13333/Disaster on Space LeX 17

Disaster on Space LeX 17
Date of Scene:	13 November 2022
Location:	Earth, Heading to Orbit
Synopsis:	The crew of Space LeX 17 are saved thanks to Four Amazons, Burning Man, and Jean. The strange cargo that caused the catastrophe has been quelled. The shuttle itself is going to need some TLC from the ground crew.
Cast of Characters:	Lex Luthor, Diana Prince, Johnny Storm, Donna Troy, Jean Grey

---

Lex Luthor has posed:
Space LeX has been sending its SSTO shuttles in to space for months now. Vertical take off and landing, they're large enough to ferry big components to space and bring broken components back. Privatised space travel has been profitable for LexCorp, their parent company.

This mission seemed like it'd be like every other so far. The shuttle took off and began its flight toward orbit when suddenly, something was amiss.

"Starport this is Space LeX 17. We're experiencing console failures, do you read," comes the voice of Captain Faigen.

"Space LeX 17 we do not read you, copy again."

The shuttle shakes and quakes as there is a burst of energy from their cargo hold. The engines burst with speed and they are lurched forward with greater speed.

"Starport this is Space LeX 17 SOS, repeat, SOS. If anyone body out there can hear us. SOS." The ship lurches again and the co-pilot hits his head hard on the panel. The crew behind them are jerked about in their seats.

On the ground sensors pick up a massive burst of radiation from the shuttle craft. The Starport doesn't need much more invitation than that to put out the alert that something has gone terrible wrong.

Diana Prince has posed:
Withthe alert causing quite a lot of drama around the port, it doesn't take but a few moments for it to come to Diana's attention, and for her to separate herself from the public event taking place at the Starport today. Already in her armor, a dark blue and gold cloak worn over it, the Princess ascends to the sky where she's picked up by the 'Invisible Jet'. An alient-tech powered vessel, the Invisible Jet (version 2 of Diana's history with invisible planes) is now rushing up through the clouds.

The Princess moves toward the front of the Jet's interior, her cloak swaying around her armored boots as she walks. She reaches the control cabin where two cloud-hued chairs face holo-imagery in the form of its controls. Two Amazons man the controls, Adrastea and Talea, both look back to the PRincess for a moment after she'd boarded the jet in mid-flight, and now is standing behind them.

"Bring us up on the Space-Lex craft." Diana says softly. "We need to try and provide it with a safet landing, or otherwise evacuate its crew..." She tells her sisters, Adra at the controls, guiding the Jet through the sky toward the vessel in peril!

Johnny Storm has posed:
The Fantastic Four automatically keep close track of all near-space traffic and transmissions, as a routine security measure. They possessed some of the most sophisticated astro-tech in existence, after all. On patrol tonight, however, is not their genius founder, but the youngest of the original Four, the square-jawed Johnny Storm.

"FLAME ON!"

The Fantasticar opens and Johnny emerges out into the air, wreathed in flame and joining the transmissions through both emergency, official and Justice League channels:

"I'm here, Wonder Woman," he calls out. "Human Torch, at your service. Initial transmission shows some radiation spiking around here, they need to get medical attention soon," he says, propelling himself at high speed to try to fly a bit below the jet to get a look down there.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The burst of radiation in near space lights up sensors across the eastern seaboard. Sensors that make up parts of the US space surveillance network from Elgin to Cape Cod; monitors at the Triskelion, Four Freedoms Plaza, the Halls of Justice and Titans Tower; private sensor arrays and satellite networks belonging to WayneTech, Stark Industries, STAR Labs and Space Lex themselves - and of course at the space port.

    Knowing Diana's at the space port, as soon as the SOS comes through at Titans Tower, Donna's on the radio to her sister. "Diana, you getting that? Space Lex vehicle in distress. We've detected a big burst of radiation, could be the engines going. That's bad news for the crew. I'm heading up in the T-Jet. We've got potassium iodide and Radiogardase tablets on board, but if there are survivors, we need to get them out quick and get them decontaminated quicker. You on the way?"

    As the T-Jet burns up through the atmosphere, Donna's hands flicker across the sensor controls to home in on the location of the stricken vessel. Switching to the emergency frequency, she broadcasts "Donna Troy with the Titans here, on route Space Lex 17. Please give your status. Do you read?"

Jean Grey has posed:
Jean kind of does space things. Or rather, she kind of IS a space thing.

For the doing part, like Diana she is spending a great deal of time at the Atlantic Starport these days. Indeed, given certain concerns about the transporters, all their recent trips to speak with the Shi'ar aboard their orbitting cruiser have been taken on the new Blackbird prototype. And as it happens, Jean is on her way back to Earth from one such meeting when the alert goes up, at the controls of the fancy spaceplane. She's got a space-suit version of her armored uniform on, in blue and yellow, even if this is ultimate a somewhat more symbolic or psychological choice than a practical one. Still, it's all routine business and she's not particular worried, legs up and some music on in the cockpit when the scanners pick up on the distress call.

"Huh. Sure is getting busy up here, these days. Good thing, though. Makes it harder for the Shi'ar to keep calling us primitive..." Who ya talking to, Jeanie?

Legs come down, she shifts into a proper posture at the controls and taps a button, both to home in on the signal and open return communication. "Hello? This is the SR-X, reading you Space Lex 17, what's the emergency?"

A beat, as she picks up both the radiation spike, some more static in lieu of communication, and then some other signals. "Oh, Princess, fancy bumping into you up here. Need help? I'm homing in."

BUSY UP IN SPACE!

Lex Luthor has posed:
Faigen looks to his co-pilot who now has a nasty head wound. "Geirs, med kit!"

Geirs undoes his seat belt as the ship rocks again and starts to speed up once more. He grabs on to the chair as his feet are swept up underneath him. A pulse of energy flows through the ship.

"Carefully he makes it over to the storage bay and takes out the med kit. He's about to turn back toward the front of the ship when he starts to sway. The radiation monitor on his wrist turns black. They're never meant to turn black. Geirs stumbles and then flops on to the floor.

The fourth crewmate, Laius, calls out, "Captain! Geirs has collapsed."

The radiological warning starts to flash on the console in front of the Captain. He takes a deep breath - they've trained for this. He just needs to get this thing back down to land. He presses the auto-land button. Nothing happens.

He turns the radio to all frequencies, "MAYDAY MAYDAY This is Space LeX 17 we're ballistic, flight console is not responding. High Radiation Warning. Two crew injured. Repeat MAYDAY." Hearing the voice of superheroes he is briefly reminded of Orientation at LexCorp - don't rely on superheroes. But today, that training can go out the window for all he cares.

Turning to his copilot he says, "Stay with me Myers. Focus on the horizon - don't fall asleep." Myers nods her head slowly. Her hand pressing against the wound as she looks out ahead of them. The dark of space starting to creep away at the blue of the atmosphere. If they keep at this they'll be rocketing out of Earth too fast.

The exterior of the shuttle seems to be warping a little around the cargo area. Likely from heat and radiation rather than anything spacial. The paint is peeling, the Le of LeX is blistering off. There's an intense energy source in the hold and it is caught in a feedback loop with the nuclear engines - boosting it faster and faster.

Diana Prince has posed:
With Johnny's arrival, a voice speaks back to him. "Glad you are here, Mister Storm." Comes Wonder Woman's voice. "It seems we have a developing issue here." She adds before she hears both Donna, and Jean Grey's familiar tones. "The Invisible Jet is pulling up alongside the Lex craft. We're picking up very high levels of radiation, it seems."

Inside the Invisible Jet, one of the Amazons at the controls points at the holo-image of the Lex spacecraft. "Look there... that doesn't look good." Talea comments.

Diana's voice comes back over the comms again. "The Space-Lex vehicle has something going very wrong inside its cargo containment area." She tells the others.

"As we come to get alongside it to help it should it begin a return trip to the surface, I think it might be best to investigate that cargo storage area, and see if something can be removed. The crew may have very little time left..." Wonder Woman warns.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "SR-X, Jonny Storm, good to see you guys," Donna's voice comes over the radio. "Vehicle speed is too high to achieve a circular orbit, this this is heading out to deeps space. I suggest we prioritize evacuation rather than recovery. Trying to bring that thing down would be very dangerous, if it burns up we'll have radioactive material coming down over a large part of the east coast. "

    The T-Jet goes momentarily silent as it breaches the atmosphere and Donna kicks in the prototype Pym Drive, warping space-time around the vessel. The warp is only activated for a moment - even the sub-light warp drive installed on the T-jet barely needs to engage to make the rendezvous. When the warp field collapses, the T-Jet is flying twelve miles from the stricken shuttle, maneuvering to match pace with it.

    "Space Lex 17, this is the Titans T-Jet, we see you. We have several fast vessels incoming, if you've got the equipment, it might be a good idea for you all to EVA for recovery asap, the sooner you're out of the immediate area of that radiation source the better."

Jean Grey has posed:
Jean sets an intercept course into the autopilot, and then starts getting up. Walking to the back, she taps a control on her suit to deploy the face-shield of the helmet.

Again, there is something that reminds her that this is all quite pointless, but she ignores it, focusing on the more mundane preparation: verifying seals, pressurization, oxygen supply, propellent for the small manuevering micro-thrusters. The Blackbird locks its auto-course to a holding point at some distance, matching velocities and trajectories with their target, creating a neutral reference frame. And then she starts for the hatch, remembering to activate the magnetic seal (everyone got a safety lecture after Rogue's first time!) before opening one of the hatches. Empty space faces her, the vast blue marble of the Earth below, the endless dark beyond, with its twinkling stars. Familiar.

And the ship, her goal.

She steps out, and then propels herself toward the floating Space Lex craft under her own power, saving those boosters as a back-up. (Why?)

Soon, she's back on the radio for her suit. "I'm heading over on EVA. Don't want to fly too close - I think your ride is a little more durable," she echoes back at Diana. "And I have to agree. Atmospheric re-entry is rough enough when everything is going right. Anyway, I'll try and get a read on the situation aboard."

To the casual observer, she's not much of a rescue team, the lone woman floating through the void in her little suit. And yet it hardly seems to worry her. As she approaches, she reaches out with her mind, first surveying the astronauts ahead, and then reaching to 'feel' through the space around them, for the radiation and whatever else might be going on. It's one of those things that once would have seemed an absurd or impossible task, to touch something so small. But these days, she can feel every particle. And a part of her yearns for what exists between them, where the infintesimal becomes the infinite, binding the energy that birthed the universe.

Lex Luthor has posed:
Laius feels a wave of nausea wash over him and he calls out, "Captain. We're going to all pass out soon if we don't do something." He undoes his belt and slides across the floor to Geirs. Turning him to the recovery position he spots the subtle glow of heat from the cargo door.

"Captain - it's the cargo. Do we know what it is?" Laius asks and checks Geir's for a pulse. He's still alive. Still breathing.
"Same as last week. Another mystery DoD box.." They work for Space LeX and when they DoD wants secrecy they get it from their private contractors. "We have to cut power to the nuclear engines," he calls back to Laius and undoes his own seatbelts. "Myers," he says and helps her put her hands on the control stick. "Keep her steady." She gives him a vague nod and then replies more confidently, "Ay Captain."

"Titans T-Jet this is Captain Faigen, Space LeX 17 - we have to make sure this vehicle is safe before we evacuate; and we have one crew who is unconscious," he replies with all urgency as Laius starts removing floors panels.

Jean can feel it - there's something exotic mixed in with the radiation boosting the nuclear engines. Whatever that energy source is in their cargo bay it wasn't meant to turn on mid-flight. It feels powerful, the kind of thing people don't want talked about or known exists. It feels like someone created zero-point energy and used it to pluck out dark energy in to a containment vessel that is now operating at full capacity.

Diana Prince has posed:
The 'Invisible Jet' shimmers as it suddenly becomes quite visible. A arrowhead-like shape, the vessel sweeps through the black of low Earth orbit and starts to angle in toward the Lex-vessel.

"Our ship can dock with the Lex ship and we can help with the evacuation." Diana says to all parties involved. "The Lansinarian technology should be able to properly conform to the hull of the Lex vessel, to make for a secure transfer of crew." Wonder Woman further says while the elegantly designed ship floats in to do just so.

At the controls, Adrastea makes the proper adjustments based on the Jet's Artificial Intelligence systems already calculating precisely what manuevers for the pilot to make, and in her time away from the island of Themyscira, Adrastea has become arguably the best of the Themysciran pilots. "We are on approach." The redhead says behind the controls. "Lex Crew, be ready at your starboard hatch."

Diana moves then to go to the back portion of the Jet, watching it manuever in to position due to the nature of the Jet's hull being able to be seen through, she can watch the two ships grow closer together, until they'll touch and their hulls lock together as one....

"We are safe from radiation within our vessel, but we should certainly determine what went wrong inside this ship, before we leave." Wonder Woman says to everyone listening.

Donna Troy has posed:
"Space Lex 17, this is T-Jet," Donna's voice comes back over the radio. " I'm pulling alongside now, will have matching velocities in seventy seconds. You are receiving heavy doses of radiation. Advise you evacuate immediately. We can deal with making the vehicle safe. How long are your suits rated for that dosage?"

    She lowers her eyes to the computer screen, watching the dance of maneuvering thrusters light up on the display as the T-Jet's autopilot corrects the vector of movement. In the near vacuum, the cold logic of orbital mechanics makes maneuvering strange and unintuitive -- the T-Jet is pointing away from the Space Lex vessel and thrusting to shed delta-V, and to Earth-accustomed senses it's hard to get away from the feeling that's how you fly away from something rather than towards it, but sometimes that's how you do things.

    "Matching velocities in thirty-five. SR-X, you seeing anything over there? Diana, what do you think about towing this thing into a parking orbit? I'm guessing we both brought tow ropes." Towing space ships is not in the NASA manuals, but then NASA doesn't have magic lassos. "If they cut engines, we should be able to do that fairly easily."

Jean Grey has posed:
Fortunately, Jean is not bound by any government contracts or ironclad NDAs. "There's a highly-advanced power source on the ship. Not the engines, something well beyond that, definitely some sort of experimental tech," she relays back to the other rescuers. There's no judgment in the tone of her analysis, however. Earth's met the stars, seen just what they're up against, how far they have to go. Why wouldn't it build these things? "And far beyond a nuclear reaction, is the main takeaway, as far as letting it back in the atmosphere goes. Orders of magnitude beyond, in the worst case."

'To soar with the stars, you must harness them. And what lays beneath.' Hank could explain the physics, but for her, it's more intuitive. This is the very essence of the cosmic life cycle, the answer to how existence can come of absence, and return to it, for it all to begin again.

But Jean doesn't meditate on it long.

"I'm not sure why it's throwing off so much radiation, though, seems like a design flaw if you're going to build your next-gen space reactor. I'm going to see if I can do anything to mitigate it, redirect it. The astronauts aren't all dead, so it's not that intense - or maybe it has some of its own shielding?"

As ever, it's hard to ascribe much physically to the what and how of Jean 'helping.' What she can feel, she can move, direct, dampen. Perhaps she could asborb it instead...

No, that's a temptation she'll avoid. Instead, with but vague gestures as her small form floats down toward the ship, and indeed eventually alights upon it, boots clamping down onto the surface, she tries to direct the outpouring away from the passenger part of the ship, and outward into space.

Lex Luthor has posed:
Whatever it is the DoD put in their hold? it can go straight to heck as far as the Captain is concerned. He didn't sign up to die from weird radiation surges. The captain moves to the starboard hatch and pulls open the manual release lever. He begins to pump it since the electronics are unlikely to work.

An intense pulse of radiation has the Captain swaying for just a moment, before Jean suddenly pulls it up and away from the crew are. Laius inserts the tools to turn off the feed valves; shutting off the nuclear engines is surprisingly easy. Except they don't shut off.

"Ahhh Captain! We have a serious problem here. Nuclear reactor is cycling down and disconnected from the engines - but we're still accelerating."

The Captain grits his teeth and taps his comms, "Do you copy that friends. I sure hope you have contingencies for this kind of thing because we're a glorified space cargo service," the captain says over comms. When he feels the clunk he pulls the lever to open up the cargo door and quickly moves back to help his co-pilot out of here. Laius moves to pick up and carry Geirs off of the shuttle.

The blue atmosphere of Earth peels away opening up to the cold black of space. They were always intending to go here - just not quite so fast or violently. The ship has far too much speed and it's continuing to accelerate.

Diana Prince has posed:
With the Now Visible Jet alongside the Lex-ship, Diana is at the hatch between their vessels. The hatch on her ship, of course, is a lot like a moving cloud though, adapting to the shape of the Space-Lex vessel. When it forms in to place, the Princess speaks up again on comms. "Idealy, I believe the ship, and the crew, need to be taken to the Watchtower on the surface of the Moon now." She tells Donna in response, though Jean is certainly meant for that too.

"I believe a mystery is developing here, one that we will need..."

She's cut off by the sound of the voice from the shuttle craft crew speaking of their velocity increasing.

"Jean? Can you disabled the ship's engines, safely?" Wonder Woman asks as she taps a holo-panel beside the hatch of the Jet. "Lex Crew, we are ready to accept you if you can open your hatch. Donna, can you keep the Space-Lex ship stable? It is starting to shake quite a lot with this added speed...."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Getting some very weird readings here," Donna sends over. "I need Vic or Cait here to interpret this data. From the sounds of things, whatever is in the cargo hold is supplying excess power to the drive. Rather than attempting to disable the drive, which could be ahhh... kind of a delicate operation... maybe the best option here is to remove the cargo so it's not able to power the engines."

    Even as she's speaking, the airlock of the T-Jet opens up and Donna drifts out into space, wearing her armor and a breather mask. In her hands, her lasso glows golden against the darkness of space. She loops her lasso around the struts of the T-Jet, and starts reeling it out towards the Space Lex shuttle.

    "Stabilizing this thing is going to be tricky. Don't want to break off any bits of ship when I try. That means gentle acceleration, and /that/ means ideally having the shuttle not accelerating itself. If we can get the engines offline or remove the power source, It's just a matter of thrusting slightly faster than the shuttle's going and we can circularize the orbit."

Jean Grey has posed:
"Disable them? Probably. Safely? No idea. I'm not really..."

This falls back to the earlier comparison, which she can't help but reflect on. Hank could explain the safe functioning states for the reactor, how one is ideally supposed to move between them, and what might be compromising that normal safe operation. All Jean feels is the raw power, filtered through a much more limited intellectual understanding of the same concepts. And there's also the fact that her best 'source' on the situation is a bit, shall we say, biased.

"I wish we HAD one of them here to talk us through it, or if I could get Hank's input on this, but I think we're going to have to go with our best understanding of the situation as we see it. So... let's go with detatch. Diana, you just get the people out ASAP. Worst comes to worse, I can drag this thing out deeper into space." There's a calm fearlessness in the offer: this isn't some act of would-be heroic sarcrifice, clearly.

"I'll go to the... cargo chamber, see what I can make of it, see if I can get rid of it." If there's an exterior hatch of some kind, that's where she goes, briefly leaping free of the body of the shuttle as the boots disengage, before telekinetically maneuvering herself around its fuselage, searching out some appropriate loading bay. Of course, absent that, she can make her own hole.

In service of avoiding this last option, she gets back on the radio with the astronauts, "If you have some kind of control to open your cargo bay, please do so. Otherwise I'm going to tear the back of your ship off."

Lex Luthor has posed:
The Captain and Laius bring the other two on to Diana's ship. The Captain, briefly, gives Diana a smile of thanks and to the two other Amazons on board. He helps Myers in to a seat. "Stary away Myers. You've got a concussion," he states matter of factly.

"Yeah, it was a the sudden thump of my head on the dash that clued me in Greg," she says with a pained chuckle. Faigen starts to wrap her head wound.

Laius asks the Amazons, "Do you have anything for extreme radiation sickness?" He's trying to keep Geirs in the recovery position.

The shuttle keeps pulling at the tethers as it accelerates driven by the mysterious energy source. The captain, hearing the conversation suggests, "You have my permission to fling whatever the hell that thing is out in to the sun for all I care. Tear away. Space LeX will want their ship back but the cargo? that's DoD property and it just tried to kill me and my crew. I expect some men in black will come asking questions and they better have answers." A quick glance down at his own radiation meter confirms he's hit max rads too.

Diana Prince has posed:
Once the astronauts are aboard, Diana shows them to a section of the Jet where they can change in to alternate uniforms, and where to leave their irradiated uniforms. "We will take you to the Watchtower swiftly for medical attention." She assures them before she returns to the main part of the Visible Jet.

"Thank you for your efforts, Jean. This is rather a concerning situation." She relays as she walks toward the front of the Jet toward where her two sisters are piloting it still.

"Donna. Are you maintaing?" She asks then. "We may need the medical supplies you brought with you." She adds while watching the Jet's holo-imagery display both Jean, and Donna, along with the Lex-ship as the Jet remains attached to it to try and help stabilize it.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Diana, get them out of their space suits and eject the space suits. I've got some spares on board if they're worried, but right now their biggest threat is the clothes they are wearing. They need to decontaminate as much as possible, as quickly as possible. I'll bring over the radiation pills as soon as we've got this thing tethered and moving."

    Donna drifts across to the Space LeX ship, the loose end of her lasso ready to tie down, and starts to study the ship's external structure for a good place to tie it down. Even with the forward velocity matched, there's a slight relative spin to add complexity to the problem.

    "Jean? Just rip the hatch open and get that thing as far away as possible. No time to waste trying to figure out how to open the hatch the polite way. It's still accelerating and I can't get this thing hooked up and start steadying it until it's a bit more stable."

Jean Grey has posed:
"Noted," Jean echoes back as the captain gives permission. This, comparatively, is the easy part.

Where feeling down to those incomprehensibly small details of reality is rather mind-bending, this sort of large-scale destruction is... well, pretty much par for the superhero course. Pushing free of the metal to fly under her own power again, the woman hangs back from the ship, and briefly closes her eyes. She feels over the shape of it, through the bulkheads, the supporting skeleton, the surrounding systems, critical and otherwise.

"Once you have everyone aboard, plot a course away, and book it. I have no idea how unstable this is, it might go off just from messing with it."

And then she messes with it.

Having felt her way through, she finds the points of least resistance, hopefully proper doors, and rips outward, bending aluminum like cardboard, popping bolts and tearing welded seals. The very first pull confirms the fact that just being out here, next to this thing... she's getting something of a 'contact high' as it were, as the Phoenix takes whatever harmful radiation and energy that would otherwise imperil it's mortal host and instead makes it a meal, with or without her say-so. And she does more than rip and tear; planes of force shear through and expand to fill the openings, trying to hold the structure in place, to shield and contain the energy from those nearby, and ultimately isolate the strange power source.

And then hopefully fly very far away with it!

Lex Luthor has posed:
The Captain sits up and feels the nausea setting in. The rest of the crew sits there too. Exhausted. Ill. Thankful for the rescue. Myers is openly staring at the Amazons with utter awe though. It's clear she's a huge fan.

The Space LeX ship is made thin, light, though strong - Jean peels it open as it was designed to do and from it a sort of satellite with a nozzle at one end is revealed. It is pouring energy out of it directly at the engines. Jean can grasp on to it easily - though the physics of the device make it resistant to moving, it is no match for the Phoenix Force.

As Jean pulls the strange device away and to safety, the crew of Space LeX mission 17 breath a sigh of relief. They will have a heck of a report to give to their superiors. Likely the Captain will have to talk to Lex Luthor directly about this one.

"Thank you, all of you, for saving our lives," the Captain says. Laius lifts up a big thumbs up in agreement and Myers grins a little goofily, keeping her eyes wide open to stay awake.

Diana Prince has posed:
Once the astronauts have exchanged their clothing for what was available aboard the Jet in the moment, Diana offers the woman from the team her blue and gold cloak. "Take them to the Watchtower." Diana instructs of her sisters who nod in response.

Outside, the Visible Jet detached from the Lex-ship and began its journey to the Lunar surface, in its wake the Space-Lex space uniforms float away in oddly shaped heaps as they will undoubtedly burn up in the planet's atmosphere now.

At where Jean is, Diana floats in near by, her eyes going from the redhead, over to where she sees Donna, and the Titan's craft. Wearing a necklace around her shoulders now that glows with a bright blue hue, Diana speaks in the vacuum of space, the necklace using its tech to translate her words and process them to the others.

"We will have to find out what caused this. This cannot be a commonality going forward..." She glances back over her shoulder, then back to the other two women with her in space. "I am not sure as to the safety of those crewmen, facing off with radiation levels such as this has produced..." She says with grave concern for the innocent astronauts, and what it could mean for everyone else back home.

Donna Troy has posed:
    As soon as Jean has made away with the mystery cargo and the Space LeX shuttle is no longer thrusting, Donna starts to quickly but securely lash the lasso to the shuttle, hitching and looping it around as many protuberances and handles as she can get it to. She doesn't even wait to return to the T-Jet to start the operation to steady the ship.

    "Marvin, start orbital insertion burn, but build it up slowly." Marvin? Who's that? The Titans have given their VIs amusing names. Thankfully for the sanity of the Space LeX crew they don't hear the T-Jet computers replying in the voice of Marvin the Martian. "Thrust at 1G for now..."

    It's not the fastest process -- Donna remains outside, watching the attachment points on both the Space LeX Shuttle and the T-Jet as the latter starts gradually pouring on the juice, making sure than no bit of spaceship is about to break off. It's a gradual process -- so long as the T-Jet doesn't accelerate too quickly away from the shuttle, no great stress is put on the metalwork of the two ships.

    She's not worried about the lasso at all.

    During this process, Donna's able to take a few moments to get back into the T-Jet, grab the rad pills, and bring them over to Diana's ship. It's important to get that stuff into their bloodstreams as quickly as possible, though not quite as urgent as getting them out of their radioactive space suits. The poor crew will be pooping radioactivity for days, but they'll live.

    "The main thing is that the crew's alive, and whatever that thing is didn't explode all over the eastern seaboard," Donna replies to Diana's message. "But... yeah. It would be nice to make sure this doesn't happen again. Could be worth finding out who's responsible and what the hell they are up to."

    She checks the readings from the T-Jet on her comm, and gives a sigh. "If you guys want to take them to the Watchtower, go ahead. Getting this thing into a stable orbit is going to take a few hours, but I can handle this from here Di, you don't happen to have any Mexican cola on board that thing, do you?"

Jean Grey has posed:
Jean does precisely as she said, flying outward, away from Earth, from the moon, indeed at an angle out from the ecliptic, as efficiently toward 'nowhere' as she can.

Without a fundamental understanding of what is happening, this is the safest plan. Or maybe it's precisely because her understanding is so fundamental, so basic and instinctive, that she trusts no other option: energy from nothing, the fundamental quantum state, the Big Bang, the eternal cycle... whatever you call it, it's a scary concept. The Phoenix is far less risk adverse, of course, indeed perhaps in some sense quite enthralled by the notion of this bit of human ingenuity peering at the heart of creation... but that's not a perspective Jean's keen to listen to.

And thus, she flies, increasing in speed by the moment, with no trivial things like friction to slow her. Whatever it's throwing off, she still can't help but bathe in, and as she moves further into the distance, continuing to accelerate, what was once just a tiny, insignificant human dot in a space-suit contrasted against the stars, slowly becomes highlighted with the outline of something greater. Not a full manifestation, perhaps, but an echo, as ember wings carry her off into the nothing.

...

"Are you reading me OK? I think it's finally done." When her message comes through again, it's hampered by a time delay, as she's gone far enough that the speed of light becomes insufficient for instantenous contact. "I'm going to call the Blackbird out to get me... and maybe you can send people out here to pick this up. Whatever it was doing, it's stopped now, I think. A finite reaction mass, I guess. Fortunately."