(no subject)
Posted byPosted: Jul 14, 2004, 1:39pm
Who:Trisees, Rufus
Where: Duct System
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trisees growled loudly as he tried, with great difficulty, to manoevre his body through the Blue Dwarf's complex duct system. He'd been attempting to crawl through the narrow ventilation shafts for the best part of five hours, but having only one arm had been a large hindrance.
He had removed the grating to the duct by breaking the gas pipe to the fryer and turning it into a makeshift blow torch. That too had gone less than well, both of his eyebrows having been singed off, and a large grating shape indented onto his forehead after he'd failed to avoid the falling metal.
Rufus woke up in a fridge. Not just any old fridge, it was his fathers old invention the time fridge. Groaning he sat up, discovering that you were not ment to sit up was painfull as the large bruise he now aquired proved. "Damnit!" He grumbled pushing on the door. Nothing happened. "Oh fantastic."
Trisees shuffled forward, coating his famously pristine white lab coat in dust, dirt and grime that had not been touched in many many years. As he wiped his forehead, some of the muck transferred itself to his face and he winced.
"Life doesn't get better than this. Crawling through a ventilation system, dirty, tired, with one arm, no sense of hearing and a really bad need to kill something."
He stopped muttering sarcastically and then sighed, partially brightening up at a recent though. "At least Shakespeare isn't around. I could seriously lose my good mood."
He shuffled some more, passing over gratings that opened out into Hive collectives, or broken jagged areas of death, until he reached a grating that seemed to open onto nothing but an empty room with a large metal box in one side. He peered in, making sure there were no hidden hive workers, before hitting the grating hard and loosening the screws around its frame. As it fell to the ground, he slipped down after it, crashing to the floor in a heap and knocking the large metal box hard.
Rufus opened one of the can's of JMC issue blackcurrent fruit juice, the stuff that was weirdly addicitve and had more e-numbers in it then your average bottle of Sunny Delight. The fridge was suddenly knocked violenty and something outside cursed the existance of the metal box. "Who's that?" Rufus yelled. "That you dad? Let us out i'm kinda stuck."
Trisees shook his head and rubbed it.
"Infernal ship," he cursed. "Can't anything ever go right?!" He stalked towards the door of the room. It wasn't a very large place, barely a few metres in diameter. Most of the space was taken up by the large metal box.
Partially opening the door he peered outside the room. A group of Hive workers were modifying the corridor either side of the room. No doubt they'd be making their way into his location soon enough.
He cursed his luck and looked at the grating. It was much to high up for him to reach. But the metal box might give him the boost he could use to get back into the ventilation shafts.
He walked over and grabbed hold of the box, unaware of the voice coming from the inside, and began to drag it along. As he reached just below the grating, Trisees slipped and hit the box, its door swinging opening creakily and his head acquiring a new wound.
"Curse everything in the world!" he stated angrily.
Rufus crawled out of the fridge and came face to face with Trisees kneecaps, dirt, grime and all. Standing up he looked over the figure. "Don't I know you? Shakspere isn't it? Thanks for letting me out, I have no idea how long i've been stuck in that thing."
Trisees scowled as he read Rufus' lips.
"No. It is NOT Shakespeare. I would appreciate it if you refrain from mentioning that name as mine." He snorted loudly and wiped some of the blood from his vision.
"And if you speak to me, do it to my face. You've no doubt noticed I'm devoid of ears. I can't hear you. Now, I've no idea what's going on, where anyone is, but once again, its clearer than plexiglass viewscreens. The crew expects me to save the smeging day."
Rufus looked at Trisees blankly, already starting to feel a pang of dislike for the man. "Save them from what?" Rufus asked.
Trisees rolled his eyes.
"Take a peek, but not too far if you feel like keeping that head of yours on that body," he said, pointing to the door.
Peering around the door it didn't take Rufus long to realise what Trisees was going on about. A slavering member of The Hive chewed noisily on what he could only presume was once part of Crewman Legless. Ironic really seen as the bug was eating his legs. "Hmmm... I see. So, what do we do about them? I mean a whole ship full of man eating bugs versus the scattered few people left onboard. I'm Rufus by the way. Who are you?" He said surpirsingly cheerfull for someone who had just seen someone being eaten.
"My name is Commander Lawrence V. Trisees, I am the ships mental technology specialist. And I'm very very cranky." He sighed and glanced at the stump of his right arm.
"Quite frankly, there's nothing we can possibly do against a ship full of these creatures. There's two of us. One of us who is deaf and only has three of the standard human limbs, the other who seems to have been locked in a time fridge. Our chances rate from severely poor, to a place just outside of 'not a single onesville'. So what we have to do, is find somewhere to hide, where we can find out just what happened and if there's anything we can do to reverse it."
"Wow, science department, like me, you'll know my dad then, he used to be the CSO but moved over to security. Only having three limbs isn't that bad, and I know plenty of successfull deaf people, granted none of them have ever come up against slavering mutent bugs before and if they have I don't reckon they will have survived, anyway, I would have thought the best place to start would be security I mean from there we can monitor the whole ship." Rufus said in one long speach hardly taking a breath. He pushed his glasses up and flicked a strand of hair out of his eyes.