RE: [JMC_Blue_Dwarf] Lester and SNIDE in: Son of the Beast of Caerbannog

<SNIP>
As the lift droned on, Lester became further worried about the stop off coming up.
Suddenly the lift stopped and the doors opened revealing a horde of armed and armoured
officers carrying deadly-looking weapons.
</SNIP>
 
Lester glanced to SNIDE, then slowly raised his hands. The guards, as one man, took a step
back, adopted a firing stance and trained their weapons on him. A dozen little red laser
dots wavered over Lester's decimated dinner jacket.
 
"State your authorisation code!"
 
"I - I -I.."
 
"Authorisation code not recognised!" The weapon power packs whined with power.
 
"I d-don't have one..." Lester spluttered.
 
"Take him in," the leader ordered, then the guard next to him tapped him on the shoulder.
 
"What?"
 
"I think you should look at this surveillance footage sir," the guard said with a hint of
nerves. "Index code 4-3-5-5-8-B."
 
There was a pause, Lester guessed that the Guards had all accessed the footage and were
playing it back in their armoured helmet visors. The silence was awkward and Lester noticed
a consistency in the responses from the guards as each one reached the various points in the
footage. First they would appear angry, fiddling with the triggers on their photon-rifles,
then they seemed uncertain, finally the laser-sight dots would waver from Lester and they
began to share uncertain glances.
 
"That can't be him," the leader eventually said.
 
"Just look at it, that's the guy."
 
The leader looked to his squad, "we HAVE been called to an emergency," he said, trying to
inject confidence in his tone.
 
"Yeah," said the next in command, "floor 388, come at once."
 
"So, if we just wait for the next lift..." the leader said.
 
"Oh no," Lester said suddenly, his hands still up, "I'm going that way. Why don't we share?
There's loads of room."
 
"That's ok sir... it's only an... emergency."
 
"N-nonsense," Lester managed. "Everyone in." He finally lowered his hands.
 
Clearly shame-faced, despite being hidden by his helmet, the guards trooped meekly into the
lift cage with Lester. They stood on all sides, a wall of beefy armour. They fidgeted, like
school boys before the headmaster.
 
"Floor 388, p-please," Lester stammered, quite unable to hide his grin.
 
"Yes sir," the lift said, "right away sir." Clearly he'd watched the same footage and Lester
could guess what it was: the camera footage of the other Lester crushing skulls and kicking
collective guard arse from earlier.
 
The lift rocketed upwards and the guards tried to keep upright without actually touching
Lester: difficult in the confined space.
 
The doors opened, the guards fell over each other, trying to get out and Lester crept after
them.
 
The chamber was enormous and watched from above by a wide, panoramic gallery. Lester peered up and could make out Seymour, Robo-Dai and the Queen. He gave a timid wave, but they didn't see him. Spread out before him was a wide circle of steel, placed firmly against a wall and trailing cables which snaked across the chamber to the various computers. Contained within the steel ring was a pulsing, multi-coloured wormhole.
 
"Coooooool," Lester sighed. Around him the Guards were taking up positions, each one trying
not to be the one near Lester. The wormhole throbbed, then disgorged a corpse which twitched awkwardly on the ground for a second or two. Another flash and another body dumped beside it. Finally the wormhole convulsed again and the last body fell out with its teammates.
 
"Guard platoon, incursion pattern delta!" The Guards took up positions, raised their weapons
and watched as the wormhole quivered again. "Incoming!"
 
The creature landed lightly on four feet and glared, red-eyed at the weapons surrounding it.
"What the smeg?" The Guard leader straightened up and scowled angrily at the wormhole-
traveller. "It's a smegging rabbit!"
 
It was. Cute, cuddly, white and gently hopping and gambolling around in front of the
wormhole.
 
"Gaston," the Guard leader gestured to his second in command, "go contain that thing. The
geeks will want to look at it. Probably escaped from one of the labs."
 
Even as Gaston stepped forward, Lester was running towards them, his math open in a long
drawn out: "nooooooooo!"
 
No-one could really have said exactly what happened. The rabbit moved, a white blur, in a
diagonal for the guard's neck. Then the Guard fell backwards while his head fell forwards.
Both splatting on to the ground about the same time. Lester skidded to a halt behind the
line of guards, then started to back pedal.
 
"Leave it! Get back! G-get out!"
 
"Kill the smegging thing!" The Guard Leader dropped his rifle by his side where it dangled
from his hip by its strap, then he reached to his hip and drew a holo-sword which flashed
into brilliant life. The other guards did the same thing and charged forward en-masse.
Twelve red-armoured forms converging on a single white-fluffy rabbit.
Blood sprayed the walls as the rabbit fought back. The Guard leader fell first, then two
others in quick succession. Limbs and heads bounced around the chamber and Lester could feel bile rising in his throat. He turned and ran for the nearest door but the lift had long
since fled down to the lower floors. He found another entrance which opened as he
approached, disgorging more red-armoured guards into the wormhole chamber.
The doorway took Lester to a spiral stair which he bounded up and found himself in the
gallery overlooking the wormhole chamber. Seymour, Brittany and Dai were grimmacing at the
carnage alongside Professor Hasenbaker who was making notes. Seymour clutched baby Alota
close to him and they all gawped in horror at the scene below.
 
"They've got the cute little Bunny!" Brittany howled in fear.
 
They had. Although his armour around his chest was in shreds, a TransMed Security Guard had got hold of the rabbit in both hands. It thrashed ferociously in his grip, trying to sink
its teeth into his gloved fingers. Another guard, a serious gash across his helmet, raised
his holo-sword and held it level with the rabbit's neck.
 
"Don't let them kill it!" Brittany demanded of Seymour. He just returned a helpless shrug
as, with satisfied precision, the guard skewered the rabbit. The rabbit's thrashing got slower and slower as blood pooled around the other guard's fingers, then its head dropped and the Guard let it fall to the ground with a splat.
 
Brittany turned to bury her head in someone's shoulder, but Seymour was holding Alota, Dai
was part coke-can and Professor Hasenbaker was grinning in a sinister fashion. She turned to
the other person in the room and screamed at the sight of a dead man. Still, at least she
wasn't about to burst into tears.
 
"Look!" Dai shouted, pointing at the wormhole.
 
It was pulsing again, its colours whirling and swirling manically. The guards backed up from
it, raising their rifles defensively when, with a syrupy noise, another rabbit landed on the
ground. It twitched its nose and ears, then sniffed at the form of the dead rabbit. This
rabbit was a sort of patchy brown in colour and its eyes a deep, dark black. It regarded the
amassed Guards with first one eye, then the other. Another sticky plop noise and a second
rabbit joined the first, this one a uniform grey. A third rabbit landed beside them, then a
fourth, fifth, sixth...
 
"Good smegging God," Seymour breathed as the floor began to fill with mass of lethal ears,
savage buck teeth and cute cotton-wool tails. "There's so many of them..."
 
"I think this place is going to get very messy, very soon," Brittany said, backing away from
the window, "and uh, since our dead friend is up and walking around ("Hello," Lester waved.)
 we should probably make tracks."
 
"Yes... good idea," Seymour seemed distracted, but he followed Brittany, Dai and Lester out
the handy fire-exit.
 
They emerged after several flights of stairs onto the roof-top.
 
"No guards," Seymour remarked.
 
"No, they've all been called down to 388 haven't they?" Dai said.
 
"There's a ship," Brittany observed, "can any of you losers fly?"
 
"Uh, I have a pilot's licence..." Seymour said and led the way, behind them a series of
clangs and clunks indicated that Dai Evans was shedding his robotic suit.
 
The ship was a small, inter-planetary shuttle. They climbed in but couldn't find the keys
until Brittany checked behind the sun visor. She handed them to Seymour and they started the engines.
 
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