It all starts when Skizz gets really into ham radio. It’s not the most surprising thing in the world—Skizz is like that, likes to find weird little niche things to devote all his free time to. He’d done it with geocaching and drones and 3D printing, and Impulse is more than used to his shenanigans after several decades of friendship. At least ham radio is less chaotic than the summer he’d gotten into competitive duck herding. Because the other thing Skizz does, when he gets into his hobbies, is he tries to get Impulse into them as well. And whilst some of the things they end up doing together are fun, Impulse had not had a great time with the ducks. But when Skizz suggests the radio—well, it doesn’t sound too terrible. Not as b ad as getting chased around by angry feathered nightmare creatures, at the very least. “Come on, dude,” Skizz had insisted over the phone, when Impulse had still been on the fence about the whole matter. “If you set one up, we can talk over the radio, even while we’re so far apart!” “That’s what phones are for,” Impulse had pointed out. “The radio’s cooler,” Skizz had replied, and, well, he was right. So Impulse had gotten himself a radio. It’d been a cheap radio, half-broken and found in the dusty corner of a local secondhand store, but Impulse is a pretty good engineer, and whilst radios aren’t his specialty, he’d figured he could fix it up. But after several hours of tinkering with it in the garage, surrounded by tools and dust, music playing from his car stereo, he’s still gotten no closer to having a functioning radio. No matter what frequency he tunes it to, all he gets is static, even when he knows for a fact that the frequency he’s trying should connect him to the local radio. He spends what is probably far too long attempting to fix it before admitting defeat. It’s getting late—the sun’s gone down outside, and now his work is only lit by the dim flickering bulb of the old desk lamp they’d moved out here when they’d gotten a better one for inside—and he should probably be getting himself some food and heading to bed soon. He’ll just have to call Skizz in the morning and tell him that it's a bust. He turns the dial one last time, more out of habit than any real hope, and reels back as static blares loud enough to hurt his ears. He fumbles forward, attempting to find the button to turn the radio off, when the static quiets, and a voice calls out from the speakers, tinny and quiet but there. “Hello? Is this thing working? Hello. Can anyone read me?” A staticky, garbled laugh. “Please. Mayday, mayday, is anyone there?” Impulse, starting, reaches for the receiver, pulling it to his mouth. His hands are shaking as he responds. “Hello? I read you. Who is this? Can you hear me?” A pause stretches out, far too long for comfort, before the reply comes. “Oh, thank god.” Another laugh. “This is Cadet Tango Tek. I’m… Well, I was an astronaut on board the starship Varia.” “Was?” “We, uh, we crash landed. On some moon somewhere. No idea where, I wasn’t involved in navigation, I just… Well, anyway. I managed to make it into an escape pod. No idea if anyone else made it out.” Impulse blinks. “Are you joking?” he asks, heart pounding. “What? No! Why would I joke about this?” A pause. “Wait. Just who are you, anyway?” “Oh! Um, my name’s Impulse. I’m an engineer.” “At HASA?” “No, just… just an engineer.” “Wait, so you’re a civilian?” “Yes?” [continued in notes and credits]
“How’re you even connecting to this frequency?” “I don’t… know.” Impulse stares down at the old radio, more confused than he had been before. “Well, you’re the only one I’ve managed to get a hold of so far. I was beginning to think my suit’s communication systems were busted before you replied.” “And you’re… stranded. On a distant moon. Somewhere in space.” “Yup! That is exactly my situation. My suit sensor says the air here is breathable, which is nothing short of a miracle, but I’ve got no food or water or anything on me. I’ve got the world’s most basic toolkit, and that’s about it.” There’s a weird staticky blast that Impulse thinks might be Tango blowing out a breath. “Lucky me!” Impulse is absolutely not qualified to deal with this situation. He’s not an astronaut. He knows nothing about space. His experience with survival is that time he and Skizz got lost whilst camping and had wandered around the woods for three days desperately searching for signs of civilisation. He should probably just hang up and go to bed, or try and call someone more equipped to deal with this situation, but Tango sounds like he’s in a pretty bad place, and Impulse can’t just leave him here to deal with it alone. So instead he asks, “Are you… okay?” My ship just crashed in the middle of nowhere, you’re the only one hailing on this frequency, and the only survivor I see is me, the least prepared person in existence for this sort of emergency! But, you know, I made it out of that whole ordeal with only a stubbed toe, so really things are just peachy. Thanks for asking.” Impulse huffs. “Sorry about the toe, smartbutt. I was trying to be nice.” Tango snorts. “I’m a little on edge right now. Not sure if you’ve noticed.” There’s a long pause. Impulse is about to try calling out again, suddenly worried that something has happened, when Tango speaks. “So, my escape pod came down in some kind of desert. There’s a huge peak a few miles away—or, kilometres, I guess? They kept trying to get us to think in metric for the mission, but some things are just hardwired.” “Don’t worry, I have no idea what a kilometre is anyway,” Impulse attempts to joke. “Finally, someone who speaks my language. Anyway—that’s to the northeast, according to my compass. South and southwest is what I can only assume to be the wreckage of my ship. They’re… definitely closer than the peak is. Which way should I go?” “The ship,” Impulse decides. “They’re closer, for one, and there’s probably supplies you can take.” "Makes sense,” Tango says. “If I’m lucky, there might be other survivors.” A pause. “God, I hope there’s other survivors.” Impulse does too. If only because other survivors would mean Impulse would not be Tango’s only source of advice in this situation. “Okay. Okay, I’m gonna start heading south. I think it’s about an hour’s walk? I’ll check in with you when I get there.” A pause. It’s hard to tell through the static, but Impulse thinks Tango sounds nervous when he asks, “You’ll still be there in an hour, right?” Impulse glances at the clock on the wall. It reads 9:35pm, but it’s a little slow—it’s probably more like 9:50. Impulse should definitely be getting ready for bed, unless he wants to completely ruin his sleep schedule. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll be here. See you then.” “See you then.” The line fades out into static. --- I DO NOT OWN THIS FANFICTION. I DO NOT CLAIM TO OWN THIS FANFICTION. THIS IS NOT MY WORK OR WRITING.
