out a bottle of beer. Using the tip of his nanowelder, he flicked off the cap.
Glaring up at Beka, he took a long swig from the bottle.
Without a word, he turned off autopilot and grabbed the control. Steering with one hand and holding the bottle with the other, he shot through space ahead of the Andromeda.
"Harper, I mean it, stop this dumb crap and get your ass back to the hangar deck right now!"
He glanced up at her as he shoved the control further. The ship groaned and the control was shaking underneath his hand.
"Well, boss, what if I tell you that I don't feel like it?"
"Feel like it? That's my ship you're driving! What I say you do with it, you do!"
He raised an eyebrow as he finished the bottle. He reached into the box and drew out another. Opening it, he took a long swig of it.
"Well, boss, I don't feel like doing that either."
Beka stared at him, at a complete loss of words. Harper was never like this with her. With other people, yes. But never with her.
****
Half an hour later, Beka was so angry that she was ready to start firing on her own ship if it meant getting Harper to stop and getting her hands around his skinny little neck.
They had been flying at breakneck speeds through systems, hurling through space and slipstreams like lightening. Not only that, but Harper had already gone through half the box and had downed a dozen beers. He was working on the next dozen. And it was staring to have an effect on him. His eyes were glazed over and his hand was shaking more than the control he was holding.
He had missed the last slipstream portal he had been flying towards by about two lightyears and had sworn a blue streak about it that had made even Dylan blush, who was standing helplessly beside her.
Now they had entered an asteroid field. Harper tore her poor ship around the rocks, twisting and turning like crazy and never slowing down from the breakneck speed at which they were racing through space.
The controls underneath Beka's hands were heating up and Rommie had told her that if they kept up this pace that soon both of their ship's systems would start melting. Beka had ignored her, never taking her eyes off the little ship which was speeding ahead of her.
She swore as she saw the Maru heading straight for an asteroid. At the last possible second, Harper jerked the ship around, barely missing the surface.
"Harper! God damn it! Slow down!" she yelled at the viewscreen in front of her.
Harper gave a small, hollow laugh, his eyes having trouble focusing. "Why? Cause I might crash and die?" he gave another one of those laughs, which always made Beka's blood run cold. "Aw, wouldn't that be a loss?"
Beka swore. "Harper, I mean it!"
He laughed. "And do I care if you do or if you don't? Hm, let's think. Uhm, no." He reached over to the box, nearly falling off his chair in the process and pulled out another bottle. He took his hands off the control and busied himself with opening the bottle. Beka saw another asteroid hurling towards them.
"Harper! Watch where you're going!" she screamed at him, nearly losing it completely. He tore his eyes off the bottle long enough to grab the control and yank the ship out of harm's way. Looking at how close he had came to crashing, his face paled a bit and a thin sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead. But he didn't stop.
Beka swore quietly. God, he was so drunk.
Dylan was staring at the small ship hurling through space ahead of them. "Well, for someone so completely drunk, he's still flying amazingly well."
Beka glanced at him, biting her lip to stop herself from screaming at him with frustration. Harper was hurling himself and her ship towards death and the man beside her was trying to make conversation.
"Yeah, well, he learned to fly from me. What do you expect? Everything he knows about flying he learned from me." She muttered at him.
She glanced back at the viewscreen when she heard a siren coming from her ship.
"Coolant lines in critical condition. Engines overheating." The Maru's voice drifted over to her.
"Harper-" she warned between clenched teeth. If he damaged her ship-
Harper blinked around himself as he drained another bottle and let if fall limply onto the pile of empty bottles lying by his feet. Swallowing hard and completely ignoring the siren and the warnings, he glared ahead of himself.
"Coolant lines in critical condition. Engines overheating."
He shook his head. God, that damn voice was so annoying. "Shut up!" he yelled at the insides of the ship. When the voice still didn't seize droning on, Harper yanked out his gun and with shaking hands started wildly shooting at the corner where the com system was.
Abruptly, the voice fizzled and stopped.
"Harper, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Beka screamed, completely losing it now. "I'm giving you one more chance. One more, do you hear me? One more! Slow down right now!"
Harper smiled up at her with that chilly, bitter smile.
Beka was reminded of the time just twenty minutes previous to this when she had yelled at him to put on his damn seatbelt at least. He had given her that smile.
That damn smile filled with gut wrenching sadness and bitterness. "You want me to put on my seatbelt, boss? My seatbelt?" He'd spat, glaring at her. "Will that fix me, huh? I ask you, will that fucking fix me?" he yelled at her. He'd turned away from her and gone back to finishing his seventh bottle.
Now he was working on his fifteenth. Beka gritted her teeth.
Rommie turned to her. "We can only keep this up for another ten minutes. Any longer and the Maru's engines will fail." Beka glared at her. "No, really? And why else would those sirens be going off like crazy on my ship?"
Harper swallowed hard and tried to concentrate. Everything around him was fuzzy and spinning. The black space outside and the asteroids all blended in with the wall of the ship and sometimes he couldn't tell if he was looking at the floor or outside. Something was nagging in the back of his mind.
After taking another sip of his beer with shaking hands, he suddenly remembered what it was. The engines. They'd be overheating soon. He had to do something. But what?
He frowned, trying to think. Thinking was pretty damn hard right now. He shook his head, trying to clear the fuzziness. Damn, he was drunk.
His jumbled thoughts were interrupted by the Beka's screaming coming from the viewscreen. He glared up at her. He was trying to think here, and she was interrupting him. He was going to reach up and turn off the connection, but he couldn't see the buttons clearly enough. He'd probably end up hitting the volume button and making her nagging louder. God, he wouldn't be able to take that. His head would explode.
What the hell had he been thinking about? He blinked.
Oh, yeah. The engines. They'd be overheating soon. That wasn't good.
He shook his head, trying to think.
Come on, Harper, think, he urged himself.
Finally, he got it. Turning to the panel beside himself, he squinted at the buttons, trying to see them clearly. There was a button on there somewhere to release excess coolant fluid to the engines.
Finally, Harper found the button. Or else, he thought he did. They all looked the same. Oh, well. He was pretty sure it was that one.
He pressed it.
Suddenly, he heard something being detached from the ship. He blinked. That didn't sound like coolant fluid flowing to the engines.
He glanced up at the screen flickering in the corner. He saw something red and blinking slowly being detached from the ship and flying through space behind them.
He squinted. He couldn't quite read the writing underneath the flying object. Why the hell wasn't the Maru telling him what it was? Oh, yeah, he'd busted up the com system.
He leaned forward, dropping the controls and nearly falling onto the pile of empty bottles lying by his feet. He squinted up at the screen. As he took his eyes off the windshield, he failed to see the asteroid which was hurling towards them at breakneck speed.
He was busy leaning forward and trying to force the fuzziness out of his mind and trying to concentrate enough to make out what it said underneath that object. It had passed by the Andromeda by now and was peacefully floating behind both ships.
Suddenly, he became aware of what was happening outside.
As he looked up, his eyes widened as he saw the asteroid. Panic set in and the blood drained from his face as he madly grabbed for the control. Blinking to clear the dizziness in his head, he jerked the ship upwards.
But it was too late.
The Maru clumsily turned upwards, but it was too slow. Harper felt a shudder as the ship's bottom scrapped against the top of the asteroid.
The control was shaking so badly in his hand that he dropped it.
The unmanned control slipped forward and the Maru's nose dipped down again and heavily crashed into the surface of the asteroid.
Harper was nearly thrown out of his seat by the impact, but managed to grab the control again and jerk the ship up.
But the ship was too tired. Still hurling along the top of the asteroid, bouncing up and down and each time scrapping itself along the surface, the Maru started to slow down. Finally, the Maru hit a large ridge and abruptly slammed to a stop, it's front having been wedged between the ridge and the surface.
At the last impact, Harper had been thrown across the cockpit. His head had slammed into the wall as he had tried to grab onto the railing behind the chair, but he had missed.
As the ship shuddered and stopped, Harper crashed into the opposite wall and his head slammed into the wall again.
The last thing Harper was aware of was the sickly taste of his own blood in his mouth and the shards of glass which lay all over him and the floor. He was vaguely aware of the fact that they had probably been his beer bottles. The faint thought crossed his mind that now he wouldn't be able to return them for a refund.
Then the fuzziness in his mind turned to blackness and he passed out.
****
Far behind the asteroid, the still form of the crashed Maru and the Andromeda which had come to a screeching halt before the asteroid, flew the object which Harper had expelled from the Maru.
Slowly drifting through space, the Maru's slipstream drive passed by large asteroids and small chunks of debris. It was the same slipstream drive which Beka's father had created from scrap pieces of metal and had lovingly installed more than twenty years ago.
It floated through space, slowly twisting and turning, until it drifted straight into a small asteroid which was coming towards it. Crashing into it, the slipstream drive crumbled and exploded. The small chunks of metal and wires drifted through space, now blending in with the other forgotten debris floating around space.
****
Archivist's note: This story was split into two parts because of length.
****