Out of the Frying pan into the fire

<snip>
The starbug ducked out from underneath the falling Anti-noptera
ship, which crashed onto the ground.
As the starbug flew upwards, Seymour watched the Hymenoptera ship
move slowly across the town, dropping more acid death.
<end snip>
Who: Chris & Kanako
When: About the same time as the previous post
Where: About the same place as the previous post
Chris looked out the cockpit of the Wormhole Jumper to see a vast collection
of Genetic Mutants racing towards them and the starbug at record speeds. He
quickly pressed some buttons and the engine came to life. The Wormhole
Jumper began to rise but something was holding them down. He looked out of
the cockpit again to see that the Sand Dune on the beach which they had
landed on was so vast that a large amount of the bottom deck of the ship was
buried within it.
Chris looked up to the clouds whilst trying to think of a way to get them
out of this, only to see green acid speed down from the sky and dissolve a
large amount of the genetic mutants that were a short way away from them. As
the Starbug finally got out of the fray and headed back to Blue Dwarf,
Chris' heart raced. He realised that, unless the got out of the planet's
atmosphere soon, then the hull would begin to dissintigrate as more and more
of the green acid began pouring down onto the land around them. He
desperately threw the throttle into reverse and hoped that if he reversed he
would be able to remove his precious ship from this overgrown sand dune.
Unfortunately, although they moved slightly out of the dune, some of the
lower deck was left in it and reversing didn't seem to make it want to move.
Chris thrust the throttle to full and prayed to the god that he didn't
believe in that it would remove them from the dune. This time it worked and
they cleared the Dune, only to discover that moments later, the very dune
which they had been lodged in had had a flood of green acid dumped on it.
When Kanako emerged on the bridge after the ship had cleared the outer
atmosphere of the planet and was now safely, or so they thought, back in
space; Chris was in a slightly calmer mood and far less Frantic though he
decided to get the internal computer to follow the starbug's vapour trail,
simply because he couldn't be bothered to fly the ship back to blue dwarf,
but also because he still needed to calm down. He completely ignored Kanako
and staggered into the mid-section of that deck where he collapsed on a sofa
that had thankfully been positioned exactly where he chose to collapse.
Within about five minutes he was asleep, owing to about two days that he had
gone without sleep. However, he was woken up by a loud blast of beethovens
fifth symphony which for some reason the computer had become addicted to and
chose to play at generally random moments throughout a day. However this
time when Chris walked into the cockpit and blasted a long list of curses at
his computer, it didnt respond, and Chris noticed that a red light on the
Damage report machine was flashing. He walked over to the machine and
pressed a button. Normally the computer would have told him what the problem
was, but the computer appeared to be out of action so he read it off the
small monitor on the damage report machine. Not only was the computer down,
but it appeared that in the ten minutes that he had been asleep, a large
amount of damage appeared to have befallen the ship, and something worse had
happened, Kanako was missing.
Thankfully, he could still communicate with other ships, he send a message
to the starbug stating what had happened and asking if anything had happened
to them. A message came through several minutes later stating that they had
not been attacked, but one of their crew members appeared to be missing,
Melissa. It seemed to Chris that these new Anti-Noptera aliens of whatever
they were called had something against him as he sat in his cockpit and
practically howled with rage before he realised that it was not only him
that they had something against, Jack would be in equal agonising pain right
now, and that these aliens had something against everyone on their side,
they hated them all, and they wanted them all dead, and if they were allowed
to finish what they wanted to do, every single human and hymenoptera alike,
and probably many other species in the universe would be dead. He sighed
heavily, and absent mindedly glared at the damage report machine with a look
pf pure hatred, as if to suggest that it was the machines fault and not a
bi-product of his own incompetance. Obviously the computer had realised that
Kanako was missing before it was shut off, and it was desperate enough to
inform Chris of this that it displayed it on the damage report machine
before it was shut off.
Chris's ship, the Wormhole Jumper, while not of any known conventional style
employed by the JMC, boasted twelve of the largest engines for ships of that
size in the galaxy. There were four engines on each side, as well as two
back-up engines. What Chris didn't realise at the time of checking the
damage report machine for the first time, was that the ship's main engines
were all down, as well as two of the back up engines, leaving only two
engines, thankfully, one on each side. Unfortunately, despite the fact that
the ship was fairly small, smaller than both the raven and most likely than
the phoenix, it was a great deal heavier, which was why, it was able to hold
accomodate a fairly large amount of people, and, it contained a large amount
of state of art equiptment being as it was a new ship, which was
surprisingly heavier than the conventional equiptment. This ship was
reccomended to fly with a minimum of three engines on either side.
Currently, and unknown to Chris, this ship only had one engine on each side,
both of which, were slowly giving up the ghosts.
While navigating his ship around random pieces of debry he was unaware
belonged to his own ship, Chris decided to head back to Blue Dwarf, where he
could re-group with the others and pray they would allow him to search for
his fiance and step-daughter. Chris noticed that the ship was flying slower
than originally, and so decided to check the damage report machine once more
to see if any, or how many to be precise, engines had been affected by the
widespread destruction on board his ship. After shooting the damage report
machine another look of pure venom, he carefully checked over what had been
damaged. What puzzled him slightly was, while they had been busy
half-inching his fiance and damaging his ship, why had they not finished him
off as well? After a long list of non-essentials that had been damaged such
as the coffee machine two decks down, Chris finally came to see the 10
engines that had been half-obliterated during the plauge on his ship, and
then realised that he was in big trouble, his ship was well over the
reccommended size and weight limit for two engines, meaning that, sooner or
later, both of those engines would cease to work. He tried to remain calm.
He maintained a steady course back towards the Blue Dwarf and was about ten
minutes away from it if he continued at his current speed, when a reasonably
load bang came from somewhere behind him, he grimaced as he knew what had
just happened. He turned around and the control panel for the engines on his
cockpit confirmed it. The control panel which had finally chosen to light up
in red the lights for the engines that were now out of action, had another
light lit up for 'Engine Eleven'. Another Engine had been lost which meant
that only one remained for the ten minute journey back to blue dwarf. Chris
knew that it would almost certainly cut out shortly under the pressure of
moving a ship as heavy as this. Nevertheless, he lowered the speed the ship
was travelling at, bit his lip and continued to stagger his way back to blue
dwarf on a ship that was running on one engine out of twelve. He was near
Blue Dwarf when he heard another loud bang similar to last one. He glanced
again at the Engine panel on what could be described as nothing better than
a dashboard and saw that the final engine, 'Engine Twelve' had finally given
up the ghosts after a long fight. Chris was now limited to emergency
thrusters, and, as he revved them up, another loud bang confirmed that he
was going no-where right now. However, as he had revved the thrusters, the
ship had surprisingly gained some considerable speed, it was, however, in
the wrong direction. Chris bit his lip and attempted to steer the ship away
from where he was going but the navigational systems of the craft also
seemed to have gone down with the thrusters, Chris realised what was going
to happen, his brand new precious ship, was about to crash into the
engineering area of Blue Dwarf. Chris bit his lip and typed in Blue Dwarf's
Radio frequency and shouted "Mayday, Mayday! All Engines and Navigational
systems down, about to crash into engineering.....it was nice knowing all
you guys". He grimaced and bit his lip as he took the brace position in his
cockpit chair as his ship edged further and further towards the Dwarf.....
<tag - does someone in engineering want to continue this one? Or onion...or
anybody else who fancies taking a stroll near engineering for that
matter...>
_________________________________________________________________
Be the first to hear what's new at MSN - sign up to our free newsletters!http://www.msn.co.uk/newsletters