I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 2 - Interlude in Zero Gravity in G Minor Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 2001 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2405 DEEP SPACE RIGEL SECTOR, UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS The International Police Starship Kenduskeag, a Danube-class runabout manufactured by the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards, cruised at a leisurely Warp Factor 5 - about as fast as it could go - through the interstellar void between Tomodachi and Zeta Cygni. This was a respectable distance, several days at Warp 5, but for two people, a Danube-class with the enhanced living-quarters module installed was a perfectly comfortable temporary home. At the controls, Utena Tenjou stifled a yawn. It wasn't that she was bored, exactly - after all, interstellar space travel was a grand adventure - but she could have done with a bit more to look at than the coruscating starfield and the intermix status panel. Then again, excitement wasn't really the purpose of this trip. It was Utena's first long-range warp-speed exercise; the run from Tomodachi to Zeta Cygni had been selected specifically because it was a milk run. No navigational hazards like the Enigma sector had, no pirate threat, nothing but clear black sky... ... OK, so, she -was- bored. Across the little ship's center command console, Corwin Ravenhair chuckled. "It's not -all- an adventure," he said, as if he'd read her mind. Utena smiled. "I guess not," she replied. "You about ready for dinner?" "Sure," Corwin replied. "Chicken or beef?" "Um... beef." "All righty. Keep her steady," he said - not that this was really a necessary instruction, since the ship's automatic pilot was perfectly capable of that task. Corwin got up from his seat - WHAM! - and was promptly slammed down onto the carpeted deck, sprawling painfully in the equipment bay aft of the pilot and copilot's seats. "What the hell?!" Utena blurted, automatically checking the engine status panel. The master alarm was howling, its red light strobing through the suddenly dark cockpit as the emergency lights flicked on. The drills Corwin had been teaching her rolled through her head, and her hands moved as if on autopilot themselves. Hull integrity fields, standby OK - anti-matter containment emergency backup systems, green - inertial dampening system, 45% effective and slowly restoring itself... Corwin, stunned by the blow he'd received from the floor, hauled himself to his feet. "Report!" he snapped, his own mind switching into automatic. "I'm not sure - I think something hit us," Utena reported, scanning the status displays. "Short-range sensors are clear - doesn't look like anybody's shooting at us. We've got a main bus B undervolt. Warp core is offline. Impulse reactor is offline. Navigational deflectors are out. Outer hull breach, dorsal amidships, inner hull is holding. Deuterium tank number one is holed and losing pressure." She glanced back over her shoulder with a slightly forced grin. "Boy, Corwin - this one's detailed." Corwin lurched forward as the ship tumbled and the inertial dampening system struggled to catch up. He grabbed onto the central console with one hand and the back of her seat with the other, leaning over her right shoulder, his face hard and eyes worried as he scanned the panel. "This isn't one of mine," he told her in a tight, controlled voice. All summer, during their spaceflights, Corwin had been throwing simulated emergencies at Utena, to gauge her reactions and the depth of her understanding of crisis management techniques. She'd done pretty well, had even come to look forward to them aboard the One-Hit Wonder, now that she'd had most of the summer to become familiar with the old Corellian's heavily modified systems. This was only her third day aboard the Kenduskeag, though, and with its completely different tech base and control format, she still felt a little out of her depth. And now he was telling her that this was no test. Corwin reached past her, slapped the master alarm deactivator to kill the alarm so he could think, and looked over the panels. He wasn't any too familiar with the Danube class himself; he had a checkride certification in the class, or he wouldn't have been out here as pilot in command, but compared to his familiarity with the Wonder, he was almost as much in the dark as Utena. It was a measure of his confidence in her that he didn't take over the left seat at this juncture. Instead, he lurched across the center console and fell gratefully into the copilot's seat again, locked the armrests to hold him in position, and started plying the engineering panels. "Jettisoning deuterium tank 1," he told her. "We'll lose it anyway, and if I can dump it overboard all at once it'll stop thrusting us around. See if you can get attitude control back with the maneuvering thrusters. I'll try to get the impulse drive back online." Utena wanted to ask him several questions, primary among which was, What the hell hit us?! - but he was right, the first order of business was to get the Kenduskeag back under control. The autopilot had automatically gone offline when the warp drive cut out; she seized the manual attitude control and started wrestling the tumbling runabout back into something like stable flight. The tumbling eased as soon as Corwin finished dumping the primary fuel tank, and the wild ride started to smooth out. The ship was still doing a good percentage of lightspeed on plain old ordinary momentum, but at least they were flying relatively straight and level now. Utena was just starting to congratulate herself when there was a POP from somewhere above and behind her. For a second she thought the inner hull had given way underneath the outer-hull breach, but no rush of escaping air came - only the sudden blacking out of about half her instruments. "Slag it!" Corwin spat. "Power systems are still failing. There must be a short in the EPS conduits near the breach." He got to his feet, which was easier now that the ship wasn't falling all over the sky. "I'll check it out." Utena nodded, still busy with what few instruments she had remaining. She locked the runabout's helm into station-keeping, activated the automatic distress beacon, and then switched the communications system to sub-etheric band 9. It blatted at her - no sub-etheric communications channels available. Swearing, she switched it to the subspace radio equivalent; this time she got a clear channel. "Mayday, mayday, mayday," she said into the pickup. "This is the International Police Starship Kenduskeag, NCC-04401, calling any vessel. I am declaring an emergency. We have suffered a major systems failure and require immediate assistance. Any vessel, IPS Kenduskeag declaring an emergency." Nothing. She turned to the long-range sensors, but they were dark and unresponsive. If the comm system were anything to go by - if, in fact, it still worked - it didn't seem like there was anyone out there. "Utena," said Corwin's voice on the intercom. "Go ahead," she replied. "Have you sent out a distress call?" "Yeah, but I don't know if we've got any working comm gear. Sub-ether is out, and all I get on subspace is dead air. The beacon's switched on, but I can't tell if it's working. All the status displays are dead." "OK. I guess that's all you can do from up there. Come back to the den, will you? I could use a hand." "On my way." She switched off, made sure the beacon was at least claiming to be operating, and went aft. The room immediately behind the cockpit was a cramped, submarine-like wardroom, not much bigger than a pair of booths in a restaurant, where the runabout's food processor and main dining table were. Corwin was up on the table, buried head and shoulders in the ceiling access conduit, with his toolbox lying open on the removed conduit cover down on the table by his feet. "How's it look?" she asked. "Not good," the ceiling replied. "Looks like the damn deuterium tank all but -exploded- up above. The inner hull's bulged down like my uncle Thor hit it with his hammer - it split a pair of EPS conduits and crossed them. Half the isos are probably fried in the main bank." "Can you fix it?" "I think so," he replied, "but it'll take a - " The next word was probably intended to be "while", but it suddenly and horrifyingly ramped up into a shrill, almost inhuman scream as the two-thirds of his body that was visible went as rigid as a board, little traces of yellow energy dancing over it. Utena didn't think; she just grabbed the duraplast access panel cover, yanked it out from under his toolbox like a conjuror doing the tablecloth trick, and slammed it into him amidships with all her strength. Catapulted backward, he came out of the ceiling panel and instantly went limp, crumpling to the table in a cloud of acrid, stinking smoke. With an inarticulate noise of horror, Utena dropped the panel cover and sprang to his side, catching him before he could fall off the edge of the table onto the floor. He was pale, deathly pale, the deep blue marks on his face standing out livid against the whiteness of his skin; his eyes were rolled back in their sockets to the point where she couldn't see any part of their ice-blue irises. Her heart pounding, Utena shoved the tools roughly off the table and laid him down on it, cradling his head. She scanned him quickly for any visible injury, and her breath caught in her throat as she found it: his hands, lying slack at his sides, were burned in an angry patchwork of black and red. They had been the source of the cloud of smoke, and they were still smoking. "Oh my God," she murmured. "Corwin? CORWIN! Can you hear me?" He's passed out from the pain, she thought. Oh God! What are we going to do? He'll never get this thing fixed with his hands like that! Was one of the broken conduits still live? How could that be, with the reactor offline? "Corwin?" She slapped his face - it was cold, clammy - - He's not breathing, she realized suddenly. The thought galvanized her, clearing away the jumble of random anxieties about their situation that had been falling through her mind. Corwin wasn't breathing. She shoved her first two fingers up under the corner of his jaw and felt nothing but five o'clock shadow and cold sweat. Utena didn't waste time swearing. With quick, almost angry movements, she stripped off her black and scarlet jacket, tossed it aside, and then seized hold of either side of Corwin's shirt and tore it open. The merry clatter of buttons scattering all over the wardroom went unnoticed as she tipped his chin back and bent down, hoping she was wrong, hoping she would hear and feel a breath, even a weak one, against her ear. Nothing. OK. Remember what they taught you in school, she told herself firmly. You all had to take this class. Forget the snickering about the dummy, forget all the stupid, juvenile jokes. This is a life you hold in your hands. Corwin's life. That it was also, by extension, her own, never crossed her mind until after it was all over. She climbed up onto the table, her knees on either side of his hips, and bent over him. Tight seal. Two breaths. Careful not to over-inflate. Check for a pulse. Nothing. Find the point of the sternum. Set back, away from the xiphoid. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Utena was in good shape - very good shape, if she did say so herself. She was blessed with a naturally fast metabolism, a high activity level, a fondness for athletic pursuits, and she didn't eat -that- much junk food, considering. She had excellent endurance - she could run all day if she felt like it - and good upper body strength - you couldn't be a successful duelist without it. Even so, this was harder work than she had ever dreamed it might be. By the fourth cycle, her shoulders were burning, her own breath coming in ragged pants. Perversely, she remembered a teacher back at Ohtori Academy - the one who kept trying to make her stop wearing a boy's uniform - primly telling her that young ladies didn't sweat. Utena, soaked to the skin after running the five-hundred-meter hurdles on a hot, humid day, had laughed and said she mustn't be a young lady, then. Well, here's confirmation, she thought punchily as a thick bead of sweat rolled down her nose and fell onto Corwin's face when she bent down to ventilate him again. This can't be happening, she thought as she kept at work. He's half an immortal and half a -god-. How can he be dying? But he isn't immortal yet. Kate explained that once. They don't stop aging and develop their full regenerative power until they reach adulthood. And he's not a god yet. He explained that once. He won't be a god until they call him back for his trial and he passes. Until then, he's only mortal. He can die. He -is- dying. "Come on - Corwin," Utena chanted as she started another cycle of compressions. "I'm - not - letting you - go - like this! D'you - hear - me? Huh?" He didn't answer her, of course, and for some reason that made her angry. She started cursing him, making demands, as though if she got mad enough she could -goad- him back to life. Spikes of pain were shooting up and down her back and arms. She tried hazily to remember how long she'd been at this, how many cycles she'd done, how long it had been since the accident. There came a point, she knew, when this kind of thing became futile, when the person couldn't be dragged back by -any- mortal effort. The thought made her heart freeze inside her, her sobbing breaths stutter-step in her throat. Her sweat-fogged eyes blurred further, hot and stinging. "No," she murmured, "no - no - no - no! You're - not - running - away! D'you - HEAR - ME?!" Remotely, as if she were in the corner watching herself labor over her fallen friend, she realized that this was the fifteenth compression in whatever cycle this was, and it was time for the two (futile, inadequate) breaths. Utena bent over Corwin again, sweat and tears running down her face and onto his, feeling the exhaustion rolling over her. Down deep inside her she could feel a strange warmth, contrasting with the cold feeling in her heart and the hot, streaky pain in her back and shoulders, and she wondered dimly if - how ironic would -this- be - she were having a heart attack of her own from her exertions. "Please," she whispered in his insensate ear as she bent over him. "I can't keep doing this much longer... " Then she pinched his nose and sealed her mouth over his. Something crossed between them with a subliminal 'crack', arching his body like another electric shock and then sending it crashing limp back to the table. Utena recoiled up onto her knees, her fatigue-blurred eyes going wide with shock, and then she heard the most beautiful thing she thought she'd ever heard: Corwin, drawing a deep, ragged breath, then letting it out amid the jagged rasps of a fit of coughing. Weak and trembling, soaked in sweat, she reached down and felt at his throat, and there was his reinstated pulse, slow but strong. His chest - starting to show the beginnings of what would be livid bruises - rose and fell, rose and fell. The relief that rushed through Utena multipled the fatigue, and she felt herself sagging sideways, about to fall off the table onto the floor. Then the gravity went out. Perfect, she thought, and the wardroom slipped away into blackness. She came to slowly, awakened as much by the chill in the air and the dull ache in her shoulders as by the sensation of something cold tapping against the side of her face. For a moment, she was very disoriented - the gravity was still out, and the room was pitch black, so that she couldn't see where she was in relation to the rest of it. The only thing she -could- see was Tiny Robo, hovering in front of her face on his softly whistling thrusters, his shoulder-mounted equipment racks open to reveal little searchlights. "(grr,)" said the little robot as his mistress opened her eyes. "Unnnnghhh," Utena replied, then shook her head. "Robo? How long... stupid, you can't talk." She raised her left wrist - wincing at the pain in her shoulder as she did so - and pressed the control stud that lit its face. 7:45 PM; she'd been out for almost two hours. First things first. "Robo," she said, "show me Corwin... where is he?" Robo turned, jetted across the room, and played his lights on Corwin, who was still stretched out in the general vicinity of the wardroom table. Calling to memory the zero-G training she'd had with Corwin and his mother early in her summer of spaceflight, she made her way over to him, grabbed hold of the edge of the table and leaned down, putting her face near his. "Corwin? Can you hear me?" For a frightening moment, she considered the possibility that he'd slipped away again after she passed out; but then his eyelids flickered and slowly opened. "utena?" he asked in a weak rasp. "is that you?" "Yeah," she replied, relief flooding her again. "It's me." She fumbled in the dark and lack of gravity, finally managed to draw them together; being careful of his hands, she held him close and almost cried with that relief. "what the hell happened?" Corwin asked. "Do you remember working inside the ceiling?" "yeah... two conduits... crushed by the bulge in the inner hull. must have... crossed them. stupid." "How could they still have been live?" asked Utena. "The impulse reactor -and- warp core were offline, and the batteries are supposed to use a secondary - " She stopped as she realized the answer, and Corwin nodded weakly at the same time. "secondary eps circuit," he finished for her, and then added in a rueful murmur, "in the -kennebec- class. stupid. this ship... not upgraded yet. batteries... feed main eps. bridged the conduits... trying to separate them." He sighed weakly and added for a third time, "stupid." "If you're going to take the blame for it, then you're going to have to share," Utena said. "I knew that too, and I stood right there and let you do it. Anyway, the important thing is that you're alive." "chest feels like it's been kicked by a mule," he murmured. "did you... " Utena nodded. "You didn't have a pulse... you weren't breathing. I... " Her voice fell almost to a whisper. "... I almost didn't get you back. Any longer... I would've dropped. As it is, I passed out for almost two hours." "two hours... with everything out... " Corwin whispered; then, in a stronger, sharper voice, "Ah! God!" "Your hands?" asked Utena. "yeah," he whispered, back to barely audible. "they're starting to... ngh! ... starting to hurt like hell. burned them pretty bad, didn't i?" She wasn't going to lie to him, not after all of this. "As bad as I've ever seen," she told him. "damn... now how am i supposed to fix this?" He closed his eyes, the muscles at the corner of his jaw working as another wave of pain swept over him, then opened them again and looked into hers. "you'll have to do it. i'll... gah! ... talk you through." "Let me find the medkit, give you something for the pain - " "no," Corwin cut her off, his voice weak but firm. "i might... pass out again. you have to... get this done... in the next hour or so... or we're both dead. i can sleep... when we've got... life support back." He was right, Utena knew it, and there was no point in arguing with him. Carefully, she released him, and then, using his tools and with Tiny Robo as a work lamp, she 'flew' up into the open ceiling panel to finish the work he'd begun. Luck, even in this series of disasters, was with them; Corwin's bridging of the broken conduits and the resultant new upheaval in the power system had knocked three of the ship's emergency batteries offline, so only two had failed to leave Utena in the dark. The repairs took almost an hour, by which time the air in the ship was starting to get both stuffy -and- increasingly cold, an unfamiliar and thoroughly disagreeable sensation. Fortunately, Utena had a high tolerance for cold; in the winter, she didn't exchange her usual shorts for trousers until the temperature was well below freezing. Finding her jacket and putting it back on was enough to insulate her against the growing cold. Corwin suffered badly, but he kept it to himself; she had enough to do without worrying about him. Besides, the waves of pain from his hands kept him awake, his mind focused, while she worked. Break off one of the conduits completely, keep it from touching and shorting with anything else; cobble the other one back together and hope it holds... go to the master patch panel and sweep it for blown isolinear control elements... replace the bad ones. There weren't enough replacements in the repair kit, so they had to start culling unnecessary systems. It seemed like the sub-ether communications relay was destroyed anyway - it was up in the dorsal equipment bay near the tank that had apparently failed - so they left that one offline. Standard lighting - unnecessary - left out. Weapons - they were in no shape to fight anyway - that element cannibalized for primary impulse power. And so forth, and so on, always with the looming pressure of time and the increasingly stale air... "OK," Utena said at last. "Either this is going to work, or it isn't." She went to Corwin's side, braced herself against the wall, and pushed him gently down onto the table so that he wouldn't fall and be further injured when - if - the gravity came back. "All right, Tiny Robo," she said. "Throw the switch." Tiny Robo did as instructed. For a moment, nothing happened, and Utena felt her heart sinking. Then one of the panels lit up, and from somewhere in the spaceframe, the low vibration of partial power started up, replacing the subliminal spaceflight hum that had been missing since the lights went out. The gravity didn't turn on, nor did the lights, but that panel was live, and a quick hand check indicated that air was flowing from the cabin ventilator again. "Hm," she said, surveying the panel. "Looks like some kind of automatic power management mode." "Ah," said Corwin. His voice had gotten stronger, though it was still weary-sounding and raspy. "Of course... it's saving up power to attempt a fusion-reactor restart. With two batteries down... it has to rely on the residual regeneration effect to build up enough power. If the reactor still works... " "Well," said Utena, reading the display more closely, "it looks like we've got five hours until we find out. At least we've got air... " Turning away from the panel, she looked - really looked, for the first time since she'd started working on the crippled runabout's power systems - at his haggard, pain-pinched face. "Now will you let me give you something for your hands?" she asked. He calculated mentally. "One dose of Analgesol ought to wear off in four hours... I guess... ngh! ... I can take that chance... " Utena 'swam' up to the dark, silent cockpit, pulled the medkit off the wall, and went back to the wardroom. There, with Tiny Robo's helpful lights, she found the spray-hypo of Analgesol-4, dialed it for one standard dose, and shot him in the arm with it. It was at that point, when she pressed the hypo against his arm, that she realized he was shivering, and trying very hard to suppress it. With a tsking sound, she went back to the living quarters, wrestled the blanket off her bed (no longer a trivial task in zero-G), brought it back, and bundled him into it, being very careful not to touch his hands. She wrapped herself in it as well, holding him from behind with her arms crossed over his chest, ordered Tiny Robo to cut the lights, and told Corwin he should try to sleep. /* James Horner "Dark Side of the Moon" _Apollo 13_ */ They drifted in and out of consciousness for the next couple of hours, huddled into a little pocket of warmth. The air circulators were back on, freshening the atmosphere, but heating was at the absolute minimum level, and Tiny Robo's sensors indicated that the cabin temperature was by now hovering around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Weightlessness was quite comfortable, though, and in this situation it had the added benefit that they didn't have to be touching the floor or a wall that could leech warmth away from them. In the pitch blackness and the silence, Utena semiconsciously imagined that it must be like not yet being born, floating in the dark with nothing but the sound of her heart and her thoughts to occupy her. She could understand now how this sort of experience could be therapeutic; she could also understand how it could be torture. But this, this wasn't really sensory deprivation - not with Corwin in her arms, the warmth of his body against hers, the sounds of -his- breathing and, if she listened very carefully, -his- heartbeat. She hadn't felt this close to anyone since... when? Bancroft Tower? No... this was more... more -intimate- than that. Then, she was soothing a friend in pain. Here she'd held his life in her hands, felt it almost slip away beneath them. It had brought home to her just how important... Utena shook her head, her eyes feeling hot again. You're not doing him any favors by staying so close to him, she told herself angrily. You know how he feels - he told you. The closer you get, the more it will hurt him when that day - you know, the day you hope and wish for with all your soul? - comes. If you really cared about him, you'd let him down now... ... And what? she retorted hotly to her own inner voice. Stop being his friend? Sure, that wouldn't hurt him at all. Sorry, Corwin, I have to break your heart now, so that I won't break your heart later. It's too late for that. And besides, what about me? It'd hurt me too, if he wasn't around. Look at all the ways he's helped me come to terms with myself and my new world. Look at how much more ready I'll be to welcome Himemiya to my new life when I find her, because of him... ... there has to be a place for both of them. There -has- to. The world isn't such a cruel place as that, it can't be. Anyway, what am I worried about? We're not lovers. He's been a perfect gentleman about that since Day 1. He understands. It's not like I'm hiding anything from him, leading him on, playing games with him. I'm not Akio. I made everything clear to him right up front and he's accepted it. He's here standing by me even though he knows the score. He wouldn't do that if he didn't know... Why am I worrying? He's tough. He'll be fine... ... he has to be. My new life wouldn't -be- my new life without him... and Himemiya has to meet him. Eventually, tired out from chasing its own tail, Utena's mind subsided without ever really coming to a conclusion, and she drifted off into an uneasy rest. Every time Corwin twitched or whimpered in his painful sleep, though, she woke momentarily to glance at the one illuminated status panel and check the time remaining until automatic reactor restart. Finally, after one such moment, he asked softly, "Utena... are you asleep?" "No," she replied, then repeated, "You should try to, though." "Can't," he murmured. "Even with the drug... hurts too much... " Very gently, Utena hugged him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wish I could do more." He chuckled weakly. "You've... already saved my life... what... three times today," he said. "Don't count yet," she replied wryly. "The night is young. Anyway, it's not like I could make it home without you... " Another faint chuckle. "Don't be so sure," he replied. "You can't die yet. There's still something you have to do." Utena wondered for a moment what he could mean, and then it was obvious almost to the point of being annoying. She smiled softly and murmured, "Yeah... I guess you're right." "Besides," he went on, "I haven't shown you the Golden City yet... " She tried to put a brave face on it as she said, "Well, we'll go there next," knowing full well that -if- they got out of this at all, his next destination would be a hospital, probably for the rest of the summer, and bang went the rest of their plans. She'd just have to get her master's certificate -next- year, unless she could get the rest of the training in over fall break and the Christmas holidays. Assuming, of course, that he could ever use those hands again... "Corwin?" "Mm?" "I hate to ask this, but... are you... can... can they -fix- what's happened to your hands?" She blurted out the last part as if desperate to get it said as fast as possible. "Oh... yeah," he said, sounding kind of dreamy and offhanded. "I know someone... who can take care of it. You'll... have to fly us there, though... " Utena nodded, squeezing him gently once more. "Just as soon as we get power back," she said. "Good," he murmured. "You're gonna love it... " There was a long silence, and she was just wondering if he'd fallen asleep again when he spoke. "I hope... this doesn't put you off spaceflight," he said. "Some kind of... freak thing. Mechanical defect... in the tank, maybe... or a random impact through... one of the weak spots... in the navigational deflector field. It happens... but... that's why we train... for emergencies. Still... when we get home... if you want to say 'forget it'... I'll understand." Utena met this statement with surprise; until he'd mentioned it, she hadn't even considered giving it up. With gentle irony in her voice, she told him so. "It's not in my nature to quit just because things aren't going well. You ought to know that about me by now," she added, gently chiding him. That drew another weak chuckle from Corwin. He wished he could touch her, reach up and pat her arms where they crossed his chest, but he couldn't; all he could do was hunch his shoulders and nudge her a little with his chin, but that was good enough. She didn't think he'd realistically be able to continue her training, at least not right away, but she asked him anyway: "Do -you- want to stop?" "No," he said without hesitation. "Not if you don't." That seemed to be all that needed saying on that subject. They drifted in silence, watching the status panel count, and it seemed like the pain in Corwin's burned hands ebbed a bit, for he started to drowse again. "utena?" he murmured. "Mm?" she replied. "something i want you to know," he said slowly, his voice becoming increasingly muzzy. "Yes?" "when we were on the moon... and i told you i wanted to show you -and-... and anthy... all the beautiful things... i just... i want you to know... i really meant that... " She smiled softly, wondering why her eyes were going hot once more, leaned forward slightly, and kissed his cheek. "I know," she murmured. "And you'll get the chance." "good," he replied with a faint smile. "'cause... i wouldn't want you to think that i'd... that just because i... " But he couldn't put it together, the drugs were finally kicking in all the way, and it was all slipping away from him and tumbling down into nothingness. There was one other important thing he had to say - maybe more important, under the circumstances - and with a last effort of will, he focused himself enough to say it: "if i'm not awake... when we get power back... then set course for... enigma x-21... and wake me when we get there." Utena blinked. "Corwin, that's a black hole." "i know." Corwin stirred in her arms, turning carefully so that he partially faced her, and grinned. Even through the pain and exhaustion marring his face, even in the dark of the wardroom, it was his same old grin, and for the first time, Utena found herself convinced that he would recover from this - that somehow, he'd be all right, -they'd- be all right, in the end. "trust me," he murmured, his eyes twinkling through their fog of Analgesol and fatigue - and to her great surprise, he turned a little further and, very gently but not at all hesitantly, kissed her. Before he'd even finished doing so, he'd lost consciousness; and so, except for Tiny Robo, Utena was effectively alone for her discovery that tears do odd things in zero gravity. /* Tommaso Albinoni "Adagio in G Minor" */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - Symphony of the Sword No. 2 - Interlude in Zero Gravity in G Minor The Cast (in order of appearance) Utena Tenjou Corwin Ravenhair Tiny Robo Flight Director Benjamin D. Hutchins EECOM John Trussell INCO Anne Cross GUIDO Kris Overstreet Flight Dynamics Back Room The EPU Usual Suspects The Symphony will return