Shore leave

It was one month since the Blue Dwarf crew had discovered the missing Red Dwarf,
and stopped the Dolaroos from using it as a weapon of mass destruction against
their enemies, the Kangaphins.
The Blue Dwarf had since been called in by the JMC to space station Deep Space
69 for a much needed upgrade. It was a busy space port, far from earth and was
always surrounded by long range spacecraft of all shapes and sizes, and today
was no exception. Civilian and military vessels alike docked here for
maintenance, and the Blue Dwarf, normally a giant among other ships wasn’t
even the biggest thing here.
Space Corp ships, cargo ships, tankers, cruise ships and private yachts alike
filled the space around the star system, as far as the eye could see many docked
with the station itself, others with smaller orbital platforms and just as many
in a slow orbit, waiting for a free slot with smaller shuttles bustling between
them.
The Blue Dwarf had been here for the last three and a half weeks, and was
currently tethered to the gargantuan circular station that was known as Deep
Space 69 by several long umblicals that were used by crew and station staff
alike to move between the ship and the station. As one of the larger ships, it
remained in open space, for maintenance, rather than be brought into dry dock
and so it was here, nestled between a Space Corps carrier and a vast oil tanker
that it now sat, it’s freshly cleaned blue paintwork standing out amongst a
sea of greys and whites of the other ships.
And towards it, rocketed the Phoenix.
Most of the crew were given extended shore leave during the ‘Dwarfs upgrade
and Captain Jay Chrysler and Ensign Katrina Salter were no exception. They’d
spent the last two weeks in the Vega star system, specifically on one of the
stars orbiting Vega “Caesars Planet”. Vega had been colonised a decade
earlier, and it’s planets were collectively known as ‘the strip’, the
entire system was filled with casino planets, and Caesars Planet was one of the
most well known, now, they were on their way back to the ship.
“I wonder what the crew will say…” Katrina said, glancing at the wedding
ring that now adorned her left hand. “I mean…we didn’t even tell anyone”
Jay, say at the controls, wearing a cowboy hat which he insisted was the sole
reason he’d had any luck on the roulette tables glanced back at his new wife
“I imagine Vanessa will be pretty smegged off that we didn’t say anything,
she is family after all…but to be honest, who cares what people think?”
"But I've married the captain!" Katrina exclaimed, "people might think I'm
sucking up!"
"Hey!" Jay said wryly "you were 'sucking up' to me long before I was Captain"
"yuck. But still, I guess your right.." said Katrina, hanging her arms around
Jay’s neck “but hey! Noone can argue that ‘Katrina Chrysler’ doesn’t
sound good and just think…Vanessa won’t be angry for long..she’s going to
be an aunt!” Katrina patted her stomach as she said this.
The Phoenix’s control panel made a bleeping noise and Jay turned his
attention to the incoming message from flight control as he prepared to land in
the Blue Dwarfs main hangar bay.
“Well” Jay said, stepping off the Phoenix a few minutes later and handing
his luggage to the skutters to return to his quarters “I’d better head to
the Drive Room and check in about the upgrade, see you later Mrs Chrysler?”
Katrina smiled and kissed her husband, “I’m going to head down to
engineering too, I want to see what they’ve done down there..this is assuming
Callum’s actually let them touch anything, you know what he’s like when
he’s been drinking….which is..well…all the tim..”
“WHAT?!” Jay snapped
“Er…nothing…drinking on duty? Our chief engineer? Of course not!
Preposterous!......please don’t tell him I told you!”
“What’s it worth?”
Katrina looked around, and then leant in to whisper something in Jay’s ear.
Jay raised an eyebrow before assuring Katrina that his lips were sealed.
The newlyweds exchanged goodbyes and turned to walk in opposite directions, but
Katrina stopped after a few steps and shouted back to Jay “Oh! And take off
that damn hat!”
Jay glanced up at the cowboy hat that still adorned his head, and reluctantly
removed it, throwing it to the baggage-skutters before leaving the flight deck,
and entering the xpress lift.
Katrina happily strode into Engineering. “Hey guys!” she said as she entered
the engine room “I’m back! I have news…!”
She was cut off as the entire ship suddenly shook violently knocking everyone
off their feet.
“Wut the smeg was ‘at?” Callum Kochanski yelled in his broad Scottish
accent, as he dashed out of his office, (but not before taking a gulp from a
bottle of whiskey).
“I don’t know!” Katrina replied, dashing across toward a nearby damage
report console as the deckplates kept rumbling, a loud, explosive noise getting
louder and louder
Before she could reach it, there was another, more violent tremor, and the
bulkhead buckled inwards, followed by a wall of fire, and which engulfed the
engine room, before bursting through the opposite wall, and several more section
of the ship before bursting out through the ships outer hull.
The express lift came to a sudden halt, and the lights within it went out as the
ship shook.
“What the smeg?” Jay said to himself “holly…what’s happening?”
No response
“Holly?...” nothing
“Chrysler to drive room?....Security? Engineering?”
No response from anyone, internal communications must be down. Jay shrugged, and
reaching up, he opened the maintenance hatch that was set into the roof of the
lift car. Heaving himself upwards, he began to climb up the lift shaft, now litl
only by emergency lights.
A grinding noise came from below him, and he looked down to see the lift car
fall the several hundred decks to the bottom.
“Well..” Jay muttered “I’ve had warmer welcomes home…”
It was less than 20 minutes before Jay, having only been a few decks from the
Drive Room at the time the lift stuck, arrived in the command centre of the Blue
Dwarf.
“Will someone please tell me what the smeg is going on?”
Amber, who was in the command chair stood up. “Oh thank god” she said as she
spotted Jay. “Captain, look”
She pointed out of the forward view screen, the giant Space Corp carrier that
was alongside the Blue Dwarf, along with lots of the other larger ships, and the
space station itself all now had large holes in their hulls, with flames
engulfing them.
The communications console was alive with the sound of incoming distress calls
from dozens of spaceships.
“What the hell happened?” Jay asked.
“They came out of nowhere!” Amber said “An entire fleet of Hymenoptera
fighters…our sensors didn’t pick them up until it was too late and they
kamikazed every ship in the area that was big enough! We were one of the lucky
ones.”
As she said this the flaming carcass of a devastated ship drifted past, fire
engulfing every square inch of the hull before it collided with another ship.
“Engineering, damage report.” Jay ordered.
Amber shook her head. “Captain…the engineering section took the brunt of the
attack.”
She showed Jay an image on the main screen, showing an external view of the
ship, a gaping hole, flaming around the edges now took up most of the second
half of the ships hull, the stern, barely connected to the front end of the
ship.
“Noone down there could have survived….”
“Katrina was in there…” Jay said solemnly. “We’d just got
married…..”
Amber said nothing, she didn’t need to. She could see that he was struggling
to hold in the floods of tears he wanted to shed, not just for his wife, but for
every person who was in that section of the ship, and she also knew exactly what
thought would most prominently be on Jay’s mind. “Ensign” she said to the
communication officer “Get internal communications back online and get the
department heads into the briefing room – Kochanski is dead, so send the most
senior person you can from Engineering…Captain Chrysler’s going to want to
plan a counter attack…”
<Tag / TBC guys, the space Corp aren't going to want us going and starting a war
on our own, but Jay isn't thinking straight, who's going to help him? Anyone
against? The blue dwarf is seriously damaged too- so let's formulate a plan!>
Sent from my iPhone