Seymour - "Shellia"

Who: Seymour Niples
Where: The centre of a "Shellite" city
When: One week after Blue Dwarf went missing
Seymour looked like a prick.
Actually he looked like a prick in a terrible turtle outfit. He was
wearing a long raincoat that had been daubed in green paint, a hat,
and the shell on his back was a round piece of metal from a Starbug's
waste storage bin. The fake shell had also had a badly painted
pattern all over it. He wasn't fooling anyone.
Luckily none of the 'Shellites' were getting close to him. To them he
looked like a tramp in the park.
He looked around at the tall buildings around him. They were all
shapes and sizes, some towers, some domes. But they all had a
vague "turtleness" to them. Brickwork was placed together using the
cracked pattern on a turtle's shell. There were so many buildings,
and so many Shellites living here.
The whole planet was like a big city, sure there were many parks
interspersed amongst the urban areas, but you were never too far from
a building, or Shellites bustling past. Floating cars passed him
overhead, even they looked a bit like turtles. Seymour hid his face
from them, fearing they'd see his pink skin.
Seymour wondered how the hell they'd managed to live here for so long
without getting found out. The Shellites were extremely Xenophobic,
and would have killed any of the Blue Dwarf crew instantly if they
were discovered.
That had already happened to at least ten Blue Dwarf crewmembers
since they had landed here, and there were another six that weren't
answering their phones, or replying to texts. Seymour would have
assumed they were dead two days ago, but Jay was determined to find
them. He made it his personal mission to keep everyone together.
Captain Calvert was still aboard the Blue Dwarf, and nobody knew
where Phil was. So Jay was next in line for Command. He wasn't doing
a bad job, but the stress of trying to keep everyone hidden AND
trying to locate the Blue Dwarf wasn't much fun.
Seymour looked around him. They were two turtles walking over to him.
He saw them in the distance. Seymour discreetly took out a phone and
rang Jay, who was 100 metres directly below him.
"What is it Seymour?" Jay said.
"Two of those... things are approaching."
"Are you sure they're heading towards us?" Said Jay.
"Of course I bloody am!" replied Seymour. "They're almost here."
"Keep them talking." said Jay.
"What?"
"Just keep them talking. Maybe they'll go away. Just don't let them
discover where we are."
"That's easy for you to say, all safe in your little bunker!" Seymour
ranted. "Whilst I'm out here in the cold, wearing a disguise that
wouldn't fool anyone!"
Seymour hung up as the turtles approached.
-----------One Week Earlier-----------------------
Jay took the Phoenix down into the Planet's atmosphere. He was
followed by a fleet of Starbugs, Blue Midgets and Space Eagles, the
exiles from the Blue Dwarf.
Jay prodded some controls, his windscreen was a blur of clouds. "This
looks familiar." a voice told him from his radio. It was the voice of
his clone, Jayne, who he had come to think of as his sister.
"Oh?" Jay said, his attention on his instruments, looking for a good
place to land.
"I think it's bad Jay."
"What?"
"I think we should choose another planet." Said Jayne, and there was
genuine concern in her voice.
"We can't this is the closest one, and not all the hips have enough
fuel to make it to another." Jay replied.
"What's this Planet called?"
"According to the Ordinance Survey Navigation charts, it's
called 'Shellia'. But it doesn't say much else, apart from 'Not a
good choice for a holiday'."
"Oh my god." Said his clone. "We have to leave."
"Why? I'm not fussy about holiday locations, as long as they have a
pub." Jay asked. "And the locals they don't try and kill us." he
joked. But his clone was silent, prompting Jay to speak
again. "They're going to try and kill us aren't they?"
"Yup." was Jayne's answer.
The clouds parted, and Jay could see the planet's surface below them.
Hundreds and hundreds of buildings, with no obvious place to land.
Jay turned his radio to communicate with all ships at once. "Jay to
all ships. Try and find a nice secluded area that we can land.
Apparently the locals aren't too friendly, so we need to find
somewhere out of the city. A Somewhere we'll not disturb them, and
they'll not disturb us."
There was silence. Then a voice came back to him from one of the
smaller Space Eagles out on his left.
"Jay... the city covers the entire planet."
"Damn."
Luckily it was dark, so the fleet of JMC craft weren't immediately
spotted. Jay made a low survey of the area. "Well the best I can find
is an underground carpark in the middle of a grassy area. It's still
only a few hundred meters away from buildings though. So we wouldn't
exactly be safe. Maybe we can hide the vehicles there?"
A spotlight lit his craft up. The small black vessel was no longer
camouflaged in the night sky. It was shining at them from a tall
building.
"Shit!" he yelled over the radio. "I've been spotted!" he looked for
the nearest craft to the spotlight. "Efof, fire on that spotlight. I
don't want us to see where we land."
Efof's small green craft broke formation and fired two missiles at
the source of the light. The building erupted into flame and he could
see turtle-shaped people being flung into the air.
"Thanks Efof." Said Jay. "Now let's land before anyone else spots us."
The entire fleet landed one by one into an underground carpark,
flying down vertically into it's entrance. Jay managed to find the
controls which sealed the large hatch shut, sealing the vehicles into
darkness.
-----------------One Week Later-----------------------------
Who: Seymour
Where: Outside the entrance to the underground carpark
When: Now
Seymour didn't know what to do so darted in the bush. He could still
see the turtles approach, but hopefully they didn't see him, and his
terrible disguise. But they had spotted him before he moved.
"Hey you. What are you doing in there." One asked.
"I'm... I'm..." Seymour thought of something. "I'm a tramp and I'm
cold." he said. And hated himself for saying it.
Now that he could see the turtles close-up, he could see that they
were some kind of police or military. They had guns on their belts.
They were primitive, but could still do some serious damage to soft
human flesh. This made Seymour even more nervous.
"There's an underground carpark near here. Do you know it?" The
turtle asked.
The cogs turned in Seymour's mind. What should he say? Should he
acknowledge the place that his people were using as a base, or
dismiss it.
"It's... closed." he said finally. "Locked."
"Oh, too bad." Said the turtle police officer. "You could use it to
sleep in."
They walked off, leaving him alone. Seymour let out a huge gasp of
breath and phoned Jay when they had left. "All clear." he reported.
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