When we last left Eveline Hawking, she had received a distress signal from an old mentor. She’d tried to quickly get her ship launched to help but the breakers in the engine impeller had kept her grounded.

More Complications with Takeoff

After her experience with the breaker in engineering, Eveline decides she needs to go fast by going slow and making sure everything is checked and proper. Unfortunately, while checking her work with the first launch attempt, Eveline realizes that her attempts to launch have flooded the fuel lines and she’ll have to vent the system, wasting a lot of propellant.

Eveline begins the process of venting the propellant system. There’s a rushing sound and she cringes thinking about how far she could have gone with it and the binds she could find herself in with it gone. She returns to her checklist and engages the main drive. Too late, she thinks about how she’s venting the propellant.

There is a roaring sound and the world shakes around her. She is thrown around in her seat and just barely keeps control as impact alarms go off. She pulls up hull integrity and aside from some damage around the cargo hold, integrity is holding. She wasn’t planning to carry cargo right now anyway, so she files that away as a problem for later. She is at least in the air now.

Entering the Storm

Eveline fights the controls of the Vigilant to get the flight back under control.

“Come on, Viggy, we’re not done yet,” she says with a headache setting in from the force of being spun around.

The Vigilant reaches orbit under control and Eveline searches for the Rookery on the scanners. The interference from the storms is huge, though. Out the viewport, she sees a swirling storm surrounding the planet Verdure.

Eveline is forced to take evasive maneuvers to navigate through and around the storms while trying to clear the interference from her scanners. She watches the propellant gauge fall as she flies with a cringe over having to vent so much on the ground.

If that runs out… But she doesn’t let herself finish the thought.

A bolt streaks out and strikes the Vigilant. The lights flicker and the readouts produce gibberish. Thrusters misfire and the stars start to drift out the viewport.

“No Viggy, not today, stick with me. We’re not going down to a stupid storm, we’re better than that, we’ve been through way worse.”

Eveline begins setting the electrical systems to reroute power around the junctions that were struck by the bolt. She’s stuck in place for several minutes, blind to what is going on out in the storm. If those same bolts are striking the Rookery, then time is precious and she can’t afford to waste it.

Eveline checks out the viewport and looks at patterns in the interference the scanners are receiving from the balefire storm. She plots a course and begins firing thrusters to keep herself out of the worst of the storm. The interference begins to clear as the Vigilant crosses through the storm and a ship takes form first on the scanners then out the viewport.

Approaching the Rookery

“Rookery, Vigilant. I have sight of you. Will attempt rendezvous. Do you have control?”

Silence.

“Rookery, Vigilant. Repeat, do you have control?”

Silence.

Eveline swears under her breath.

“Okay, Viggy. Let’s do this the hard way.”

Eveline applies a deft hand to the controls and swiftly brings the Vigilant alongside the Rookery, matching velocities. She applies just a bit of thruster to close the distance with the Rookery, and deploys the automated docking clamps to secure the ships. She winces when she only hears one set of clamps engage. No response from the Rookery’s automated docking systems.

“Rookery, please engage docking clamps so we can come over.”

Nothing.

Eveline runs a more full sensor sweep now that the Rookery is only meters away. Electrical down. No comms, no environmental. That explains the radio silence, and time just got a little more precious.

“So, the Rookery is even more dead in the water than I thought Viggy. You hold down the fort, guess I have to take a little walk to finish the job.”

Eveline leaves the bridge and goes to the airlock to don an EVA suit to prepare to enter the Rookery.