The Day Off

[stardust47]

James arrived back on Junction, carrying a stack of books. Behind him came two of his old friends: Dave Enfield, a man in his fifties who he had known for years and Steve (short for Stephanie) Wesson, a girl James had known on the Parabellum. Catherine had just finished maintaining her ship when she clambered outof the hatch, shutting it.
"James. You're back already? Must have lost track of time. So, you brought Dave and Steve?" said Catherine, tired from the hard work. "So, it's been a while,"
"You must be Catherine," said Dave, "I must say, it is a pleasure to finally meet you," Dave had been through a tough upbringing on Southamption Shipyard but he never let his good manners sway.
"The pleasure is all mine," replied Catherine. The four of them made their way into James and Catherine's room.

A few hours later, everyone was having a wonderful time. They were playing one of the new campaigns for Dark Dungeons and were just about to face the Dark Lord when Junction's sensors picked up an anomaly.
"Is this really what the Tomb Lords are coming up with these days?" said Dave. As the 'Tomb Lord', James had the job of guiding everyone else through the adventure.
"Uh, that's not me," said James. It would have taken someone else to rig the sensors for a fourth-wall breaking moment like this and the other residents of the station were out pirating.
"Shall we check it out?" suggested Steve.
"Well, this might be important," noted Catherine. Everyone nodded and packed into the ships. Steve went with Catherine in her CSF while Dave was in James' Eagle.
"It's in sector D3, about 4 kliks off the galactic plane," said Catherine.
It didn't take long to see the anomaly.
"A wandering black hole... I never thought I'd see one..." said Steve, "Last time one of these showed up in Sirius, a jump gate construction in the Omegas got delayed by three decades,"
"I heard about that," said James. "Wait, these energy readings are far too small for a sustainable black hole. This one must be nearly as old as the universe itself. It's..." James checked the readings once more, "I don't believe this. It's about to go into the final stages of its evaporation!" He reminisced back to his physics lessons back at the Royal New London academy. "We're gonna have to get back to Junction,"
"Why?" asked Catherine.
"As a black hole reduces in mass, it gets exponentially hotter. When it stops being a black hole, it releases a huge amount of gamma rays, which is bad," replied James.
They docked with the station just in time. The burst hit Junction, shorting out the main capacitor bank and reducing the station to emergency power.

Catherine had just finished reconnecting the curcuits when it was time for Dave and Steve to go back.
"So, good time?" she asked Dave.
"Ah, too much excitement for me. I think I'll just go back to Southhampton and fix up battleships," came his tired reply, "I bet Steve will be begging to come back though,"
"I thought so. Anyway, I'll keep in touch," And with that, Dave and Steve piled on to James' Eagle and headed back to Bretonia.

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