Heaven has no rage...

<snip>
“Well sorry, I'm in charge and I say we can.” Seymour's jaw jutted indignantly.
“F'smeg's sake! I knew this would happen.” Alex muttered.
Efof looked at him. “Really? With the silk and everything? That's amazing.”
Alex screwed up his face. “... No.”
Jacky seemed bewildered. Justin was still laughing at Bedge. Cass looked like she was about to murder someone. Monroe whispered [something] into the giggling Justin's ear...Then slinked across the room where she sat seductively in a chair at the opposite console.
</snip>

Turning away from her dysfunctional compatriots in disgust, Cass sank into her chair at the science desk and leaned in towards the monitors, her thin fingers moving across the console’s controls as she quietly queued a complex chain of commands while Bedge took it upon himself to launch an attack on Seymour, catapulting the pompous little cretin across the room to fall, flailing, into Monroe’s lap

It was at around then that Jelena turned up and started asking dumb questions and the new kid, Jacky, decided to embark on the sort of stupid heroics that earned him the legs of a seven year old and the face of a seventy year old – which was particularly unlucky, Cass thought, for someone who had been fortunate enough to emerge unscathed from three million years of stasis only scant hours ago

<snip>
Marilyn glanced at every person in the room, pointing her gun at each one. She motioned to Bedge and Jacky, noting what crossing her could cause, and making it clear that she could do far worse.

"It's up to all of you. You can die, or let them live..."
"...to kill." Alex responded.
"It's not so bad when you get used to it."
</snip>

“Bloody ‘ooman” Bedge growled in the silence that followed, his little baby arms twitching with anger “I tell yer – If I ‘adn’t a been reprogrammed to be subservient, I’d ‘ave ‘er ‘ead ripped off so as I could shit down ‘er neck”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever” Cass sighed dismissively “The thing is: If we refuse to do this, we die and some other STCP flunky will do the job anyway; so we might as well just get on with it and spare ourselves any more of this smegging embarrassment”
Alex scowled and grumpily fished a packet of cigs out to spark one up
“I guess there is that” he conceded
“Well, I only wish you had mentioned this earlier” Jacky pouted “I mean, look at me!”
Cass favoured him with something of a half-smile
“I’m sure agent Monroe would be glad to revivify you and our simulant friend out once we’ve kept our end of the bargain and destroyed that comet” she said, nodding towards the enforcer who appeared somewhat mollified by this little exchange and lowered her guard enough to glance down at Seymour, exuding an air of pompous indignation, laying on the floor at her feet
“There now” she smiled at him “You must be relieved that at least one of your crew isn’t as stupid as the rest?”
Seymour muttered something in response about the crewmember in question being nothing but a bloody menace, before suddenly raising his voice
“Solvay!” he bellowed “Get me up off this floor this instant!”
“I ain’t your servant” Alex growled, sulkily exhaling smoke and remaining where he was
“Oh for heaven’s sake” Seymour whined, pathetically flailing around on the floor “Will no one help a disabled gentleman in his hour of need?”
“Move out of the range of the Stiphalid weapons Hol” Cass called as Efof shrugged good naturedly and ambled over towards Seymour when nobody else looked like they were going to bother “We’ll wait for the comet to come to us... there’s no need to waste fuel”
“What!?” Seymour spluttered as Efof began dragging him back towards his wheelchair “I give the orders around here!”
Cass silenced him with a glare
“We’re here at your behest you little prick, so you'll be quiet while the grown-ups work”
Everyone suddenly busied themselves doing other stuff

Three quarters of an hour later when the comet was looming large on the main monitors, Cass slipped on the heavily modified pair of jet black sunglasses that she had been working on over the past few days and initiated the boot sequence
“Whacha got there sweetheart?” Monroe asked, suspiciously eyeing the glow of the HUD bleeding out from behind the sunglasses lenses and the weird protrusions arcing up from the arms into Cassandra’s hair
“Functional modifications to one of my toys” Cass grated as the drive room door suddenly hissed open and a partially complete, three metre high bipedal robot ducked into the room and levelled a heavy looking arm bristling with weaponry at the STCP agent
“What the smeg!?” Monroe cried, leaping out of her seat and raising her weapon
“Aw cool!” Jacky smiled
“Don’t smegging move" Cass barked "Not. One. Smegging. Muscle”
Monroe froze, her eyes darting around, taking in the massive machine and its various weapons
“What is this?” she murmured “I wasn’t briefed...”
“Of course you weren’t” Cass smirked “Now let’s have that weapon of yours kicked over here – No sudden moves or you’re dead!”

Faced with little choice Monroe complied and slowly set her chrono-gun down on the floor to kick over towards Alex
“What was your brief?” Cass demanded once the enforcer had been disarmed “Why are we here?”
“Dunno why you’re so important” Monroe sniffed “But I had to baby-sit you lot and keep you out of harm’s way while we dealt with Chrysler”
“You know where he is?”
“The traitor should be dead by now” Monroe smirked “He must have thought he was so clever sat behind that primitive temporal shield of his; I only wish I had been there to see the look on his face when he was destroyed”
“Oh dear” Seymour murmured “That doesn’t sound good”
Cass raised her eyebrows
“Dead?” she queried
“Very” Monroe’s grin widened evilly
“Okay” Cass sighed “We use the device you used to get us here to jump us to a point where we can stop him from leaving”
“That’ll create a paradox” Monroe was struggling to keep the glee out of her voice “He’s dead - There’s nothing you can do”
“Oh well” Cass shrugged “I think I’ll have that device anyway”
“You can smeg off” Monroe snapped, her smile suddenly disappearing
“Hand it over” Cass demanded holding out a hand, her machine taking a menacing step towards the STCP agent “Now”
To her credit, Monroe was a trier; she pivoted and sprang away, drawing a concealed weapon and raising it in an expertly practiced move, with the intention of killing Cass as quickly as she could; but even without the speed of her neural interface, it took less than a fraction of a second for Cass to cue her machines weapons, the jury-rigged and appropriated STCP weaponry mounted on the robot’s arm crackling angrily as it messily tore Monroe in half, the stench of burned flesh and gore filling the air
“Aw smegging hell” Alex gagged
“You crazy bitch!” Justin screamed “You just killed the hottest women in the known universe! How am I ever going to get hard again now!?”
“Dear God” Seymour gasped, primly waving a silk handkerchief in front of his nose, trying to waft the smell away “Was that entirely necessary?”
Cass wordlessly stood and walked across to Monroe’s corpse, digging through the woman’s pockets until she found what she was after
“This” she said, raising the white brick sized object for everyone to see “Is a prize well worth killing for – With this we don’t need a new wormhole drive, we can go anytime, anywhere”
“Cool” Efof beamed “We could go and rescue Jay”
Cassandra’s expression darkened
“Smeg Chrysler and his smegging wife” she snapped “They pissed off and endangered all our lives without so much as a smegging warning”

Stunklmop smashed through the Stiphalis’s asteroid moments later as Cass triggered the device, the Dwarf sliding through a massive vortex into another time and another place

<tag>
What’s happened to Jay?
Where and when are we?
</tag>