The King Harry Attacks

Who: Lester Seventeen-dot-Phelps and Seymour NiplesWhere: The skies above New TenerifeWhen: Um... not long after the last post about Lester and Seymour. ===================================================It screamed out of the skies, a massive, bulbous shape, in pure white, punctuated with portholes and high-reaching smoke-stacks across its spine.It was vaguely ship-shaped, but before it had dropped out of the atmosphere it had been significantly more ship-shape. Now bits had melted or completely vapourised in re-entry. Where there used to be ornately decorated passenger viewing areas, there was now motlen rivulets of metal crawling along the deck, swept upwards as the ship roared downwards. Three massive reactor engines behind it were forcing this strange craft down into the eager embrace of gravity, their exhausts forming an orange glow: three minature suns in unison.Its wail was a thousand banshees as it hammered through the air, straight as a dart, for the hovering gunship. A shadow formed on the ground beneath the gunship, swallowing its own shadow, then expanding, casting the hovering be-weaponed craft, then the shore of the island into darkness. Seymour Niples gritted his teeth, clung to the control console beneath him and risked a glance at Lester. He was still standing upright, hunched over the massive ship's wheel, his eyes narrowed, intent on their target. One hand on the throttle control -now fully open. The island filled the view out the bridge's windows, Seymour could see details in the shoreline, the castle, the headlines on a scrap of newspaper. - Thirty minutes earlier -  Lester grabbed Seymour's immaculate shirt front and yanked him down below the level of the security window. "Ow, smeg's sake," Seymour complained, "this is Persian silk, from the sentient silk-worms of Persia-omicron. If you've got to manhandle me, at least do it by my lapels, or collar. They're only Armani." "Shush," both Lesters snapped, leaving an odd echo. "SNIDE?" He held up his hand, "pick a nice one," he said, "set off the alarms. We'll be ready." Lester let SNIDE down from his palm and watched him scuttle under the wire-mesh fence and out across the space-port. No, Lester realised, looking across at the row upon row of ships, this is a drydock, a repair station for the thousands of visiting starships. "Is this strictly necessary?" Seymour whined, "why can't we take your vehicle, or mine?" He was fretting seriously about the safety of the Queen. The Castle had built in ground defenses and was constantly monitored by armed satellites. To blackout that security so quickly was a frightening thought. "I want something a bit more powerful, that was clearly a gunship we heard," Lester told him. "How do you know that?" Seymour asked. "Yes," Lester asked himself, "how do you know that? I don't know," he replied to himself and Seymour quietly, "I just... do." He crabbed under the security booth and then strolled casually to the large hangar marked "FIRE CREW. DO NOT OBSTRUCT." He placed his metal hand against the locking mechanism, pushed teh door open and wandered in. The hangar was wide and tall and housed three large red emergency vehicles, supported on metal feet. They waited, fuelled, stocked with emergency gear, waiting for an emergency to respond to when they would rise up on anti-grav engines and roar across the tarmac. "How do you do that?" "Oh, th-that's j-just a st-standard 256-BIT security lock, n-nothing d-difficult," Lester told him. Then in his more serious voice: "Seymour, distract the staff, I'll get what we need." "Distract them? How?" Seymour paled but Lester was already disappearing behind the nearest vehicle. With a frown, Seymour nervously crossed the hangar to a small area where the emergency crews were relaxing in the warm glow of the TV. Some were playing a card game, some were just sitting drinking coffee. "Hello," he said, knocking on the partition wall that separated them from the vehicle hangar, "could I interest you in, er, part-work weekly? Yes your weekly guide to weekly guides. Each issue comes with a free first issue of a famous or historical weekly guide." The emergency crew, to a man, looked confusedly at Seymour. "Issue one features the now infamous Victorian Garden weekly, issue one of which .. uh... has... uh..." The emergency crew, to a man, looked angrily at Seymour. "Then issue two is the historical s-slave trader's guide, wh-which in the eighteenth century would b-build up into an entire cotton plantation, as l-long as you could afford the five... thousand... issues... Lester?"The emergency crew had left the cards, their coffee and their TV and were stepping forward. The Chief, a big guy with a large belly held out both hands. "Listen, mate, I don't know what your game is but..." "I'm a distraction," Seymour whimpered. "... you can't just barge in here spouting your... what?" "I'm a distraction?" There was a terrific fwoosh noise and the small partitioned living area filled with a deep, thick white cloud. Seymour felt a hand on his collar and he found himself standing next to Seymour, dressed in the silvered thermal uniform of an emergency crew member, holding the hose of a level-ten disaster recovery extinguisher module. Cold, cold, cold gas filled the room, and when he had finished a dozen or so statues glared angrily at Seymour and Lester. "Come on," Lester said, throwing another silver uniform at Seymour. He led the Ambassador to one of the vehicles, but veered off, "get it started," he barked and began hosing down the support struts on the other two vehicles. Then he threw the hose down and climbed in beside Seymour. "Now what?" Seymour demanded, aware that it wouldn't be long before the emergency crew thawed and they wouldn't be pleased with him... "Come on SNIDE," Lester said through gritted teeth. He was rewarded by a terrific clanging as the alarm system went off. A computer display in the cab of the emergency vehicle lit up stating: "Category Omega disaster - Immediate response - Bay 19." Lester gunned the engines and they roared through the hangar's automatically opening doors. "Maybe it's that one," Seymour pointed to a yacht. But it was Bay 4. "Gosh, maybe that one," Lester chipped in, indicating a jet-black star-limo, but that was Bay 9. "Oh for smeg's sake," Lester growled as they approached Bay 19. They were dwarfed, in their substantially sized Emergency Response Vehicle, by the ship in Bay 19. Seymour squinted, making out the name-plate some fifty-feet above them. "HMS King Harry! Oh for smeg's sake,it's a smegging cruise liner!" "Yes! W-way to go SNIDE!" As they approached the boarding ramps, they realised that a small crowd had gathered. The alarm klaxons were still sounding and the Captain of the HMS King Harry was waving them down. The rest of the crowd appeared to be members of the cleaning and maintenance staff. "It's a full nuclear alert," the Captain said grimly to Seymour as he leaned out the window. "One second everything was fine, the next, every damn light on the panel was red." "Right, get your crew clear," Seymour said, "we'll handle this." "Shouldn't you have more ERV's?" Seymour looked blank. "Emergency Response Vehicles?" The Captain explained. "Oh that... no, not a good idea to risk more than one, not until we have an idea of the potential blast radius," Seymour felt quite proud of that last bit as the Captain seemed to turn green. "Right," Seymour said happily, "we'll take it from here." He slapped the door of the ERV and Lester drove them up to the boarding ramp. Donning their protective helmets, the pair of them climbed the boarding ramp into the steerage levels of the ship. "Why a cruise ship?" "SNIDE h-has problems w-with his sense of scale," Lester explained. "B-bigger is b-better as far as he's concerned." Lester stopped, looking at a map of the ship on the wall. It was, indeed, vast. "Go to the engine room, make sure it's clear of all staff," he told Seymour, "I'll get to the bridge and set course for the island." "W-what about the nuclear alert?" Seymour asked, wondering why he'd followed this lunatic this far. Lester simply gave him a look which lasted a while... "Oh," Seymour said, "that's us, or SNIDE, isn't it?" Lester nodded, then began jogging in the direction of the lifts. Seymour took the second lift and with a sense of pressure, as if he was going deep underground, he emerged into the grimy, gritty, oil-stained corridors of the HMS Harry King's engine chambers. The engine itself was an enormous sphere of magnetically contained fusing hyrdogen, supsended above the main chamber. Metre-thick cables leached power from it, feeding into the plasma converters and supplying the ship and its motors with power. It was all lost on Seymour who put up a hand to shield his eyes, "bloody bright," he muttered and began checking in the shadowy areas that marked the monitoring equipment for signs of life. "What you about then, boyo?" The voice was deep, rumbling and unapologetically Welsh. "Um, hello," Seymour felt himself becoming protectively more English, his usually well spoken voice going up a notch so that he sounded like a slightly strangled Penelope Keith. "We're the Emergency team," he said. "Had a wasted journey, haven't you? Got the little bugger, didn't I?" The overalled engineer said with a half-smile. "Little bugger?" Seymour winced and the engineer held up a clear plastic lunchbox in which an irate SNIDE could be seen thrashing and cursing in robot-speak. "I thought to myself: there's only one place where you could trip all the alerts at once isn't there? So I got my sonic super-mop, had that left over from my days on the SS Mark Twain didn't I? Didn't ask much as a third technician, did I? Just got on with it. Wouldn't be without my mop though, bless her. So I thought to myself: there's only one place it could all have gone wrong and when everyone else cleared out I stuck my mop in the tertiary relay conduit, didn't I?" "Did you?" Seymour asked, agog at this flagrant display of nationalist identity. "I did, found this litte beggar and put him in my lunch box. Shame really, there's a nice cheese toastie in there he's totally destroyed. Crumbs is all that's left, isn't it?" "Right, great, well time to go then, I need you to climb down the disembarkation ramp and join the crew on the tarmac," Seymour tried to be as authorative as possible. "Can't do that, can I? It's not a real emergency now is it? Got to keep an eye on the engine, else it might all go up in smoke, won't it?" "Listen Taffy!" Seymour's patience snapped, "I'm an Ambass... an emergency ... person and I'm telling you to get off this blasted ship. And give me that lunchbox!" "Dai." "What?" "Dai Evans. Deck Officer Dai Evans. Not Taffy." The Engineer looked hurt. "I'm sorry," Seymour began. "It's not much I ask, is it. Just some time with the engines, get it nice and shiny, keep it going for the fancy people up top. There's no call to start with the racist names is there? Taffy indeed, there's some names I could use for you, sonny, so don't go using names you might come to regret. That's all I'm saying." "I'm really very sorry, but please, it's very important that you give me that lunchbox and get off this ship as soon as possible." "Why's that then?" There was a pause as Seymnour struggled with this then finally: "We need the ship because her Majesty, Queen Brittany is in danger and we need to rescue her." Deck Officer Dai Evans squinted thoughtfully at Seymour, "right, you'll need an engineer then won't you?" "What?" "I'll help you, don't worry, you can trust old Dai." "You believe me?" "Why not? If you were lying you'd make up something better, wouldn't you?" "I would? Yes, I suppose I would." "Get up those stairs, I'll get her warmed up for you, Mister, won't I?" "Thanks, Dai." "No problem, and do you have a name?" "Seymour, Seymour Niples." "Well that's nice, isn't it. Hey, here's a thought: did you know your name sounds a bit like See More Nipp..?" "Yes! Thank you Dai," Seymour grabbed the lunchbox and turned, running for the lift. Up on the bridge, Seymour tossed the plastic box to Lester who, puzzled, opened it and was confronted by a cheese-covered, livid SNIDE. "How'd it go?" "Fine, wasn't it?" Seymour said. "Was it?" "What?" "Sorry?" There was an awkward pause then Lester shrugged and turned to the controls. "We have full power, clearing moorings." On the tarmac of the repair dock the Captain could only look on as his ship majestically rose from the ground, shedding supply lines and docking clamps. Its engines roared and it powered away swiftly into the sky. The Captain stared after it for a minute or so then: "Bugger." <Part 2: The here and now to be provided in a bit>Are you a PC?  Upload your PC story and show the world Click Here!