Merlin Sinclair stopped just inside the door and stared silently at the virtual arsenal displayed on the walls of the gunnery officer's cabin. A black wolf leaned over an ugly-looking weapon of questionable origin on his workbench and flashed the ship's helmsman a friendly smile.

"Come on in," Dayton Reese said. The grey wolf moved forward a step and the door panel closed behind him.

"I’m continually amazed at all the firepower represented in your quarters every time I’m in here," Merlin said with a grin, putting his hands into the pockets of his flight jacket.

"Well, you know my motto," Reese replied as he removed a heavy plasma rifle from a rack on the wall. "Peace through superior firepower."

"So, you bloodthirsty child," the helmsman laughed, "What new toy have you acquired today?"

Reese smiled, replaced the rifle to its spot, and then returned his attention to the item on his workbench. "That, my friend, is a Binfurr Soundripper 303. It fires off a concentrated sound pulse that literally shakes apart whatever you hit with it."

"What?" Sinclair exclaimed in mock surprise. "No explosions? No big boom?" He knew the black wolf's love of ‘more power’ when it came to firearms.

Reese's grin widened to display his teeth, a disconcerting sight in a dark face beneath vibrant golden eyes. He closed an open panel on the weapon and picked it up. He flipped a switch and then aimed it a hand-sized rubber ball lying on the deck next to the door. "Watch this."

He gently squeezed the trigger and Merlin’s sensitive ears picked up a brief high-frequency whine. The air in front of the weapon’s barrel flickered briefly, and then the rubber ball blew apart with a loud bang! Tiny bits of thick rubber material splattered all over the room, including the front of the helmsman's uniform. He brushed them away and smiled at the black wolf.

"You should see what it does to flesh and fur," Reese stated with a curled lip.

"Nice. What are you doing, cleaning it?"

Reese set the weapon on his workbench and reopened the side access panel, exposing wiring and circuitry. "Increasing its power, of course," he replied.

Merlin rolled his eyes and laughed. "Of course."

The black wolf sat behind the workbench and gave the helmsman his full attention. "So, what’s on your brain?"

"I need a magnetic equalizer and a size fifteen probe for my snake drill," Merlin answered. "You’re the only one on board outside of the tool crib that has them, and I didn’t feel like going all the way to the repair hangar to check them out."

"Easily done," Reese replied as he turned to a toolbox mounted to the wall. "What are you building this time?"

"An automatic watering system for all of Hal's plants in our cabin," Merlin replied.

"It’s practically a forest in your cabin," the black wolf added. "Don't you mind all the growing things ol' Big Ears has in there?"

The grey wolf shrugged. "Not really, since it gives the place a good scent; it beats the smell of oil and grease of the hangar deck. I think Hal is experimenting with cross-splicing on two of his rarer ferns for a richer fragrance. Botany is his hobby and he spends a lot of his off-duty time in the hydroponics gardens."

Reese gestured to the tools he had laid upon a rubber mat on the bench. "With you rooming with him, why does he need a watering system to care for his plants? Couldn't you could do it for him?"

"He’s my copilot; when I am gone on patrol, so is he. If we have an extended mission somewhere, he wants his plants taken care of." The helmsman glanced at his watch and then picked up the tools. "Anyway, thanks for the loan. I think I have just enough time to complete it for him before I go on bridge duty."

"See ya later."

* * *

"Once upon a time, all these asteroids belonged to the planet Lechuguilla," Jesse Lindo announced to no one in particular. When no one responded, the panda shrugged her shoulders and read off a little more information she had found in the library computer.  "Plate tectonic instability literally shook it apart when its erratic orbit took it too close to both Mainor and Dennier."

The asteroid cluster before the Shishaldin consisted of rocks fist-sized and up to small planetoids. The Kennia system's sun was starboard of the vessel as they patrolled the perimeter of the potentially dangerous region where valuable mineral rights were in dispute between the two worlds.

Captain Ben Clark stood just behind her, his arms crossed as he studied the images in front of the ship. "I wonder if any civilizations ever developed there," the jackal mused.

Sinclair looked up from a display he had monitored. "Some of the larger asteroids still retain some gravity and an atmosphere," the helmsman said.

"Meaning there are plenty of places for Mainoran interlopers to mine illegally," Clark replied. "Okay, send out recon teams." He looked at a large canine at a nearby station and said, "Carl, you and Iago will head the operation. Merlin and Hal will join you in their Khatamu, and Gracie, Eric and Reese will spread out in the Vargs."

"Aye, sir," replied the security chief.

Sinclair called for a backup pilot for the SS Shishaldin and then began locking down his controls for the transfer as Carl left the bridge.

* * *

Halden Ravan was already in his place aboard the Rustbucket when Sinclair arrived in his flight gear. The desert fox with large, sail-like ears was checking the systems with a frown.

"The Com unit’s malfunctioning again," Hal remarked as the wolf settled into the pilot’s seat of the Khatamu-class fighter.

"So what else is new?" Merlin replied with a frown.

"I informed the Bridge of the problem, but we were directed to go out anyway."

Merlin closed the canopy and began pressurization of the cockpit. "We’re on recon, Hal," he said. "It defeats the purpose if we can’t report in." A deck hand gave him a sign that the External Power Unit was ready for engine start. He waved back and began the sequence.

"We do have communications, Merlin, but it’s intermittent."

"Hopefully it’ll last long enough until we get back," the wolf said wishfully. Their fighter was the most dilapidated of any on board, but constant patching kept it flying. The Shishaldin itself might be in good working order, but the smaller ships stationed on board her were not so fetching. Poppi was an excellent mechanic, but there was only so much the mouse could do for the aging ship with the material and equipment she had on hand. The engines started on cue and Sinclair nodded to the deck hand; the coyote uncoupled the EPU connection and waved them on.

* * *

"Hal and -- are --ing sta--ard of the fl-- -la-, Carl. We’ll distance ours-- to tw-- kilom--rs and ta-- a parallel --rse until we int--ect your own fli-- --att--n while w- -hec- out a ra--er l-ge --anet--d."

Iago raised his eyebrows. "What did he say?" he asked. They had already been out from the Shishaldin for an hour; the wolf's messages were constantly broken up and getting worse.

"Merlin, repeat that," Carl transmitted with a sigh.

* * *

"Merlin, -- that."

The wolf frowned, "Could you make out what he said, Hal?"

"I think he said, ‘copy that,’"

"Oh. Okay, let’s go."

The Rustbucket veered away from its current flight path and headed toward an especially large asteroid that had enough mass to generate gravity and retain an environment. They skimmed in close, just outside its atmosphere envelope. "Roughly two thousand kilometers in diameter," Hal muttered as he read his scans. "Breathable air... gravity one-fifth normal... some vegetation and animal life, but I detect nothing like a ship or organized shelters – rather, no signs of intelligence."

The wolf frowned at a slight shudder in the controls and replied, "I’ll take us around once more to make sure." Hal adjusted his instruments and heard Merlin curse beneath his breath.

"What is it?"

"Left rear stabilizer thruster is firing randomly."

"How much of a problem is it?"

"It’s trying to push our nose toward the surface. If it gets out of hand, we’ll skim in closer than we really want."

"Hunk of junk..." Hal replied irritably. He activated the Com unit to report in to Carl, but got only silence from his headset. "Communications are down," he said.

"Wonderful," Sinclair grumbled. "See if there’s anything you can do back there. It’s getting worse up here." If the thrusters fired continuously or at least in a recognizable pattern, he could respond with an opposing thruster. Unfortunately, it was unpredictable and he was having little luck maintaining a true flight attitude.

"There’s nothing I can do with it right now," Hal retorted. "I can't get power to the transceiver. We seem to be okay for the moment, and Carl knows where we are."

They rounded across the terminator into the asteroid's daylight hemisphere. Hal kept scanning, but as far as he could tell, no one had set up shop down there. "Okay, let’s move on to something else," he suggested.

A powerful jolt from the left suddenly brought the landscape below directly in line with the nose of their small craft. "That does it," Sinclair exclaimed. "We’re going in!"

Of all thoughts to pop into his mind, Hal suddenly wondered what he had done to annoy the captain. Clark had teamed him up with Merlin, but that was not the problem. He had been partnered in a ship that seemed to be designed for their destruction. Not for the first time, the desert fox wished he were back in the relative safety and mundane peacefulness of shipboard maintenance.

The canopy flared orange in sudden friction as they passed into the thin atmosphere. The effect was short-lived as they broke through and glided into a wispy cloud. The ground appeared suddenly and approached at a rate too fast for Hal's peace of mind. He readied himself to eject if necessary, but the thin air was unlikely to give a parachute much lift.

Merlin leveled their descent and passed through a narrow canyon between two small rocky peaks with only a meter to spare on either side. As they emerged into open sky, the errant maneuvering thruster kicked in and they veered suddenly to the left. Hal swore in anxiety. Had the thruster fired a second or two earlier, a canyon wall would have been their final destination.

The wolf fought to compensate, but the craft caught a rock outcropping at a glancing blow that rattled the fliers’ brains, but otherwise did no appreciable damage. Merlin knew he had to get away from the mountains and land quickly before they had any more close calls.

"There’s an open plain!" Hal exclaimed, pointing past his partner’s shoulder.

"I see it. Get ready. We’re going down." Sinclair lowered the landing gear and dropped their airspeed as he brushed past a tall, scraggly tree. A moment later, they were gliding softly over the rocky terrain only ten meters above the ground. The shock absorbers in the landing system allowed them only a smooth bump when he finally brought the Khatamu-class vessel to a stop. He powered down the engines and sat back in his seat with an exhale of breath.

"You okay?" he asked his partner.

"Just a little shaken, but otherwise I’m still with you," Hal replied. "Are you sure we weren't shot down?"

Merlin chuckled without humor. "Not this time. How are the outside conditions?" the wolf asked as he looked across the landscape around them. It was rocky desert with scrubby trees and bushes here and there. There was not much in the way of dirt or sand, and no water in sight. The mountains were a kilometer behind them and mostly hard stone, though there was a copse or two of trees in the lower canyons. The think atmosphere gave made sky light azure and the close proximity of other asteroids made them appear as stone clouds floating lazily above them.

"Thirty-two degrees Celsius," the desert fox reported. "Humidity is almost nonexistent, and the air is a bit thin, but breathable — little to no ozone in the mix, however. Solar radiation should be minimal, but monitored."

"Do you read anything that would make us unable to work on the Rustbucket without having to use our suits?"

"No. It should be okay. Air pressure is acceptable."

Merlin toggled the canopy switch and it raised with a slight hiss as the cabin air vented away. He sniffed the hot, dry air and frowned. The wolf unbuckled his harness and eased himself up out of the seat, but he almost flipped over sideways before he caught himself.

"Whoa!"

"What was that?" Hal laughed. "I told you the gravity was light!"

Sinclair grinned and lowered himself to the ground. "I guess I forgot in all the excitement." He walked slowly back around the ship to assess damage from their rebound off the mountain. "It’s a bit of a chore to walk without bounding around."

Hal remained in his seat and twitched his large ears as he continued working with the Com unit. "I can’t get anything at all on the receiver, Merlin. It’s as dead as my love-life."

"We have another problem..." was the wolf's reply.

Hal abandoned his seat and landed on the ground beside the ship with a bounce that awkwardly took him several meters away from the craft before he managed to stop. He made his way back and over to the wolf at the opposite wing. When he ducked under the fuselage and came up on the other side, he saw a crumpled and torn section of the tail directly in front of an equipment package.

"We lost the APU," Sinclair said dejectedly. Hal frowned and wondered how they were going to restart the engines without an operational Auxiliary Power Unit. It was the most essential device on the craft while on the surface. They would never leave the ground without it.

"Looks like we’ll be here a while..." the fox remarked.

"Were you able to get any kind of distress signal out before the Com unit failed?" Merlin asked.

"Nope."

The wolf was silent a moment as he looked back toward the mountains. "The sun is directly overhead and our exposure is greatest about now," he said. "Let’s hike back to the hills and see if we can find shelter to set up camp until it cools off a bit."

Hal shrugged his shoulders and said, "Okay; that sounds logical. I’d rather not cook my brains out here just yet." He moved back to the cockpit and hopped up to the cabin without effort. He grabbed the emergency provision kits and tossed one to the pilot.

* * *

They found a cave almost immediately upon reaching the mountains. Hal stood just inside the wide opening to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He sniffed the air and frowned as he fumbled for a small flashlight from a pocket of his flight suit. "Something’s been here before us, Merlin; possibly someone’s den."

"Anybody home?" the pilot asked. He was reconnoitering the jumble of boulders outside, searching for any materials they could use for camp.

Hal strained his sensitive ears and listened as he tested the odors in the air again. "I don’t think so," he called out as he moved further into the grotto. "I hear water trickling," he added.

Sinclair appeared at the cave entrance with an armload of dead wood and stepped inside. The cavern illuminated in his partner’s light looked about twelve meters across and a ceiling three meters above them. Stalactites and stalagmites were everywhere, though some of the larger ones were cracked and broken apart, no doubt from the planetary destruction of Lechuguilla so long ago. The catastrophe must have happened primarily on one side of the planet for such a large chunk of it to be in relatively good condition. A single column was off-center in the middle of the room and breakdown blocks of stone were everywhere. A small stream of water flowed out of a hand-sized hole in the left wall and meandered around the edge of the room, only to disappear again beneath a jumble of rocks.

The wolf set his bundle down near the column and began rummaging through his pack for the items needed to start a fire. Hal held a plastic tube up into his light beam and studied the color of the sample he was testing. "There’s a small trace of gypsum in the water, but otherwise it’s drinkable; no bacteria or other nasty critters that the hand scanner can detect."

"Gypsum?" Merlin repeated as he got a small flame started. He began slowly fanning it to catch on the other dry sticks. "Will that do anything to us?"

The desert fox walked back over to him and sat on a rock with a lopsided grin. "It’s a natural, mild laxative."

"Hopefully we won’t need it," the wolf replied with a laugh. "Our emergency water and provisions should last us a few days before we’ll resort to cleaning out our systems."

Hal frowned and reached into his pack for a brush. He began grooming his tail of the dust it had accumulated on the hike from the landing site. "Do you think we can get the Rustbucket repaired with what we have here?"

"I dunno." Merlin’s campfire flared up and the sticks began to crackle and pop. He tossed a few larger pieces on top and then turned off his hand light. "That depends on how bad the problems are. We will first have to assess the damage to the APU, although I think it may be beyond repair with our emergency tool kit. If we can get it functioning somehow, we can get off this rock and back to the Shishaldin. Otherwise, we’ll have to concentrate on the Com unit so we can call for someone to come and get us."

"I’ll work on that," Hal said. "I’m willing to leave the Rustbucket here if we can get a ride back home." He dipped back into his pack for a plastifoil wrapped energy food bar and opened it.

"If you can get a transmission out, the Shishaldin can send parts to get us airborne again," the wolf countered. The fox’s dissatisfaction with the unpredictable usefulness of the battered fighter was well known. Sinclair had flown the Rustbucket since his first assignment to the Shishaldin under Captain Clark’s command. It had been only a half-decent field-repaired fighter then, even when they had access to spare parts and the necessary equipment to keep the small ships operational. It had gained a reputation on the Shishaldin as being unreliable and dangerous, but it was maintained as best as could be under their circumstances. He felt possessive toward the Khatamu-class ship, but he knew if he ever had the opportunity to trade it in for a better one, he would take it without a backward glance at the Rustbucket.

"Yech, blech and pooie!" Hal made a face as he chewed his unidentifiable snack bar. "It tastes like stale, greasy cardboard that’s been between the hulls of the Shishaldin for months..." He swallowed and squinted, his large eyes watering. "It’s just as bad going down," he complained.

Merlin looked at the uneaten portion of his partner’s food with a grimace. "I think I’ll avoid the ones with the blue wrapper."

"Avoiding the food is wise," Hal replied. "Calling the Shishaldin for parts to repair the Rustbucket isn’t. We’d be better off if they just rescued us and we left the pile of junk on this rock."

Merlin sighed audibly and relaxed back against a tilted flat slab of stone. He almost agreed with the desert fox.

* * *

Jesse turned to the jackal in command and reported, "No Mainoran miners have been detected in this section so far, Captain. All the recon parties have reported in, except for Sinclair and Ravan."

Clark’s eyebrow twitched. "When’s the last time they checked in?"

"About an hour into the flight. Chief Morse said the last transmission he received from Sinclair was garbled, but there wasn’t any concern at the time."

The captain shook his head slowly. He remembered Hal's report of a faulty Com unit. "How long have the recon teams been out?"

"Seven hours," Jesse replied. "I can hear the fatigue in their voices when they report in," she added.

"How much longer until they have swept the area?"

The panda brought up a computer representation of the asteroids on the main screen and marked several sections in differing colors. "Chief Morse and Iago Ingram have covered what’s in red, Dayton Reese in green, Gracie May in blue, and Eric Dell in orange." The search had covered most of the region, with the exception of a small area marked in yellow. Jesse pointed toward it and said, "This is the area Sinclair and Ravan were to check. Without communication from them, I can’t track what they’ve covered."

Clark stood up and approached the screen, "We don’t know if they went down due to an enemy, a malfunction, or a crash with an errant asteroid... or, if they’re still pulling their recon search, though just not able to call in. Great." He absently scratched his chin in thought.

"Contact Carl and have him coordinate his teams to go over the area our missing pair are supposed to be." Clark returned to his seat and continued. "If they aren’t found in two hours, recall them all for a rest period." He saw Karla Spense and Aileen Hale yawn in unison. He stood up again and moved to a spot between the skunk at Navigation and the chipmunk at the Helm. "You two," he said, "put your systems on automatic and go get two hours’ rest. The Shishaldin is not going anywhere until recon is back. Then, I’ll need you two fresh to move us further into the asteroids."

"Aye, sir," Aileen said. Karla only smiled tiredly and nodded her head.

* * *

Hal threw down his screwdriver in disgust and stomped away from the Rustbucket as much as the slight gravity allowed. He was normally a quiet guy who got along with most everyone, but he was hot, tired, and frustrated. After four hours of diagnostics, he was still no closer to finding the problem with the Com unit, though he thought he had it narrowed down to an innocent-looking processor chip. For that, he needed the handheld scanner that Merlin currently used on the APU.

The wolf had fixed the problem with the faulty stabilizer thruster two hours earlier, but was getting just as tired and frustrated as his partner with the diagnostics on the damaged Auxiliary Power Unit.

"Hal," he said a moment after the scanner beeped twice. The desert fox moved over to the bedraggled wolf and looked over his shoulder at the scanner without a word. Merlin held up a flat, white processor chip an inch square. "All that’s keeping the APU from functioning is this little jewel," he said with a sigh. "It’s as fried as these rocks around us."

"So, we can’t take off without it?"

"There’s no way to repair one of these things." Merlin tossed the chip to his companion and added, "They’re cheaply made, intended to be replaced and thrown away when they burn out."

Hal took the scanner from the wolf and said, "I have a similar chip in the Com unit I need to check out."

"If it’s good, would we be able to use it to start the engines?"

Hal gave him a smile that was anything but pleasant. "If it still works, probably, but that’s one of the things I haven’t checked in the unit yet. If it’s bad too, it’ll do neither of us any good." He stood up straight and stretched with a yawn. "This heat is draining..." He shook his head twice and blinked a few times in the evening sun before trudging lightly back to the cockpit.

Sinclair stood up and dusted himself off. He was grimy from reaching into the APU for its repairs and light-headed from the heat. He panted for a few moments and felt a little better. He had conserved his water throughout the short planetoid day, but now he afforded himself a mouthful of the warm liquid as he tried to will himself to relax.

He smiled as he remembered the shoulder rubs his former copilot and roommate used to give his tired muscles. He and Olivia never developed their relations beyond friendship, but he often missed the golden retriever since she had transferred to their sister ship, the Isanotski. He cracked his neck back and forth, wondering who on board might be willing to work him over. Lauren Velvet immediately came to mind, but she was off-limits for hardly anything more than looking at. The husky’s scent was pleasingly distracting, however, and she always drove him crazy anyway with her endless chatter. Perhaps Frankie would give his shoulders a workout. The athletic vixen definitely had the grip for it with her Hestran ancestry.

Hal swore an oath in his native language and then called, "Merlin, the chip’s burned out in the Com unit, too!"

The wolf shook his head and stood up. He moved to the cockpit and faced his large-eared partner. "Are there any other systems on board that uses a similar chip?" he asked.

"Just one, but we need it right where it is."

"How important is it?" Sinclair asked as he hopped up to sit on the edge of the cabin frame. "Does it control the landing gear?"

"No," Hal replied. "Environmental Control. You know... oxygen, air pressure, and temperature. In other words: life-support."

"Oh."

"Besides, I checked the schematic and it operates on a slightly different frequency register than the one in the Com unit. However, I think it might work well enough to transmit a distress signal for a few minutes."

"For a few minutes, eh?" The wolf looked back toward the aft end of the craft. "What about the frequency register of the chip in the APU?"

Hal bit his bottom lip. "The life-support chip matches the one in the APU exactly, but when the engines come online and fire, you wouldn’t be able to get to it to take it back out to put it back into the Environmental Control package. I would not bet that the air in our suits would last us long enough to search and relocate the Shishaldin in this asteroid field. Without life-support, we’re just as stuck here as we are without a way to start the engines."

Merlin sighed and nodded. "Okay, you win. Put the Environmental chip in the Com unit and see if we can raise anyone to come and get us."

The desert fox nodded solemnly and pulled an access panel loose on the left side of his seat. The white chip came loose easily and he held it up to the scanner. The readings indicated it was fully functional and Hal quickly inserted it into the Com panel in front of him.

"Here goes..." He switched on the unit and everything appeared normal as he keyed in for coded transmission. "Come in, Shishaldin, this is—"

Sizzle, pop!

The chip did not last a few seconds, not to mention the few minutes he had predicted. The side of the white chip now contained a scorched spot as a tiny curl of smoke issued from its socket. Hal sat back in his seat with slumped shoulders and choked back a weary sob.

"We have no communications," he whined, "no way to start the engines, and now no life-support system." He looked up at Sinclair and exhaled loudly. "Our provisions will only last a couple more days and I think I’m getting heat stroke."

Merlin nodded and looked up toward the sky. Stars were visible through the thin atmosphere and the sun had just dropped behind the horizon. "Come on, partner," he said as he jumped down to the ground. "Let’s go back to camp and get some rest. We’ll come up with something else to try tomorrow when we can think straight."

Hal rubbed his eyes and crawled out of the cockpit without complaint. He did not even bother to pick up the tools they had scattered around them. The desert fox would normally have been more suited to this environment than his partner would, but his stomach had been a little queasy for the past half hour, and now all he wanted was to lie down and hide away in some pleasant dream.

* * *

They knew something was wrong before they even stepped inside the cave. Merlin sniffed the air at a new scent and shut off his hand light. Hal noticed the wolf’s flaring nostrils and tested the air himself. "Uh oh..." he whispered, extinguishing his own lamp.

Sinclair pulled his gun free of its holster and held it up beside his head, backing up to the rock wall of the opening. The desert fox shook his weary head and blinked his eyes twice. "Merlin," he whispered weakly, "I don’t think I’m up to this."

The wolf pulled his companion to him and sniffed his fur with a frown. "You smell sick, Hal. I’m sorry I didn’t notice earlier, but you rest out here while I deal with whomever’s home we intruded upon with our camp." Hal nodded and slumped down on a boulder a few feet away.

Merlin readied his gun in one hand and the light in the other. He crept around the corner and saw the coals from their earlier fire still glowing in their bed. He could see nothing more without light. He strained his hearing, heard movement and heavy breathing, and then something occluded the red glow of the fire pit. He took another quiet step into the cave and then thumbed on the light.

* * *

"RROOAAARRRRR!"

Hal jerked his head up from his chest where he had drifted off and saw a streak of light erupt from the cave reminiscent of a ballistic comet. At the streak’s tail was a large dark shadow that followed close behind, bellowing like an enraged banshee. He blearily realized it Sinclair was being chased by whatever had been in the cave, but he was too weak to do anything about it. All he could do was watch the streak zigzag back and forth as the wolf tried to escape his pursuer.

Fortunately, Merlin was a fast runner, especially with a mad creature at his heels, but the massive shadow was gaining and taking swipes at him with long, sharp claws. He stumbled over a rock and tumbled end over end several times before thumping to a stop against a large boulder. He expected to feel his flesh savagely ripped from his body, so he bared his teeth and prepared to defend himself as best he could. The assault never came. Instead, he heard the battle screech of a new maddened animal attacking his roaring pursuer. He swallowed and wondered what new danger had been drawn in by the commotion.

Hands suddenly grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away from the fighting fray. He looked up into the brown eyes of Ben Clark with shock.

"Captain!" he exclaimed.

The fighting ended suddenly with a shriek, and a sickening crack! Clark pointed his hand lamp to the combatants and Sinclair saw a red vixen smiling triumphantly at the limp grizzly bear at her feet. Blood stained her hands and teeth, her clothing was shredded in several places, and there were claw marks along her arms and shoulders. The strong Hestran fox born on a heavy gravity planet did not seem to mind her injuries; she gave the carcass a swift kick before she walked over to the wolf and their captain.

"Ya okay, Sinclair?" Frankie asked; her breathing was not even heavy from the fight she had just won.

Merlin swallowed and said hoarsely, "I could kiss you for showing up when you did..." She smiled, amused. "I’m okay, just a few bruises, but Hal is very sick. He needs medical attention."

"Dr. Rockwell is with him now," Clark assured him. He looked up at Frankie and gestured toward the cave. "Check out the den and make sure we don’t have another bear to deal with."

Frankie licked the blood off a knuckle and smiled. "Aye, sir."

* * *

Forty minutes later, Dayton Reese set his Varg fighter down between the Rustbucket and the rescue party's Makoyi-class medical transport. Merlin walked over to the single-seat craft and smiled up at the black wolf as the canopy opened.

"Greetings, oh bedraggled one!" Reese said with a laugh. He unbuckled his seat harness and then handed a small box down to the Shishaldin’s  weary helmsman.

"Hi, Reese. Thanks for the delivery," Sinclair said as his friend dropped lightly to the ground beside him. "Hopefully these are all the chips we’ll need to get the Rustbucket flying again."

"I brought every chip for a Khatamu-class ship I could get Supply to hand over," Reese replied.

"I still say we should just leave the bucket o’rust here and be done with further headaches," Hal muttered from his pallet several meters away from the ships. Dr. Naomi had given him an injection to strengthen his condition before transporting him back to the Shishaldin. She smiled and put a cold compress across his forehead. The too-thin ozone layer in the planetoid’s atmosphere had exposed the desert fox to too much solar radiation. Combined with the heat of working out in the sun, the diminutive copilot had nearly collapsed from a stroke, despite that he was a desert creature himself. The doctor had assured the captain that Hal would be okay once they got back to the ship’s facilities.

Merlin and Reese ignored Hal's remark and set about installing the chips. The captain sat on the ground next to the chemical campfire they had started and glanced across the orange glow to Frankie, who was attending her wounds with antiseptic wipes, and then looked back to the desert fox.

"Sorry, Hal, but we need all the ships we can keep flying," he said with a smile.

"Sir, that’s the same speech you give me every time I complain about the Rustbucket," Hal replied.

Clark gave him a grin that included all his teeth. "Stop complaining and you won’t hear the speech anymore."

"The Rustbucket may be battered and in need of a major overhaul," Sinclair called back from the tail of the ship where he was installing the chip in its hard-to-get-to control board, "but it still flies."

"Usually..." Frankie added.

Hal grumbled beneath his breath, eliciting a laugh from Reese. The black wolf powered up the Com unit and successfully reported in to the Shishaldin a moment later.

"Jesse wants to know what you two want as a reception when you get back," Reese called down to the desert fox.

"A bottle of Winstle Vodka!" Hal replied in sudden animation.

Dr. Rockwell tapped him on the forehead with a finger and said, "Calm down. You’ll get none of that while you’re on medication."

Hal stuck out his bottom lip and said to the canine physician, "How about a big meal? We’ve had nothing but emergency rations since we got here."

"MRE's…" the doctor muttered, making a face. "Actually, real food would be the best thing for you right now."

Reese snorted. "Food from the Galley counts as real food?"

"It's better than the Meals Ready-to-Eat packets," Hal said back to Reese. "Tell Jesse I want one of everything!"

* * *

The SS Shishaldin was patrolling a different sector of the Lechuguilla asteroid field a day later, and things were running smoothly. There had been no battles or emergencies, although Carl and Iago did flush out a civilian miner trying his luck on a small planetoid. The lone individual had escaped without a conflict, likely shaken from Morse's warning broadcast. Otherwise, the patrols had been quiet.

 Merlin entered the quarters he shared with Hal and saw his short partner stretched out on his bunk. He had been out of the Infirmary for the past twelve hours and although Dr. Rockwell said he was okay and would have no aftereffects of the sickness, the desert fox had been moping ever since. Hal stared lethargically at the new makeshift watering system sending small squirts of misty water at his hanging plants.

"Captain Clark says we have orders to return to Dennier to resupply, departing tomorrow," Merlin said quietly. "We might be able to get some much-needed replacement parts for the Rustbucket once we're stationed in orbit." Hal said nothing, but continued to stare at his plants.

"Would you let me buy you a drink as a peace offering?" Sinclair asked.

Hal glanced over at him and raised an eyebrow at the clear glassite bottle the wolf held in his hands. It was Winstle Vodka, the desert fox’s favorite liquor. "I thought you didn’t drink," he stated with a twitch of his left ear.

"I don’t, but I said I’d buy you a drink."

Hal licked his lips eagerly and nodded, sitting up and crossed his legs on the bunk. "Okay, apology accepted. Now gimmee!"

Hal opened the container and took a large gulp of the near-toxic liquid. He set the bottle on the mattress beside him and began coughing violently. When it subsided, he smiled widely and Merlin noticed that his companion’s eyes had already glazed over. It did not appear that the fox had a high resistance to the stuff.

Merlin laughed and stood up. "Have fun, partner." He turned and left the desert fox to his drink.