Meet 1132

Who: Bellhorn
Where: Flight Deck
When: Four hours late
Micky burst onto the flight deck at full speed, rapidly working
through the speech he had prepared on the sprint down here.
"Sorry I'm late! There's a mad toaster in my room. I swear he's
after me! Anyway, I'm here now, so where do I start?" …. "Hello?"
Micky looked around for this Chrysler bird, but there wasn't a person
in sight. Just a skutter, seemingly broken, driving round and round
in a small circle. Micky walked over and gave it a swift bang on the
head with his fist. That did the job. He looked for a name or
marking, but all he saw was 1132.
"1132? That's a bit boring. How does Erik sound?" The skutter
looked up at Micky and nodded. "Great. Well now I've done you a
favour, you can run a couple of errands for me. First, I need you to
go to the engine level and pick me up some synthetic grease. Then up
to the medi bay and get me some type 4 Euthanazinol. It has to be
type 4 though, type 3 will kill me. When you've got those, spin by
the science labs and pick me up a bag of nitrogenizing dust, then
head back to my quarters. Got that?" Another nod and Erik was
gone.
As he looked around the huge open space in the flight deck, he found
it astonishing (and a bit spooky) he was here on his own. There were
rows of craft. Starbug, Blue Midget, there was even a squad of the
new fighters here. It was all rather impressive, but knowing there
was nobody here at all, Micky couldn't help feeling like there was
something not quite right on board.
"Holly?"
"Wot?" The computer obviously needed re-booting, his emotion chip
must be overheating or something.
"Where is everyone?"
"Hold on a minute…" It was more than a minute before he finally came
back. "Yep. I've found them," with a smug look on his face.
"Where are they?" This computer was hard work. Bellhorn was finding
it hard to stay cool.
"It's top secret."
"Are you always a complete smeg head, or have I just caught you
PMSing?" Clearly, Micky wasn't chuffed.
"I'm a computer. Just wires and chips. Ooo! Chips! They haven't
been served up for a while in the mess hall. Probably do good for
morale if they dished em up after this horrible monsters been dealt
with." Holly looked like he was a million miles away.
"Horrible monster?" Asked Micky, "what horrible monster?"
"Well, I can't tell you that. It's top secret. Just like I can't
tell you everyone is off doing their bit to try and sort things out.
Ere. Why aren't you off fighting with the rest of the crew?"
Obviously letting top secret slip for his own curiosity, Micky didn't
have a lot of faith in this computer.
He unscrewed his hip flask and took a few long mouthfuls. "Didn't
know there was a monster. What is it?"
"Well, it looks like a spider, looks like a human, it's really strong
and is probably a member of the crew. You never know who you can
trust." He finished with a wink, looked suspiciously round the empty
room and went on staring blankly into space.
"And you think I should go and pick a fight with this human spider?"
"Hymenoptera."
"Hymenoptera? Are they still about?"
"Well it's not brussell sprouts killing off crew members, security
guards and some top secret forces, is it?!" His sarcasm chip wasn't
overheated then. "Anyway, the person you're meant to report to went
into the armoury not long ago. She thinks I don't know it's her, but
I'm not as stupid as this lot make me out to be."
"Good for you Hol. Has that skutter got my bits yet?"
"What's a skutter?" Micky stood up and sighed.
"Never mind," and slumped off slowly in his wet clothes to get some
work of his own done.
<Will Micky ever get down to some real work? >