"But what if it's not only navigation—"

  As Geoff stepped on to the flight deck, he saw Shrey not-so-subtly change the image on the large viewscreen to black. He easily noticed how the younger man twisted around in the pilot's seat to glance at him, just before putting up the current alerts up on the big screen. Helen, who was standing right next to Shrey, appeared to be a lot less startled by his entrance.

  "Don't mind me," Geoff said casually as he sat down in one of the rear seats, turning off the workstation screen just as it flickered to life. He could already see that they were in trouble, simply from how the viewscreen was completely filled with red, high priority alerts. They had so many urgent issues that they couldn't be shown on one page anymore.

  "We'll talk later," Helen said quietly to Shrey, before turning her attention to the man lounging in the back. "Then we're just waiting for—" She stopped talking as Brendan walked in. "Good, now everyone's here."

  "This isn't everyone," Geoff replied automatically.

  Shrey managed to glare daggers at Geoff, despite having to twist around awkwardly in order to make eye contact. "Don't joke about that," he said angrily. "It's way too fucking soon."

  "I'm not—" Geoff huffed quietly. "You know who I mean."

  "Danny is helping Cassie make emergency repairs," Helen jumped in, her voice calm and collected. "And I wasn't about to pull them away from their work for this."

  Shrey kept glaring at Geoff. Geoff crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat, ignoring Shrey in a way that only appeared to irritate their pilot further.

  Brendan cleared his throat. "I know we've just been through a lot, but let's be civil." He stepped into the middle of the cramped room, keeping mindful to avoid hitting his head on the lowered ceiling. "We all need to work together, now more than ever considering the situation we're in."

  Helen nodded in agreement. Shrey looked away from Geoff, still looking somewhat annoyed.

  "What about the reason we're all in this situation?" Geoff shot an almost accusatory look back towards Shrey. "I can't be the only one wondering how we ended up in that debris field." His gaze shifted over to Helen. "Because nothing like that has ever happened to us before."

  Shrey and Helen shared a knowing look. Shrey's eyes shifted between Helen and Geoff uncertainly as the silence dragged on. Geoff watched closely as Shrey slid his hand in and out of his pocket.

  He'd only seen Shrey act like this in one other place, the poker table.

  "What is going on?" Geoff repeated loudly.

  Helen took a deep breath. "It was Intel." She continued, ignoring Brendan's skeptical expression. "They screwed up, conveniently forgot to tell us there was a scrapyard on our brand new route."

  "You've got to be fucking kidding me." Geoff slammed a palm down on the console in front of him, bringing the screens back to life. "Those military bastards are going to be the death of us, sending—"

  "We'll give them hell when we get back," Helen interrupted. "I promise." Her tone didn't contain a shred of doubt. "But right now we need to focus on the future."

  Brendan nodded slightly. "The damage to the ship needs to be our first priority."

  "Wait just a minute there," Geoff added quickly, the anger not entirely gone from his tone. "If Intel screwed this up, then do we know there aren't any more surprises waiting for us on this route?" He pointed towards the front of the ship. "I say we change course, don't give them a chance to screw us over a second time."

  "Our maneuvers inside the field already pushed us off that route," Shrey explained. "And we've got no thrusters so we can't course correct even if we wanted to."

  Geoff slouched slightly, looking somewhat deflated. "Oh, good."

  "So what's our current course?" Brendan leaned over the chair, looking down at Shrey's workstation, which was currently showing a lot of log entries and a total of zero maps.

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  "Um... we don't know," Shrey admitted reluctantly.

  "What?" Geoff exclaimed, sitting up straight.

  "We will know," Shrey added insistently. "The computer is still calculating our predicted trajectory."

  "So we don't know where we are or where we're going," Geoff grumbled. "This day just keeps getting better and better."

  "It's not as bad as it sounds," Shrey said confidently. "Once we get out of the dark zone, we'll be able to use the main engines to get back on course and we'll be able to call for help if we still need it."

  "You managed to fix our communications then?" Brendan asked, looking up at the alerts with a confused expression.

  "Uh, not yet," Shrey mumbled so low that his voice was difficult to hear. "But we'll have them fixed before we get out of the dark zone."

  "So our brilliant plan is to fix it later." Geoff shook his head hopelessly. "Sounds like something I'd come up with."

  "It's not that bad," Brendan replied, leaning over further to get a better view of Shrey's screens. "I know my way around a computer, maybe I can help get navigation up and running so we'll at least know where we're going."

  "No," Shrey blurted out, quickly closing all the files he'd been viewing. "I don't need any help." His voice carried an uncharacteristic tone of nervousness.

  Helen rubbed her forehead with a hint of exasperation. "The navigation system is Shrey's concern and nobody else is going to be working on it other than him," she declared. "And it doesn't matter where we're going if we're all dead by the time we get there."

  The cockpit fell silent. Brendan raised a questioning eyebrow at Helen. Helen rested a hand on top of Shrey's chair, shaking her head slowly. Geoff couldn't see her face, but he had a good idea as to her expression.

  Helen turned around to address the room. "We took a lot of damage and without Aqeel... we all need to step up," she explained gently. "There's plenty of stuff to do for everyone."

  Brendan, looking rather unhappy, walked away from them and sat down in the empty rear chair. "What's the status?"

  Shrey brought up a diagram of the ship on the viewscreen. "We were lucky," he said grimly. "It could have been a lot worse."

  Geoff scoffed in disbelief. Difficult to imagine worse than the huge flashing red areas currently on the map. They'd lost atmosphere to almost a quarter of the ship. There were so many sections closed off, it was hard to believe they still had a route to walk to the back of the ship without spacesuits.

  "The damage is... extensive," Helen began, with a heaviness in her tone that was difficult to identify. "External communication is down. Thrusters are gone. Sensors are in poor shape." She paused. "But there's good news too. Life support is fully operational, in the areas that weren't comprised or lost power."

  "What about the cloak?" Geoff interjected.

  "The dark generator is operational," Helen reported, with a small scowl. "But it's relying on the one heater that's still working."

  "One heater. That's a single point of failure for the generator." Brendan frowned slightly as he leaned forwards in his seat. "I don't like that."

  "Neither do I," Helen agreed. "I already told Cassie to get the second heater up and running, but that's not the only issue." She tapped on the back of Shrey's chair and he switched the large screen to show the status of the temperature regulation system, along with the pipping network that pumped cool fluid from the dark generator out into the rest of the ship.

  Helen pointed at the red and grey lines crisscrossing through the cargo modules, throughout the middle of the ship. "Unless we fix those cooling pipes, it's going to get quite toasty."

  Brendan stared up at the screen, beginning to look a little worried. "We don't have the time or the supplies to fix all of them."

  "I know, we'll have to prioritize," Helen admitted unhappily. "And some places are just going have to live with being a little warm."

  "We could take a lot of pipes off the list," Shrey suggested, pointing upwards. "There's no air here anyways, no point in repairing them."

  "Unless those pipes connect to areas we do need cooled," Brendan objected. "We can't rule out fixing them yet."

  "Before we start talking about fixing anything, we need an accurate damage assessment," Helen stated. "Which the sensors aren't giving to us at the moment."

  "So... we fix the power and fix the sensors?" Geoff suggested optimistically. "Then we let the ship do the damage assessment for us."

  "No, because the only person who knows how to do that is Cassie and she's needed elsewhere," Helen answered, leaning against the back of Shrey's chair. "We'll have to do a visual inspection and go section by section."

  Geoff groaned. "Have I ever mentioned how much I hate how big this place is?"

  "Only every time you have to get off your ass," Shrey grumbled lowly.

  "My point is that this is going to take forever," Geoff retorted. "That's a lot of ground to cover."

  Helen nodded, as if she'd been expecting this. "We'll split the sections up between you, me and Brendan."

  "It will still take forever." Geoff pointed a finger at Shrey, who hadn't bothered to turn back around. "And I'm not being lazy. More than half of those sections don't have air. The suits will slow us down. It'll take all week."

  Helen scowled thoughtfully at the map. "I don't want anyone suiting up unless we absolutely have to."

  "Then we won't," Brendan said confidently. "We'll start with the sections that have atmosphere first, then reevaluate afterwards if we need to go into any depressurized areas."

  "That's a good idea." Helen almost smiled. "Brendan, you take the front third of the ship. Geoff, take the middle. And I'll take the rear." She clapped her hands together. "That's the plan then."

  "Got it," Geoff replied as he slipped out of the room, with unusual eagerness, spurned by relief that that particular meeting was over. That whole conversation had been off, in a way that irritated him, but he was just glad to be out of there and back to work. He was in the middle of turning the corner when the realization struck him.

  He'd been the only person to actually leave the room.