The Daventry Connection

[Drae Shelton 0]

The Daventry Connection

 

Huh? Who, me? What the....

 

Nothing like being the new guy on the block. Er... ship. One minute he’s minding his own business in engineering and the next minute he’s....

 

Olie shimoley....

 

… swimming through a sea of dead bodies in a just-as-dead space station? Did I sign up for this?

 

A few minutes ago he was sitting in engineering, absorbed in the readouts that were coming from Daventry when Jaenke called, “Your turn!”

 

Huh? What...?

 

...and in less than a minute he was in his least favorite place (a dead space station), wearing his least favorite work clothes (EVA suit), navigating his least favorite debris: _dead_ bodies. Live bodies, maybe. Dead bodies, no way.

 

Now, even though EVA suits were Drae’s least favorite thing, when it came to a choice between smelling dead bodies and being protected by an EVA suit, the EVA suit won, hands down. Then there was that little matter about lack of oxygen, life support, and everything else on Daventry, but that seemed secondary to the smell of dead bodies.

 

He magnetized his boots to get a grip on the situation, then went to scratch his head, but the suit got in the way, which lead to an itchy nose, which meant he couldn’t scratch it, which led to that time on Spector when he had that fly inside his suit that drove him crazy for hours, which led him to his days in R&D, which led him to....

 

“Hey! Engineer!” someone shouted into the comms, “check out the consoles, see if anything works in here.”

 

“Uh... yeah. I’m on it.” Headscratch. Not gonna happen. Gotta lose that habit.

 

The consoles in the C&C were pretty limited in scope, so he didn’t expect much. What he got was absolutely nothing.

 

“Uh.. sir?” he called to the commander he hadn’t met yet, “We really don’t have anything here.”

 

“Nothing?”

 

“Right. Nothing. Got no power, which explains the lack of gravity and lighting,” he said, then muttered under his breath, “and the floating bodies.” Then louder, “There’s no memory storage, and my equipment’s registering no radiation,” he turned toward the commander, gesturing with his tricorder as he spoke, “which means, of course, we have no atmo so it’s good we have the EVA suits because if we didn’t we’d be joining those corps....” He stopped mid-sentence at the aggravated look. “Right. Bottom line, there’s nothing here. But the corpses of course. And the station. And whatever else is.... here. But... not working.”