#<- gonna try & stay out of the main tag after btw soz

[ss-tulpar]

//new Mouthwashing blog babyyyy

INBOX OPEN: Jimmy & Curly

”What the hell am I looking at?” “I’m…not certain.”

“What the fuck do you mean not certain? You’re the captain, you’re the one who runs this ship, and you’re telling me you don’t know that this?”

“Jim, whatever it is it’s not recognized by the auto scanners. It’s probably just an anomalous asteroid. The TULPAR isn’t rated for research, it’s just…shaped weird. Maybe it has abnormally high levels of uranium.”

“Oh, really.”

“Jimmy.”

“I forgot you were such an expert.”

“Can we just steer clear of this?”

“Fine.”

“Jim, please be serious. We can’t let bickering get in the way of safety.”

“I am being serious. My controls aren’t responding.”

“Fuck. Seriously? Fuck! Okay, go find Swan—“

—

“Jesus fuck!” Swansea curses, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. It comes away spotted with blood. “What the hell was that? You alright, kid?”

Daisuke rubs his back, wincing. “I think I fell onto a pipe or something.”

“Hell of some turbulence.” Swansea bends over, spots dancing in his vision, to pick up his dropped wrench.

“You’re bleeding!” Daisuke exclaims. “I should get Anya—“

“It’s fine.” Swansea grunts. “Just a flesh wound.” “What happened?” Daisuke asks. “I mean, the whole ship just…” He looks up at the ceiling where the red emergency floodlights remain off. “Asteroid field, probably, the captain mustve pulled the emergency breaks. Let’s clean up.” Swansea orders gruffly.

“Okay, but I’m—“

—

Anya sighs picking up another pill. What poor timing to be sorting inventory, why hadn’t she been given heads up that they were moving into rough space again? Though, it might’ve been a surprise asteroid. She doubted the Captain would neglect to tell her like that…

Still, it meant a lot more work for her today. She was just lucky she was wearing gloves, she didn’t need to start dissolving the pills onto her fingers. The IDs for each medication was stamped on them but they were each stubbornly uniform, forcing her to check each individually.

The hard stop had been sudden and a little worrying, but the intercom and emergency lights had been silent. She’d need to check on the others to make sure no one got hurt by a falling object in a minute, once she picked up enough painkillers.

She can’t help but feel off at the quiet. The hum of the main engine had become a part of the background noise at all hours of the day. —

Jimmy ducked back into the cockpit, red light bathing the room as he shut the door. “Everything’s fine.”

“Fine.” Curly says, flipping through something. What, a goddamn paper manual? The light of the limited diagnostic scans cast him in odd shadow, highlighting the stress on his face. “Fine. Every other system on the ship, the life support, the oxygen, the gravity, all of it is in perfect working order except for our engines.”

“Isn’t that good news? What, you’d rather we start choking to death within ten minutes?” Jimmy snipes, settling into the co-pilots chair.

“it doesn’t make sense.” Curly leafs though the booklet more aggressively. “Even if I tried to stop the ship wouldn’t just…stop! That’s not how physics works! We’d be sliding forwards for at least an hour but our scanners say we’re floating in dead space.”

Jimmy sighs, leaning back into his chair. He avoids looking at Curly, staring up at the projection hologram of the ship. “It could be worse.”

“Right.” Curly says and he seems to actually relax at the half hearted statement. “It could be a lot worse. We have a course of action at least.”

He glances at Curly out of the corner of his eye. “Which is? Cause I don’t see how we’re doing anything but sitting and waiting.”

“Our radio system.” Curly says. “We can contact other ships. The Express had to upgrade them in all operational vehicles, eventually we’ll find someone who has something useful or could even come help us. We have enough food to last us too.”

“Right. S-O-S.” Curly ignores his tone.

“The frequency settings aren’t precise so I can’t focus it on only ships, but we can filter the chatter manually.” Curly says. “It won’t be that bad. Right?”

Stuck here on a ship with Anya, Daisuke, and Swansea, picking up the phone to a bunch of random idiots on some six person planetside commune. How exciting. “Turn it on already then.”