Crash Course in Captaincy

                There was a rushing of wind. It tore at Ensign Jess Morel's uniform and chilled her face. With eyes shut tight against the airflow she pictured the engineering bay around her being blown apart, the heavy engine equipment and power converters rupturing as the hull of The Adequate was rent open by whosoever had ambushed them. Based on where she’d been facing when the blast hit and the direction of the wind, the damage must logically have been from around the crew quarters, but that was around the middle of the ship; whatever had attacked them had burrowed into the centre of the vessel. As junior officer in engineering she didn’t know all of the details, but it was obvious even to her that there was no salvaging this. Jess waited for the air pressure inside the cabin to push her out into empty space and the vacuum, with the numb, absence of feeling that overtakes panic when there's just too much about which to be concerned.
                Whump. Not whoosh, and not brr, but whump went the end of the air. Ensign Morel felt herself crash into something like soft sand, feeling it spray up and clatter over her back as her head deformed the pile of shifting material beneath it. She could only imagine how much damage the ship must have sustained to blast it into a fine powder like that. Buried in what really did feel alarmingly like sand, Ensign Morel couldn’t see, hear or smell anything. Part of her thought it was better this way; if she didn’t have to know about the carnage around her as it happened then maybe she’d be unaware when death finally took her. There was no chance of rescue in a situation like this, especially with a hostile ship flying around ready to pick of rescue vessels; everyone who chose to go into space had to face up to that reality. It was drummed into them over and over during basic training, and didn’t go away no matter how far they advanced to their careers. The captain must have had hundreds of ‘No Seriously, it’s Dangerous Out There’ leaflets in his desk from previous flights.
                In all of Jess’ training she’d been led to believe that space would feel cold, but lying there in the unidentified sandy wreckage she felt alarmingly warm. There was no way that a fire could have been sustained in the vacuum, so it wasn’t like burning fragments of the engine could be warming her up, and it felt like the radiative warmth of a star despite their ship being lightyears away from the nearest solar body during the attack. It nagged at her mind, like a jigsaw piece that doesn’t fit into the rest of the picture because it’s actually a crossword puzzle. Ensign Morel knew that she should have been suffocating and freezing, what with the lack of air, but neither of those two things were happening. It was, in fairness, getting a little hard to draw breath through the thick sand, but that wasn’t quite the same thing so she couldn’t really count it.
                ‘No use in just lying here. If you’re not dying then you’re probably still on the ship. If you’re on the ship then you’re in danger. Get up and help to save it.’ Jess told herself, which was surprisingly easy to do when there was sand blocking out the horrifying sounds of a space vessel during battle. With a single concerted effort, Jess pushed herself up from the sand, feeling it stick to her cheeks, lips and eyelids. Braced for the resumed damage alarms, screamed orders and tearing metal, what Jess in fact heard was almost nothing. Just a gentle whispering of a breeze in her ears. Using one hand she tried to wipe the sand off her face, but given that the hand was also covered it just moved things around and swapped the particular bits of sand over.
                “Urgh.” Ensign Morel groaned, using the back of her sleeve instead. After a lot of wiping and thrashing around, spitting out of sand and shaking her ears, she felt safe to open her eyes to the suspiciously quiet carnage.
                From what Ensign Morel remembered of space it was supposed to be mostly dark, with lots of little star lights scattered around. And from what she remembered of the engineering bay it was mostly grey metal but broken up by bright lights from control panels and glowing tubes of plasma. What she instead saw was an expansive desert, with shimmering blue dunes undulating into the far distance. Shaded valleys and scalloped slopes were half-covered by one another as they criss-crossed in the rising, or potentially setting, sun. Here and there were outcroppings of deep blue and red rock with veins of mineral deposits marbling their sheer, cleaved faces, and caves carved into their bulk by centuries of windblown sand. Most striking though were the few upright slabs of grey which stood up from the desert, as well as the falling chunks that struck the surface like meteors and sent up great splashes of sand. This had most certainly not been an outlined scenario in the emergency situation training.
                Ensign Morel closed her eyes, rubbed her face with only slightly abrasive hands this time, and then opened them again. Everything was still there as it had been; the rain of grey chunks that now, on second glance, seemed to be fragments of the hull, other miscellaneous falling shapes which could feasibly have been members of The Adequate’s crew, and flaming chunks of control panels and engine systems.
                “But we weren’t in orbit around anything…” Jess mumbled to herself, watching with her jaw slack as The Adequate crashed into the desert around her. Vague, distant screams reached her from the plummeting crew, and well as dull impacts when heavy lumps of space vessel slammed into the sand. The thought of being underneath such a lump hadn’t occurred to her until the engineering bay’s vending machine whammed into the dune alongside her, sending up a wave of sand that would definitely be a nightmare to brush out of her hair again later. And that was assuming that she could even find a hairbrush among the wreckage. She made a mental note to question why that seemed so important to her later.
                At least partially regaining her presence of mind and perspective, Jess looked up for potential threats. The sky was cluttered with twisted panels, sections of hull, spilled fuel lines, torn cables, unfortunate crew, and manifold other parts of The Adequate, all against a background of bright blue. They streaked through the air like the flares of a firework, blasted outwards and downwards in a hemisphere of attractive destruction; very much a silver-lining around a terrifyingly huge black cloud.
                The Adequate hadn’t been a huge ship. It was big enough for the job of front-line scanning and surveying, with a limited set of instruments to give a basic idea of atmosphere, minerology, and chance of finding a decent plant for making a herbal hot drink, but it was far from a big vessel. Now that it was shattered into pieces and spread all the way across the sky, it seemed even smaller. There were lots of gaps to a ship; they were more commonly known as ‘rooms’ but for all intents and purposes they were simply spaces, enclosed by the hull, where pieces of ship weren’t. Replace those spaces with open sky, and the remaining material seemed like very little at all.
                Ensign Morel rolled onto her back, felt the sand move to accommodate the shape of her body, and laid there watching the shower. There was an insistent part of her mind that wanted to run, but it was just as likely that she’d run into something’s trajectory as out of it. Don’t panic, all the instructions said. Remain calm and assess the situation objectively. Jess was doing just that, and if it happened to look a lot like lying on a pleasant sandy beach whilst watching pretty light shows in the sky then that was a risk she was willing to take. She just tried not to think about what would happen when some of the higher-altitude crew hit the ground.
                As much of a morbidly beautiful shower as the ship made, it was over in a few seconds. Gravity never really had a sense of theatrics or showmanship; it was up one moment, and firmly reconciled with the attractive force between masses the next. When the sky had been returned to its presumably more typical empty blue, and the smell of hot, dry sand had been replaced with the acrid scents of burning ships and hot metal, Jess accepted that she had to get up. There were probably survivors to rally, injured parties to tend to, and dead crew to avoid looking at until a member of the medical team could be convinced to deal with them instead. Better to be seen on her feet than rolling around in the sand.
                Although it involved sliding half way down a dune and earned her a fully formed suspicion that there was sand in her undergarments, Jess managed to get to her feet and start taking a survey of the area. For several hundred metres around her were the obelisks and pyres of what had, until very recently, been The Adequate. Clouds and trails of dark smoke rose from their smouldering edges, tracing the paths they had taken through the air and blotting out the beauty of the desert. Scattered among them were the colour-coded uniforms of the Pangea Union. Some of the uniforms were standing up and milling between crash sites, while others were rather closer to the ground and not nearly as animated.
                Ensign Morel looked from shape to shape for the distinctive purple chest-piece that demarked members of the command team from everyone else. Failing to see any immediately standing out from the blue sand she instead searched for the green chief astrophysicist, but he proved similarly elusive. Much of the next couple of minutes, in fact, was wasted on a futile colour search for any high ranking crew members, until Jess finally accepted that she couldn’t see anyone at all who might have been on the bridge at the time of the attack. She wasn’t even sure who was considered the ranking officer if the entire bridge crew was missing in action. A sneaking suspicion told her that it was whoever declared themselves to be in charge first.
                Shrugging off the question of whom to report to, Jess took herself off towards the largest group of staggering survivors. The desert was still ominously quiet. Even the sounds of the wreckage shower hadn’t been terribly loud. Voices were audible from the coalescing group of surviving crew, but there was very little blind shouting of names going on; either everyone was disciplined enough to refrain for the time being or no-one really cared that much about specific missing colleagues. A few tens of metres out, fingers started to point her way with surprise and heads turned to follow.
                “Ensign Morel?” asked the familiar, gruff voice of Private Gunderson. “Good to see an officer. Are you hurt, ma’am?”
                “I’m fine. Erm, what happened?” she asked, hoping that there was enough of an assembled community here to know something between them.
                “No solid reports yet, ma’am.” Answered Midshipman Ezio. “I can’t get anything from the info-server.”
                Jess watched him tap at the glass screen on his wrist for a few seconds.
                “I think the server’s down.” He said with concern.
                “So is the rest of the ship, midshipman. Can anyone provide a report with their organic ocular or auditory sensor suites?” Ensign Morel re-phrased.
                “There was an attack.” Private Macro told her.
                “Thanks. Anything more specific?”
                “We lost the fight. The Adequate has sustained…” Technician O’Yeats looked up and counted something on his fingers. “…over thirty percent damage. I suspect that extensive repairs will be required before the ship is space-worthy again.” She reported with stony conviction.
                “I think you could go further than suspicion on that front.” Private Gunderson assured. “I’d say it’s highly probable that repairs are needed.”
                “I think, perhaps, that it would be generous to call any of what we need to do ‘repairs’. Re-building from rubble is a bit more the speed of what would be needed to get at least part of The Adequate back into working order.” Ensign Morel weighed in. She’d always wondered why the senior officers insisted on full written reports, and her first experience of verbal updates cleared that mysterious fog away thoroughly.
                “Permission to speak openly, Ensign?” Nurse Oldbuck requested. Jess nodded. “I agree with O’Yeats that the battle was a loss.”
                Jess waited patiently for the rest of the statement, until it became clear to everyone that the nurse was already finished.
                “Thank you, nurse.” Jess said with a confused frown. “Has anyone seen Captain Chlotherm?”
                There were shaken heads and negative murmurs.
                “First Mate Styken?”
                More shrugging and shaking.
                “Doctor Oliton? Chief Engineer El’Kiln? Anyone from the Command Team?” Jess asked desperately. There had to be someone with the rank and experience to deal with this. There had to be someone who knew what had happened and what they needed to do.
                “I don’t think anyone has seen any sign of the bridge or the crew therein.” Technician O’Yeats confirmed.
                “The servers have their status set to ‘Offline’, ma’am. The comms officers normally turn their communicators to ‘Do not disturb’ for the night, so perhaps they’re in bed?” Midshipman Ezio suggested with laudable optimism.
                “I rather think that they’d have been woken up by recent events, even if it hadn’t been during the middle of the working day shift. And I thought we’d established that the servers are down, on account of being blasted apart?” Jess responded.
                “It seemed worth checking again, just in case they’d rebooted.” Ezio clarified.
                “Keep yourself busy doing that, then.” Ensign Morel suggested. She looked around at the assembled dregs of the crew, all staring at her for orders as the only officer in sight and therefore their acting commander, and sighed heavily. It was typical that the one time she had to take command was in a situation that none of the handbooks had described. “Nurse Oldbuck, you and the other medical team members are to lead teams to start checking the injured and the dead. We need to know who’s still alive and gather them together.” She said. ‘And hopefully find a superior officer so that you’re all their problem’ she thought to herself.
                “That would be me, Nurse Haggard, and pharmacist Krumm, ma’am.” Nurse Oldbuck reported. “Should we bring back sand?” She asked. The others nodded enthusiastically.
                “Wh- no. Do what I just said about the injured and dead first. Bring the injured here so that we can set up some kind of triage area, and leave the dead where they are for now. We can deal with them later.” She ordered. It was a surprise to hear herself being so callous. At least, to hear herself being callous outside of someone asking to borrow her hairclips. Those things were at a premium on the ship and no-one else was getting their hands on them.
                “Roger that, ma’am. Should we split up, or stay together as a team? We could carry three times as much sand if we work together and use our uniforms as a kind of tarpaulin.”
                “We have plenty of sand right here! Split up, take other crew with you in groups of three and cover the ground quickly!” Jess barked.
                “With respect ma’am we can’t get complacent that these sand supplies will last forever. Bringing back a small amount each time wou-”
                “Go! That’s an order!” Ensign Morel shouted. Looking aggrieved, Nurse Oldbuck nodded and set off towards some crew-shapes by a pile of wreckage.
                When the last of the assembled survivors broke off to search for more of the crew, Jess's militarily correct upright posture immediately sagged down. She hadn't ever experienced true command before. She didn't even have a team on The Adequate; such was the staffing situation that although she was a junior commissioned officer, there was no-one directly underneath her to command. The perils of early promotion, she supposed. Whilst some would have called it an excellent opportunity to develop her skills and learn what it really means to be a leader, which is second only to 'character building' as a  feat of trivialising someone else's experiences to avoid thinking about them properly, Jess saw it as rather strenuous following an extended shift.
                Until such a time as a more senior officer was found, Ensign Morel had no choice but to start getting everything organised. Taking stock of the situation she ran a checklist through her head of what they’d need to resolve immediately; shelter, water, food and the like. If someone could find a way of recreating the basketball court then so much the better, but without the ability to switch off the artificial gravity for extreme dunking it would probably have less charm anyway.
                While she was busy planning whether the court would run up and down a dune to create an asymmetric handicap, or along its scalloped edge for maximum inconvenience to both teams, the first few injured were returned to the impromptu rendezvous point. Considering what they’d all been through with a fragmented ship and a fall to the planet from various heights, the injured crew weren’t in bad shape. They were certainly bloodied, with red-stained sand encrusted into grazes and cuts across their bodies, but it could have been a lot worse for them.
                Ensign Morel captured details of the ranks and names of the survivors on her data tablet as the medical team set up rudimentary stretchers with jackets, torn upholstery and anything else they could find. Out of the corner of her eye Jess swore she saw Nurse Oldbuck surreptitiously emptying a fistful of sand out of one of her pockets, but let it slide. It was easier to live in denial than acknowledge the truth for the time being.
                A gradual trickle of crew members filled the growing encampment as the hours passed, some of them wandering in of their own accord and others being carried by one of the medical rescue teams. Every time she saw a new uniform Jess’ eyes would light up at the prospect of it being a ranking officer, and then dull again when she saw that it was just a private or a civilian crew member. Equally out of frustration and a need to organise events, Ensign Morel sent the new low-ranking members of her survivors out to gather useful debris and resources from the crash. In particular, she insisted, the vending machine which had fallen next to her was to be recovered. The food inside would be preserved under battery power for several days, and as long as she confiscated all the spare change it would act as an unorthodox but effective rationing system when it came to be used. The fact that it would also taunt those crew members spiteful enough not to outrank her with delicious food and drink was no bad thing.
                Jess watched with contentment as the bulky rectangular machine was dragged arduously through the soft sands. That’d teach those layabouts to get off their behinds and work their way up the command chain.
                “You wouldn’t think we’d invented the wheel or the sled several thousand years ago, would you.” A deep, judgemental tone said behind her. Ensign Morel would have jumped in fright if the soft sand underneath would have let her. Instead her feet just slid forward, out from underneath her, and left her to fall into a seated position.
                “Ow.” She said more out of reflex than actual pain as she hit the desert. An ungainly display of thrashing in loose sand ensued, until she was on her feet and able to face whoever had crept up on her. “Oh, Dr Cleanse!”
                “Ensign Morel. I’m glad to see that you’ve not been so foolish as to die.” Dr Cleanse greeted. Jess had long since stopped tricking herself into thinking that the doctor didn’t mean things the way she said them.
                “Likewise. Are you injured in any way?”
                “Nothing significant. A few scuffs and scrapes.” The doctor replied brusquely. “What’s the plan here?”
                “We’re gathering survivors and taking stock. Hoping to find a member of the command team or a more senior officer.”
                “Obviously. I meant longer term than the next few hours though.”
                “Oh… well yes” Jess stammered. Dr Cleanse had been the chief research and engineering consultant on board The Adequate; only a civilian crew member, but wielding an intellect that afforded her far more respect than her rank did. “We’re going to pool whatever resources we can scavenge from the wreck and try to work out both where we are, and how to get back to a Union station.”
                “Ambitious.” Dr Cleanse said simply. Offering no more commentary she sat herself down in the sand and started making notes of some kind on her own data tablet.
                Ensign Morel moved away to direct the vending machine into its correct location, but kept half an eye on Dr Cleanse. She was quite used to working with the doctor, who took full technical control over any research and development work carried out on The Adequate, and therefore had frequented the engineering bay in which Jess was posted. Apparently she had been all but thrown out of the central research and development labs that the Pangea Union kept in orbit around Earth due to ‘personnel incompatibilities, and relegated to smaller projects as far from the rest of the centralised engineering arm as possible. Jess could see why the doctor might have been difficult to get along with for long periods of time; she seemed to suffer from the curse of competence, and a lack of empathy for those who didn’t. What might seem like a brilliant leap of intuition to the average ship’s engineer was a trivial cause-and-effect problem to Dr Cleanse, and she made no secret of that. Regardless of her manner she was a genius, as far as Ensign Morel could tell, and would probably be their best shot at finding a way off-world. All Jess had to do was stop the good doctor inciting the rest of the crew into smothering her in her sleep before then.
                An hour after dusk Jess finally ordered the search and rescue efforts to pause for the night, and the surviving crew filed back to their impromptu camp. Generally they clustered around the embedded pieces of The Adequate’s hull for shelter and protection, or milled around looking for anyone else they knew. Some shared food rations they’d found among the wreck, others just went hungry, either too tired or too distracted to worry about eating.
                Activity around camp died down quickly once everyone was back. It seemed that crashing and trekking had exhausted many of the surviving crew, and no-one really had the heart for late-night boisterous sing-songs. Instead small groups formed, like wild dormitories, and gradually sleep started to take over. Without the blazing heat of the sun above them the temperature had dropped significantly, but it seemed that the blue sands held so much heat that it never really approached cold. Hunkering into the dunes provided all the bedding many of the crew needed in the warm air, although the injured were given the bedding which had been salvaged from the wreck.
                Not everyone was allowed to drift off, however. Rudimentary as her survivalist training was, Jess knew that it was probably for the best to have a guard set up around camp. Several people over the years had petitioned for all forward survey vessels, the ones most likely to encounter an unknown planet, to have training to deal with surviving on a strange world like this. Due to budget constraints, went the reply, there was no-one able to provide such training, but several 'stop, drop and roll" posters had been issued to the concerned parties as a compromise. Unfortunately those posters had led to a series of ship fires when their flammable paint ignited, and nobody had been able to read the advice on how to deal with it.
                Along with the guards there was another group of nocturnal workers; the nominated astronomers. Everyone who tried to join the Pangea Union Space Corp had to pass an astronavigation exam as a part of their application, being deemed a vital skill to fall back on in case of navigational instrumentation failure. In its position as a critical baseline for all staff, there was naturally a lot of cheating and answer swapping involved in the exam to get everyone though; the wider the skillsets required by the Pangea Union the less likely it was that every interviewee would have a solid grasp of celestial cartography, and no-one wanted to have an astronomer with no fine motor control as the ship’s hairdresser. All of the application centres knew it happened, but they claimed it didn't really matter for two reasons. First of all, the reference images for the test were all taken from Earth, or nearby to Earth, so if the star maps were recognisable then there was already larger clue for orientation available. Secondly, anyone who could negotiate answers to an entry exam could probably blag directions from a passing UFO anyway. First contact would just be an added bonus.
                "Do you think that's the back side of Orion?" One of the astronomers asked his gathered colleagues, staring up at the night.
                "Doesn't look like a set of celestial buttocks to me." Another assessed. He wasn’t sure what celestial buttocks looked like, but felt sure that he’d recognise them if he saw them.
                "Orion always was skinny though. And angular. Buttocks don't really fall within those bounds so he probably did away with them entirely." A third replied.
                "Maybe... I suppose it is a line of three, sort of."
                "Where's the rest of him then?" Asked the second astronomer.
                "Um..." The first said, scanning across the twilit sky. "Well... it depends how close we are to his belt, I think."
                "You mean, how gluteo-proximate we are?"
                "Yes. I suppose." He started looking further afield. "Maybe those are his shoulders over there?" He speculated, pointing almost to the dune-packed horizon, their soft apexes looking like pitch black mouse bites taken out of the sky.
                "Quite a long back then, you think?"
                "From this planet, yeah. We must be pressed up in a fairly gluteo-proximate position, with the shoulders being where they are."
                "Hmm. I hope we don't put our eyes out on his sword."
                "The next time I see you getting your eyes dangerously close to a main sequence star I will tell you, but I suspect that the horrifying burns across the rest of your body will act as an early warning."
                He pondered this for a few moments.
                "Phew!" He concluded with relief.
 
                Dawn came early. At least, that was what Jess told herself. This planet didn't know when dawn was meant to be, so it came bumbling in much earlier than either true morning or the even later getting-up time. She rolled further into the sand and tried to shelter her face from the light. Maybe they could move the camp to a higher latitude and escape the dreadfully short night times, form a light block from sections of the ship, or perhaps get a decent, dark cave. All she knew was that she was definitely justified in not getting up yet. That element was non-negotiable. With a wiggle of her whole body she tried to burrow down further into desert, feeling the old, trapped heat of the sand from below and the rapidly building heat of the sun from above.
                A mere few minutes later, with barely any more sleep to her name, Ensign Morel started to feel vibrations through the sand. There were a few gentle, distended disturbances at first, like someone had channelled a breeze through the dunes. But they soon grew into shorter, sharper and more energetic pules of activity, and they multiplied over time. Before long there was an almost constant stream of gentle shakes and jostles rumbling through the sand, accompanied by the muffled sounds of speech. It all conspired to disrupt Jess’ important sleep work. As the acting commanding officer of whatever crew remained she felt that strong words would be needed on the subject of waking a superior officer and being bamboozled by the false, early-arriving morning.
                Despite a valiant effort to do away with consciousness and stay in her cocoon of blue granules, the incessant activity around Jess was getting through to her, bringing with it the unwanted gift of situational awareness.
                Reluctantly Jess pushed up to her feet and stretched out, blue sands trickling off her clothes and back to the dune. The early sun was hot and bright. It sent long, navy blue shadows out from the assembled supplies and surrounding debris, with the vending machine in particular standing isolated like a sundial or a monument to convenient but over-priced snack foods.              Behind that plexi-glass window was a selection of newly generated calorie dense food bars, fresh sugary drinks, and fruit packets so old that they may well have turned to oil by now.
                The rear of the vending machine trailed its various pipes and power lines like flaccid tentacles across the sands. It was a great mechanical octopus drying out in the sun, except for the excellent environmental controls built into the chassis keeping everything inside pristine. Ensign Morel had rarely paid the machines much mind on the ship, but now that she had to worry about getting provisions for the crew she felt that the inner workings of their convenience food dispensers would become far more interesting.
                The Pangea Union space corps had fingers in a great many research and development pies back on earth, not only in terms of their fillings but also the pastries. Sending vast contingents of personnel into space required breakthroughs not only in traditional aeronautics and extra-terrestrial travel, but also logistical matters, psychology, catering, and finding a way of providing team-based ball sports without the easy way out that gravity always provided when designing a game. In their labyrinthine private laboratories, as well as universities and funded institutions around the globe, the union had forced the progress of countless technologies, large and small, in the pursuit of keeping a spacefaring population going indefinitely. One such example, at which Jess found herself staring, was the culinary replicator.
                Welded to the rear of the vending machine, the culinary replicator did for the vending machine what a regular service contract with a machine provider could never hope to: it kept the shelf adequately stocked at all times. Whenever an item was purchased and dispensed the replicator fired up, using various powder-deposition, flash-melting, organic fabrication, and false advertising techniques to synthesise and package an exact replica at the back of the row. No matter how many people used the machine in one day, and no matter how uneven the demand profile for the contents of the shelves, the vending machine was able to keep itself fully stocked thanks to the action of the culinary replicator. They were certainly power hungry, Ensign Morel knew that much from the surges of demand on the engines whenever it came to snack time, but aside from that the regular piping of scrap material into the back, she had no idea how they really functioned.
                Lying limp in the sand, the power cable begged for something to feed on. If they could only find some sort of naturally occurring desert plug socket they’d be set for life.
                “Acting Commander Morel, good morning ma’am.” Said a voice beside Jess. She snapped out of her vending machine trance, a not uncommon trance in her time on The Adequate, and turned to face Private Morass. He was staring at her expectantly, with a simpering grin pulled across his face. She’d had little contact with him on the ship, and that already felt like too much for a lifetime.
                “Morning Private.” Jess replied reluctantly.
                “I was wondering what our orders were for the day? Obviously you must know exactly what we’re doing, but I have taken the liberty of organising a planning meeting for you and the rest of the acting leadership so that you can share your boundless wisdom.” He said. The words came out more like an oil slick than a sentence, leaving a greasy, slimy sheen over the dry sands.
                “Really. Well...” Jess stalled, trying to think of a subtle, underhanded way of telling him to go away. That was the real trick of being an officer, she suspected, and she’d need to learn quickly if avoiding Private Morass was a long-term strategy.
                “Right this way.” Morass schmoozed. Jess had been too slow, and the private was starting to walk away in the expectation that she’d follow. To stand there or to refuse at that moment would seem not only rude but also hesitant, which wasn’t commanding officer behaviour at all in a disaster situation. But, she thought, delegation still was.
                “Tell everyone that the plan from yesterday still stands. Search for more survivors, then have the medical staff lead teams to tend to the dead. Bring back anything useful to our camp here, especially food and water.” She ordered.
                “Oh. Er, yes ma’am, of course, but do you not want to meet with the rest of the… you know… committee?” Morass said, struggling to think of the right word for his hand-picked cabal of low-ranking crew members.
                “No time. Off you run, that’s an order.” Jess declined, turning away without even waiting to see the irritated look on Morass’ face.
                 “Yes, ma’am.” He grumbled, before shuffling back across the sands.
                Before Jess had a chance to feel too relieved, however, a reflection in the vending machine’s front window caught her attention.
                “Ensign Morel? We’re intending to expand the latrine. Do you have any orders regarding where we should dig?” Midshipman Ezio asked, with a worrying note of urgency in his voice.
                “What? Why would I know anything about where to dig a latrine?”
                “You have the casting vote as the commanding officer, ma’am.” Ezio explained. “We can’t submit the formal approval request because the data servers are down, otherwise that would have been clearer. Sorry.”
                Jess started at him for a moment, and he continued.
                “Millard wants to dig around the edges of the existing latrine, and Sholt thinks we need to burrow down and dig under it instead to send the older muck further into the dunes.” Midshipman Ezio elaborated. “Thryce wants to dig a whole new sanitation pit next to the vending machine so that everyone knows where to find it.”
                “No!” Jess ordered simply. She wasn’t about to have someone digging a lavatory hole where she was standing.
                “To which one?”
                “The vending machine one, obviously.” Jess said, mouth hanging open in exasperation despite the heightened risk of sand blowing into it.
                “We could really do with your guidance.” Ezio said, redundantly.
                Jess sighed. This was most certainly not what she wanted to do having just woken up, but there was a benefit to knowing where the latrines were.
                “Where is everyone?” She resignedly asked.
                “Up there, by the current loo.” Ezio said, pointing up to the top of a nearby dune.
                “Why is it up there?!” Jess demanded. “The dunes move in the wind! Whatever horrors you’ve buried won’t stay there for more than half a day!”
                “See, this is really why we need your help. I had totally not thought of that.” Ezio accepted easily, nodding and staring wide-eyed into middle distance as he contemplated the consequences of what Jess was saying.
                “Ugh. I don’t want to see it. Just… just dig a new latrine on the far side of that dune. And make sure it’s at the bottom. I can’t stress that one enough.”
                “Should I help you to stress it? Would that make it stressed enough?” He asked earnestly.
                “Stress it as much as you can.” Jess told him slowly and deliberately, lacking the emotional bandwidth to drag the interaction out and finding even less of it available when Technician O’Yeats hurried up to queue behind him.
                “Yessir. Yesma’am?” Said Midshipman Ezio, saluting through his confusion and dashing back up the dune.
                “Yes, O’Yeats?” Jess sighed.
                “Status report ma’am. I would like to revise my estimate to say that The Adequate has definitely suffered well over thirty percent damage. We might never know the true figure, but it’s in excess of sixty percent damage, and the chances of having it space-worthy within the week are very low.” The Technician reported, standing with her hands clasped behind her back.
                “Consider me up to date with the ship’s damage status. I need you to worry less about reporting and more about finding any working engine components or power generators, please.”
                “I don’t know if we’ll be able to find another one, ma’am.”
                “Another one?” Jess asked urgently. “You mean we have one already?”
                “Yes ma’am. Dr Cleanse got one of the minor auxiliary generators running last night.”
                A hungry part of Jess’ soul brightened.
                “Perfect. Where is she?”
                “Over there. That sort of walled-off collection of hull fragments is where she’s currently set up.” Directed Technician O’Yeats, pointing towards a loose assembly of twisted metal panels.
                “Thank you, technician. Keep searching for more working equipment.” Ensign Morel ordered, feeling like O’Yeats was probably waiting to be told to do something, as she strode towards Dr Cleanse’s enclosure.
                Ensign Morel scanned the horizon as she walked and saw more of the crew massing, drawn by the sound of her rudely awoken voice and preparing to descend upon her with requests, queries and sycophantic committee invitations. One hand pinched the bridge of her nose as she scrunched up her eyes and looked down; none of this was going to be as important as talking to Dr Cleanse. But, the tedious officer-training in the back of her head reminded her, they were her crew and she needed to make them feel heard. If one of them felt they couldn't come to her with bad news then the last basketball might end up punctured long before she knew there was a shortage.
                Drawing a deep breath and opening her eyes back up, she strode purposefully along the path to Dr Cleanse and accepted the harpy harassment which would come along the way.
                "Orders ma'am?"
                "Same as yesterday. Morass was meant to tell you"
                "We can't find any formal wear! There’s no way we’ll be able to hold a ball at this rate."
                "Then don't arrange one."
                "Have you reconsidered prioritising the supply pipeline of sand to camp? We don't want to leave our planning until there's already a problem?"
                "Wounded. And. Dead. First."

                By the time she reached Dr Cleanse, which was only a few hundred yards, Ensign Morel had reassessed the importance of accessibility to the crew in comparison to her own wellbeing. She had also decided that all of this needed to be nipped in the bud with a morning assembly in the future.
                "Office hours are done. Get on with building a camp." Jess growled as she crossed the threshold of Dr Cleanse's metal pen. Muttering voices of dissent bubbled around the edges for a moment and then dispersed in the general direction of the camp.
                Jess looked around asked speculatively for Dr Cleanse. The woman herself was leaning over a makeshift bench and examining a collection of circuit boards, electrical components, motors and computational equipment. Sand had started to pile up around her ankles in the direction of the gentle desert breeze, but if that was of any concern to her then she either didn't show it or hadn't yet realised that her socks were becoming a haven for loose grains.
                "Don't you just hate it when you're trying to do something and people won't leave you alone?" She grizzled, approaching the doctor from behind.
                "Mm." Was the only response. Dr Cleanse didn't look up whilst providing it.
                “They’re always after answers to some inane question or wanting to tell you something totally banal.” Jess continued.
                Silence.
                "Anyway, I hear you've found an auxiliary generator that still works."
                Dr Cleanse allowed the statement to hang in the air under its own weight.
                "That could be incredibly useful for the camp." Jess added. Still she was left to support the whole conversation, feeling every bit of the mass and the leverage pulling against her. Dr Cleanse remained hunched over her erstwhile workbench while a thin string of smoke wound its way into the air. Ensign Morel stared at the back of the doctor's head and concluded that it didn't provide the answers she sought.
                "As the commanding officer here I must be consulted on how our resources are used, and as an engineer I won't be deceived easily by technical talk." Jess announced.
                "Noted." Dr Cleanse finally replied. It was obvious to Jess that no notes has been copied down anywhere.
                "Right, I order you to fit that generator to the vending machine in the camp. It's a limitless source of food which will keep everyone alive, and whatever you're tinkering with is not as important."
                Dr Cleanse slammed something small and metal down onto the table surface with a loud bang and span to face Jess. She'd managed to fashion a perfectly functioning swivel chair out of what appeared to be the mess hall ceiling and a set of metal dinner plates, which was an impressive, if perhaps non-critical, use of the available resources.
                "I can assure you, Officer Morel, that you ascending to the top of the command chain by everyone above you dying does not make you a better leader than you used to be. Nor does it possess you of more technical aptitude or logistical planning than myself who, until yesterday, was your technical superior and mentor. So I would appreciate it very much if you would refrain from trying to flex your authoritarian muscle at me and save it for the non-civilian crew who signed up to that kind of thing." She spat tersely, before spinning back to her work.
                Jess fought to keep her expression somewhere between furious and stoic, suppressing the fearful dismay that tried to well up from underneath. Being told off by her engineering lecturer was not an enjoyable experience no matter the context, and a Pavlovian flight response was desperate to make itself known.
                "And before you start again, this is far more important than your snack machine." The doctor added.
                "Not your decision.” Asserted Jess, bravely. “The utilisation of resources and time is my responsibility, no-one else’s. It is my choice and you will respect that, Dr Cleanse."
                "So you would rather we had some junk food available than let me get us off whatever planet this is?" The doctor enquired.
                “It… you know what? Maybe.”
                Dr Cleanse swivelled her chair back to face Jess, tipped her head, and gave a withering look.
                “I mean, what could you possibly be working on that could get us all away?”
                “An experiment.” The doctor replied unhelpfully.
                “Looks more like the circuit board from a remote control, to me.” The struggling captain assessed.
                “Well I’m having to improvise aren’t I?! This isn’t some triviality, as I tried to explain to Captain Chlotherm many times over.”
                “What isn’t? Stop playing the pronoun game.”
                “It’s a transportation device, obviously. A prototype of one, at least.”
                Jess found only silence to say. She stared into Dr Cleanse’s irritated but smug face.
                "Why am I only finding out about this now!? You have to tell me about these things. I’ve got the crew scouring for survivors and supplies, when they could be focused on finding the parts you need or rebuilding critical elements of the system or… or anything else!"
                "Then you should have asked!" Dr Cleanse snapped back.
                "I can't just ask every single person what they're doing! You have to tell me. You have to report to your commanding officer and give me a status update."
                "I'm not running around after you like a-"
                "I don't want to hear the argument. Your one and only job is to build the transporter and get us off here on the double." Jess instructed, commanding to the doctor to do exactly what she had already been doing. It was the only real way to ensure obedience.
                "You're just as bad as Captain Chlotherm, interrupting me just to tell me to get on with things."
                "Right, fine, whatever. What do you need from the crew? Give me a list of parts and requirements and skills and we will see what's available. And give me a plan for when it's all going to be done so that I can stop the crew mutinying about the vending machine."
                "I saw Nurse Oldbuck filling a backpack with sand to bring back into camp in case we run out.” Dr Cleanse relayed drily. “I don't think this crew has the mental bus-fare for a mutiny."
                “Really?”
                "Certainly not if their main concern about being in a desert is making sure that it stays sandy."
                "We can probably keep them miserable if needs be then." Said Jess.
                "Yes... quite. But since you’re willing to help I need the following: a mostly complete tri-axial power coupling, as many working computer terminals as you can find, a set-"
                "I'm not your secretary. Make a list and give it to me."
                "I… fine, then. My list comprises one thing: a secretary.  Get me one and you will have your requirements." Dr Cleanse pouted.
                "Fine." Ensign Morel replied, accepting that it was probably the best she was going to get from the cantankerous academic and marching back to the camp. Leadership had involved far more walking than she’d realised it would.
 
                "Ezio here has agreed to act as your documentation liaison." Jess announced upon her return several minutes later. The midshipman waved awkwardly. "Get your list sorted and over to me."
                "It was a bit more of an order than an agreement, really." Ezio mumbled.
                "Same difference. You agreed to follow orders when you signed up with the Pangea Union so it’s voluntary consent to be commanded." Jess dismissed. "Sooner we get this list, the sooner we can get to action."
                Dr Cleanse rolled her eyes as Jess turned back towards the camp for yet another sandy walk and started to reel off requirements to Ezio.
 
                It only took ten minutes for Dr Cleanse’s list to get to Ensign Morel, and most of that time was Ezio’s walk back from her camp. Jess wondered how much time had been wasted this way on The Adequate, but didn’t really care enough to finish the train of thought.
                “Most it should be easy to find, ma’am.” Ezio told her as she read down the list. “I’ve seen several of the major ship components in the area when looking for survivors, and they’ll have a lot of the kit there. I tried to keep a list of where it all was but my data tablet still can’t find the network at all…”
                “She wants half the engineering department dragged over there.” Ensign Morel said, mostly to herself, as she reviewed each line. “And that’s not even to mention the people. Three technicians to tune and calibrate. Half a dozen engineers…”
                “I’m wondering if maybe I won’t get to connect to the info-server at all on this planet. Maybe there’s interference from the atmosphere. If we find the network hub I’ll be sure to restart it straight away and see if that fixes things.” Ezio continued, not really requiring Jess’ attention to maintain the conversation.
                Jess flicked through her improvised manifesto of available people. There was a definite mismatch between skills required and skills available.
                “We could try a different plug socket too. Or any plug socket at all. Can I add extra plug sockets to the list, ma’am?”
                Jess sat down on a salvaged chair from the canteen wreckage. It wobbled and sank into the sand unevenly, but settled down eventually into a steady state. Jess was left sitting at an authoritatively jaunty angle.
                “What was your specialism, midshipman?” Jess asked.
                “Diagnostics and reporting, ma’am. We worked together for a couple of years…” Ezio reminded, a little hurt that Jess had to ask. “So, am I going to be able to add the extra plug sockets to the list?”
                “Grab whatever you can.” Jess consented. “But you’ll need to report to Dr Cleanse straight after and do whatever she says to finish up the transportation device.”
                “Work for Cleanse?!” Ezio repeated. “But she’s so… such a… you know.”
                “You’re scared of her?”
                “No! Well, yes. But no more than anyone else is.”
                “I know she can be difficult to work with, or work for, but this is about survival and escape and it’s a direct order. She needs technicians.” Jess explained.
                “I’d be much better at scavenging the equipment, ma’am. It’s like diagnosing the landscape with what it contains. Right up my alley.” Ezio persisted, become his own walking CV.
                “Do one and then the other, then.” Jess instructed with a shrug. “But get every able-bodied crew person over here to hear their assignments first.”
 
                Jess sat in wait on her sunken canteen chair as the remainder of The Adequate’s crew formed an audience in front of her. Private Morass had attempted to sidle up and stand like an aide or second-in-command, but a series of thunderous stares had sent him back into the crowd. Behind them was the deep dish of a sand dune, looming up like the bowl of an auditorium. It dawned on Ensign Morel as she looked at it that she was on the wrong side of the makeshift amphitheatre to be speaking; all its shape would do now was amplify the voices of hecklers. Her authority would simply have to speak louder than any voice, dissenting or otherwise.
                The crowd’s general burble grew in volume as more of the survivors arrived and milled around in anticipation of what was to come. Jess saw tattered uniforms starting to take on the blue stain of the desert’s vibrant sand, and noted that the effect was particularly prominent around Nurse Oldbuck’s strangely bulging pockets. A few of the injured had been able to get up and come along with their splints and crutches too, adding some whites and reds to the mix.
                It wasn’t much of an elite crew; she was the only survivor of rank higher than private and even then she was the lowest of the possible officers. The Adequate it may have been, but what was left didn’t quite live up to that appellation.
                A gradual damping of the conversation spread from the front to the back of the audience in waves as Jess stood up. At her chest she held both the manifesto and Dr Cleanse’s list. A few final remarks in the crowd faded away and the soft tinkling of sand being poured subtly out of medical scrubs abated while the assembled eyes all turned themselves upon Ensign Morel.
                “Everyone. We, er, thank you for coming. We’re rather, well… um, we’ve crashed on a deserted planet as most of you are probably aware.” Went Ensign Morel’s strong start. The captain had always made improvised speeches look so easy, or maybe just spent a lot his free time writing and rehearsing. It was hard to tell. “I don’t really know quite what happened to put us here, but there’s a chance that we can get away. It’ll take a lot of work from all of us though.”
                That’s it, Jess told herself. Open with a reminder that there was a great calamity, and then hook them with the promise of lots of hard work to only potentially find a way off world. The sea of uncomfortable faces confirmed that this wasn’t the best announcement they’d ever heard.
                “Dr Cleanse survived the incident without injury and has plans for an experimental transportation device which she’s confident can get us back home safely.” Jess embellished, both for the sake of morale and out of panic. “I have here a list of equipment and personnel she requires to complete the construction and operation of her device. It’s up to all of us to make sure that these requirements are met and tended to as quickly as possible.”
                “What about food and water?” A voice shouted from the crowd. There were nondescript sounds that seemed to suggest other people were also interested in the answer.
                “We have gathered a modest stock of supplies from the wreckage thus far, which should keep us going for a while. Anything found while scavenging for Dr Cleanse’s parts must be brought back to the camp for proper distribution among the crew.” Jess responded.
                “And what about when that runs out?” Someone else asked. Jess looked around for who had spoken but couldn’t pick them out.
                “There is at least one undamaged vending machine. If we can secure a power source for it then the replicator will be able to provide us with supplies for as long as we need.
                “Does the replicator have schematics for creating sand, if we should find that-”
                “No it does not. There is enough here already, nurse.” Jess growled. “Now, Technician O’Yeats? Are you there somewhere?”
                “I am precisely here. Bearing of about ought-four-five from you with my right arm raised by approximately sixty centimetres ma’am.” She directed.
                “Fantastic. You are to report to Dr Cleanse and - please put your arm back down. Thank you - and do whatever she asks to bring the transportation device online. Likewise Chef Vighelm.”
                The crowd rippled as Chef Vighelm made his way to the edge with Technician O’Yeats.
                “Ma’am? Are you sure you mean me? I don’t know anything about building transporters.” The chef asked nervously. His white uniform had picked up a lot of sand, until it looked like he’d spent the last week cooking with crayons.
                “You were the only person aboard who could navigate the arcane controls of the ovens and pressure cooking vessels. I think that makes you one of the most technically qualified crew left among us.” Ensign Morel told him. It wasn’t just idle morale-building either; the state of the pickings really was that bad.
                “Yes ma’am. I’ll try my best. Can’t be that much difference between making filo pastry and creating an experimental engine.” He said hopefully, in an obvious attempt to convince himself of it and build up some confidence.
                “They’re incredibly different. No flour or shortening in a transportation device at all, I’d wager.” Nurse Haggard opined.
                “It’s experimental; no-one knows how much flour or shortening it requires.” Countered Private Macro.
                “Or sand. I’d personally imagine that it consumes vast quantities and therefore needs a dedicated team to transport it.”
                “Your focus is the injured, Nurse Oldbuck!” Ensign Morel shouted, for what she vainly hoped would be the last time. “Everyone else, the list of equipment that Dr Cleanse requires shall be copied onto the wall behind me. Private Gunderson, that’s your responsibility. I want everyone who is able to commit themselves to the search and bring back all the components they can. Groups of three or more. All parts to be delivered directly to Dr Cleanse and then annotated against the list.”
                “Ma’am? A question.” One of the astronomers yawned. The night of celestial buttock observations had been a long one.
                “Yes?”
                “How is this going to fit in with the search for formal wear and organisation of a ball?”
                “What ball?” Jess asked, not knowing why she’d given the question even that much dignity.
                “Well, exactly. We’ve not been able to plan anything at this rate.”
                “Transportation device takes priority. Obviously.” The astronomer’s face dropped. “But if you find any formal wear then by all means you may bring it back to camp with you.”
                “Aye ma’am.” He said, puffing himself up and saluting. “We won’t let you down.”
                “Any more questions?” Ensign Morel asked quickly, desperate to get in before anyone else could ask something. There was some mysterious but well-known power in that enquiry which robbed any listener of the questions which had been burning in their minds for months.
                “No? Good. Getting a transporter up is our top priority. Don’t stay out after dark, but make sure that any time spent searching is spent well. Dismissed.” Jess said, sitting back down in her catering chair and turning her face towards the list again. She knew that she was supposed to be handing it to Private Gunderson, but it seemed like the right sort of thing for an erstwhile captain to do, and had to commit to it until the crew had properly dispersed. Such was the burden of command.
 
                Jess stared at the wall-high list from the shade of a crashed portion of corridor. Rising upwards like an obelisk of access it enclosed her on two sides, one of which was lined with light fittings, to provide shielding from the midday sun. A significant quantity of rays still reflected up from the sand, casting a deep blue glow across her grey uniform and genuinely improving its appeal. No amount of atmospheric blue lighting could make the list unappealing, however. While the doctor was intelligent enough to know what equipment could or couldn't be found on The Adequate, it seemed she had been paying less attention to who was left alive. If she even knew who anyone else was in the first place. The request for six engineers stared out at her in the improvised ink that Private Gunderson had used to write on the wall. Many discarded shoes had lost their lives to be melted down for that message, but it still didn't give Jess enough staff to fulfil Dr Cleanse's wishes. She stood, she stared, and she thought. There was only one qualified engineer left alive, aside from Dr Cleanse, and she was currently engaged in acting as the commanding officer.
                “Ensign Morel, ma’am?”
                Jess snapped out of her concentration and turned to face one of the scanning terminal operators, Private Sessario.
                “Yes?”
                “I was wondering if there are plans to set up more permanent barracks or dormitories around the camp. I had a really good spot on a dune last night, but I’m worried that someone else might take it because there’s no delineation or property boundaries.” Sessario explained earnestly.
                “I… did not have specific plans for that to happen today. The acquisition of parts for Dr Cleanse is the most important activity for all of us.”
                “OK, I understand, but it was a great sleeping spot. Not too much sand, not too little, just right.” Sessario intoned. Jess couldn’t wrap her head around how one spot was more or less sandy than any other. “Would it be OK to take some scrap wreckage and mark it as mine?”
                “Yes. Fine. Great. Do that quickly, and get back to scavenging.” Ensign Morel accepted.
                “Thank you ma’am. Right away.” Sessario said, backing away with an out-of-place bow and then hurrying off.
                “We got the latrine dug out again.” Announced logistician Millard from somewhere unseen.
                “Why is no-one out searching for parts like I ordered them to?” Jess grumbled to herself, turning her face to the sky for a moment.
                “It’s down at the bottom of the dune like you asked for, but it’s tiring to walk all the way back up. And if someone slips down then I dread to think what they might land in.” Millard warned. He stepped into view around the corridor piece.
                Jess looked towards Millard’s narrow head, with his slightly bulging chin wobbling underneath.
                “They can walk down a dune a little way away then can’t they? Why am I getting involved in planning routes to and from the lavvy?”
                “Because it’s important to get right.” Millard defended. “That’s a number one survivalist’s priority. Anyway, Sholt is convinced you’ll want us to excavate and move the first latrine down there to the new one, but no-one wants to do that or be the one to carry it. Grim business. Can you confirm why it is you’d ask us to shift everything like that?”
                “I didn’t! At no point have I ever ordered that. I ordered you all to go out and get the salvage from this list, so go and do it!” Ensign Morel barked, pointing a straight, tense finger at the writing on the wall.
                “Sanitation is...” Millard started, but the look in Jess’ eyes disavowed him of the notion that arguing would work. “Yes, ma’am.” He instead accepted.
 
                Dr Cleanse was directing her newly acquired technicians as Ensign Morel arrived in her lab camp. O’Yeats had taken up the mantle of prodding and investigating the selection of circuit boards on a makeshift work bench, Chef Vighelm was sitting cross-legged in the sand with a series of cross-wired control modules and fiddling dials left and right, and Midshipman Ezio was trying valiantly to bail sand out of several expensive-looking pieces of equipment. It was a comparative hive of activity, and made Jess feel better in the knowledge that at least a few of the crew were following their orders.
                “Glad to see that some work is going on here.” She said by way of announcing her presence.
                “Ah, Morel. Do I have my engineering staff yet?” Dr Cleanse asked.
                “You’re looking at her.” Jess said simply.
                “And the other five?”
                “I’m the only engineer we’ve found alive, so you’ll have to make do with me. I’d try to get one of the others involved but they’re obsessing over various things. Holding a ball, smuggling sand, and latrine positioning to name a few.”
                Dr Cleanse tipped her head to one side and narrowed her gaze at Ensign Morel.
                “The burdens of command aren’t to your tastes after all, then?”
                “Command is fine. Being ignored and having inane bleating about unimportant nonsense are the problems. Why do I have to solve everyone’s problems?” She lamented. Dr Cleanse didn’t react. “I mean, what are the chances that only officer not killed was me?" Jess blurted, unable to stop the tide of whining once it had started.
                "How many officers were there aboard?" Dr Cleanse asked, looking down at her data tablet.
                "More than twenty." Jess estimated.
                "Then the chances were 'more than twenty' to one. Roughly." Dr Cleanse said dismissively. “You’re an engineer, you should know that.”
                “Very helpful, doctor. Now what do you need me to do? What are we working on?”
                “A transportation system, like I said. One that could potentially get us all the way home.”
                “I was really after a few more details than that. Are you confident that this is going to work?” Ensign Morel queried. It was a bit of a late question, given that the whole crew were already out in the desert scavenging for it.
                “It got us here didn’t it? Saved us from the attack that would otherwise have left us to suffocate.”
                Jess frowned. It was obvious when she thought about it.
                “You teleported us away from empty space and into a safe atmosphere? I thought the teleportation project got cancelled when you declared it to be impossible.”
                “It is impossible!” Defended the doctor.
                “But you did it. You teleported us… plucked us out of space and dropped us here.”
                 “Don’t be stupid. We both just told eachother that it’s impossible.”
                Jess’ expression implied that she was going to continue being stupid until educated into another circumstance.
                “So you want to teleport something, right? Then you need to stop the thing being where it is, send it somewhere, and then rebuild it. That’s three massive problems right off the bat. Am I supposed to vaporise what I’m meant to teleport and then store the gas in a bottle?”
                “Well, no you… you’d beam them away…” Jess offered weakly.
                “I can’t just turn a person into a line of code and some light to shine across the galaxy! What would happen to their actual body, all the atoms that made them up can’t just disappear? Even if, IF, I could turn them into a beam with some kind of magical device that didn’t leave a big stain on the floor, then what happens when I shine that light into space and the beam starts to spread because perfect collimation doesn’t exist and all light gets diffracted? Or what if it gets blocked by a meteor? Does a person then reform without their arms or end up on a piece of space debris? How do they even get put back together at the other end without a replica of the system that turned them into code to rebuild again?”
                “I mean… yeah. That does sound a bit silly when you put it that way. But if you could… maybe… 3D print them at the other end? Send layers of them over to stack up again or something?” There were only straws in clutching distance.
                “Are you serious? So we’re back to vaporising the subject, which would be murder if we’re talking about people by the way, then somehow firing the material that used to be them across space, which is even harder and slower than using light. Do you think that a 3D printed person would be alive? We have plenty of corpses around if you’d like to try reassembling one and seeing if it springs back into life, but I don’t think you’ll get on very well.” Dr Cleanse explained aggressively. Years of technical frustrations were pouring out at the only authority figure who had ever made the mistake of listening.
                “I suppose you’re right.”
                “And how does any of this stuff get directed to its end point? How would we define co-ordinates for a teleport system that worked everywhere in space? What could we possibly use as a reference point to set a zero in the first place while we’re hurtling along in a space craft? Setting up a fixed co-ordinate for that is impossible because even if the ship was stationary with reference to something, everything else in the universe is always moving away from each other and itself. In every direction. At the same time. That’s just basic astronomy. And on top of that, space-time gets distorted around heavy things like planets, maybe the planets we’re trying to send someone to, so a straight line isn’t straight anymore, and time flows differently depending on gravity so your trajectory stops making sense, and eventually a metre is longer than it used to be so whatever you work out as the distance to travel is immediately wrong.”
                Dr Cleanse’s mouth was a blur of enraged motion, struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of debunking she had to do.
                “OK, you’ve made your poin-”
                “So say we ignore that and try to think about a very local teleport that doesn’t have hugely varying gravitational fields to worry about. I could try to painstakingly work out exactly how far to move someone in our local reference frame, depending on how much the length of space between the target and the person is changed because of their relative speeds, but without line of sight or an accurate 3D map of the area I’d have to just hope for the best and pray that there isn't a mountain or a building or a bloody bird there when they land. I mean the whole thing is just a nightmare from start to finish, and the captain expected it to be designed and built in a few years for intergalactic operations! It took that long to work out how many problems there were to solve.” Dr Cleanse continued to rant, like a textbook after someone had given it an adrenaline shot.
                “Alright. Alright. It’s not a teleporter. We are both uncomfortably aware of that fact now.” Jess placated. It was critical that Dr Cleanse stopped venting before she deflated completely. “But you managed to build something that works and moved us goodness only knows how far. That’s still the point that we’re trying to get back to. How does it move us?”
                “It doesn’t. It moves a lot of space to us instead. My transportation system bends space around itself so that we can hop from one bit to another.”
                “It’s a warp engine?” Jess asked.
                “That’s a crude and inaccurate way of putting it, but the principle is there, yes.” Confirmed Dr Cleanse.
                Jess stared into middle distance, lost in memories of lectures about the theoretical possibility of warp travel, and tried to allow the reality to sink in. She’d experienced warp travel. She was standing with the inventor of the first confirmed warp engine. It was nearly time to rebuild it. Some of her crew were honestly considering carrying the contents of a sandy latrine down a hill to put in the new latrine. It was all a lot to take in.
                "Well…” she said slowly. “At least the ship’s engines were already failing before the tel- er, transporter fired, so we can't have gone very far."
                “What makes you say that?” Dr Cleanse asked curiously.
                “They wouldn’t have had much power to give, so we can’t have been moved very far.” Came the elaboration, which experienced decreasing confidence as it went on.
                "Oh. Oh no, quite the opposite. Moving a short distance takes tremendous power, but going a long way takes much less." Dr Cleanse explained.
                "You've invented a perpetual motion machine in that case." Ensign Morel said, sarcasm pouring off her body like sand. She had a good reference for how that looked and felt.
                "Don’t take that tone with me! I just told you that it doesn’t move masses, it bends space instead. We didn’t have to go to the bother of spending the energy required to drag you across lightyears of distance. You’d have felt that."
                Jess couldn’t argue. She probably would have felt it.
                "So… you’re trying to tell me that bending more space is easier than bending less space?”
                "Well, yes! Imagine bending a cardboard tube as tall as a person. It's easy to fold that in half because you have so much leverage and so much material with which to work. Make it a half inch tube and suddenly that's a hard thing to bend. Same thing with space; if you bend a lot of it, each element only has to bend a little bit to eventually give you a large curve. Try to bend a single little bit into the same overall curve and you're trying to stretch it by several times its own length. You need a lot more energy to make that happen. That’s just basic science and Hooke’s Law!" Dr Cleanse claimed.
                "Great. So we're probably lightyears away."
                Dr Cleanse shrugged.
                "I don’t know about probably, but possibly, yes. It's very difficult to say. When you're bending so much space a small difference in energy can make a huge difference in length. Ultimately I have no idea how much power went from the engines into the teleporter, and length-transported asymptotes to infinity as energy input tends to zero, with respect to the threshold required to achieve any bending at all."
                Jess sighed and rubbed her face with both hands. The sand made her stop quickly again.
                “I’ve already got a team on nights trying to work out where we are from the stars. Will that help?”
                “It won’t hurt.” Dr Cleanse responded, in much the same way as saying that owning a spare left shoe won’t hurt one’s chances of being named Gregory. “If we can find a way of calibrating energy input against distance travelled then it would be useful information.”
                “I’ll keep them at it then.”
                Dr Cleanse seemed unmoved by the statement and started fiddling with her equipment again.
                “So we know it works and we’re just rebuilding it?” Jess pressed.
                “That rather trivialises the task ahead of us, Morel. The transporter was experimental to begin with and fine tuning it will be nightmarish. We could end up absolutely anywhere if we get it wrong.”
                “You must have some idea of how to aim it. You managed to put us here.”
                Dr Cleanse gave a piteous look.
                “That’s your optimism talking. We got astronomically lucky with turning up here.” The doctor told her, making it clear in her tone that a pun was the last thing she ever intended.
                Jess had no idea of how to respond. They were alive because of experimental technology and an incalculably probability of it putting them somewhere safe. And it was still their best chance of getting home. It was another important reminder in her life that ‘best’ is sometimes a lot worse than ‘good’.
                To one side, among a stack of equipment, Chef Vighelm was staring at them both blankly. He'd had the basic astro-training like everyone else, but the conversation happening in front of him was above his knowledge and his pay grade. Pastry never did this to him. Roast vegetables always obeyed classical mechanics and no-one had to be vaporised or beamed across the universe to enjoy a cinnamon swirl. It did sometimes require the bending of space time to get a really good crème brulee, but that was about the limit. A spark between two of the machines next to him caught his attention and pulled him back to more tangible concerns.
 
                "Did you hear that stuff the captain and the doctor were talking about?" The chef asked O'Yeats later. They were rummaging through a bin that had been recovered from the wreckage of the engineering bay.
                "I only caught bits of it. Making a transport system of some kind." O’Yeats replied. Her right arm was shoulder-deep and rustling around in a collection of circuit board fragments.
                "I heard them talking about people getting vaporised and rebuilt maybe. And space getting folded up." The chef continued with some concern.
                "Vaporised?"
                "Yeah. The doc said that we're rebuilding what put us here to try and get away again, but that it doesn't work if it vaporises us or something."
                "Well... Yeah of course. If it vaporises us then it's an oven not a transporter.” O’Yeats surmised. “Bit of a specific failure to call out but it went fine last time." She looked around. "Sort of."
                “I suppose so. You know more about all this technical stuff than I do so if you think it’s safe I’ll take your word for it.” Chef Vighelm conceded.
 
                Another sunset came suddenly across the blue desert, robbing the crew of their ability to identify what they were looting from the various craters, containers, and piles of debris. In a series of uniformed trickles they all returned to the camp.
                Once the food rations had been distributed and an inventory taken of what they’d managed to gather up throughout the day, Private Macro updated the list by portable lamp light. What started as an orderly queue to provide updates, formed with military discipline, quickly descended into a jostling crowd of tired scavengers fighting to give their reports and leave. Gunderson could barely keep his ‘rag-on-a-stick’ improvised paint brush wet enough with paint to mark up the progress. Watching over the process and waiting for them to be done, Jess leaned against what used to be the canteen ceiling and mulled over the wisdom of using jury-rigged, re-purposed equipment to repair an experimental transportation system. Although Dr Cleanse had maintained that the ship’s damage was down to the assailant’s weapons alone, that claim was still unproven. It seemed perfectly likely to Ensign Morel’s outside perspective that a system capable of bending space-time could also tear a ship’s worth of metal apart easily enough.
                As Jess’ concerns raised questions, and contemplation of questions raised further concerns, the crowd around the list gradually thinned out until, before she realised it, the wall of text was left untended again. She reactivated the portable lamp and peered closely at the shopping list Dr Cleanse had prepared for everyone, with freshly painted ink glistening in the white glow.
                It hadn’t been a bad haul. A few lines had been crossed through completely, and most of the others at least had a few tally marks against them. At the very bottom of the list someone had even added an item, which filled Jess with optimism until she realised it read:
                “Sand (Vitally important, don’t question) - six sacks so far.”
                It was like talking to a brick wall. Or maybe more like shouting into a sandstorm.
 
                “Good morning everyone.” Jess said from her speaking chair. Starting to look a little sun-bleached, the same crowd of uniforms and faces looked back at her for the day’s orders.
                “There was some great progress yesterday, so keep up the search at that rate and we’ll be done soon.” She instructed. There were a few nods. “Any questions?”
                A hand shot up from Pharmacist Krumm. Thankfully it was his own, attached in the normal place.
                “Are we going to look for food or a source of water soon? The rations won’t last forever. I know that, because sometimes I thought I had a lot of medicine in the pharmacy but, sure enough, when I kept taking it out it started to run out. Food and medicine are different, granted, but I think that they could be similar in the regard of finite quantities.” He asked, hammering the point home with a powerful anecdote.
                “Probably, yes. We’ve got enough rations to keep us going for another week or so. Hopefully by that time we’ll have a transporter up and running, but we’ll start the search in a few days’ time regardless. That’s still to be planned. Bear with me.” Jess replied.
                “If we find a flat piece of ground for a dance floor, could that be used to hold a ball?” A familiar voice asked.
                “Again, probably. Not top priority.”
                “It’d be good for morale.”
                “So would having enough food to stay alive.” Pharmacist Krumm added with an eager nod.
                “Great. Anyone else?” Jess asked, eager to move things along and get back to work with Dr Cleanse.
                “Is it true that we might be getting vaporised?”
                A tremor of worried chattering spread from the question’s epicentre, the round, open face of communication operative Sholt.
                “Absolutely not! Why would anyone be getting vaporised?” Jess replied sharply.
                “I heard that the transporter will either take us straight home, or it’ll vaporise us into bent space and tear the planet apart.” Sholt explained matter-of-factly. “I’m all for getting back to safety, but I think I’d rather not be turned into a pile of ash at the same time, you know? Does that sound silly of me?”
                Jess barely knew how to respond.
                “No… no that doesn’t sound silly. But it’s also definitely not going to happen. The transporter will not be vaporising anyone.”
                “Then what will be vaporising people? Someone definitely heard something about vaporising, and there’s no smoke without fire.” Logistician Millard pointed out. He was holding his arms out in a wide shrug.
                “Nothing! There’s no vaporising at all. Or melting, or dissolving or otherwise dispersing of a person’s body.” Jess growled, nipping several synonyms in the bud before anyone could jump across to them. The scuttled hulls of their tangential questions sank beneath the waves of pre-emptive dismissal.
                “So… so when we’ve been transported again… there’ll be little enough vaporising that we’ll still be able to do some ballroom dancing of some kind?” The astronomer asked.
                Jess sighed.
                “Ok, no more questions. Off you go.” She said, sitting back in her chair and wearing her best ‘I’ve had enough of this’ face.
 
                “Ah, there you are.” Dr Cleanse said as soon as Jess was within the bounds of the lab camp. Striding over with a collection of data tablets that had been provided to her the previous day, the doctor’s glasses reflected the early morning sunlight into Ensign Morel’s face. “I need you to look over these schematics and work out which ones go together. There were a few revisions of the input sphere containment logic, and apparently my lab techs couldn’t number them up properly.” She ordered, dropping the pile directly into Jess’ arms.
                “Ugh, erm, right. OK. How is it supposed to work?”
                “It’ll be obvious from the schematics.” Dr Cleanse said with a dismissive hand wave. “When I can expect the rest of my equipment?”
                “Weren’t you at the briefing this morning?” Jess counter-questioned.
                Dr Cleanse looked over with a raised eyebrow.
                “No. I didn’t really feel the need.”
                “Maybe you should have felt it, because you would have known what’s been found and that everyone has been sent out to look for the rest.” Ensign Morel chastised.
                “But you’ve just told me half of what I want to know and the other half I can work out from the pile that’s been left for me. Good enough. If I had enough time to sit and listen to show-and-tell then I would have enough time to sleep. As it is, I’ll keep giving it a miss.”
                Jess bristled, until she comprehended.
                “Why haven’t you been to sleep?”
                “There’s work to be done.”
                Ensign Morel placed the slates on a piece of corridor flooring that now served as a workbench, and then sat on the remains of a workbench which was serving as a passable chair.
                “I’m not sure you’re at your best when sleep deprived, doctor.”
                “Even if I’m not at my best, I’m still the best we have down here.”
                Jess let it slide and started flicking through the schematics.
 
                It took Jess nearly two hours to finish sifting through the diagrams, and by the time she was done she could see circuits everywhere. The dunes were amplifiers and differential buffers, strung together along lines with capacitive chunks of wreckage. For longer than was strictly necessary she looked around for a switch to close and make it all come to life, but all she found was that she probably needed to get herself hydrated.
                “I think I’m done.” She called over to Dr Cleanse. The good doctor, if she could reasonably be called that, was helping O’Yeats and Vighelm connect several large pieces of equipment together.
                “Good. Next job is to correlate the correct drawings with the boards over there.” Cleanse called back, pointing towards a bench with several neat stacks of green circuit boards on top. “Get them laid out and ready for us to plug in.”
                “Yes ma’am.” Jess muttered under her breath. On legs which had long since gone to sleep and were in the middle of an engaging dream about running free across the plains, without any useless torso to hold them back, she stood up and staggered through the loose sand towards the boards. Looking around herself for the sake of stretching her neck out, she laid eyes on the generator sitting idle in the centre of a large, metal platform which had presumably been a floor or ceiling back on The Adequate. With the sight of it, thoughts of the vending machine came flooding back, and in turn the concerns over food and water provisions surged up. This kind of work could take weeks, and their assembled rations wouldn’t stretch that far.
                “We need to talk about the generator, doctor.” Jess said, trying to swing the weight of her authority in with the words.
                “Do we?” Dr Cleanse replied, stepping away from her technicians and looking sceptically towards Jess. “I thought we’d already agreed that this was the most important application for it?”
                “Most important, but not most urgent.” Ensign Morel clarified. She wasn’t sure it made sense, but it sounded good in the context; another important leadership trick she’d picked up. She stepped close to Dr Cleanse and lowered her voice. “We’ve got another seven, maybe eight days of food and water. After that we’ll need to either send out search parties in the hope that there’s a source of potable water, or we need to rely on the replicator in the vending machine.”
                “Then it sounds to me like this conversation can wait for seven, maybe eight days.” The doctor hissed back. “This is a distraction from real work, ensign.”
                “Not if we want to build up a stockpile. The sooner we start, the better positioned we’ll be if it comes to a long wait.” Jess countered.
                Dr Cleanse clenched her jaw and looked into Ensign Morel’s eyes, her gaze unwavering.
                “That generator is the only reliable power source that can run the transporter. If it breaks down and we haven’t got the parts to replace it then we’ll need to reinvent smelting from first principles to manufacture new parts, which isn’t something I’d readily welcome. Cut the rations down. Empty the vending machine out and add to them. Do something other than risk our only chance of getting out of here.”
                “Give me another workable option then.” Jess demanded. ‘Aggressive Delegation’ had been a more advanced officer training course, alongside ‘Shoulder-Sloping’ and ‘Introduction to Listening to Every Other Word’.
                “I thought I just did.”
                “Not a stopgap that ends in malnutrition, a solution. You must be able to make something that can power the vending machine. I thought you were a genius.” Jess had got a particularly high score on the ‘Goading for Results’ module.
                Dr Cleanse’s nostrils flared and she looked around the growing heap of parts that the crew were bringing to her, like ants traipsing around a beautiful blue garden and transporting gifts to their queen. She’d often lamented not having the mighty abdomen of a queen insect, and she resolved to fix that once she was back in a real lab.
                “If, and I mean if, I get enough spares that I don’t need them for the transporter, then I should be able to make a low voltage unit to power your machine and keep us fed.” She said sardonically, as if nutrition was a petty concern which she’d long since abandoned. “So you’d better get on with working out which boards I do and don’t need.” She added, spinning around in a spray of dust and turning back to her technicians. O’Yeats gave Ensign Morel a wounded look at enraging their already cantankerous supervisor, and she shrugged in reply. It was the privilege of leadership.
 
                “An expedition?” Jess asked with one palm across her face. The evening sun was casting long, deep shadows that almost rivalled the length and depth of Ensign Morel’s disdain.
                “Yes.” Logistician Millard said confidently. “We all know that rations aren’t going to last forever, as Krumm so accurately pointed out earlier, so it’s up to the more intrepid members of the crew to deliver everyone else from famine.”
                “And you think that you can provide that service?”
                “I am a proven survivalist; my intuition to set up a viable latrine attests to that, as does my rugged demeanour and strong jaw line.” Millard claimed boldly, through the soft jaw of his stretched-pear head.
                “I would argue, logistician, that you would serve better as a quartermaster for whatever rations we have left than an explorer.” Ensign Morel observed gently.
                “You’re confusing logistics with stores management.” He grumbled. “Logistics is about moving things onwards, like moving me and a crack team into the desert for supplies.”
                “Pretty sure that’s a stretched definition of the term, Millard. We’ve not seen any sign of life out here and for all we know the whole planet could be the same sandy wasteland as our camp. It’s too dangerous to risk losing people for a wild goose chase.”
                “Is it not our duty as a survey vessel to gather data on the planet? Our whole purpose on this mission for the Pangea Union was to provide accurate details on atmospherics and planet compositions. Stop trying to stop me doing my job!” The logistician accused.
                “Your job was to organise shuttles, not to die of thirst.”
                “I won’t take no for an answer.”
                “Then why did you ask?”
                Millard opened his mouth to reply and then stopped himself. Confusion overtook his face as he tried to work out the answer.
                “You’d better take yourself over to the canteen to get dinner while you think about it.” Jess said softly, ushering him away from herself. With a suspicious gaze he acquiesced, looking back every now and again to make sure that he hadn’t been tricked and that Jess wasn’t about to embark on an expedition of her own.
                Once he was well away Ensign Morel sat into her command chair and wondered if keeping the crew on track would ever get easier.
 
                Days passed, and Ensign Morel found it no easier to keep her crew on track. The search for parts had come to an end with nearly everything accounted for, and the crew had found themselves with less to occupy themselves. That led to wandering imaginations. Jess had to rebound dozens more requests for balls, mediate several arguments about the planned ‘Latrine Two: Bigger and Better Edition’, explain to most of the crew that vaporising really wasn’t on the agenda, and re-assign several people to work for Dr Cleanse just to shut them up. Every time she looked over at the triage area it was sitting on a higher mound of sand than the previous day, and Millard had spent two nights missing shortly after being witnessed whittling a broom handle into a spear. After the immediate, reflexive worry had subsided she was just relieved that she didn’t have to listen to him talk about himself as a great explorer anymore, but that was a pleasure compared to what he’d become when he returned.
                “I have seen the mighty sand sparrow!” He bellowed as he strode into camp. It was early in the afternoon, and many of the crew were tending to menial duties that Jess had made up to pass the time.
                “Millard’s back!” Went the cries up and down the camp, some excited and some disappointed. Like a fishing net he trawled along, gathering a troupe of followers. Ensign Morel saw the crowd and commotion from her workbench at Dr Cleanse’s makeshift lab.
                “Oh gods, what are they doing now? I can’t leave them unattended for five minutes.” She groaned. “I’ll be back when, no, if, I can.”
                Dr Cleanse looked up, shrugged, and kept fitting boards into electrical sockets.
                At the edge of the camp Jess could hear the throb of voices. Excited chatter bounced from the panels stuck in the desert sands, channelling the hubbub unnecessarily. Jess worked her way through until she saw the back of the crowd, which had gathered in the open auditorium-like space that she used for the announcements. With wordless shouts of being in charge, she pushed her way through the massing bodies until she reached the front and saw standing there logistician-turned-explorer Millard.
                His legs were covered in scrapes and scratches. The uniform which had already been on the ragged side was now torn off at the knees and shoulders, with the loose sleeves tied into bandanas around seemingly random parts of his body and scraps of fabric tucked into his waist band. It also looked like the flies of his trousers had been rent irreparably open at some stage. In one hand he held his spear, handle downwards and stuck in the sand.
                “Captain! Your most accomplished surveyor returns!” he bellowed, to a mixed response from the crowd.
                “Welcome back Millard.” Jess said unenthusiastically.
                “How long has it been? Days? Weeks? I have lost all track of time since starting my voyage so very, very long ago…” he said, turning his face to the side and looking down melodramatically.
                “It’s been about… fifty hours maybe?” Private Macro estimated.
                “Hah. Fifty of your primitive city hours.” Millard rebuffed awkwardly. “I work on desert time now.”
                Excited murmurs rippled through the crowd, ending abruptly when they met pockets of cynicism.
                “Well whatever time you work on, I see that you’ve returned. Without food or water I would observe. So can we put this nonsense to bed, please?” Ensign Morel asked, stepping up to stand in front of him.
                “Oh, captain. I didn’t return for piffling concerns over food or water.” He said, leaning past her to address his crowd again. Now that Jess paid attention to it, his voice certainly seemed dry and parched. “No, I came back to bring news of the sand sparrow, the dune weavers and the prismatic deer that roam the far reaches of the desert.”
                “Did the sand sparrow have a huge beak?” screamed an enthralled cleaner.
                “As vast as two paddling pools.” Millard confirmed.
                “What about its plumage?”
                “The vibrant blue of the sands, but also with red and purple. And hexagons! Hexagons without number!”
                “That sounds like a dehydrated hallucination to me, Millard.” Jess interjected.
                “Nonsense! I’ve never been more hydrated in my life.” He denied, the lie as barefaced as he was. There was clear sunburn across his forehead.
                “Please tell us of the prismatic deer!” Nurse Haggard pleaded. She pulled her hands out of her pockets to clasp them in either prayer or begging, and sand spilled out in a large spray as she did so. She looked guiltily at Jess for half a moment, then returned her attention to Millard.
                “It is a beautiful creature made entirely of glass pyramids!” The logistician shouted, making triangle shapes with his hands. Jess saw the more sceptical members of the crowd start to walk away, shaking their heads. It gave her some hope. “They canter up and down the dunes, never across, and they catch the light in their huge ovoid antlers, storing it for times of darkness. Of course, they were intimidated by me at first. But being gentle creatures they came to trust me, and took me in as one of their own in time.” Millard ‘recalled’ with narrowed eyes.
                “Please! Tell me more!” Haggard begged.
                “When night falls the stags circle the rest of the herd and keep their light contained, so that the whole dune is illuminated in their prismatic vibrancy.”
                “They circle without ever walking across a dune, only going up or down it?” Jess heckled, far louder than necessary given that she was standing next to Millard.
                “Uh… yes. Of course. They use special desert-evolved gaits to never have to travel from side to side in order to go there.”
                A few more of the crowd wandered off, but the core of hypnotised fanatics only gathered more tightly around.
                “And what of the dune weavers? What even are they?” The cleaner asked.
                “They are the most mysterious of all, making complex tapestries from nothing but sand.” Millard revealed, waving open hands like a magician.
                Ensign Morel looked at Millard’s remaining crowd and saw a brainwashed belief in their eyes. It looked like they would listen forever, which was a poor combination with Millard, because could talk for hours. With a frown she watched the sorry affair for a while, trying to get through to them with contradictions and logic, but it was no use. Eventually, accepting that it was at least keeping them out of trouble, she wandered back to Dr Cleanse’s work area. The more she worked on the transporter, the less time she’d have to deal with this.

                Another two days passed, and Jess was concerned that Dr Cleanse had made no progress on the vending machine’s power supply. It was becoming a habit to start the day worried, and then talk herself out of saying anything to Dr Cleanse throughout the day whilst working. On the day that she told herself she was really, finally, actually going to say something to the doctor about it this time, she was spared the deliberation; the transporter was suddenly declared to be ready to fire up. In much the same way that it rose from cobalt sands in a shock of electronics and thick cables, the news that they would soon be able to set out on their escape came like a bolt from the blue. Dr Cleanse delivered the news to Jess as if she had been talking about making toast, and it had taken a few attempts to make the announcement really sink in.
                “Just like that? It’s ready?”
                “What do you mean just like that? You’ve seen the work we’ve been putting into this. You know how many resources we poured into getting it up and running again.”
                “I.. yes, but it’s just happened much faster than I expected. One minute it’s business as usual, checking this and rebuilding that, and then suddenly it’s ready.”
                “That’s what repairing things is like. Goodness me it’s like a week as a captain robs you of your memory of engineering.” Dr Cleanse tutted. Jess ignored it.
                “So… so when do we fire it up?” Jess asked anxiously.
                “The generator needs to charge up a lot of capacitors and settle down the electronics. Then the computers needs to calculate the approximate distance from here to the nearest Pangea Union occupied system based on the star chart updates made by your astronomers. I wouldn’t expect anything until the middle of the night at the earliest.”
                “Tomorrow morning then.” Jess said.
                There was a silence.
                “What do we do now?” she asked.
                Dr Cleanse shrugged.
                “I could make you that backup generator for the vending machine?” she offered.
 
                News of the vending machine being up and running whipped the crew into a frenzy, and Jess had been forced to station guards at either side of it. Once she realised the guards had immediately succumbed to corruption and were just ordering more and more food for themselves, she had to depose those guards and appoint new ones. When history repeated itself, she walked away and left the crew to it.
                “If they’re like this over a pack of dehydrated mango slices then what are they going to be like when it turns out they can leave?” She asked Dr Cleanse, who was keeping herself typically detached from the situation.
                “At arms’ length, hopefully.” She simply replied. “Although…”
                “What?”
                “We don’t have to tell them. They might be better off not knowing. The range of the transporter will include the camp without too much trouble. It took the whole of The Adequate before.” Dr Cleanse offered.
                “That would definitely be jarring to them.” Ensign Morel said with quiet concern. “And it might not even work. We could all be leaping to our deaths if the navigation calibration is even slightly off the mark.”
                “Maybe.” Shrugged Cleanse. “But also maybe not. What’s the alternative? Try to find a life here in the sand? Wander like nomads hoping for the best? That backup power supply won’t last forever, and nor would the replicator. Borrowed time or a chance, those are the options here.” She said.
                Jess’ brow furrowed as she looked across at the writhing mass of vending machine frenzied crew. Some of them were trying to crowd-surf forwards to the machine, some were throwing balls of sand to clear the way, and others were standing perfectly still in a feat of queueing patience that she’d hardly thought possible. It was hard to reach the conclusion that these people were competent to make the choice if she offered it to them.
                Beyond the crowd though, another mass of people caught Ensign Morel’s eye. Clustered a short way away was a group of survivors who had, for reasons best known to themselves, elected to tear the sleeves off their uniforms and generally tatter what was left. Like a house without planning permission built on a floodplain, her hopes for the crew subsided even further into the mire of disappointment when she saw Millard strutting backwards and forwards in front of the cluster. Every now and again he would point to the vending machine and shake his head, and then make some over-dramatic mime or other. His crowd was still enthralled, despite the draw of sugary treats. Jess didn’t know which obsession she liked the least, but at the very least a divided crowd couldn’t get into as much trouble.
                Dr Cleanse looked about her feet for a moment and then sat down in the dune. Her legs sunk into the soft sand and she seemed contented to watch the show. Jess joined her, deciding that although she wanted to sort out her crew’s nonsense, maybe they’d earned the chance to tire themselves out this once.
 
                Jess didn’t sleep well, especially when dawn came. It had arrived early yet again, which was still unwelcome, but Jess had been awake for a while already this time. Despite her faith in Dr Cleanse and the work they’d all done, the distinct possibility that she was about to lead her crew into a transporter that dumped them in the empty vacuum, or perhaps inside the fusion engine of a star, was playing on her mind. There hadn’t been a ‘Moral Decision Making’ course, nor a ‘Valuing the Right to Self-Determination of your Crew’ module, so she was really out there on her own with this one.
                Traditions always had a habit of forming themselves where possible. Generally it went unnoticed in cultures like the militaristic Pangea Union, because it was already chock full of traditions that masqueraded as rules or drills. They all wore the same clothes designed by someone lost to history, they gave one another made-up titles to respect as a hierarchy, and they always threw their spoons away after just one use. With the destruction of The Adequate many of those traditions were lost, and so new ones had to appear to fill the void.
                Gathering equipment for Dr Cleanse had tried to become one, but the crew was too efficient for it to last long. Arguing about latrines and balls was a workhorse for a few people, but it didn’t catch much popular appeal. The one that really stood out to Jess, as she stood in the morning sunlight, was the daily audience the crew shared with their erstwhile captain. She’d only had to arrange it once, and every day afterwards the crew had congregated in front of her, ready to receive orders, absorb wisdom, or double-check that she was really sure about there not being a desert prom that evening. Jess found herself deeply grateful for that tradition on the final morning. Without sleep she really didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to try to corral everyone.
                “Well, everyone. I have an announcement for you all of some… gravity.” Jess said. She swallowed. “As you all know we’ve been working since the accident to repair Dr Cleanse’s transporter.”
                “I didn’t know that.” Nurse Oldbuck shouted.
                “You’ve been too busy working to bring sand into a desert though.” Jess sniped. She could see the triage area on its mountain, now looming over the whole of the camp. They’d had to erect a staircase made of old hull wreckage to get up there.
                “We haven’t run out though.” The nurse persisted. Ensign Morel ignored it.
                “The point is, that we are now in a position to be able to leave. However, there is a risk that the journey will not go well. Whilst all efforts have been made to ensure that we get to Earth safely, it’s a very volatile technology and we may end up inside the Sun or floating around in empty space instead.”
                The crowd listened in near silence. There was still a persistent excited hum about the vending machine, but it had fallen to a low level.
                “The transporter will bring along anyone in the lab, and its range extends to most of this camp as well. It’s my belief that the transporter offers our best chance for survival, but I won’t ask anyone to use it against their will. We will be firing it in ten minutes. Anyone who wishes to remain here and take their chances with the unknown planet should be sure to leave now.”
                As if choreographed and rehearsed, Millard dashed to stand alongside Ensign Morel. He’d added some faux-teeth carved from wooden spoons to his ensemble.
                “I offer the alternate path!” he cried, a little behind the curve. “Those of you brave enough and rugged enough and handsome enough to face the dangers of the wilderness should stick with me.” With a flick of his head, which would have been far more impressive with a mane of hair than his balding scalp, he turned to face Jess. “Ensign, I must tender my resignation from your crew so that I can serve the Union as a forward nomadic scout for this planet. All I ask is that you leave all of the supplies. And the vending machine. And you tell everyone of my sacrifice in great detail when you get back.”
                “Done, done, and maybe.” Jess replied flatly. Millard seemed to accept it.
                “Anyone who wishes to choose adventure over the moderate risk of being vaporised should follow me. We march to the promised land of prismatic deer and horizon beetles!” He bellowed. The pack of junior survivors waved their improvised spears and scurried to keep up with him.
                Jess watched the modest crowd congregate around Millard for a few moments. She’d seen him conducting training exercises with his fanatics over the last couple of days, preparing them to fight imaginary monsters in the sands and teaching them dubious tricks for survival. It seemed like attention-seeking lies had become a full delusion, but a part of her wondered if it was a thin and denial-ridden pretence to avoid admitting to fear of the transporter. Jess was willing to let her crew have it if so.
                “Ten minutes.” She repeated, before stepping away.
                Without any time to worry or plan, the crew couldn’t get into a good panic. They couldn’t even get into a bad one. They had ten minutes to make a life-changing decision, less than that if they included time to get beyond the boundary of the camp. Far from the rioting mass of vending machine looters, the crew had adopted the numb, silent, pensive demeanour of those who are forced to face an irreversible and unknowable decision without any time to think. Jess couldn’t bring herself to look at them, instead adopting to join Dr Cleanse in the walk to the transporter.
                Aside from the necessary communications between technicians, Jess and the doctor to make sure that everything was prepared and set up correctly, there was no conversation. Everybody’s focus was on the job at hand, mostly so that it didn’t have to be on the aftermath. Everything was checked over and over again as the clock ticked down. Minutes spilled away to seconds and crewmates blustered around in the space between the camp and lab. Jess looked over them all as the time grew close and wondered if she’d done a good job. There was a small train of self-made nomads marching quickly across the dunes to put space between themselves and the transport, and she wondered if her announcement had only given them the chance to die of thirst on an alien world. That wouldn’t earn her a ‘World’s Best Captain’ mug, but it was within acceptable limits to pass the ‘Callous Leadership’ module.
                “T minus 10 seconds Ensign.” Dr Cleanse informed her, mostly for courtesy.
                “Did I do things right?” Jess asked the doctor.
                Looking away from the control panels for a moment, Dr Cleanse made time for a withering look.
                “How should I know? T minus five...”
                “Sounds about right.”
                “…four...”
                “I hope Millard doesn’t-”
                “…three…”
                 “-get them all killed.”
                “…two…one…”
                Dr Cleanse pulled the firing lever and Jess saluted her crew. It was a redundant gesture but suited some melodramatic and theatrical part of her mind.
                Capacitors whined as they discharged. Lights flared and a small pot of screws toppled over. The camp disappeared with a soft whoosh.