“Nah, it’s bloody well gone again.”

Mason sighed at Bennett’s words, casting a glance over at where the big engineer was hunched over the engineering console on the left side of the bridge. He didn’t often spend time up here, preferring to remain holed up in main engineering… that and the bridge of the Resolute was small. With the two of them in here, plus Andrews, the other crew had to practically squeeze between them.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. Since the Blackout had fallen across… well, pretty much everywhere… restricting comms and warp drive, they’d been crawling their way across the sector using what little pockets they could find where space acted normal and try to slingshot themselves across to somewhere near where the Canterbury was. That was if the Canterbury was still in one piece. Everywhere they landed, each system, it was like following a trail of carnage and chaos.

No, he reassured himself. The Canterbury was a hell of a tough ship and he’d checked out Thorne’s record. She was hardcore, not at all the admin officer he’d first assumed her to be, and not the kind to fall apart at the first sign of trouble.

“Ship slow now.” Kovash complained, the tall, lean rivan pilot leaning back in her chair and shoving her hands through her long, white hair in frustration. She glanced back at Bennett. “Slow ship, engineer. You need to fix.”

“Yes, yes, I know!” Bennett growled, glaring back at the pilot. “Just give me a moment, this ain’t an exact science, you know! Allen… please tell me you have something.”

Mason settled back in the captain’s chair, feeling the slight creak that told him it was going to need welding again soon. The console built into the arm pinged with a message, surprising him. No messages had gotten through to the ship in days. Which meant this was from onboard the ship. He looked down with a frown. 

It was from Andrews. Who was sat next to him. Right next to him, in the XO’s chair. 

Those two really need to get a room.

He snorted softly, sliding a glance sideways. Andrews offered a small grin and an ‘amiright?’ quirk of his eyebrows.

They really do. They’ve needed to for years, he quickly typed back, looking up as Bennett cleared his throat. The love-hate thing between the engineer and the pilot had been raging for years. He wasn’t stupid enough to get in the middle of it. 

“Allen?” Bennett growled in demand. “Gotta give me something here.”

“Yes, of course. Unlike engineering, this is actually an exact science,” the chief science officer threw back, not looking up as his fingers flew over his console.

He didn’t look at all concerned with the annoyed chief engineer’s growl, but then, he’d once had some kind of all powerful alien entity capable of dropping everyone on an entire planet with one thought stuffed in his head, so an annoyed Dayne Bennett probably didn’t even register.

“Okay,” he checked something on his console and finally looked up. “New course, Kovash. Bennett, you ready?”

The engineer nodded with a grunt. “This is freaking killing the core,” he complained. “I’m going to have to do a full overhaul when this is over.”

“Absolutely,” Mason said, as Kovash turned the ship and they crawled forward. “I’ll even come down there and help you.”

Dayne looked up at him, with a look of mock horror across his face. “Lady’s sake, boss, don’t scare me like that. I’ve seen what you can do with a spanner. It’s horrifying. And remember the shelves in your ready room?”

“Hey! Those shelves were definitely defective. that’s why they fell off the wall.”

“Fell off?” Bennett scoffed. “They practically did a suicide lemming leap for the floor.”

“Oi! We’ll have less.” Mason grinned as chuckles went around the bridge, lightening the mood. They needed that, now more than ever.

“Coming up in three…” Kovash announced. “Two…”

Mason crossed his fingers that this next ‘puddle’ Allen had identified would give them warp capability, if only for a little while.

Even just an hour… hell, fifteen minutes might give them just enough to get somewhere they could get a lead on the Canterbury.

”One.”