Cassandra: Whoops

Who: Cassandra
Where: Deep in the bowels of the prison planet
When: About a week before the S.C.S. Huddersfield sent out its distress signal
<snip>
"I'll explain later the lights are about to..."
Force fields failed and everything momentarily went black over the entire prison
complex before emergency lighting flickered to life, casting the complex in a
hellish red light
The Lizardmen shrieked and charged
</snip>
Taking a step or two backwards, eyes widening in horror at the sheer number of
the charging creatures, Cass turned heel to sprint the short distance back
towards the vent access chamber, and vaulted through the airlock door before
turning to urge Sally to hurry
The words, however, died on her lips when she saw the woman inundated by the
swarm of Lizardmen; the hybrid fought with frightening ferocity, but was
quickly overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the lizards, bearing her over in a
frenzied, screeching ball of twisting flesh
Leaning back through the chamber doorway, Cass hammered the ball of her fist on
the door control, hoping to seal herself into the chamber and buy a bit of time,
but to no avail: the power grid outage having disabled the door
"T-minus fourteen minutes to caldera detonation" a cold, hard woman's voice rang
out through the stations PA system
Panicking, she turned and pulled the Mime tool from her pocket with shaking
hands and aimed it at the main vent access door set in the opposite wall, hoping
against hope that it might actually even work on dead circuits
"C'mon c'mon c'mon" Cass whispered, her voice only barely audible above the
devices warbling hum and the wailing shrieks out in the darkened control room
behind her
After what seemed like an age, the locking mechanism finally gave way and
shuddered to life, the door hissing open to reveal a narrow vertical shaft with
corroded ladder rungs set into the opposite wall
"Yes" Cass cried, but her jubilation was cut short by a loud, sibilant hiss,
which made her glance involuntarily over her shoulder in fear at the massive
Lizardman framing the doorway
She bolted through the access door and leapt the short distance across the vent
shaft onto the ladder, to begin climbing as fast as she physically could as the
Lizardman let out an inhuman shriek and barrelled after her, clearing the vent
and landing on the ladder before Cass had barely managed to climb more than a
couple of metres.
Whipping a clawed hand up, the creature grabbed at Cass' leg, but she was too
fast for it, hauling herself up the ladder more than a metre at a time,
thankful, for what must have been the first time, of her current profession and
the physical strength and agility that pole dancing actually afforded
"T-minus thirteen minutes to caldera detonation"
Scrambling up to the top of the ladder in blind panic, Cass hauled herself up
into a long straight tunnel which sloped upwards into the red lit gloom,
immediately rolling onto her back to whip her legs out of the reach of the
Lizardman, and trying to scramble backwards away from the ladder
She didn't get the chance to move far before the creatures head reared up out of
the shaft, closely followed by a clawed hand which grabbed for Cass, trying to
snag her by the ankle and drag her back downward
Panicking, she kicked hard, landing a lucky strike on the Lizardmans head, and
rattling the creature into a dazed concussion; it waved its arm weakly at her,
trying to either grab at Cass again, or to fend off the next blow, she wasn't
sure
Another couple of heavy, panicky kicks finally succeeded in dislodging the
creature, smacking its head off the back wall of the shaft, before sending it
careening downward out of sight as Cass scrambled up onto her feet to sprint up
the tunnel
"T-minus twelve minutes to caldera detonation"
Another couple of breathless minutes ticked past with Cass having covered a good
five or six hundred meters before the air rang with the echoes of the hissing
screams and barks of what sounded like dozens of perusing Lizardmen
Her lungs already burning from her exertions and regretfully too many
cigarettes, Cass urged herself on in the vain hope that the creatures would give
up the chase if they didn't actually manage to catch sight of their quarry
"T-minus ten minutes to caldera detonation"
Five more minutes ticked past, by which point Cass' legs were starting to ache
badly from running up the tunnels incline, her breath in the noticeably colder
air, coming in hot ragged gasps that were all but drowned out by the shrieks of
the following Lizardmen which seemed to be getting closer by the minute
Chancing a glance back over her shoulder, Cass was dismayed to see a distant
collection of hunched, dark shapes running after her, perhaps only a hundred or
so metres further down the tunnel
Had she the breath to do so, she would have cursed
"T-minus five minutes to caldera detonation"
Another minute of increasingly painful running slipped past before Cass skidded
to a halt at the lip of a vertical shaft sunk into the floor in front of her;
she knew she could jump to where the tunnel continued on the opposite side, but
to do so, she needed time to catch her breath and a good run up – two things,
with the Lizardmen quickly gaining ground, that she knew she didn't have the
luxury of
A barking hiss suddenly sounded from behind her, making her turn, shocked at how
quickly they had closed the distance, to regard the group of Lizardmen prowling
predatorily towards her
Gasping for breath, Cass inched backwards towards the edge of the pit, her eyes
darting briefly downward into the shafts murky gloom and then back to the
Lizardmen, weighing her bleak choices carefully
"T-minus four minutes to caldera detonation"
The lead lizard, a big brutish looking creature, moved forward, barring its
teeth and letting out a long, low hiss as it readied itself for a pounce
Heart pounding, her eyes wide with fear, Cass tried to prepare herself for the
inevitable when the Lizardmen at the back of the pack started screaming, their
ruined bodies flying through the air trailing blood and gore, as a
battle-scarred Sally hammered into them
Looking back at the carnage, the lead lizard gave a howl of frustration and
threw itself forward at Cass, grasping for her with its knife-like claws but
mercifully never making contact, as one of Sally's forelimbs spiked it in mid
air, viciously smacking it down to the ground in a wild shriek of pain
Cass had never been so glad to see another creature killed
"Oh, smegging hell Sally" she gasped "Am I glad to see yahrh..."
Sally had whipped an armoured claw up to clamp it around Cass' throat and lift
her off the floor, pinning her up against the tunnel wall
"Thanks for the help back there, sweetheart!" she hissed
"I... Smeg... I... arg" Cass choked, struggling in Sally's iron grip
"Just why was it that you didn't shift, and wade in to help me out?"
"I... s... mm..."
Black spots were beginning to dance in front of Cass' eyes as Sally slowly
increased the pressure of her grip on Cass' throat
"Well?" Sally breathed, leaning in closely enough for Cass to take in the full
alien horror of the hybrids inhumanly blood red eyes and the vicious mandibles
bulging within her distended mouth
"T-minus three minutes to caldera detonation"
"N... not a splice like... you!" Cass gasped, her feet kicking vainly in the
air, trying to lever herself up out of Sally's vise like grip
"Not...?" Sally's eyes widened in surprise, and she reluctantly dropped Cass to
the floor
"Someone must really hate you to have sent you down here with us splices!"
"Just lucky" Cass coughed, gasping for air on her hands and knees on the floor
"Thanks for saving my life there"
"Bah. Because of you, we're going to smegging die anyway!" Sally snarled,
"Thanks for killing me!"
"No no no!" Cass blurted, scrambling to her feet "Everything is under control, I
promise you! That AI would have killed us anyway, so I had to kill the smegging
thing - it was the only choice: with it dead, we at least stand a chance, but if
it was still alive it would have killed us long before now, believe me! This
tunnel vents straight to the surface; we just need to get the hell out. Now!"
"T-minus two minutes to caldera detonation"
Without a word, Sally whipped around on her many legs, and snatched Cass up like
a rag doll, before clearing the vent shaft from a standing jump and sprinting up
the tunnel, her many insect legs hammering a staccato beat as she tore up the
tunnel
"T-minus one minute to caldera detonation"
"There!" Cass yelled pointing at the rapidly approaching point of daylight ahead
"See that!?"
Sally said nothing, merely continuing on at the same terrifying speed, the walls
blurring past until at last they finally shot out of the vent tunnel into the
snowscape beyond
"Critical caldera pressure reached."
A dull rumbling quake shook the earth while Sally arced around away from the
vent mouth in time to avoid the blast of superheated volcanic gasses that
belched out into the cold air, finally skidding to a halt in front of a small
group of Mimes standing guard around Cassandra, Cass' other-dimensional self,
who stood imperiously amidst them, swathed in a billowing long black coat
Sally hissed, and threw Cass roughly to the floor to step backwards and look
from her to Cassandra and back again, an angry, perplexed expression playing
across her face
"Easy" Cassandra warned "You do not need to do this!"
"You!" Sally hissed at Cassandra, rearing and bringing her talons up "You evil
butcher!"
"No, don't!" Cassandra and Cass both shouted in unison, but it was too late;
Sally lunged forward to attack but didn't even manage to cover more than a metre
towards Cassandra before three quarters of her skull blew out, showering
steaming red black gore across the snow
The hybrids momentum carried her forward, ploughing her corpse down into the
snow, coming to rest a few short metres away from Cassandra's feet, as Cass
struggled upright in the snow
"Cortex bomb" Cassandra smiled without humour "Most of the prisoners have them,
but don't even realise it; nanotech assemblers added to their food."
"Smeg's sake woman" Cass shouted, looking down at the ruin of Sally's head "What
did you have to do that for!?"
"I'd have been dead by now if I didn't" the other woman replied, as she
proffered Cass a warm coat
Cass took a shaky breath and tried to calm herself enough to allow a more
rational dialogue with someone who, if she wasn't careful, could have her killed
on a whim
"Ok" she breathed, struggling forward through the snow to accept the coat and to
shrug her way into it "Point taken"
"We both told her not to, didn't we?"
Grudgingly Cass had to concede this, but chose not to voice her concerns about
why Sally had reacted the way she did to seeing Cassandra; she was just pleased
that she personally wore her hair long and not in the rather severe bob that
Cassandra wore hers; otherwise Sally might have just reacted the same on first
sight of her, and killed her without question
"I'm sorry about endangering your life there with that AI" Cassandra started
Cass rolled her eyes
"Yeah, I imagined this was likely to be part of some plan of yours"
Cassandra smiled apologetically
"Everything is under control. Everything. There are plans within plans within
plans..."
"I'm sure" Cass muttered tiredly, suddenly wishing she was a long way from
Sally's corpse "Shall we go?"
"Good call, it'd take too long to explain everything anyway. Suffice to say that
it all went nicely enough, and that you and what's left of the Blue Dwarf crew
will be leaving here soon; sensors confirm that the wormhole drive has been spun
up, although to be frank, I've no idea how, but regardless: it's good for me;
and the exterior remotes seem to suggest that your Captain will be signalling
the withdrawal before too long"
"Whoa, wait, wait! What do you mean 'What's left of the crew'?"
"Well..." Cassandra began apologetically "You killed that AI quicker than I
anticipated, and while we had a good percentage of them evacuated in preparation
for the grid going down, the scum that Seymour dictated we store here instead of
just killing them, escaped and massacred quite a few of them when the lights
went out"
"Aw, smeg" Cass breathed
"Yeah" Cassandra agreed "I'd guess that most of the rest of the survivors will
have been killed by the power system going volcanic, but any that are left who
managed to escape and haven't made it to the Blue Dwarf yet, will probably die
when your Captain activates the wormhole drive and screws planet."
"Smegging hell!" Cass near-shouted "We've got to..."
Her words petered out when she saw the expression on Cassandra's face
"There's no chance is there...?"
"No; and I'm somewhat surprised that you're even concerned"
Cass closed her eyes and silently massaged her brow
"Frankly, I'm not at all concerned about their lives; it's just that if the
Captain finds out that I'm responsible for the loss of what...?"
"Heh" Cassandra smiled a little nervously, and looked down at the ground to
shuffling her feet "Around... fifty percent of the crew?"
"Fifty percent!!?" Cass screeched
"Aw, don't worry, he won't find out that you had anything to do with it"
Cassandra soothed, ignoring Cass' expression of shock and disbelief
"Besides" she continued brightly "If he does, you can always kill him..."
"I... dunno" Cass started "He's a good tipper, and besides: He's a nice guy..."
"Ha! I get you!" Cassandra smirked, striding off "C'mon. We've got to go"
They walked through the snow in silence for around five minutes, flanked on
either side by their Mime escort until they crested the brow of a hill, to see
the Blue Dwarf laid on the valley floor beneath them. Beyond that, Cass could
just see hundreds of people and Hymenoptera engaged in what looked like a rather
jolly snowball fight. It was with a jolt that she realised that there were far
fewer people there than there should be
"Down there" Cassandra said unnecessarily as she started down the slope
"How the smeg did you park a Dwarf class starship there?" Cass asked, following
in her wake
"Dunno. Seymour did it - he's quite the ace pilot when he wants to be; and a
legend between the sheets too! How's the Seymour from your dimension? He looks
pretty much the same apart from that lovely devil-may-care moustache..."
"I... don't know. I've never met him in person; although I do know that he's got
good taste in soft furnishings and antiques, but other than that: I haven't met
anyone other than health and safety officers who speak highly of him"
"Huh. Sounds like he needs a few Bacardi Breezer's to loosen up" Cassandra
stopped and turned to face Cass "Let me give you a word of advice though: If
he's anything like my Seymour: What he lacks in 'stature', shall we say, he more
than makes up for in imagination, enthusiasm and stamina! Give him a try, you
might be pleasantly surprised"
"Umm... Yeah..."
They continued down into the valley in silence after that, and before long
arrived at the Dwarf, towering above them like a blue cliff
"Here's where we part" Cassandra motioned towards a nearby open airlock "I think
we'll have that hyperbaric wrench back first though, shall we?"
Cass grimaced, having hoped that Cassandra might just have forgotten about the
Mime tool
"It's just too powerful an artefact by far" Cassandra continued, holding her
hand out "Can't let something like that go skipping off into another dimension,
can I?"
Reluctantly Cass fished it out of her pocket and handed it over
"That thing came in bloody useful" she began "I've been wondering how the whole
Mime thing works anyway. I mean, how does it affect reality like it does? Some
sort of collective neuro-kinetic quantum manipulation, or something like that?"
"Gold star for you" Cassandra smiled "If you were anyone else, I'd be impressed,
but I honestly didn't expect anything less from you."
"That's incredibly advanced technology though" Cass continued "What did you do,
construct a Matrioshka brain to come up with the means of manipulating reality
like that?"
"That would be a cool way to do it, but no, we just found some Archiver tech,
and worked with that. Once I had reverse engineered an interface mechanism, it
wasn't difficult to activate the device and tune it towards human neurology;
after that, it was just a matter of accumulating more and more slave
consciousnesses to create an ever greater impact on reality"
"Neat concept; so how does that explain the stripy jumpers and white faces?"
"Just a bit of colour from me; after I left home, I spent a few years in
France... How about you?"
Something beeped wildly and Cassandra pulled a mimed, invisible something, out
of a pocket and stared anxiously at it
"Got to go. That wormhole drive has just been activated"
Cassandra and her mime escort turned and ran a few metres across the snow before
jogging up some invisible stairs
"Been a pleasure" Cassandra shouted from the top step before she turned and
ducked to run inside whatever it was that the steps led up towards
Cass in turn ran to the airlock as the ground around her started shaking
violently, only stopping to look back and wave in acknowledgement as the airlock
hissed closed and Cassandra and her Mimes shot skyward in their invisible
shuttle
"Smegs sake" Cass breathed, watching them go "Fifty percent...?"
She turned to trudge towards Parrotts
<ooc> Ok, so we're a few hands down; doesn't have to be exactly half the crew,
Cassandra's estimate could have been wrong, but who's missing and how's this
going to affect life onboard?
Sorry about the length too</ooc>