(No subject)

Where: Drive Room
When: After the Raven has landed.
Who: Alota, Eric, Johnny and Farkas Amiri Vanth.
"Captain, The Raven has returned." Holly informed Alota.
"Thanks Holly, can you tell them to report here for debriefing?"
"I'd rather them keep their underwear on, Sir." Holly said with a
smile
of someone who had just said a really bad joke.
Alota gave Holly's monitor a look so bad that Eric could notice that
a
very fine crack started to appear.
"Right now, they've headed to Parrott's to fight one of the unknown
aliens. Also, the science department has just sent you a message
asking
for a sample of DNA from one of these aliens."
"Thanks Holly, I'll get someone to speak to the science department
asap." Alota replied. "Mr Lustbader, the next shift is almost ready
to
start, so could you please go to the Science Department?"
"Bad timing, Captain. The Blue Dwarf seems to have picked up some
sort
of signal from the planet the crew were visiting. It seems weird, I
need to analyse it a bit further, with your permission. It could be
important."
"It had better be, Eric. You've got twenty minutes. Johnny, could you
go to the Science Department please? Your shift here is up."
"Yes Captain, I'll head off now." Johnny said, loggin off the network
as his replacement came to the controls.
Johnny left the drive room to go to the Science Department.
"Captain, I have found the purpose of this message. It seems to be a
distress signal from the EC class of space ships, designed for
interstellar exploration."
"Why on Earth would there be one of those in this vicinity? If I
remember rightly, the last ship of that class was sent out fifty
years
ago. How come you only just picked up the signal?"
"Either something that was blocking the signal has stopped, or the
signal has only just started. It is quite possible that there are
survivors. The scanners seem to report biological signs... they seem
to
be of human origin. It is possible a survivor saw our ship and set
off
the signal."
"How do you know? The scanners can't know that!"
"Actually, they can. It was a function that was added on at the last
minute, and you can only get the feature by adding a new subroutine
to
the program."
"Typical computer programmers and hardware enginers."
"My thought exactly." Holly chimed in.
"I'm just printing a read out made from the extrapolation of the data
combined from the scanners and the origin of the distress signal,
which
should give us an accurate map of the location of the ship."
"I assume, Lustbader, that you wish to lead another mission to the
surface to find the ship. Hold on, why would there be survivors if
the
Hymies captured the ship years ago?"
"I'm sure, you remember it's unusual locking mechanism? They were
impossible to steal, and if your fuel cells went flat, you would be
stuck in there until you were refueled."
"Wouldn't the Hymies have just turned it into molten slush?" Alota
inquired.
"Curiosity? Maybe they have scientists working on it. Either that,
or..."
"A trap." Alota finished. "By these smegging phasing aliens."
"Then we should wait until the Science Department have scanned the
DNA
of one of the aliens. If they're still alive after however many years
they've been stuck there, a few mour hours won't kill them."
"Hopefully." Alota added.
* * * * * *
Johnny walked out the Science Department. Finally, some action. He
didn't like being left out of the last mission. Sure, he's not on the
Security team. As a pilot, there can only be one number one, and it
wasn't him. That means you mainly get to do boring missions, unless
they needed two shuttles. Hopefully this was his mission to finally
prove himself. They gave him a few hypodermic needles and some other
tools. Hair, blood or soft tissue was what they wanted. Johnny wasn't
prepared to get them anything else, unless he was able to beat the
crap
out of one of the aliens, which didn't look likely.
Johnny walked out of the elevator closest to Parrott's holding a
needle
in each hand, with the needles pointing down and his thumbs ready to
flick the plunger so he could get a sample before they phased out.
Johnny walked to the entrance of the bar, where some of the crew were
dodging a stinger that had just been fired.
Johnny could hear someone crying, and then being reassured by someone
else. The person who was crying just couldn't understand why the bar
kept on being destroyed.
<tag anyone else fighting the alien>