Cake or death?

<snip>
"Well, Cassandra, you seem to have your head screwed on... more than most at least.." he shot a glance Dean-ward at this. "Do you have any other ideas?"
</snip>
If it wasn't for all the grime and blood smearing her face, you'd have been able to see Cass blush
Here was an Opportunity - and to think her stepmother always said she'd fail!
"Umm..." she began hesitantly "I... Well..."
She stopped to think: How basic a level should she pitch this? - Chrysler was a starship captain after all, so that should say something about his mental acuity; but in her bitter experience, the higher up the chain of command someone was in an organisation, the less they knew about anything, and the more they just needed their face pushing through a meat grinder
Captain Chrysler, it had to be said, was at the equivalent managerial level of the sort that were easily impressed by the slide transitions in certain presentation-type software packages; but from what Cass had heard about him in the past, it seemed as if he had risen to where he was by merit, rather than being a toadying lickspittle in dire need of the meat grinder treatment - that and he was always a generous tipper; so all in all, he was a bit of an awkward one...
Cassandra took a breath and opened her mouth to speak
"This is preposterous!" exploded Seymour "You cannot possibly be serious about canvassing this common little tramps opinion? I mean, just look at her! Every inch a vile, filthy, hussy! She couldn't even tell you the difference between demitasse and caviar spoons, let alone advise us on how best to get back onto the Blue Dwarf!"
Jay closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and slowly exhaled, mentally counting backwards from ten in an only moderately successful attempt at remaining calm
"Seymour..." he began
"I'm well aware of what I have to do for a living" Cassandra hissed "But believe it or not, I do have feelings Mr. Nipples, and more to the point, serious suggestions as to how we may achieve our aims, which is more, I might add, than you've so far managed to come up with!"
Seymour opened his mouth, and then shut it again; near apoplectic at this common tarts barefaced cheek
Jay turned back to the monitor
"Do continue" he smiled
"Well..." Cass began, wondering uneasily if she had just made an enemy of the ambassador "Holly uses sensors and even the odd old fashioned camera for its weapons targeting, so we need to knock these out before we're going to be able to get near enough to land on the hull, right?"
"I'm fairly sure we should be able to cobble a very basic electronic warfare rig together out of a few starbug communication arrays - it won't be pretty and will probably burn out quickly enough, but with enough power, we should be able to effectively blind the AI on one approach vector for long enough for some cannon f..." Cass paused and smiled "Brave Volunteers, I mean, to land on the hull and gain access to the ships interior. Anyone with even a basic level of technological knowhow should be able to override one of the airlocks, or failing that, I guess they could always blow a hole in the hull by destabilising the containment field on one of the plasma weapons - messy but just as effective..."
"After that, I suggest it would be prudent to release a few nanoswarms programmed to kill Holly (although where you'd get those from I've no idea) - They *should* keep the AI busy enough to prevent too many casualties amongst our volunteers during the fight through the hordes of armed scutters they're likely encounter on their way to Hollys core to force a reboot; so a few phials of luck virus and an insectoid killing machine would probably be a great help..."
Cass paused to take a deep breath
"I was just going to suggest a similar plan myself" Seymour peevishly interjected
"Or..." Cass continued, scowling at Seymour "We could just return to Little Cheftonia, and see how far the Molopods hospitality extends at the behest of their new queen - We could just wait around in luxury while a tactical JMC IT support squad comes out to see to their hardware; there would be less chance of death and destruction all around, but it won't look so good on your record Captain"
Here she stopped talking and stared directly up into the camera
"So, what do you think?"
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