Chapter 5: A Faerie

~~ April - Week 14~~

The problems aboard Allan’s ship had started two days after they had left the previous continent.

Things started going missing, particularly food. The berries disappeared first, and then any food left out that didn’t contain meat. It would disappear, or it was found rearranged. Taps were found dripping. The onboard cameras started to develop glitches.

No one was happy when they found objects in places no one remembered putting them. Then they would find things pulled apart or lying busted on the floor. They each blamed each other but couldn’t see why the items had been dismantled or why anyone would be doing this.

Glittin told Allan later that she had fun learning about the big people. She had followed him back to the strange machine he entered and followed him inside. She had a feeling he was going to help her get home.

She had ended up on Jahnville due to a storm blowing the ship she had hitched a ride on, off its course. She had been the only survivor and had spent two crappy years on Jahnville before he came. She had been very scared when the strange machine had made loud noises and moved.

She didn’t know what to think of the strange dwelling he had entered from the noisy machine. But it was an interesting place. She had gotten hungry, and when they had left their food on the table, she had helped herself. She had told him they ate some strange things, even animal products like the Burgis and Prols.

However, she had identified vegetables, nuts and fruits that she decided she could eat. She had found their speech very crude, but after a few hours, she had started working out the variations. Faeries were very good at picking up languages. They could speak all the dialects the other races spoke.

While the other races mostly talked in common to others, they each retained their own languages. She told Allan that his people spoke a more bastardised common than her people did. His kind often shortened the words as she knew them, but she had little trouble working them out.

She had kept waiting for them to get in the box again so she could go home. After ten cycles of their lighting, they hadn’t. So, she had started exploring further to find a way out of their dwelling. This was when she had really gotten herself into trouble. Glittin had followed Ferris into the room with the big engines but didn’t see him leave and got locked in.

It was at this time that Allan had gone to the surface. She had slept for a while but had gotten very thirsty and hungry and went looking for food and water. She had bumped against a panel, and then the alarms all over the ship were squealing at her. She had been terrified and hid.

The problem was when she hid, she damaged a very important air intake flap for the Rih drives cooling system. It could no longer open fully, but the sensor was saying it was. She had gotten her dress caught under the flap jamming it and blocking the sensor, but she didn’t tell Allan this.

Glittin had accidentally started a FID (Fore Ionic Drive) when she hit the button. The engines had manual buttons that could be used to run operational checks on them. Ferris had left the panel open, so the buttons were exposed.

When the FID kicked in and ramped up to full throttle, it caused the ship to drop into an even lower orbit, and head lower into the atmosphere of the planet. The crew had wanted a better look, and faster data retrieval so had been orbiting as low as was maintainable.

As soon as Ferris entered the room, Glittin headed straight for the kitchen and water, unaware of the disaster she had caused. By the time, the crew got to the helm they knew they were in trouble. They had all been asleep, and no one was on duty.

They had tried to get the ARSD (Aft Rih Space Drive) working correctly, but the main drive was in distress and kept overheating. They had to shut it down. Then they couldn’t get it restarted, without it overheating again and couldn’t work out why.

Ferris had the FRSD in bits as it had a cracked casing. He didn’t think they had the time to fix it, as he hadn’t finished manufacturing the new parts. They didn’t have a replicator as they were not common items on spaceships at the time.

They managed to get the other IDs going and lift the nose. However, with the ARSD now shut down, they would not be able to return to a safe orbit fast enough with just the Ionic drives. They were only designed for manoeuvrability, not the speed required to get the explorer back in the orbit it should be in.

The higher gravity worked against them. It didn’t help that the ship was also heating up as it dropped lower into the atmosphere. Their energy reserves were depleted faster than they could be recharged, due to the constant restarts of the RSD and trying to cool the ship.

They were in big trouble. After several fruitless hours Allan decided the ship was doomed, they were running out of time to fix it. He told the crew to grab everything they could and get into the transporter. He loaded up the return probe data, told them what had happened, added the crystals and launched it.

They got the hell off the dying ship.

Glittin told Allan when she realised something was wrong, she made sure she got into the machine they loaded with a lot of gear.

She had listened to the angry conversations of the crew. She realised she might have caused the disaster. According to her people’s code of ethics, she felt honour bound to help if she could. The crew directed the transporter into an orbit to land on Delta3, as they still knew it.

An argument ensued about First Contact. Glenda and Ferris wanted them to go to the deserted continent. Allan, however, was having none of that. The thought of only having Glenda to fuck for the foreseeable future was not an option.

From the vids, he had decided the race, he thought of, as the Frey would be fine for sexual partners. Some sizzling hot chicks were running around in that city, even if on the short side. Also, that city was where they had found the energy crystals.

The people back home would definitely want to make contact with the people who currently controlled the crystals. He’d decided it would be better to be in the know than stuck on some deserted continent thousands of kilometres away. Plus, he had told his bosses that this was where he would be if still alive.

Glittin didn’t want to go back to the deserted continent either. She had worked out the place Allan wanted to go was home. The discussion had gotten heated. She got worried the others would make the man they called the Captain do what they wished by force.

Glittin flew to his shoulder and then appeared to the group. To say her appearance was shocking, was a little understated. Glenda screamed, and Hogan started praying, saying, “Holy mother of God! Holy mother of God!”

Allan had felt her weight settle on his shoulder. He could now hear the soft beat of her wings as they flittered behind his ear. He had been suspicious for several days that his little faerie was on board the ship. He had even been leaving food out for her and had noticed it was missing when he came back.

“Hello, again, Little One,” he said. To his amazement, she answered.

“Hello, my Captain,” she replied in her singsong voice. She was loud enough for the others to hear.

“I was wondering when you would make an appearance?” he replied.