A Mindnode is born

[Akura]

"Status report" Takao practically demanded, eying the chaos below,

"We're pushing it sir, you have to throttle it down!"

"No, we're not getting stranded here!"

"Either you slow down, or this baby fails, or worse, explodes"


Takao's voice buzzed through to the bridge,

"Slow us down to a stop, switch off everything that isn't the lights and life support"

"Yessir, and the Captain"

"First casualty... gather everyone and get them down here to engineering" Takao's voice was strained and tired,

"On it" the navigations officer replied, switching off the comms, "You heard the man, everyone down to engineering"


The trip out to the unmapped nebula was a disaster, everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, and now they were stranded. The crew was relitively small for a ship of it's size, as most of the equipment was automated and they lacked a powerful weapons battery.

Within a few minutes, the ship came to a grinding halt next to a large jagged chunk of rock, powering down scanners and engines. The crew slowly made their way to the large engineering deck, piling onto the platforms as best they could.

"Generators, how much longer till the main one fails?" Takao sighed, looking across at each man's face, seeing the fear and confusion,

"Perhaps another four hours like this, one hour if we try to move again, with the risk of failure of course" the head engineer explained, "The backup won't be functional for a while, trying to bring it online earlier fried some pretty important pieces of tech"

"Shields, what of those?"

"The main reflector was damaged by the rocks, we have a backup, but someone has to leave the ship to refit it" the technician shivered, "Most of these rocks are pretty still, but if a single rock in motion hits us, it'll hit us hard, we're sitting ducks"

"So we have four hours till we suffocate, do you think you could have the backup online by then?"

"Yes sir, if we get a move on..."

"Do it, lets get us home boys" Takao ordered with a heavy feeling of dread.