**Action** "The final plan"

**Action** "The final plan"
JMC Blue Dwarf
20/8/2100
 
The senior officers came to in the officer's lounge. The polymorph/ jigglypuff had long since dissapered. Captain Cannon and Commander Niples got up and saw that Harris had gone too.
 
"Right," said the Captain. "This is the last straw!"
Seymour was still amazed at how much the captain had changed since he had his incompetance sucked out.
Niples giggled.
"What are you laughing at?" demanded the Captain. "this is a serious situation, and I'm going to finish the job!"
"Sorry sir, its just that my sadness was sucked out- I can't help but to be happy. But my Affection for others was also sucked out, so I don't care about anything."
 
So your affection is gone, so that means you should be really bitter, but your sadness is also gone so you are happy- I don't understand any of this." said Captain Cannon. "lets just get rid of these damned polymorphs so we can continue with our mission."
 
"What is our mission again? (not that I care)" asked the giggling first officer.
"To find Red Dwarf you fool! But we need to pick up some new crewmembers first."
"Where from?"
"Proxima orbital poultry factory."
"ok, hehehehe. A chicken farm in space!"
Captain Cannon looked at him with a face which was as serious as stone. "The proxima orbital facility provides food to the entire sector, it is no laughing matter."
"ok Sir. hehehehe"
 
**************************
Later
 
Captain Cannon was in his office planning out a strategy to get rid of the polymorphs once and for all.
Smegg had told him that they could be killed by using microwaves. He suddenly had an idea and tapped his comm device on his desk. There was a ringing at the other end and then the voice of Lt. Smegg came on.
"Hello?"
"Smegg, could we somehow modify the Blue Dwarf's internal sensor array to send a serge of microwaves through the ship?"
"Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh...."
"...Therefore killing all polymorphs"
"The chief engineer thought for a moment, "But sir, that would expose the rest of the crew to the same radiation. And I don't feel like being cooked alive today."
"good point, never mind. Bye."
 
***********************************
Medical lab
 
Dr. Van Threk had her hands full, a lot of crewmembers kept coming to her with reports of lost emotions and dizzyness. Some even had bruises and cuts from a fight with the polymorph.
 
One poor soul had even been toasted when a polymorph had turned into a huge fire-breathing dragon on the promenade.
 
Aside from that she had managed to collect some scans on a polymorph. Lokking over the information she thought that it might be useful to the Captain, so forwarded the data to his office.
 
***********************************
 
Later
Captains office
 
Lt. Smegg barged through the door and walked proudly into the office.
"Don't you ever knock?" asked Cannon.
"Sorry sir, but I've lost my humility.
Cannon was puzzled for a second, trying to work out that had to do with it.
Smegg spoke again. "About what you were saying before, I think we can modify the internal sensor array to sweep the ship with microwaves, but the frequency we would have to set the microwaves to to kill the creatures would harm everyone else onboard as well.
 
Cannon held up the piece of paper from Dr. Van Threk showing the scans of the creature.
"We don't need to kill it, we just need to make it uncomfortable. This information shows that we could sweep the ship with low levels of microwaves and force the polymorph into one specific area..."
 
"We could start scanning from both ends of the ship and force them into the centre." Smegg stopped to look at the map on the captains wall. He pointed to an area directly in the middle of the ship.
"Here, in cargo bay 9. We can force them here."
 
Cannon looked at Smegg, he pointed a finger at him. "Make it so." he said.
The chief engineer scuttled off.
 
***************************************
Science lab
 
Captain cannon walked into the clean, white science lab. Many goggled eyes turned to look at him.
"erm, excuse me." he said, feeling a little out of place in the sterilised room. "I believe Mr. Albino wanted to see me."
 
A man walked towards him, his face was as white as his protective coat, Cannon assumed he didn't get out much. "Mr. Albino I presume?"
The man spoke with a slight German accent "Zat is correct Captain, I have just invented a weapon which I think may be of use to you."
He handed a bulky tubular object to the Captain, it had wires sticking out from all angles and a trigger at the bottom.
 
"Zis weapon will fire concentrated pulses of microwaves, if you use it on a polymorph it will turn the creature into jelly within seconds."
 
Cannon turned to the test-dunny on the far wall and fired the weapon, a large glowing pulse shot from the barrel of the weapon and hit the dummy with incredible accuracy. Cannon dived to the floor expecting it to explode.
The dummy of course remained unharmed.
 
"Well done captain," said Albino, helping the Captain to his feet. If that were a polymorph it would be dead by now."
"Cool" said Cannon.
 
*********************************
20 minutes later
Main Engineering
 
"Commencing microwave sweep now" said Chief engineer Smegg sat at his console, pressing buttons like mad.
"Sweeping front and rear sections of the ship"
 
The sweeps gradually closed in on the centre section of the ship, forcing the polymorphs that got in their way in only one direction- cargo bay 9.
 
The sweep made its way through the promenade, through engineering and through the drive room.
On the drive room Commander Niples was trying to remember how long that potted plant had been there. He watched as the microwaves scanned the plant and turned it into a small polymorph which turned and scuttled quickly to the centre of the ship to escape.
 
****************************
Cargo bay 9
 
Major Harris and a security team were ready and waiting for the polymorphs to enter the safe-zone. Security 'redshirts' were crouching behind cargo containers around the perimeter of the bay, ready to pop out and shoot as soon as the polymorphs entered.
 
Silence, the security team waited.
...and waited.
 
Then Harrid thought he heard something, it was a strange squenchy noise coming from outside. He waited a few seconds then decided to go and take a look. The Major told everyone else to stay where they were while he walked out of his cover into the middle of the cargo bay.
 
Holding his blaster out in front of him he quickly surveyed the cargo bay. It was dark, except for one light that shined down into the middle, plus a few lights spelling "exit" on the door. He looked up, the roof was so high that he couldn't even see it.
He cautiously made his way to the door to see if there were any polymorphs outside.
 
He pressed the button to open the door. Outside there was a foot, one with claws and warts and scales and ingrowing toenails. Above all, it was huge.
 
"urm..." panicked Harris. But it was too late for him to say anything else, the entire wall above him crashed down to the ground reveiling a huge red-skinned monster. The beast opened its huge mouth and roared horribly. Not seeing the small security chief between his legs the monster crashed through the rest of the wall and stepped into the cargobay. Every step causing vibrations through the entire deck and causing more rubble to fall, narrowly missing Harris.
 
Now the creature was in the light, the security officers saw that it resembled a huge spiny dinosaur, its long tail whipped around behind it as it turned to look around the cargobay.
 
Harris saw that everyone was still hiding behind the cargo crates.
"Shoot! Shoot Damnit!!!!" shouted Harris raising his weapon and firing energy blasts at the creature's behind.
Every other security officer followed Harris' example and began to fire at the monster. The energy pulses seemed tiny in comparison to the huge beast and barely even scratched it's thick hide.
The creature ducked his head to get closer to it's attackers and roared loudly.
 
Sergeant Jackson ran over to Harris and shouted "What the hell is that thing?"
"It's too big to be any of the polymorphs," shouted back Harris over the sound of weapons fire and annoyed screams from the creature. "they must have all merged together just like they did in the officer's lounge."
 
The security team had now fully surrounded the creature and was trying to knock it down. One Enterprising chap had managed to climb onto the creatures tail by jumping from a cargo container. The polymorph was now whipping its tail aroud so fast to get rid of him that he was catapulted across the cargo bay where he slammed into the far wall.
 
This is when the fully-competant Captain Cannon arrived on the scene, closely followed by Commander Niples who stated: "I'd just like you all to know I don't care about any of you and I won't be sad if you die."
Harris scowled at him and then saw what Cannon was holding. It almost looked like a.... cannon.
 
"What the frell is that thing?" asked Harris.
Captain Cannon's face had that grave seriousness about it again.
"Don't ask" said Niples, "he's doing the 'Captain' thing again. I think I actually preferred him when he was normal- at least then he didn't take things so seroiusly!"
 
Captain Cannon crossed through the giant hole in the wall which the creature had made and aimed the Microwave pulse weapon towards the creature. At this point the huge beast was more interested in squashing security redshirts like ants.
 
He fired. The pulse hit the creature in the side, but didn't even notice. This obviously needed more firepower.
He Turned the power dial the 'High' and fired.
 
The creature turned its head, ignoring the puny humans with guns and moved slowly towards the captain. Then stopped, centimeters away from him.
The monster was easily 50 times the size of the smaller human, and could snap his head off with a relatively easy muscle spasm, but Will Cannon stood firm, his hair even blowing in the breeze of the creatures breath.
 
He turned the power dial of the microwave pulse weapon even higher, turning it all the way past 'Caution' and only stopping on full setting called 'Stand well back, this is a friggin' powerfull blast' setting.
 
The 4-deck-high beast watched as the small human put his weight on the trigger, opening its mouth at the last second ready to rip the man to pieces with its exceptionally sharp teeth.
Cannon fired.
 
If you've ever seen a huge creature fly, you can imagine what happened next. The glowing bolt of hyper-concentrated microwaves hit the polymorph striaght in the mouth and threw it well off its feet. The security team watched in slow-motion as the huge mass defied gravity and passed over their heads, crashing into the wall behind them leaving a very large dent in the metal.
The dying form of the beast slumped to the floor, its body already decaying from the effects of the EM radiation.
 
Many redshirts gathered around the polymorph as it bubbled away into a gungy form. One cheeky security officer thinking it was safe to touch the dying creature felt a lump in his pants when the beast tried a final lunge at him, stopping close by a few centimetres.
Then it feinted and died.
 
A complete look of blank came over the Captains face. "Duuuuhh, now what do I do?" he said, the incompetance flooding back to him.
Niples felt the emotions coming back to him too. He looked around and started to worry, "Look at this mess! Who's going to clean this up? Look what happened to the people, their dead!!!!"
 
Then Smegg skidded into the Cargo bay, it looked as though he had been running very fast to get there.
"Sorry, I got caught up in engineering. Did I miss anything?"
He saw the remains of the dead polymorph.
"Oh."
 
==================================Lt. David "Onion" BallAssistant Helm officer/ Pilot  USS Endeavour-ACommander Seymore Niples  JMC Blue DwarfWWW.Geocities.com/BlueDwarf2000Are you being paid for being online? I am! http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=IJU209==================================