Distant Earth CYOA part 21

Story by sisco on SoFurry

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#25 of Distant Earth text adventure

Ok a few days late, but not too late. I do hope people are enjoying this series, just to warn you though some tough choices are coming up. This are going to get more dangerous and your choices will affect who lives and who dies as things progress. anyway please remember to vote on the next option and feel free to comment and add your opinions on what just happened, what you'd like to see happen etc.


Option c invite Qerry to breakfast in the engine room.

Zack paused at the thought of maybe getting to know Qerry's brother and his pack a little better, but he just couldn't walk away from the mystery. After all what if Kelo and Reese needed him, or worse what if they solved it without him? The horrible thoughts of being last to know about the device, he found, were unbearable. He tried to tell himself not to get his hopes up, that it would probably turn out to be something totally benign and worthless. Just some old part bound for a colony for an antique machine... though it didn't look old in fact it looked brand new, still had the factory fresh smell on it.

The blonde rabbit walked over to the com and typed in the code for Qerry's cabin, "hey, is Qerry there?"

A few seconds later the wonderful cheery tones of his amour replied, "hey there, are we meeting for breakfast?"

"Well, see...there's this thing I have to do in engineering..." Zack mumbled, acutely aware and embarrassed by the stares of his roommates, he assumed Qerry was suffering a similar lack of privacy as well. "So I was thinking, maybe you could grab some stuff from the mess hall and meet Me, Kelo and Reese down there and we could have a sort of working breakfast... does that sound lame, it sounds lame doesn't it?"

A soft chuckle could be heard down the come and some muffled comments that the rabbit knew was the panda saying something to his cabin-mates. "Well, not exactly lame, it isn't the private breakfast in Qieth's gunnery turret that I had planned, but hey I don't mind. I can eat anywhere, but if you are going to be in engineering then that's where I'll be eating."

The rabbit blushed heavily at the awing sound the pony and raccoon made together behind him. His voice was several tone higher than he intended as he replied, "great see you there in ten?"

"Looking forward to it, sweetheart," replied the panda and before the come cut off he could hear a few calls and some laughter from the pack.

Turning back to Kelo and Reese the two avoided eye contact, though the grins on their faces couldn't be hidden. "ok, he's in."

"Yes he is, very in... into a certain rabbit." Agreed the smiling stallion as he picked the device out of the raccoon's paws. "You two are soo sweet, we should have you for dessert after breakfast."

"Stations fall, dark the moon rising," snorted the raccoon as he got to his feet.

"Yeah, what he said," said the embarrassed rabbit a little defensively.

Kelo opened the door and headed out, sticking out his tongue he answered, "oh please, Reese was just complaining that we don't have dessert at breakfast, so we should save you two for dinner."

It was almost quarter of an hour later that Qerry turned up in the engine room with a tray laden with ration bars and some food raided from the transport ship, he also had his black wolf brother in tow. Not that Zack noticed any of that, his eyes were for his shy and slightly portly red panda. He hadn't seen him in twenty-four hours and his eyes were reprimanding him for going so long without his lovely image.

The two embraced and he took in deep breaths of Qerry's soft scent from his neck. He had been with so many male's yesterday and yet all he could think of as he held the panda was of how much he wished he had been with Qerry all day. He knew with their lust bleed-through they would always be open to sex with others. However, he also knew that it would be just sex with anyone else, his bond with Qerry grew deeper each time he was with him.

A warm paw on his shoulder made him look up, into the sheepish expression on Qieth's face, a rather strange one for a wolf to pull. "Hey, I just wanted to say, you know... after taking part in the raid and all...you know like welcome aboard..."

"Just ask him ok?" Qerry said giving the wolf a nudge in his ribs.

"My turret is still a little bit sluggish, you think you could have another look at it when you get the chance?" The wolf asked scratching his head.

"Yeah, no problem, I'll change your oxy-scrubbers too, I noticed they had almost burned..." Zack's reply was cut short by a loud squeak from Reese.

The raccoon danced on the spot and pointed to the device, "port....moon.... sails away merrily!!!"

The four observers looked at each other and then back to the dancing raccoon, who looked at them all expectantly. The brow and grey furred creature sighed and shook his paws in mild annoyance. "Sails away merrily!" He repeated pointing at the device.

"Sorry, honey, we just don't understand." Kelo replied stepping forward and placing his paw on the raccoon's shoulder.

Reese pushed it away with a snort of derision, "like Eric the starlight's." He snorted and moved over to a box of spare parts, he pulled out an oxy-scuber unit, grabbing a small screwdriver he began to disassemble it. The other's watched bemused, as the raccoon grabbed a pair of tweezers and pulled out a tiny component, half a millimetre long. The raccoon yelled out in triumph, "sails away merrily!"

It was Zack who realised first, "holy fuck, he's right?" He exclaimed leaning closer his eyes fixed on the component.

"He is? Are we going on some jolly cruise?" Snorted the bemused wolf in frustration.

"Shut up, he is so right... Reese you are so brilliant and fucking hot right now," Kelo said shouldering the wolf physically out of the way to look closer.

"Do you engineers want to let us two in on what is so amazing about whatever it is he is holding?" Qerry asked politely, before his brother could ask far less politely.

"It's the heart of an oxy-scrubber, they are lined with dozens of these little devices they change any oxygen holding gas into oxygen, so like carbon dioxide, nitrogen dixoide for example. They will keep the oxygen level to twenty two percent." Zack whispered in awe.

"Right, that's ancient tech, so why are you three staring at it like it's the holy grail?" Qeith asked with a hint of amusement as the tech boys geeked out.

"You don't understand... I took that device off the transport ship..." Zack said waving his paw at the device.

Qerry and Qieth glancd at the device and then at each other blankly before Qerry urged, "We're going to need just a little bit more sweety."

"Oh for the love of god, don't you see it's a scaled up version... my god the power requirements..." Kelo replied with a snort and then he turned his gaze and his paws to the device. "Seriously can you imagine the power it takes to activate it."

"Never mind the power, think of the capacity, the area I mean...it must be thousands of times the size and it's exponential...oh shit what do you recon, ten thousand..." whispered Zack all three of the engineers surrounding the device lost in pure awe at the technological marvel their companions completely failed to appreciate.

"No, I'd say nearer fifteen thousand, fifteen thousand..." Kelo muttered.

"Rebound the dark night..." agreed Reese.

"Oh fucking hell, I am a simple wolf, I have a graft which teaches me how to hit people. Can you guys please put what is so great about that gadget into terms so simple even I can understand, before I start using my graft?" Shouted the black wolf in frustration.

Kelo stood up and sighed, "it's simple, that little device over there is capable of making about a meter cubed of oxygen atmosphere right. This here is a much bigger version it is capable of converting... who knows at least fifteen thousand cubic kilometres into breathable atmosphere in about half a minute. So please just give us a moment because this thing breaks about seventeen different laws of physics as well as my mind."

"Ok then," muttered the wolf, impressed despite himself but not quite willing to give the device it's due respect.

"Where did it come from? Who made it and why has nobody heard of this?" Zack wondered aloud his eyes running over it, his engineers graft was screaming at him that what he was looking at shouldn't exist. "Do you think it works, it might just be like a model, a teaching device maybe?"

"No I scanned it, there's a lot of complicated tech in there, now that I know what it is, it makes sense...I mean it makes no sense at all, but if you know the end goal it makes sense." Replied Kelo confidently, there was no doubt in his mind the device was genuine. "We need to find out more, we could take it apart maybe?"

"We should tell the Captain, I bet this thing is worth ....billions." Qieth said, his mind finally catching up, not on the tech but, on what the others said it did. Any device like that would be worth untold credits to any of the asteroids of planetoids they supplied with food and water.

"I see an access port I could patch in, maybe find out about it," Qerry offered stepping forward, giving Zack a wink of pride as he thought of getting to show his boyfriend what he could do. "I'm sure I can overcome any inbuilt security software."

Ok same as last 21 times vote by clicking thumbs up on the corresponding comments below

A) Tell the captain before you do anything and let him decide what to do next.

B)Open it up and see if they can figure out what makes it tick.

C) Let Qerry try to hack into the devices in-built computer core and extract information direct.

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