no way to compare when less than two revisions

Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+======  Terrans are Bad Luck ======
+"Right-o then",  says Ariel cheerfully.
+"So, Nick. I would love to learn the whole truth about how you and
+then GR rookie Flash Roger helped save Pherion 5 from being overrun
+by the Arsenium slime monsters.  I've never quite believed it the way
+he tells it - I mean, surely you didn't *really* use nothing but the
+ships medical kit?"
+She looks around absentmindedly.
+"And does anyone have something i could put all these Terran bills in?"
+===== Terrans are Bad Luck =====
+Ya know Ariel, that story gets better every time Flash
+tells it. Well, Flash Roger is a pretty good ranger
+now, but back when I first met him he had more chin
+than brain.
+I was returning from a mission in Darmok Space, in a
+Darmok warp crusier I'd liberated (my own ship had
+been vaporised by the local law enforcement, but
+that's another story), when a distress call came over
+my sub-space communicator.
+The call came from a Terran government vessel,
+stranded on the outer edges of the Pherion system and
+under attack from a bunch of space fighters. Luckily
+enough the pirates ran for it as soon as I turned up,
+I say luckily since the Darmok cruiser was designed
+for a pilot with about 6 more arms then me. Good thing
+I'd been taking zero-g tap dancing lessions, else I
+wouldn't of been able to fly the thing at all.
+Turned out the Terren vessel was carrying Jorge
+Juteson, the Terran ambassador to the Pherion system.
+A bit of work with a big hammer got the Terran vessels
+engines running again. And just in time; the pirates
+hadn't run away, they'd just gone to get friends. I
+kicked the Terran pilot out and ran that ship hard as
+I could, but the pirates were going to be on us within
+a few kilo-secs.
+Thinking quick, I turned towards Pherion Major, a gas
+giant at the systems center. The pirates couldn't
+track us through PMs atmosphere, and sure enough they
+gave up the chase soon after we hit the soup.
+Everything was looking pretty good, until the damn
+ships engines blew up again.
+With no power, we started falling helplessly back into
+the gas giant, and the explosion showed the pirates
+where we were.  I should of realised that trying to
+help a Terran is bad luck.
+"I'd wager, Nick, that despite your reknowned skills of piloting and
+flower arrangement, the inferior quality of the ship you were
+molesting into working correctly proved inequal to the task.  Its
+hull fragmenting almost instantly in the upper atmosphere of the gas
+giant.  And if it weren't for the leviathan fungoid creatures that
+lived and floated in its stratosphere - you would surely have
+perished."
+A credit mote manifests in holographic display.
+===== Jumping out of airlocks for fun =====
+"That's pretty much what happened Simon, has Flash told this story to
+everyone ?"
+"With the engines dead, we dropped into one of the huge and violent
+storms which were common in the planets stratosophere. Pretty soon
+the ship was shedding it's skin quicker than a Gundark in malting
+season.
+A few of the sensors were still working, and they showed a huge
+floating mass some several thousand meters below us. Anything was a
+better option than being crushed with the ship in the lower
+atmosphere and, so we grabbed space suits, opened the airlock and
+jumped out into the turbulent (and bright pink) sky.
+It's pretty difficult to steer while free falling through an
+electrical storm the size of a moon, fortunately the island was a
+large target. As the ground rushed up I braced for a sharp impact, so
+was pleasently surprised by the soft and gooey landing, which left me
+up to my neck in lime green scum. Moments later the arrival of the
+Ambassador was announced by a sudden wash of slime and a resonant
+splat. Soon enough we found solid ground, and explored enough to
+dicover that the floating island was in fact a vast mass of fungi of
+many types, floating randomly through the planets stratosphere.
+Now, anyone knows that a giant floating mushroom will react promptly
+to catching fire. By turning my GR standard issue ray-gun up to the
+maximal setting we found that a limited form of steering was
+possible, and so after a few days of pleasant sailing we made it to
+one of the many hunting lodges scattered around the planet. The
+assorted tourists staying at the lodge seemed mighty impressed by our
+mode of transport, and soon enough a party of them had embarked on an
+expedition aboard the leviathian fungus.
+Well, now that I had access to the lodges sub-space communicator, it
+was easy enough to get in touch with GR HQ. Turns out that they
+already had a GR jump-ship on it's way out here, and even better they
+had a new GR space-fighter I could requisition. The bad news was, I'd
+also been assigned a new Rookie."
+Pia perks up.  "You betcha giant floating fungi react prompty to catching
+fire.  You say you set fire to them to help you steer?  I don't believe
+it.  Those fungi would have exploded in all directions if they caught
+fire, setting fire to you and everything for hundreds of metres around.
+On a planet like that, it would have set off a chain reaction, and you'd
+have the whole atmosphere burning!  I reckon you found some other way to
+steer, and you made that up so you wouldn't have to tell us."
+This contradiction is accompanied by the appearance of a holocredit above
+the table.
+===== Don't shoot the yellow fungus =====
+Nick Nitrous (GR, OTE, UHF) scowls briefly at Pia,
+before continuing
+"Well Pia, admittedly I skipped some of the boring
+technical details.
+As it happens, the Terrans and me weren't alone on the
+island, the whole place was crawling with big bugs.
+Now, if you've got slime, you expect bugs, but these
+ones were pretty clever (well, for bugs). They'd built
+huge sails out of algae all over the island, and were
+using them to steer the Leviathan Floating Fungus
+after the bigger lightning storms.
+We fooled the bugs storm sense by chucking small
+chunks of fungus into the wind and vaporising them, so
+the steering really did use a bit of raygun work.
+Actually, I think it was the vaporising stuff aspect
+that appealed to the tourists who set off on the
+island after us. Unfortunately those tourists were a
+bit careless about which fungus they shot, soon after
+we departed aboard the GR jump-ship that particular
+fungus island caught fire. Don't know where you would
+of heard of fungus causing a planetary chain reaction
+though, hell that explosion was barely 10,000 km
+across.
+Now that we were space bound again, I offered to give
+the ambassador a lift to Pherion 5 so he could get on
+with his job, which was to mediate a big spat that had
+erupted between the Pherionions and a bunch of
+Arsenium Miners living in the systems asteroid belt.
+(Did I mention that I scored a shiny new space-fighter
+?)
+Soon enough the the Ambassador, myself and my new
+rookie were coming into dock at Pherion 5's spaceport,
+expecting a warm welcome as I'd rescued the
+amabassador and all that. Now the inhabitants of
+Pherion 5 are squat, aquatic flightless avians, sort
+of like a Terran penguin only bright orange. This made
+pretty difficult not to laugh on seeing the puffed up
+Pherion military types waiting for us in the hangar.
+Got a bit easier when the head Penguin announced they
+were here to arrest Ambassador Juteson and Nick
+Nitrous, on charges of Genocide."
+"Aaaah yes.  I believe I've heard of this situation.  Unless this is a
+regular occurence, and I don't know the Pherionians as a species at all
+well, was not the Ambassador accidentally and fatally shot while trying to
+escape."
+An odd tentacles from the base of the shell slides up over the table edge
+and, placing a glassite credit plate in the centre of the table, extrudes a
+spiral of credit dust, which soon sets into it's standard, highly
+attractive purple sparkly form.
+===== Trust no-one, especially if they spit slime =====
+[OOC one more post will wrap this up]
+"Well Svathlan, I expect it happens all the time on
+these backwater planets. The thought of Ambassador
+Juteson trying to escape is a hoot, the man was as
+spineless as a Frequalian Jello Raptor, a deboned one.
+No offence to any invertebrates present."
+"But, back to the story, I had a pretty good idea who
+had set us up, but I couldn't follow it up if I let
+myself get arrested. Quickly I stepped forward and
+introduced myself to the most inflated Pherion
+'I’m Flash Roger, Galaxy Ranger. I'm glad you're
+here; I'd like to turn these two over to the proper
+authorities',
+Then, gesturing at my rookie, who of course was the
+real Flash Roger,
+'And, I request that the renegade Galaxy Ranger, Nick
+Nitrous, be turned over into my custody for later
+trial'
+Flash seemed a bit surprised at being misnamed, but
+was naive enough to trust me. The Pherion guards of
+course refused to hand anyone over, and took the other
+two into custody, as well as demanding that I stay on
+the station until further notice. I'd bought myself a
+few hours, until a Pherion smart enough to pick one GR
+from another saw the prisoners"
+"I started looking around the rest of the docks, and
+my suspicions were confirmed far sooner than I
+expected; down in the repair dock was one of the very
+ships that had been used to attack the ambassadors
+ship. It looked like the Pherion military was behind
+the attempt to kill the Ambassador. Immediately I ran
+to the transport tubes, if I was right then the
+Ambassador was in a heap of trouble. (Oh, and Flash
+too) All too slowly I arrived at the stations small
+prison area, as soon as I stepped out of the transport
+the way was blocked by an armed penguins.I set my GR
+raygun to nauseate, and a quick blast left the gaurds
+well distracted. While I was trying to figure out what
+to do about the locked blast doors into the prison, a
+conveniant explosion from within took care of them,
+and almost took care of me as well. Well, I found
+Flash pretty quick in the ruins of the prison, but the
+Ambassador had already been shot in his cell. The
+explosion must have been set by the militant penguins
+to fake an escape attempt. Flash and I legged it back
+to my ship, with surprisingly little resistance, and
+soon enough we were space bound again. "
+"With Ambassador Juteson dead, (I sent off a quick
+sub-space message of condolences to his wife Judy and
+their boy Elroy), it fell to me to try and negotiate
+with the Arseniums. Conveniantly enough, there was a
+Arsenium Warcraft approaching Pherion 5 already. I
+hailed the ship, and they agreed let me talk to their
+Queen, so long as I did it from aboard their ship.
+Well, it seemed like a big risk, but in my line of
+work that's nothing special.  Flash volunteered to
+mind the ship, he turned out to be a quick learner
+that boy. After we matched course with them it was
+only a short space walk to the other ships airlock. I
+was about to get my first look at an Arsenium."
+"Now, the GR guidebook classifies Arseniums as a Mucus
+Based Lifeform, but I tell ya, I know a Slime Monster
+when I see one. These guys looked like hairballs
+dipped in used reactor coolant. The interior of the
+ship was intensely humid, and stringy blue muck
+dripped off the walls. On my arrival, I was taken to a
+round room which contained several of the slimy
+critters and an old, battered robot translator. Soon
+as I turned up, all of em' (bar the robot) started
+bouncing around and spitting little blobs of slime. I
+assume that's how they talk, since the translator
+crackled into voice"
+Nitrous continues in a cheesy fake robot voice,
+"Welcome, Galaxy Ranger. I'm afraid that your treaty
+arrives too late. We are tired of the inhabitants of
+Pherion 5 constantly ignoring our demands."
+"Well, I protested that the Pherion Military had
+sabotaged the attempts at mediation, which caused the
+collection of blobs to start rolling around
+frantically. The robot translated this as harsh
+laughter.
+'Of course, half the Pherion Military is working for
+us. Within 20 kiloseconds we will be within range to
+launch our class one Greenhouse bomb at their icy
+little planet.'
+At that moment a dozen more of the slimeballs entered
+the room, and the translators voice took on a menacing
+tone,
+'As for you, Galaxy Ranger, I doubt you'll be around
+to see the show'
+===== Never expect gratitude from a Penguin =====
+Nick Nitrous, Galaxy Ranger (TM) pauses to sort out
+the small pile of wagers on the table, and finishes
+his beer before resuming the story
+"As the droid finished it's cliche ridden threat, I
+noticed that there were sparks jumping from a loose
+plate on it's power supply, not that there was any way
+I could use that while surrounded by threatening slime
+monsters. Just then, the ship rocked and juddered,
+throwing the slime monsters into a slippery confusion.
+Flash, listening from the GR Space Fighter, had
+launched an attack. This was distraction enough, I
+leapt forward, overpowered the robot and, ignoring
+creative verbal abuse in a dozen languages, ripped the
+cover off it's power supply. Slimy tentacles grabbed
+at me and the robot from all around. Turns out that
+the mucus covering the Arseniums was a decent
+conductor, soon as a tentacle crossed over the robots
+power plate, it shorted. There was a sudden flash of
+light and a shower of spare parts. (Forunately my
+suits air filters spared me from the stench of charred
+slime monster). I grabbed one of the strangely shaped
+weapons off a stunned slimeball, shot at the next one,
+then turned the gun right way round and tried again.
+The rest of em returned fire, making it a prudent time
+to run like hell. I was hoping to find my way to the
+bomb bay, but it's hard to read the signs when those
+signs are actually small pools of colored slime on the
+floor. Pretty soon I was back at the airlock, with
+half a shipload of slime monsters behind me. The
+airlock crew bounced down a side corridor when I
+turned up (assume they were scared, but really how
+would ya tell?) The airlock controls were no clearer
+then the signs, so it fell to the direct approach. I
+lined up the airlock doors with my new toy, and was
+rewarded with a dull fading hum. That's when I noticed
+that my GR issue ray gun was still sitting on the
+airlock control layout, right where I'd left it after
+coming aboard. Well, I yelled for joy at being
+re-united with my best friend, though it was drowned
+out by the sound of the wall I was using for cover
+being vaporised."
+"Now, the GR issue ray-gun has a wide range of useful
+settings, with the stipulation that actually using
+most of them will void the guns warranty (and often
+the users life insurance policy). I figured that not
+getting shot was a bigger issue, and so with some
+trepidation turned the Ray-Guns dial all the way up to
+."
+"The next thing I recall I was floating in space,
+surrounded by debris and covered in slime. The ray gun
+was warped and half melted, and my glowing teeth lit
+up the inside of my space helmet. Half a dozen slime
+monsters were writhing and venting green clouds in the
+space close to me, and their ship was disappearing in
+the distance, with a hole in the side looking like a
+ruptured blister. Flash swung past soon enough and
+picked me up, though my space fighter was no longer
+shiny or new after picking a fight with a far larger
+ship"
+"There was no way we'd be able to catch up with the
+Arsenium warship before it dropped it's Greenhouse
+bomb, but we still had a chance. Ya standard
+Greenhouse bomb releases a horde of fast breeding
+fungus that spread like mad, then decay and release a
+bunch of gas, quick enough to change the planets
+atmosphere in a few days. We'd have to deal with them
+before the lot got entrenched and spread out, probably
+in the first few hours. Normally, I'd follow standard
+policy on dealing with this kind of thing, but we
+didn't have any nukes handy. Next best thing would be
+a huge load of fungicide. Not the kind of thing that a
+GR normally carries, but I knew where to get some"
+"After I abandoned the Darmok ship I'd flown into the
+system, it followed the autpilot and finished up in
+orbit around Pherion 5. A crowded warship gets pretty
+grungy on a long haul trip, and when ya consider that
+an average Darmok of Darmok has at least 12 armpits,
+well you get the picture. We went aboard and got the
+autodoc to spit out a few Darmok first aid kits, each
+of which contained enough fungicide to slow down a
+Leviathan Floater. By now, the Arseniums had dropped
+their payload, and a confused three way space battle
+had broken out between the warship and the two
+factions of the Pherion Military. We got a fix on the
+bombsite and flew on down towards the surface. Most of
+Pherion 5's surface is covered in gray ocean or vast
+planes of reflective ice, the dirty green lump
+spreading from the bombsite stood out even from 20km
+up. We set down right at the center of the puddle of
+muck, loaded up with as much fungicide as we could
+carry and set to work. After the last couple of days
+I'd started to really hate fungus and slime, it felt
+good to get some serious payback. The foam from the
+Darmok first aid kits worked great. Soon enough we
+were standing at the bottom of a 100m wide crater,
+which the planet wrecking fungus had eaten into the
+ice, covered head to toe in dead green muck."
+"Well, a pretty major war erupted in the Pherion
+System, but the Arseniums had put most of their
+resources into getting the Greenhouse bomb, so it
+ended up as a civil war between traditionalist
+Pherions and the faction who wanted better weather for
+surfing. Flash and I were still wanted by both sides,
+despite saving their planet. In the end we had to
+smuggle ourselves out of the system, we posted
+ourselves back to GR HQ  in cold-sleep capsules
+disguised as lunch meat shipments. I got back ok; the
+Aeolian courier service delivered a container full of
+Frequalan Sentient lounge chairs instead of Flash.
+Now, if you could get Flash to tell ya how he avoided
+becoming thinking furniture for a Hedonist Cult, I’d
+love to hear it”
+----
+Back to [[science fiction]] \\
+Go back to  [[The Captain's View Hotel]]