Cmdr Niples "En route"

JMC Blue Dwarf
En route to Proxima Orbital Poultry facility
24/8/2100
 
Drive room
 
"Whats our ETA?" asked Commander Niples to the young ensign at the navigation computer.
"Ermmm, what's that sir?"
"Estimated time of arrival fool! Its the first thing they teach you on the Navigation course at the JMC academy!"
"Actually sir, the first thing they teach you is the theory of space travel." replied the Ensign smugly.
"What about basic spacecraft manouvering? I hope to god you learned that!" said the commander.
"Actually sir, we learned the 'theory' of spacecraft manouvering, we never actually did any practical manouvering. All we had to do was write an essay on how it worked. They dont let us anywhere near a real ship in case we crash it, its all done with paperwork now."
 
"What?!" said Niples, shocked. "The academy has changed since I went there, they don't even teach you the basic controls of a starship now...." he paused and looked at what the ensign was pressing on the keyboard. "You do know what your doing don't you?"
 
The ensign looked at him blankly. "No sir, I'm just pressing buttons at random."
Niples shrugged his head and walked off, the crew was just as hopeless as their Captain. He hoped that the new crewmembers they were about to pick up know a whole lot more than these.
 
Seymour walked into his office, allowing the automatic door to close behind him. With a sigh he sat down to his desk and looked at the paperwork that had gathered there. One was a report on the destruction of certain shops on the promenade, the MacDonalds restaurant was first on the list. Now that he had his affection and sadness back he could be sad for the loss of a great eating establishment.
Once they got to the Orbital facility they could of course start work on rebuilding the shops, but that would leave him (he looks at his watch) 24 hours without a MacDonalds.
 
Seymour looked at the other reports on his desk, they were mostly work for the captain to do. The lazy bastard of a captain had probably snook in and left them for Niples to do, it figured.
 
Niples sighed and slammed his fist on the table, why should he do the captains work? he wasn't having it. He gathered the pile of paper and took it to the door to the captains office. The door slid open to reveal an empty room, Niples sniggered and slipped in. Dropping the paper in a pile on the empty desk.
 
Quietly he sneaked out of the room and headed to the promenade, there was a good pub down there with his name on a bar stool.
 
********************
A few hours later
 
Seymour belched loudly as he entered his office again, only to find the pile of the Captain's paperwork on his desk again.
 
"Right, thats it!" he shouted to himself. "I'm not doing any more of this, I'm not the one who'll get court marshalled!"
 
With that he took the paper down to the nearest airlock and watched through the window as the pieces of paper fluttered into the void.
Niples rubbed his hands together and headed to the flight deck to take one of the Starbugs out for a spin.
==================================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==================================