On board.

Who: An irate Captain Peiades
When: Just before Blue Dwarf flies through the giant doughnut.
Where: Blue Dwarf, Docking Bay 26.
Jo stormed towards the technician lounging at the control console lazily watching the crew of the Quasar 4 working around the ship.
“What on Io do you think you were doing with my ship! You nearly broke it in half bringing it through the bay door!” she shouted.
The technician seemed alarmed at suddenly being the focus of a rather angry military type person.
“I-I…He…It…” he spluttered.
A balding disembodied head appeared on the screen infront of her. “Looks like you’d already tried that yourself.” Jo glared up at him. The technician, scuttled out of the way, glad that someone else was now the centre of attention.
“Do you have any idea how precious the equipment on that ship is….” She began furiously.
“Keep your hair on,” he interrupted, “I rescue you and this is the thanks I get? Space is big you know. Really, really big. So unbelievably vastly hugely mindbogglingly big that the probability of being picked up this far out into deep space are two to the power of one hundred and eighty five thousand four hundred and two to one against. Those are some pretty heavy odds whatever your mental capability. Gordon Bennet. With a rescue like that I thought you would be a bit more cheerful, a bit happier to be alive. Instead, here you are hollering about my handling skills. I’m a busy computer you know. I actually had to stop my weekly crossword. And what do I get? No thanks whatsoever, not even the answer to 13 down. I honestly don't know why I bothered…”
For someone who had just survived their spaceship plunging into an asteroid, Jo felt that enduring an indignant barrage from a garrulous neurotic computer was definitely not on the list of things she was expected to cope with. Quite suddenly, it was all too much. She stared at Holly completely dumbfounded. All the energy born out of stress and high activity that had propelled her along for the past few hours was expelled in a rushing sigh.
“Thankyou,” she said, quite deflated.
Holly paused in mid rant, “Say what?”
“I said thankyou, Holly”
“Well,” he said. The computer with the IQ of 9,000 marketing executives paused, couldn’t think of anything else to say and so said “Well” again.
After another minute of floundering, he said, “I suppose that’s alright then.”
Jo closed her eyes and massaged her temples. Her brain had apparently gotten a hold of a mallet and was presently trying to hammer its way out of her skull through her eyes. “Holly, do you think you could direct me to the captain of this…uh,”
“Mining ship,” Holly supplied, “You are standing in Bay 26 of the JMC Blue Dwarf. Captain Niples is in the drive room at the moment.”
“Right, so in which direction is the medibay?”
His eyes widened. “You’d’ve had better chances of surviving on that asteroid.”
“Ok,” she tried to assimilate the information through the tired fog that engulfed her brain, “point me in the direction of the Drive Room, and please get someone with vague medical competence to treat my injured crew if they’re not too busy.”
“Rightio. Just follow that skutter.” Holly disappeared. A small service robot appeared and beckoned with its claw for her to follow.
A sudden violent shudder knocked Jo to her knees and sent the skutter tumbling into a console. “Good God! Not again.” A second convulsion sent her crashing into the wall and hurled the bot past her head and out the door of the hanger.
Jo climbed to her feet, with great difficulty as the ship was now tilting at an eccentric angle and decided that she altogether preferred it when ships stayed in their intended orientation. She watched as one of the landing struts of the Quasar 4 collapsed and it slowly skidded across the steel floor on the hangar to rest against the far wall. “Holly!” she called to the air. His face appeared again on the screen, now wearing sunglasses. Jo looked at him curiously and shook her head and suddenly wished she hadn’t. The cut to her forehead was bleeding again.
“What happened?”
“We are now safely free of the asteroid field. We are instead currently sinking into an ocean.” “And that’s somehow preferable to the asteroid field?” Then she blinked as she realised exactly what he’d said. “An ocean.” The part of her brain that was still working realised that this was an impossibility in the middle of deep space and quite sensibly abdicated responsibility for any further thinking in that direction.
“Yup. Time for a beach party, I think.” Holly grinned manically. She looked at him hopelessly. He was more demented than she had initially thought.
The skutter reappeared in the doorway, a little dented from its flight. “Take me to Captain Niples.”
(OOC – I will be posting what happens in the intervening time between this post and the crash a little later in ‘flashback form’. Onion, I commend you on a very interesting action post =) Cheers, Steph.)
Please do not be alarmed by anything you see or hear around you. We are now cruising at an improbability level of two to the power of twenty five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thankyou. Have a nice day.Do You Yahoo!?Get your free Yahoo! address at Yahoo! Mail: UK or IE.