Cassandra: like a kipper, all at sea

Who: Cassandra, Mr. Butler, and a couple of other crewmembers
Where: In a section of the ruined Blue Dwarf
When: A few hours before the singularity virus was detonated
<ooc>a back post for anyone interested in how the instructions for the singularity virus were retrieved</ooc>
<snip>
"Tada!" announced the blonde, "Here we are! Somewhere around here, there's a functioning Blue Midget. Grab an armload of weapons, and then fly it over to Aquileia. There's a boat near there with the instructions for the singularity virus on it. Off you go!"
</snip>
Cass glanced around the hangar, spotting the miraculously undamaged Blue Midget almost at once - it was the one still standing in its anchor couplings instead of lying in a twisted, mangled pile at one end of the hangar
"Can you fly one of those?" Cass asked Mr. Butler, "'cause I haven't a smegging clue..."
The big man just grunted in reply and began striding over towards the other side of the hangar, leaving Cass standing there none the wiser. Shrugging she wandered over towards where the two Dwarfers, a similarly attired man and woman, were trying to pry the weapons locker open
"Uh, Hi. Wanna try one of these?" she began, fanning out the key cards the monk had given her
The woman, a slim blonde with long hair, jerked and span around to face her, eyes wide with terror
"DON'T SHOOT!" she shrieked
"Woah! Steady on..." Cass took a step backwards
The man, a tall slavic looking bloke, placed a soothing arm around the woman's shoulders
"S'ok" he murmured a couple of times, calming her down somewhat before he addressed Cass "'Scuse that. My friend here's a little highly strung today, what with the crash and all the death and all; you know how it is..."
Cass had to admit that she did indeed know how it was: the dozens of crunchy or smeary corpses they had encountered on the way here had been a little distressing to say the least - bits of one of them were still wedged under her nails, and she suspected that the stuff that had splashed up her legs earlier on, was way too organic in origin for comfort
"My name's Ivan" said the man, "And this is Alison"
Cass inclined her head "Cassandra; and the big man over there is Mr. Butler. Nice red jumpers by the way." she nodded at their matching red jersey and black trouser outfits as a loud, grinding crash echoed through the hangar making Alison squeal and bury her face in Ivan's chest
Machinery shrieked and clanked for a few minutes, building up to a rending crescendo that left Alison curled on the floor in a quivering foetal position as the hanger doors slowly ground open above them revealing a dark, bruised looking skyscape
Mr. Butler silhouetted occasionally by atmospheric showers of sparks from shorting conduits above, strode across the hangar towards them, wiping his hands on a rag
"We should move. The emergency power will fail soon" he growled
Cass stepped over Alison's prone form, trying to ignore her panicky and constantly repeated litany of "We're going to die", as she slid the first of the key cards into the weapons locker maglock mechanism. She was rewarded seconds later with a loud buzz, prompting another whimper from Alison, and the satisfying sound of the doors securing bolts sliding back into their housings and the locker hissed open, revealing a treasure trove of bazookoid and laser weapons.
"Ahh" Cass sighed, reaching into the locker "just what I need..."
She pulled a flight suit and a pair of boots out, then frowning and pursing her lips, she grabbed a couple of laser rifles which she slung over one shoulder before picking up a few pistols for good measure
"Right. I'm set"
Butler turned and started walking towards the Blue Midget, leaving Cass to glance down at where Ivan was crouched attempting to calm Alison down again. His eyes met hers
"You're not gonna just leave us here are you?"
"I..."
Cass looked at Alison: Here was a pathetic loser who was even weaker and more panicky than she was. Cassandra supposed that she should feel at least a little compassion for the other woman, but since she recognised far too much of herself in her, and given the fact that she loathed herself, Alison frankly disgusted her - there was no way in Hell that she wanted to babysit this pathetic snivelling bint. She made a move to go.
"You can't just leave us here!" Ivan said forcefully
Cass stopped. It would be a mercy to kill them both now, she reasoned; after all someone like Butler wasn't going to tell, and it might just get back to Le Souteneur that she wasn't to be messed with...
"Grab some weapons and get in the midget" she sighed "We've the universe to save..."
Who was she kidding..?
The flight to Aquileia in northern Italy took just over an hour; the last twenty minutes of which Cass spent in the cramped ships head, trying to ineffectually scrub bits of corpse and other assorted filth off her with scented wipes and small bars of complimentary soap. In the end she just gave up and zipped the flight suit up over the whole mess and, as the ship juddered alarmingly, emerged from the head smelling vaguely of dead people, filth, camomile, and aloe vera.
Nodding to Ivan and Alison, Cass breezed past them to slump into the chair next to Mr. Butler who was sat hunched over the flight controls.
"How's it going?"
"We'll be there in a bit." he replied, "That woman got anything else to say about where we can find what we're looking for?"
"Yeah. The instructions are apparently encoded in a shield somehow, and we've even got a map showing us where it is. How's the weather out there?"
"Not good"
"I've a bad feeling about this..." Alison moaned in a low voice
Cass glanced over at the other woman, and idly wondered if she shouldn't have just shot her earlier
"We're here." snarled Butler, guiding the midget down out of the stormy sky towards a tiny wooden boat moored in a cove against the driving wind and rain.
Settling a comms kit into her ear, Cass took a deep breath and popped the midgets hatch, her hair and clothes immediately whipping wildly around her, buffeted by the storm, as the door whined open. For all of Alison's moaning and bleating, Cass suspected that she might well have a point: the weather out there was foul, and they had no idea what was actually awaiting them down there in the boat bobbing about on the foam capped waves below; worse still, Mr. Butler, the one person Cass actually wanted along, was the only one who could fly the midget and had to remain onboard to provide emergency evac on the off-chance it was needed.
Sighing, Cass checked the two laser pistols that she had elected to arm herself with for the last time, and gazed silently downwards at the wildly pitching boat getting nearer and nearer as the midget howled down out from the stormy sky
Butler guided the midget to within two metres of boats deck before Cass jumped, landing hard and immediately losing her footing on the slick surface; she rolled upright in time to see Ivan and Alison, both armed with bazookoids, jumping seconds later, Alison somehow mastering herself sufficiently to allow for this sort of stupidity - either that or she just didn't fancy being left alone with Mr. Butler; it was just too bad that she landed awkwardly on top of her bazookoid, and triggered a discharge that exploded point blank, blasting a hole in the deck and tearing her body in half
The woman had just enough time to look vaguely surprised before the light faded from her eyes and the remaining top half of her lifeless corpse slid wetly from the pitching deck into the sea
Ivan screamed like a girl, while Cass just sat there mouth agape, unable to tell if the droplets hitting her face were just rain or tiny, wet, meaty pieces of what had until recently been Alison.
Fighting hard to control her breathing, she scrambled upright, staring wildly around as her adrenaline kicked in, as usual, seconds too late for the party, leaving Cass feeling shaky and nauseous, her breath whistling through her chattering teeth while Ivan vomited noisily over the boats handrail.
Taking couple of deep gulps of air, Cass shakily pulled the little media player out from one of her flight suits pockets and thumbed the map of the boat open - they had a job to do here, and concentrating on doing that rather than on what she had just witnessed would be easier by far.
A moment or two passed with her staring blankly at the screen and blinking bloody water from her eyes passed before she managed to pull herself together sufficiently to try and figure out where she needed to go to get the damn shield or icon or whatever it was, and she stumbled across the deck to slap Ivan hard across the back of his head and pull him, sobbing, up from the hand rail
"Get your shit together man! We've this piss-poor universe to save!" she yelled above the storm
Ivan stared numbly at her, so she slapped him again, with little effect other than to make feel mildly guilty about slapping someone who had obviously been through quite a lot today
"Hey..!" he managed
"Follow me" Cass snapped, motioning towards the hole in the deck that Alison's abortive attempt at boarding had created - the shield was down there somewhere
In the end, it only took a few minutes to locate the shield, secured to a wall in a tiny room belowdecks in what appeared to be an eerily empty ship; Cass figured that the crew were maybe either hiding or had decided to weather the storm ashore - either way it suited her nicely: the whole "Look! A space trollop!" reaction that she seemed to provoke with these backward cretins was beginning to wear a little thin.
Cassandra and Ivan stared for a moment at the shield: It had some sort of goats skull design embossed on the front of it, which made Cass feel vaguely uneasy, although exactly why, she couldn't quite say. Shrugging she stepped forward and unhooked the thing from the wall.
"THIEF!" a voice yelled
Cass spun around just in time to see Ivan catch an axe blow to his neck, felling him in one; his blood fountaining up over the ceiling and walls as he dropped, spastically twitching to the floor in an ever growing dark pool of his own gore
Cass eyed his killer, a burly middle aged man, covered in scars
"I'll teach you to lay your filthy trollop hands on the Lionhearts shield", the man smiled; he turned his head and shouted down the corridor outside the room "My Liege! There's naught but a girl here now!"
Cass didn't need any more encouragement and just shot him with the her laser pistol, watching with satisfaction as the beam vaporised a two centimetre hole through his ribcage, cooking his lungs and heart in an instant. The man clutched vainly at the wound and keeled slowly over to splash down in the slick of blood covering the floor
In the meantime, judging from the sounds of commotion coming from further down the corridor, Cassandra judged that things were about to get ropey for her very quickly, so slinging the shield over her back, she grabbed Ivan's bazookoid out from the pool of blood it was lying in and darted out into the corridor before her budding assailants managed to get close enough to trap her in the room
"THERE SHE IS!"
Panicking she wheeled around and fired the bazookoid off down the corridor, its charge blowing a large hole in the wall, showering the cramped space in charred splinters and filling the air with smoke. Cass fired another couple of shots off for good measure and turned tail to sprint down the corridor and up a steep set of stairs at its end
Coughing with the exertion and wishing that she had never started smoking, she banged out through a hatch at the top of the stairs back into the storm and onto the rain slicked deck, where she scanned the skies for any sign of the midget
"Butler!" she shrieked into the comms kit "Butler! Where the smeg are you!?"
Another hatch at the other end of the deck banged open, disgorging several heavily armed, big men, prompting Cass to fire wildly in their general direction, and destroying large aftward sections of the boat
"BUTLER!!!"
Cass backed off as far as she could go towards the bow of the vessel
"BUTLER!!!"
It was tough to see what was going on further down towards the other end of the deck what with all the rain and smoke, but Cass just knew that what survivors there were, were going to be rushing her at any moment
"BUTLER!!! FOR SMEGS SAKE!" Cass was nearly in tears with desperation now
An arrow whistled out of the darkness, and caught her in her left shoulder, causing her to drop the bazookoid which slid across the pitching deck and rattled down into the sea
"Ah, shit!" she groaned, fumbling for one of her pistols as the scene around her was suddenly illuminated from above by the Blue Midgets landing lights
"You took your smegging time!" she screeched into the comms kit
More arrows whistled out of the darkness as Mr. Butler bought the blue midget down hard onto the boats deck, positioning the it between Cass and her would be murderers; She spent no time sprinting towards the open hatch and in seconds they were back on their way ascending into the sky, leaving the burning, slowly sinking boat behind them.
Mr. Butler set the autopilot on and removed the arrow from her shoulder after he had piloted the midget above the storm. The wound stung like hell but he assured Cass it was non-fatal as he wound a bandage over it
Unbidden, the little media player chirped to life in Cassandra's pocket. With a groan, she pulled it out; the blonde woman was talking again.
"Well, thanks for that" she beamed, "Someone had to make sure that the Lionhearts ship sank en route back to England. Don't worry about the shield by the way - there's no instructions anywhere on the thing; I've encoded them on this player for you instead, so now you've held up your side of the bargain, you can just pass them on to whoever puts the singularity virus together. Rufus I believe his name is..."
Cass thumbed the player off
"Smegging bitch..." she breathed