**Action** Away at last!

**Action**
Stardate 22.9.2100
8AM
 
The huge mining ship "Blue Dwarf" moved away from the Orbital Poultry facility, it's docking clamps having been released by station personnel.
 
Kieran Loes sat at the navigation console in the Drive room, piloting the massive ship into the void.
Harris had recently recieved information from one of his contacts of the direction in which the lost mining ship "Red Dwarf" had last been seen heading in. This was the only piece of information they had to go on so far, nomatter how unreliable it might be.
 
Commander Niples was unsure about the information as it could be a trap, but Captain Cannon gave the order to follow it anyway saying "I'm getting paid to search for this piece of drifting junk, as long as we're looking for it we're not stood in the dole queue!"
 
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Down in Main engineering,
 
Chief engineer Jason Smegg sat behind his desk telling everyone else what to do.
"What do you mean theres nothing wrong with the engines?" he asked Steev MAckEnzyyyyyy. "Theres always something wrong with the engines! So go and find something!"
"Yes sir!" said Steev with more enthusiasm than he actually felt.
As soon as Steev had left the office, Smegg looked around to make sure he wasn't being watched, then removed a computer games console from his bottom drawer and started playing.
 
********************
Drive-room
 
Commander Niples walked into the busy command centre of the ship. There needed to be a lot of communication and co-ordination between systems involved in working in the nerve-centre of a ship, and as everyone seemed to know what they were doing most of the time the commander left them to it.
 
"Report." said Niples in his friendly but executive way.
"We're on course, sir." said Ensign Loes from the nav station. "We're entering an unknown area of space though, there are no maps to follow- I'm just relying on the sensor readouts."
 
Niples turned to the young woman at the sensor/radar station.
"Anything to report ensign?"
She was busy chatting to the communications officer so didn't notice him.
"Ensign?" he repeate, but louder.
"Sorry sir," said the blonde-haired woman. "What can I do for you?"
"Can I see the sensor redings for this area of space please?" said the Commander, being way too polite because she was so darn attractive.
She pressed a few buttons and a picture came up on her computer screen.
"Here you go sir." she said in a very friendly manner, also the way she said 'sir' made his knees turn to jelly.
 
He looked at the sensor screen. It just looked like a swirl of colours to him, but something looked really wrong.
"When was the last time you checked these readings?" asked the Commander.
The woman looked at her watch, "About 2 hours ago sir."
 
Then he started to panic.
 
"So who checks them when you're not checking them?"
"Ermmmmm, nobody sir." said the female ensign.
Then he asked her something really important. "What are these huge grey things in front of us?"
The woman chuckled, "They're just sensor echoes sir, they're nothing to worry about- we get them all of the time."
 
"Echoes of what?"
She pressed a few buttons and a list of mineral properties came up on screen. "Echoes of asteroids sir."
"Asteroids in front of us?"
"Yes, asteroids in front of us sir."
 
Then he really started to panic
 
"ALL ENGINES FULL REVERSE, NOW!"
 
 
The Blue Dwarf entered the asteroid field, narrowly missing the larger asteroids which were about half the size of a planet, but several smaller asteroids smashed into the hull- leaving gashes in the forward section.
 
Nothing was badly damaged, but the entire ship felt the jolt of the colisions. As the ship's reverse engines managed to fight against its momentum, the massive mining vessel slowed down to a stop.
 
The entire ship fell silent as everyone who had not been in the drive-room wondered what had happened.
 
Most of the drive-room crew had lost their balance from the collision and were now getting up from the floor and dusting themselves off, trying not to look foolish.
 
"Activate forward viewscreen" ordered Niples. 
Kieran looked around and then stood up and pressed the 'on' button on the widescreen TV attached to the drive room wall.
Images of asteroids outside the ship appeared on the screen, in particular one large one directly in front of them.
Niples remembered a video he had seen of a Dwarfstar-class vessel loaded with crash-test-dummies hitting an asteroid in slow motion. It wasn't pretty, luckily it hadn't happened to them- this time.
 
The communications officer broke the deathly silence when she pressed her earpiece with her hand and said "I'm picking up a signal- its feint, but its coming from within this asteroid field."
 
Niples spun around to face the pilot Kiern Loes. "Ensign, take a Starbug out there and see what you can find."
 
To be continued...
 
 
==================================Lt. David "Onion" BallAssistant Helm officer/ Pilot  USS Endeavour-ACommander Seymour Niples  JMC Blue DwarfWWW.Geocities.com/BlueDwarf2000Are you being paid for being online? I am! http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=IJU209==================================