FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

~ The deer came to with the brittle haze of hibernation heavy in her thoughts, the dull alarm tone of the travel sleep pod making a rhythmic request for her attention. With a bit of a shake, Catherine opened her eyes to take in the situation.

~ "Mains Power Not Detected", the pod's display indicated in deep orange letters above the warning, "Auxillary Batteries Nearing Depletion", brightly red in block font above the neatly noted blue text reading, "Unable to establish communications with ship primary harness."

~ Beyond the screen and the glass top of the pod was a silent and dim hallway, the occasional tool floating by. Something had knocked out main power, while she was asleep, and it had been out long enough for the artificial gravity to have fizzled. The deer took a breath, and punched in the commands to open the pod's door. A soft whinging sound of the latch being jammed against its own mechanism. Catherine groaned, and pulled up the maintenance menu. While navigating the power routing options, a cleaning drone drifted into her field of view. She paused to watch it.

~ The little drone, being basically a disc with a couple small limbs, some gyroscopes, and several little wheels on the underside, didn't seem to be taking to the lack of gravity very well. It flailed with the tiny actuators, twisting about a bit as the gyroscopes failed to find purchase. When it slammed into the floor infront of the pod with a satisfying 'Whummmphk!', Catherine let out a soft giggle. The adventure past, she turned her attentions to diverting additional auxililary power into the solonoid for the door latch.

~ With the extra energy and force behind it, the latch mechanism made a sharper sound of failure. Something was putting a lot of pressure on the mechanism, and Catherine was at a loss for ideas. From the tiny toolkit embedded into the wall of the pod, she tasked herself with removing the panel covering the mechanism.

~ "I suppose I'll have to use a prybar on the latch's actuator...", being careful to pocket each screw removed. It would do no good to leave them floating free, ready to puncture things or people. As the final screw started turning, her attention was caught again by cleaning drones drifting past.

~ This time, a pair of drones were doing their own dances of solitary flails along what looked to be a collision course. With hours of power left in the pod, the deer took a moment to watch with interest.

~ "Will one of them figure to get out of the way?..", and within moments the pair of drones slammed into each other with sufficient force that each came away dented.

~ The silence of the impact caught the deer's attention. Abruptly, Catherine's top priority was no longer opening the pod door.