Wasting Time

“Bloody hell” Cass coughed, rolling over onto her back and taking a few ragged breaths “That was too smegging close!”
She sat up with a groan looked around
“Is everyone alright?"
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White Wolf sat with his back against the stairwell wall, panting for breath and with his whiskers looking just a little bit singed. Phi had curled herself up into a ball but had managed to get a face full of ash, which she was almost hysterically trying to get off her face.
"I said is everyone OK?" asked Cass. White Wolf gave her a feeble thumbs up and Phi nodded solemly. At that moment, they heard foot steps coming up the stairs beneath them. Cass quickly pulled her gun and aimed it down the stairwell. Soon, the breathless faces of Gomez, Alex and Davie rounded the corner. Seeing it was just them, she lowered her gun and looked at them.
"Did you get the cutting equipment? Things should be safer in the Drive Room now. We just need to see if things will be safe. Holly just blew the whole place to Kingdom Come" Cassandra related to the others.
"Yeah, we felt the explosion a few decks down. We came back as quickly as we could, just we ran into a Simulant Patrol a few levels down. We got the cutting equipment and we can make a start whenever" said Alex. Both he and Gomez were carrying large laser cutters which they'd salvaged from supply bunker.
The team made their way back up the stairwell and down the corridor to the Drive Room. There was a haze of smoke in the air and the smell of burnt flesh, making the team gag. Walking into the Drive Room, things looked a shambles. Most of the computer consoles had been gutted and every monitor screen had blown out. There was, however, a figure lying in the corner. Gomez moved over to the body and turned him over.
"Oh dear" said White Wolf, twitching his whiskers nervously "it's Stanley. We forgot about him in all the commotion, is he dead?".
"No" said Gomez, checking for a pulse "ee is steel alive, but unconcious. I theenk he sustained a concusion."
Phi moved over and had a look at him. As far as she could tell, he'd be alright, but he would be unconcious for a while. She removed her now somewhat shabby lab coat and bunched it up as a pillow and placed it under his head.
Davie surveyed the emergency glass wall that Seymour had activated. His experience told him it was made of plasti-steel and was as hard as a diamond rhino.
"Alex, d'you reckon these mining lasers will really do the trick?" he asked the scruffy tech, who was trying to light a crumbling, three million year old cigarette with an equally ancient match.
"Hope so" Alex replied "otherwise, I'm out of ideas".
Gomez had found a servicible power socket and had plugged in the laser cutters. He handed a cutter to Cassandra and to Davie and they approached the plasti-steel barrier.
"Stand back, everybody. Theese lasers are wery dangerous" Gomez warned the others, who promptly took cover behind a burnt out bank of computer monitors.
"OK" Gomez called to Cassandra and Davie, "let's do eet!".
However, the second he placed his finger on trigger, the few remaining emergency lights in the Drive Room went out and the power drained from the cutters.
"What's going on?" said Phi, somewhat panicked by the sudden dark.
Alex shuffled over to a console and tapped randomly at the keypad.

"Everything's gone offline. Looks like the mainframe has gone into reboot mode. Should come back on in a few days."
"Oh, smegging fantastic!" drawled Cassandra "what are we meant to do until then? I for one don't think it's a good idea to sit around here in the dark, waiting to be eaten by zombies or tortured by sims."
"Cassandra is right" said Phi "I really think it'd be a good idea to get out of here. This place is hardly safe and not the most hygienic of places."
"Senoritas, I theenk we should find Senor Chrysler and maybe Senor Nipples." said Gomez, thinking pragmatically. In order to come up with a plan they were better off with all of them together, especially seeing as Jay and Seymour knew the ship inside and out.
Picking up their guns and with White Wolf carrying Stanley, they headed off in the direction that Jay and Seymour had disappeared off to.

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