Welcome to Gaia! ::

Xander wheeled himself under his latest project yet again. He had been working all day, and in a few hours it would be all night. He was working on a new design of personal cruiser, class IV. Rather than sitting upright like most models, Xander's newest plan had the pilot in a prone position. There were some safety kinks to work out, but he was confident it would work out. He fiddled with some of the wires of the integrated computer system.

Xander had always been fascinated by machines. He loved their power, versatility, speed, everything about them. Naturally, to be involved in machines in that day and age, it was just as vital to understand advanced computer systems as it was to know one's way around a rocket-thruster. After earning advanced degrees in engineering and computer tech, Xander moved on from one starship to another, eventually landing a job as lead engineer on the current ship, the Valhalla.

He finished up what he was doing and went to the nearby utility sink to wash up. He was coated in a thin layer of grease and various other fluids from his work. He splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. His thick, brown hair was disheveled from the long day. When it was tended to, it had natural honey highlights. His piercing green eyes were rimmed with red from fatigue. Xander rubbed off on last smudge of grease from his slash of a jaw and turned back to admire his handiwork.

The newest design was very sleek and stylish, perfect for any market. It consisted largely of a pod in which the pilot would lie prone, which boasted one large primary thruster on the rear. Two thick panels that served as wings projected from the side, each of which was mounted with a smaller secondary thruster. Xander smiled and pushed a small button near the back of the craft and the control-bay opened like an enormous bivalve mollusk. He reached inside and flicked a switch, activating the main computer mainframe. He stepped back and prepped for a diognostic program.

He touched two fingers to the touch-screen watch on his wrist. A large holographic image of the small craft leaped into the air. With a touch of a suspended icon, the image broke into a detailed schematic. Xander rotated the image on several axes, periodically tapping a certain system. The ship would run that system, ensure that it was working properly, and the part of the schematic that corresponded with the system would turn green. Xander muttered to himself as each system checked out. Finally, the entire ship was in the green except for one part that remained to be checked. He rotated the image appropriately.

"Testing, primary thruster," he said. He tapped the floating image of the ship on the large thruster. It flickered green as the ship briefly fired the thruster. After a moment, however, the thruster coughed black smoke. The image on the hologram shifted to red, and one by one, the other systems went red as well. The ship shuddered, all of its systems attempting to fire at once. Xander foresaw what was coming, and tapped a small red icon in the corner of the display, opening a comm link to the Valhalla's main computer. "Valerie, blast-shields!" he yelled into the mic. Valerie was the name given to the Valhalla's computer personality. Heavy iron doors immediately flew downward, just in time for the craft to blast off uncontrolably. It crashed into the far end of the hangar in a fiery explosion, sending shrapnel all the way to Xander, who was ducking behind the personelle blast shield. Still, small shards of metal slashed at his face. The concussive blast echoed throughout the Valhalla. Xander coughed as thick black smoke rolled through the hangar. He groaned quietly, upset about the loss of his project and sore from the shockwaves from the blast.

Before the smoke had even cleared, Xander had opened a comm link with Valerie requesting a damage report. Bars of progress flickered across the hologram and a running list of systems ran in a ticker across the bottom of the screen. Several items were highlighted in red and were itemized in a list labeled as "in need of repair." Xander walked halfway across the hangar and examined what was left of the malfunctioning thruster. There wasn't much left, and it was impossible to judge exactly what had gone wrong. He heard someone enter the room and slowly turned to see who it was. He saw Alexa and jumped to his feet, saluting without deactivating his watch. It continued to stream information at his side.

Xander had always held tremendous respect for Alexa, even more so than most of the crew. Despite her best efforts, he always felt that she had many more facets than she let on. Regardless, he was probably in some deep trouble for causing yet another explosion in the hangar. "My apologies," he began, "there was a...malfunction." He felt his face grow warm under the scrutinizing eyes of his commander. He always felt abnormally self-concious when he was around her. The pistol at Alexa's side certainly didn't help matters. Everyone knew there was a traitor on board, but Xander didn't feel he was worthy of an armed confrontation. His watch *pinged* and he glanced downward at it. The check was complete. A robotic voice chimed, "Energy couplings C1, C2, E5, S1, S2, S3, and S4 are in need of repair."

This was not evidence in favor of Xander's innocence. Energy couplings were incredibly sensitive instruments that regulated the flow of power to individual systems. A large impact, or explosion, could jarr them hard enough to throw off their hardware and could pose a power-short hazard. Repairing them was a lengthy process, and required complete shut-down of their designated systems. The couplings having problems were connected to communications, engines, and most prominantly, security. "Uhm...I'll take care of those ASAP..." he said sheepishly.

As soon as Alexa left the room, Xander relaxed visibly. Now it was his hand that flew to his head. None of the people she had mentioned were qualified in his mind to perform repairs on something as crucial as an energy coupling. If the ship had to veer to avoid any spacejunk, it would be up to the couplings to direct more power to the thrusters from some of the less crucial systems. He turned to the little line of other mechanics, all of whom had considerably less training than himself. "Just run what's left of the ship down to the hold..." he muttered bitterly. It was in his contract that he could have access to the hangar and whatever supplies that weren't needed elsewhere for his inventing. Things go wrong, it happens. He wished he didn't have to face down Alexa on her home turf. He was a practical guy, and he didn't appreciate being talked down to, like she was sure to do. He opened a comm link to Valerie again and requested a constant video-feed of the workers be sent to his watch. Only certain crew-members were authorized to have such a watch, because in the wrong hands it could wreak true havoc.

He left the hangar, walking slowly. A few other crew members asked him about the explosion, but he declined comment. Instead, he simply waved his watch in front of a small wall-sensor, which caused the wall to allow him passage into one of the many maintenance hatches. He walked into his sanctum. He knew what every single cable did, how every little piece played a part in the function of the Valhalla. Not only was he more comfortable in the tunnel of pipes, cables, and LED lights, but they served as a shortcut to Alexa's office. He planned on getting there a little early to get it over with. His footsteps echoed through the bowels of the ship. He mentally ran through the procedures for repairing energy couplings...

Xander finally emerged from the maintenence tunnels nearly halfway across the ship. He startled a relatively new member of the crew, but he didn't think to apologize. It was a long walk to the captain's office; It was akin to the walk to the principal's office back in grade school. He almost rolled his eyes at how foolish his feelings of anxiety were. He periodically checked his datawatch to keep an eye on his lackeys back in the hangar.

He finally reached Alexa's office. He took a steadying breath and entered, knocking quietly as he did so. He knew she had a killer headache, maybe a full-throttle migraine, so he made an effort to be quiet. He even turned down the display on his datawatch, though he made sure he could clearly see what was going on in the hangar. So far, nothing of note had occurred. He sat across from Alexa in an overstuffed recliner. He checked his datawatch anxiously. His hands were used to being constantly in motion.

Xander noted with some dismay that the cameras throughout the ship were deactivated, probably as some sort of precaution to prevent a power-short. He mentally pawed through the files of the Valhalla's maintenance crew, searching for someone that could handle the responsibility of the couplings. "I guess the only one I could trust would be that Taveral kid...Derek?" Derek Taveral had transferred to the Valhalla from a battleship with the Space-Navy. He would have been extensively trained in coupling repair, as they were the first sign of a ship in trouble during bouts with space pirates. "Other than him, there's no one I would be willing to put on the job." He knew that it would appear as if he was trying to take care of the job single-handedly, but it would be him in hot water if the couplings weren't repaired properly.

"Well, as near as I can tell," he said in response to her question about the incident in the hangar, "the main thruster busted a seal. It heated up, fried some sensors." He began ticking off the things that went wrong on his fingers. "The cooling system kicked on to prevent an engine fire, but without the sensors, it didn't know when to stop pumping coolant. It dried itself up, tried to keep pumping, and fried. Without coolant, the engine heated unchecked, blasting the onboard computer with heat, compromising the micro-conductors. The engine fired, the thing took off without a guidance system, and it went boom." He had long ago run out of fingers to count the issues on, so his hands drifted back to his lap, still fiddling with each other nervously. "There was probably some other stuff...I couldn't tell for sure from the wreckage." He still kept an eye on the workers in the hangar.

Xander didn't plan on giving Derek too much responsibility. He was very much a "if you want it done right, do it yourself" sort of person. He only put Derek on the job to placate Alexa. He took her order and stood, preparing to leave. He paused, however, when Alexa seemed to swoon slightly behind her desk. "Are you ok?" he asked. His voice had a faint tinge of hysteria to it; He was unused to seeing the captain in any position other than one of perfect control. He called Valerie. "Val, run a health-check on the captain, here. Feed the data to me, I guess," he said as he noticed she wasn't wearing her datawatch.

[Grr short.]

Information scrolled across the display of Xander's datawatch. Heartrate, body temperature, bloodflow, neurological data, everything anyone would want to know about Alexa's health. James burst onto the scene, already throwing about accusation. That was all too like him. Xander stood to defend himself, but halted when a very red message sprang into the air from his watch. It read in bold type, "ENERGY COUPLING E1 REMOVED. ENERGY COUPLING E1 REMOVED." On cue, the ship listed dangerously to the right. Back-up systems would have corrected the roll and yaw, but the systems weren't receiving power. No coupling. Alarms blared, and the ship slowly continued its tilt like a dying behemoth. The easy chairs in the office began to slide, as did the room's occupants. Panicked crew members ran about in the halls, searching for something to hold on to. The captain was poisoned, the ship was being dismantled...what else could go wrong? Suddenly, the ship picked up speed and began to move forward as well as to the side. Xander ran/slid into the hallway and looked out the window.

He was greeted by a view of a gigantic planet. It was a mottled green, like an enormous marble, and bizarre atmospheric winds twirled its clouds into strange patterns. "Alexa!" Xander said urgently, "We're headed for Jayda XII!" Jayda XII was a recently discovered planet that was still relatively unexplored. In fact, the only sort of information about the planet was gleaned from various probes fired from Darius, a planet in the adjacent star-system. "What do we do?"