Future Vision: Chapter 11
Chapter:11
The next few days seemed to drag on forever, and everyone in the station was affected by Viper's death. Why Viper had decided to save Nexus was beyond understanding, but most had guessed it had something to do with the experimental ship he was flying. Nexus however did not find an comfort in that reasoning, but he didn't want to know the real reason. All he knew for sure is that he had caused it, that he was the reason.
That wasn't the end Nexus's letdowns however as he was given relief time until the doctor saw that he was mentally fit to go back to work. Sure he was still getting paid and his benefits, but it did nothing to help burn time. Yesterday he had done nothing except lay in his bed replaying the events of the fight, and could not help but wondering what would have happened if the Arbiter were a few minutes earlier.
He understood that in times of war and battle, that death was unavoidable. That you could be killed by doing something stupid, honorable, or at complete random. Death had no bias, no care, and if you mortally wounded beyond what could be healed, you died. It was the sad but honest truth, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Shaking his head he picked up his COM and reviewed the battle report for the tenth time. He still had not memorized or even read all the way through it. He was at the part detailing the damaged to his ship, as well as his interactions with what he now knew as an "Experimental Conscious Artificial Intelligence". His ship had sustained minimal damage, just a few burnt out emitters, a melted thruster assembly, and melted armor on the port side of the ship.
Becoming bored with the 20 page long report again he set it down on the floor next to himself and sighed. Realizing he had been doing the same pattern for the last 2 days he sighed louder and sat up. He wanted to cry and be happy at the same time but he couldn't manage to do either. He was depressed the Viper had died but happy he had survived, as well as flew a classified ship with a new type of A.I. helping him.
Rubbing his forehead with the palm of his paw he got up and headed to the kitchen. Even though the station had several meal halls as well as professional chefs, he had always preferred to cook his own food. It was one of the older Vari customs that he liked that mostly everyone else had waved off due to their culture not being in such a distrusting state anymore. It wasn't an issue of trust for Nexus either, he just liked to cook.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Running around the station in full panic mode, GP was checking up on every single thing from power relays to shield generators and demanding constant updates and reports on the hour every hour until the station was back up and running. He wasn't happy about the fact that there was minimal lighting, enough shields to maybe block a small attack, and that all the guns were offline. Hell the fact that the station took damage to its armor really worried him. He had never expected an attack that large to take place, and no one knew that humans had a ship that big.
There was good news in all of the disaster though as they now knew what the Humans were capable of, and that their Carrier was not completely destroyed. GP gave out specific orders to all the Force Shield Ship pilots to tow the Carrier as close to the station as possible and to stand guard. He had not yet received orders on what to do with it due to the minimal power but he would be damned if he was going to let the Humans anywhere near it.
Checking his COM as he headed towards the main mess hall on the central level of the station, he saw that he was going to be over 30 minutes early for the briefing. Cursing himself for never wanting to be late, he slowed down his pace and tried to find damaged parts of the station to take interest in. However 6 coupling stations later and one out of service Mag Lift, he picked up his pace again and headed straight for the mess hall.
His fast paced walking was interrupted however by all the lights in the section turning off, including all the scary red dim ones that for some reason were suppose to make you feel safer, and provided about as much effective light as the screen of his COM. He waited a few seconds for the lights to come back on, and after about ten seconds of waiting he started to get worried.
Pulling out his COM again he noticed that not only the lights were out, so were the COM systems on this level. Having no signal and no light, he just sat down against the wall and leaned his head against it. Being well aware that the Arbiter was still next to the station, as well as the arrival of an incoming fleet that was due to jump in, he tried to force himself to relax very well knowing that he was safe. He still cursed his genetics however that his vision in near nothing light was not as good as his feral ancestors.
"Hello? Can anyone hear me and what happened to the lights? I can't see and this COM is useless!" GP heard a voice call from down there hall.
"I'm here" he called back in a gruff tone "I don't know what happened to the lights and my COM doesn't have signal."
"Damn GP you in here? Well knowing it's you I feel a whole hell of a lot safer. I'm Senior Technician Durov. Are you alright sir?
"I'm fine Durov, thank you for asking. What were you doing down here?"
"I was working on conduit 47-LPR, but I did not have a power diffuser coil and was waiting for my teammate to bring me one back from the engineering supply room."
"How are the weapon systems looking out of curiosity" GP asked not really wanting to know the answer now that they were sitting in the dark
"Well the last COM from the CO said that the pulse generators were back up and running, and that all the LPR for them had been repaired so we should have point defense turrets. Also the engineers have put the shields into reinforcement mode so they can take the beating from whatever until the power is completely drained from every system in the station including life support. That's all I know sir"
"Better than I expected with the beating it took from that damn carrier. Do you still have a tractor lock on it?"
"I believe so sir, if I remember correctly they fused a few power-grids to tie it into the shield systems, but I cannot say with any certainty."
GP did a mental breather and just as he did the dim red lights came back on with about as much life as someone 5 minutes from death. It was light though and GP was thankful he could at least see in front of him.
"It looks like you can go back to your work now" GP said with a toothy grin as he stood up. "Not to be an ass or anything, but I want those main lasers back up ASAP. To hell with sitting here in this crippled state."
"Sir Yes Sir" and with that Technician Durov went back down the hall and turned the corner.
"Don't hurt yourself!" GP called after him. Wishing he would have gotten a better look at this Technician he sprinted towards the mess hall.
__________________________________________________________________________________
"What kind of fucking military station has a complete power outage" Nexus cursed tossing away his now ruined vegetarian fried rice. "Oh good no COM signal either, hmmph"
Placing the frying pan back on top of the heat induction cook surface, or has Nexus liked to call it "The Plasma Warmer", he sat down in his desk chair feeling defeated. Not only was he hungry, he was tired, his head hurts something fierce from all the aggressive flying, and he strangely wanted nothing more than to be next to GP.
Nexus had always been a loner, never really wanting a relationship. Sure he had thought about it but he was in all honestly happy being by himself. Still though there were indeed times were on several occasions he would have wished for someone to be by his side. Someone to give him comfort with he was feeling defeated or sad.
He chuckled to himself a little as he recalled one incident where back on the planet where he was once living, he tried a "Do It Yourself" job on his vehicle. It was a fairly easy brake repair job, but he butchered it up completely. There was a metal disk that spun inside of the reverse thrusters that had metallic pads clamped down on them to keep the thruster from spinning. In doing this the brake exhaust ports would stay closed allowing the thrust from the turbine to go to the main exhaust ports which move the vehicle up, left, right, and forward.
It just so happened that the mechanism for clamping the metallic pads was hydraulic, and when he went to change the worn out pads, he stepped on the brakes not thing about the fact that the piston would shoot out of its housing in the hydraulic, which ended up costing him 150 credits more than the "DIY" job and a major headache over the amount of money he really didn't have to spend to take it to the shop. What were 30 credits turned into close to 250, which pissed him off and worried him at the same time.
The red emergency lights flickered on and Nexus slumped further back into his chair. He heard his COM chirp on the counter and decided it would be ok to wait a minute before picking it up. It chirped again making Nexus groan as he got up and picked it up forcefully. He saw that he had one message from GP stating that his presence was needed in the main mess hall and that there was a mandatory meeting in progress for everyone that were directly involved in the battle.
He slipped the COM into his dark gray pants and slipped on his white t-shirt that was sitting next to the Plasma Warmer. It didn't say formal dress and he didn't feel like getting in uniform at any rate. He walked out to the main living area and dimmed the lights.
Pawing the holographic open door button he walked out to a dimly lit hallway that was the length of two football fields. The lights themselves looked like they were barely getting a enough power to stay illuminated and some weren't on at all. Not seeing another soul in the hallway he started off going towards the mess hall. All was going well until he reached the center of the station where with no warning the lights faltered again and went out.
"What the fuck is going on" Nexus said just loud enough for anyone within 5 feet to hear. Checking his COM he saw that he still had signal. Typing a quick message to GP asking if he knew what was going on with the power and placing it back into his pocket, he started to fell his way around the circular platform.
"This way nexus" he heard from his front right. He recognized the voice as a Raccoon named Mirko Volkov. It was very common for most Raccoon Vari to have the same strength night vision as their feral ancestors, which the military very often used as night time snipers. What appeared to be nothing but pitch black to Nexus was enough for the Raccoon to see clearly enough to spot him. "You are going to the mess hall right? Follow me, I'll lead you there."
"How did you know it was me, thought you don't have color vision in low light situations?"
"It's not all about color, and you are one of about a dozen foxes in this station. I can still see your body outline and there is only one other fox I know that has a similar built body. No offense but you are on the hefty side for a fox. Not saying you are fight, just bigger... Ya know?"
"Heh I know I am, none of the ladies want to pass up on all of this" Nexus chuckled inside making fun of his own heftyness.
"I might believe that if I knew you didn't have a thing for guys"
Nexus couldn't see Mirko smiling but was sure he was. Nexus grabbed his arm with a paw and let him lead the rest of the way to the mess hall. If anyone could see the two it sure would be an embarrassing sight, but thankfully there were only 2 other raccoons on the station.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Sitting on top of a table GP was getting highly annoyed with the lighting situation. Luckily there was an engineer on the scene and GP told him to find a way to hotwire the lights to something so they would stay on. The engineer explained that the only other system compatible would be the power outlets, and went on to explain that it could blow out every circuit in the room and than nothing would work. GP had simply pointed to the lights and stared.
Since then the engineer has peeled apart walls, laid out wires, detached panels, but he was only one person and was working as fast as he could with the light of a dozen or so COM screens. GP knew that but he was uneasy sitting in the dark, and was five seconds from leaving the hall until a raccoon whose name eluded him and nexus came through the doors.
"Reporting as ordered sir" Nexus announced as he stood at attention in front of GP
"At ease" GP said in a disinterested way, not out of disrespect but this was no time for military formality, plus he couldn't see Nexus saluting anyway.
"Sir, do you have any idea what is going on? The lights..."
"I'm having the engineer there hotwire the lights in this room to the wall outlet couplings. He said it should work in theory, and that any lights on the same circuit should also come on. How much longer on that by the way"
"I'm working the best I can, I'm guessing another 5 minutes though, I just have to reprogram this converter and realign the relays and he should be good to go" the engineer replied back with an obvious annoyed tone but GP let it slide since from what Nexus could tell, he was even on the edge.
Everyone sat in silence and watched the engineer finish soldering wires and put the converter back in place. It took him a few more minutes to add some energy amplification modules to ensure that most of the lights on the circuit would light up without blowing out a main distribution relay that was a deck down.
"Everyone ready for this?" the engineer finally called out. "Everything seems to have power but it is not full strength, the amp modules should compensate thought but not for ever. Eventually they will overheat and start failing, but I cannot tell you for sure how long they will last. I only had 3 in my tech bag so I did what I could."
Everyone nodded and the tech flipped a switch on the panel he had laid out on the floor. It lit of several light which changed from red, to green, and to blue. Once all of them were blue the light came on all at once causing some of the LED to actually explode and other to melt. However it wasn't long until the power level evened out and the lights stayed lit at their normal ambience.
"Ta-Da!" the tech stood and clapped for himself "I never said it was going to be perfect but despite the dozen or so LED's I blew I would say I deserve a promotion!"
"Some other time perhaps" GP shot back as he opened the doors the mess hall. "How many lights did you say where on the circuit?"
"Um, everything from this section to the lift, so pretty much this whole fourth of the deck minus some supply closets and the like according to this diagram I downloaded."
"Is the internal COM system online by chance?" GP asked back now in a more calm tone being able to see.
"Umm... Yes, it is but the system is damaged as several connections were severed in the bombardment. Most of the station would be able to hear a message, but the most outer parts of the station on the port side would either get static or nothing. I can try to ping the system and give you more exact details."
"It won't make sense to check really, nothing we can do to fix the system at the moment. Find a way to patch my COM into the communication systems" GP replied as he handed his COM to the engineer which immediately made a quizzical face at the device due to its age before getting to work. GP was one to not upgrade to the latest and greatest if what he had worked and performed its intended function adequately, and his COM was in fact two generations old.
"I'll need about 15 minutes to get it to interface with the Internal COM system; it would take a little less time if it wasn't so... antiquated". The Tech said peeling apart the metal housing of the device. "The new ones come with a separate internal antenna that takes a flip of the switch after pulling a panel off to get it to interface with the COM on the emergency channel. This, I'll have to reprogram in order to pick up the specified signal band"
GP sat knowing that his COM wasn't the latest in the line of devices, but it worked at that's all he needed. He thought back to a time when he was in his early twenties and he owned a family oriented hatchback car. It was always slow off the line due to the thrusters being just enough to get the vehicle moving off the line at a relatively good pace, and the fact that it weighed so damn much. At the time he had wanted the what was considered "affordable" sports car from Valhalla. After a few weeks of thinking about it, he realized that his car had a very reliable engine core, better than moderate braking power, and for its weight could weave in and out of places with ease. Sure it was still off the line, but once up to speed it had no problems keeping up or passing other traffic. From the point he realized that he had a great hand-me-down from his parents, he took pride in his car and kept it in as mechanical and physical condition as he could.
GP didn't realize he was stuck in his past until the Tech gave him his COM. "Channel's open, feel free to speak."
GP put the COM up to muzzle and took a mental breather. "All crew, All crew, This is Command Chief Master GP. The station is experiencing system wide power outages from several systems. Please remain calm as Engineering is working on the problem. If you do not feel safe in your current location, make your way up to the main mess hall on the central deck. Our systems took more of a beating than was initially reported and are cutting out for reason yet to be confirmed. Thank you for your hard work and cooperation."
With that GP slipped his COM back into his pocket and turned to look at everyone. "I'm heading down to engineering, if anyone wants to come feel free. Plus when we get to that deck there most likely won't be any lighting so extra COMs would help."
Nexus immediately walked over to GP and was going to call Mirko to come lead, but the raccoon was already gone. Nexus figured he must have left while the room was still unlit, and most likely was on an assignment when he caught sight of him struggling.
"Anyone else" GP asked. He didn't feel like giving orders so he was going to demand someone to come. Most of the station crew were still shook up about the battle, since they had never either been in one or one that intense. Since most of the staff in the mess hall were just crewmen or new recruits, he decided to let them be which was probably for the best. He really didn't want anyone slowing him down anyway.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Nexus wasn't sure why he had just gotten up to venture with GP to the lower regions of the station, but by the looks of things he would be the only one taking the trip. He felt happy to have the alone time with GP, but burdened at the same time. He knew that he was eventually going to have to talk to GP about the night, and now might be the best time.
"Well you're the only one who wants to go, so let get to it shall we" he heard GP call next to him.
Nexus started to feel more uncomfortable as they left the mess hall and headed towards the main lift. He chanced a glance at GP seeing that his own face had the slightest signs of unease, but he could say for sure he was thinking about the same thing. All he knew at the moment was that the silence between them was awkward even though neither of them seemed to mind being trapped in their own thoughts.
It wasn't until they reached the lift that GP looked over at Nexus with heavy eyes. Nexus pretended not to notice simply pawing the button to activate the lift. Leaning against the back grate Nexus noticed GP shift a little and he didn't want to be rude, but at the same time he wasn't sure if this was the appropriate time to be confessing each other's love. He had always liked GP from the start, something about his personality and the fact that he stable and could cope with more situation than Nexus could himself. Nexus knew that GP was the one that was unsure just by his body language and the way he acted whenever he was around.
"What's wrong GP?" he decided to ask pretending to be blissfully unaware of the true situation. If GP didn't bring up the subject on his own he knew he would have to. It was a type of conversation one could not really prepare for since the possibilities of how many different direction it could take were impossible to account for.
"Its... Nothing I'm just not looking forward to going back into the dark. To tell you the truth, I'm actually afraid of the dark. It wouldn't be so bad if I had night vision like feral panthers but it was not something that was carried over."
Nexus thought for a moment about what he just said, it didn't sound like a lie but it wasn't all truthful either. He took a mental breather knowing now that he was going to have to bring up the subject. He look down and gathered his thoughts the best he could, it was than however that GP did the unthinkable.
GP placed a paw under Nexus's muzzle and looked right into his eyes, their noses literally an inch apart. He then closed the gap by merely placing his lips against Nexus's. Although the first kiss was fast and not romantic, it didn't take long for GP to figure out what to do. The seconds kiss they held each other close in a hug and explored each other's mouths. Nexus's worries were officially placed behind the stove being pushed off the back burner to be forgotten about.
It wasn't long before GP started pushing his body against Nexus's continually getting more passionate and their kissing a lot deeper. Nexus could feel GP's cock pushing against his and even though Nexus had a little more control over his own member, it seemed that GP was either doing it on purpose, didn't care, or was very much aroused much more by his present that he originally thought. Either way Nexus wasn't going to stop him, not yet anyway since they had another 3 minutes on the lift to themselves before they would have to "clean up".
Nexus felt GP paws slide down his back and stop on his waste. He could feel GP flexing his claws slightly just enough so they could be felt through his pants. Nexus had to hand it to the panther; he certainly knew how to turn someone on. Nexus gifted GP a bit by allowing himself to give in and slid his own paws under GP firm ass and gave it a nice squeeze. GP let out a moan inside his muzzle and his claws flex a little more.
Sadly the fun had to end as the lift chirped telling them that they were one floor above their destination. They both looked at each other with dopey smiles as they straightened out their fur and uniforms. The lift stopped and the gate opened and they walked into the neon blue ambiance of engineering together, side by side.