The smoke inside the MTLRTTLSNK was thick enough to chew on, but the sound was thicker. The Space-Freighter had seen many years and billions of light-years but had done a fabulous job until today. Today the starboard engine took a meteor right to the chest. Realizing what had happened, one of the two-man crew, the blue-skinned space veteran called Houba didn't bother to grab a fire extinguisher. He looked sad as he grabbed his five-string bass-guitar and began to play the vessel's requiem. Next to him Dokk in a purple-skinned blur of motion fell in and went into a frantic double-time beat on his kit. "If we're going down after all this time," Houba growled over the screech of tearing metal, "we’re going to honor the old lady properly. For mark my words: she has really earned it!"

An even older entity, a mechanical serpent, lay motionless and broken on the ground covered in debris. It had shut down and been resting there quite a long time. It hadn't been programmed for rhythm but this time the sounds and beats were so heavy they recalibrated its sensory array. Hardly noticeable it began to coil and hiss in sync with the percussion, its metallic scales grinding like an industrial synthesizer. The monitors on the ship's walls flashed erratic waveforms, depicting not the oscillations of a dying ship but the probably most legendary funeral march in the history of the Gamma Quadrant.

The music stopped only when the MTLRTTLSNK finally kissed the dunes of Xylos-9. The impact was enough to rattle their teeth, but the hull held - mostly. Stepping out into the harsh, twin-mooned sunlight, they surveyed the wreckage. Houba crossed his arms, his orange flight suit covered in soot. He looked less like a happy survivor but rather annoyed that the power had finally cut out on his amp. Dokk stood back, staring at the vast, silent desert. The adrenaline of playing his unique drumbeats was fading, being replaced by the grim realization that they were millions of light-years from a cold drink. Between them, the Metal Rattlesnake rose from the sand. It too had survived the crash. Now as the music had jump-started its circuits its green optical sensors were glowing with a new, strange intelligence. It just watched swaying slightly as if it could still hear the ghost of the drumbeats and basslines echoing off the dunes.

"Well," Dokk sighed, breaking the silence. "The acoustics in the desert are terrible anyway." Houba didn't look back. "Doesn't matter. We’ve got a song to finish, and the snake knows the way.”