Plan A or B, or even C
All the crew are on the flight deck doing preliminary checks at their own consoles. Dizzy keeps looking up expectantly at the various entries to the flight deck, Porter notices that Dizzy seems agitated and sees her looking around,
PORTER: “Hey, What’s up Dizzy?”
Dizzy looks at Porter and gives him a half smile. She then looks down at her console and pushes a square on her touch screen, “DIZZY, PRIVATE
COMMUNICATION SELECT” appears in text, she then slides her finger across to IOA.
IOA/DIZZY PRIVATE COMMS, flashes, she then holds her fingers against the back of her left ear to turn her personal embedded earpiece on (All crew have a Wireless/Galvanic radio transmitter/receiver implanted behind their left ear under their skin).
DIZZY: “Nothing Porter. Ioa, Captain’s location please”
Dizzy listens to the private response from Ioa in her embedded earpiece, IOA: “Captain is outside, close to extended cargo ramp number two”
Dizzy gets up from her seat and rushes towards the elevator, Porter looks up at her rushing away,
PORTER: “DIZZY! what’s up!”
DIZZY: “It’s the Captain”
The remaining crew on the flight deck all look at each other. Dizzy meanwhile has got in one of the elevators and pushes “EXPRESS
TRAVEL”,
DIZZY: “Ioa, exit elevator closest to current extended ramp number two where John is located”
IOA: “Elevator exit fourteen is closest to current extended ramp number two, at John’s location, elevator express travel has been selected, please observe safety protocols for this mode”
Dizzy pushes herself back into padded depression in the elevator wall and grabs handles either side of her that have popped out of depressions either side of her. The elevator accelerates rapidly, Dizzy is gritting her teeth like a human would on a fast theme park ride.
The elevator hurtles and whizzes around corners all around the star ship in express travel mode. Dizzy exits the elevator and runs and stops at the top of the ramp, she is dishevelled with her hair all messed up and is dizzy from the rapid fairground like elevator ride, DIZZY: “Captain! Captain! John!”
John is standing on the end of the ships ramp with Ghost looking out towards the caves entrance, he looks around when he hears Dizzy shouting, John runs up the ramp and grabs Dizzy by both arms, Dizzy is still dizzy in a panic and shaking,
JOHN: “DIZZY! what’s going on?”
Then John looks up over Dizzy’s shoulder as he can hear muffled shouting and the sound of military guns whistling as they are charging up.
John and Dizzy witness the arrival of the rest of the crew plus three yellow maintenance robots crammed into the adjacent elevator that has been set to express travel mode and has visibly been overcrowded.
As the elevator doors open with Dizzy and the crew inside. Porter comes out backwards first, then the rest of the crew spill out all disoriented, then they all start arguing amongst themselves.
The arguing quickly stops, and Ghost and Tombs start adjusting and loading their heavy guns. Porter is putting on body armour and is trying to do up the straps while holding a space gun in each hand.
The three confused maintenance robots have turned up with miscellaneous tools and toolboxes and are just wandering around banging walls with their fists, they then start measuring anything in site.
The maintenance robots are not really sure what they supposed to be doing, they start buzzing at each other like they are chatting, one starts tapping a wall with his knuckle and shrugging its shoulder’s.
Dizzy starts helping Porter get his amour on that he brought with him.
She starts by helping him with the body armour straps.
TOMBS: “Where are they?
GHOST: “What’s going on
JOHN: “Yeah? what’s going on”
PORTER: “DIZZY, eh, Dizzy ran out, eh, we thought you were in trouble”
TOMBS: “Porter said quick, its John, outside!”
JOHN: “DIZZY?”
DIZZY: “I was just worried for you John”
JOHN: “Well I’m fine, I’m doing OK. I just wanted a bit of time to myself to think some things over, and to chat to Ghost. But since you are all here now. Tombs, did you do a scan of that alien vessel”.
Tombs is trying to focus on shutting down his gun, but he is still a bit disorientated and has accidently set his gun to self-destruct. John takes a few steps back and looks concerned because the gun has started to give spoken warnings.
GUN VOICE: “Gun self-destruct set on, stand back at least two miles from blast zone, ten, nine, eight,
John has a localised shield generator emitter that can stop bullets and small amour, he gets it off his belt and turns it on. It emits a humming fuzzy greyish shield bubble around himself, Ghost, Porter and Dizzy all looking concerned quickly decide to join John in the bubble, the bubble bulges, and then hums some more.
Two of the yellow maintenance robots lay down on the ground with hands over heads, the other robot sees the other two on the ground and rolls up into the foetal position.
TOMBS: “Fuck, Fuck,”
Tombs thumble’s with the guns controls and turns off the self-destruct, GUN VOICE: “three, two, gun self-destruct has been turned off”
John turns off his shield generator emitter,
JOHN: “Not that the shield would had done much good this close anyway”
TOMBS: “What’s that’s boss?”
JOHN: “Nothing”
TOMBS: “yeah, it was an Endellion scout ship”
JOHN: “There’s usually three that escort an Endellion system destroyer, am I right Tombs”
TOMBS: “Yeah, those scouts are fast, sophisticated, well equipped, but short range, so they need to refuel often. So, there must be an Endellion system destroyer around here within, oh, I guess 10 or 12 light years”.
Tombs is twitching his body like he is getting excited about something, TOMBS: “Are we going to pick a fight with those Endellion Basterds John”
Tombs and Ghost are looking at each other and are both nodding and smiling broadly. Ghost lifts both her arms up and kisses both her upper arm muscles.
GHOST: “Yeah, here we go again Fight! Fight! Fight! Rock and roll, aye Tombs”
PORTER: “Actually Ghost, rock and roll have a different meaning than what you are using it for”
GHOST: “Yeah I know Porter. “ROCK AND ROLL! aye Tombs!”
A smiling Tombs goes up close face to face with Porter teasing him,
TOMBS: “Right! Rock and Roll girl! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
JOHN: “I what to retrieve some more Endellion Gyres, so that we can fix some of these paradoxes they have created. I what to avoid any conflicts, but I guess it’s going to be unavoidable”.
TOMBS: “You mean those rounds things, that look like hockey Pucks!, that rhymes with Endellions Fuck”
Ghost laughs, John smiles,
JOHN: “Yeah, Endellions Fuck”
Ghost starts to swing her hips with arms in the air in celebration,
GHOST: “Yes!, Yes!, Yes!”
DIZZY: “Will you reprogramme us again John, to fight like the Marines”
John looks at Porter then Dizzy,
JOHN: “I’ve written a new algorithm; you will be able to choose to be angry or not to be angry, it should safe this time, you won’t try and kill each other like before. Or any of the crew”
TOMBS: “What’s the plan boss”
JOHN: “I’m going to send out a drone emitting a false bow wave signature with long distance tracking, so Alice won’t get tracked easily. A drone should be able to out manoeuvre a scout ship. I think I can set one up so it will be one step ahead. I’ll send it on some random path, then the scout should chase after the drone, it will make the scout ship burn up
fuel fast. The scout ship will have to return to the destroyer to refuel.
That’s how we can find the Endellion destroyer”.
TOMBS: “Then what”
JOHN: “Let me think over some things first, and I will brief you all at breakfast”
Once they are all back on the ship John checks over the helm settings and sends a drone off to find the Endellion scout ship, then goes over to speak to Dizzy.
JOHN: “Dizzy, can you take the helm patrol overnight, and track that drone I sent to take that scout ship on a magical mystery tour of the local system. Once they have realised they have been chasing a drone for a few hours and they are low on fuel they are going to leave the drone alone.
Get the drone telemetry downloaded and wake me, I need to know ASAP.
I’m going to have a shower and get some sleep if I can”.
DIZZY: “No problem captain”
Tombs and Ghost are chatting,
JOHN: “Ghost! Tomb’s! try and get some rest”.
Ghost waves back an Ok at John.
John puts his hand on Dizzy’s shoulder, he smiles at her, trying to reassure her,
JOHN: “It’s going to be Ok, Dizzy”
Dizzy smiles at John, John smiles back. He then starts to walk away in the direction of a doorway on the ships bridge, the doors slides open as he approaches them. He stops and looks around at his crew, JOHN: “Ghost! Tomb’s! Get some rest”.
Ghost and Tombs wave back an “Ok” at John again.
John leaves the bridge and goes downstairs to his cabin. The cabin looks just like a very large modern bedroom with built in wardrobes that could be part of a smart house on a beach someplace warm and sunny. Its bright and decorated mostly in white. It has male and female furnishings. One
door in the room is open wide, the room inside is a bathroom with a large wet shower.
On the far wall big white net curtains waft around wide-open glass sliding doors as we see a balcony outside which makes it look like it is a low-level building overlooking a warm blue coral sea on a desert island. This is really a realistic looking holographic projection. John sits on the side of his big double bed in the bedroom,
JOHN: “Ioa, shower on”
IOA: ”Shower is now turned on, temperature set to 23 degrees”
John leans forward and puts his head in his hands and sighs, JOHN: “Oh fuck, what a day”
John undresses and has a shower, afterwards, he grabs a white towel and dries himself, he then just lays down on top of his large double bed, he leans over and picks up Lunas grubby and blooded T shirt off the floor and smells its front, he examines it and smells the T shirt under its arms, he smiles,
JOHN: “Channel de lion Eau de Parfum…”
Johns eyes well up with tears,
A soft knocking at John’s cabin door is followed by a women’s voice.
GHOST: “John? John? It’s Ghost! Can I come in? Would that be ok?”
John quickly wipes away his tears,
JOHN: “Yeah, come in”
The cabin door automatically slides across with a “swish”, and Ghost stands in the doorway,
John looks up, he tries to smile at her and tucks Lunas T shirt under his bed pillow.
JOHN: “What’s up girl?”
GHOST: “I want to hear more about you and Luna”
JOHN: “Grab a seat”
GHOST: “Can I kick back and get you and me a drink first John”
JOHN: “Go for it”
Ghost walks over to a dark camouflaged painted cabinet with big heavy metal riveted hinges that looks like it has had some sort of military use in the past. It has “Dangerous contents “EXPLOSIVES X-C-9” in big letters written across the doors. Ghost uses an eye scanner embedded into the cabinet door to get authorisation to open it, GHOST: “Can I open the drinks cabinet please Ioa”
IOA: “Scanning. Authorisation to access drinks cabinet. Ghost, Marine officer class one, Crew, Alice, you have authorisation to access, John’s drink cabinet,
A click is heard, and the doors of the cabinet open, GHOST: “This is my big old ammo box you know John”
JOHN: “I know it is. And they are my drinks inside”.
GHOST: “I could just blow the hinges off with some X-C-9 and rob the booze you know”
JOHN: “And ruin the drinks inside?”
Ghost looks around at John and smiles at him, she then gets a bottle of whisky and two glasses from the cabinet. One glass is bigger than the other,
GHOST: “Usual?”
JOHN: “I will have the small glass, usual”
Ghost pours whisky for them both and hands the small one to John who is relaxing on his bed. Ghost pulls up a chair that is near the bed closer to John. While she is sitting she removes her heavy boots and puts her
outstretched legs and feet on the bed. John looks into his glass, which looks rather full,
JOHN: “This isn’t a small glass shot; this is a small glass full right up, may as well be a big glass shot”
GHOST: “You’re my drinking buddy John, here, have my small, big glass”
Ghost takes Johns glass and hands him hers, which is larger. John ‘tuts’,
JOHN: “Ghost!”
Ghost winks at John,
GHOST: “You deserve it, and anyway, I solicitously love you”
JOHN: “And I care for you and love all my crew. To the Alice, Cheers Ghost”
GHOST: “To the Alice. Cheers, and up yours John, and down the hatch”
Ghost downs the drink in one swig and pours another from the bottle, GHOST: “Talk to me John”
John sips from his glass, sighs, and smiles at Ghost, Ghost slides her foot across the bed and gives John a friendly kick on his foot,
GHOST: “So, go on, you were fixing the Ballerina”
JOHN: “Yeah, and so I started making repairs to the ship, that’s the Delta ship, the tug we call the Ballerina. I looked at the damage on the Ballerinas engine, and just knew in my head how to repair it, and what I had to do to fix it. It was weird how I knew; I was still thinking it was from Luna’s memory. The damage wasn’t as bad as it looked and didn’t take too long to repair. Luna said we might need the car, so she put a ramp down and I drove the car into the ship’s cargo bay. Then Luna said to me…
LUNA: “We need to get going, we don’t have long”
We went to the Ships Bridge, and she sat me down at the helms co-pilots seat and she strapped me in. Again, it all seemed strangely familiar to me, but I was unsure why, I was thinking it was because I was sharing her memories. I said to her….
JOHN: “So, if earth is not going to be here soon, where are we going”
LUNA: “To earth’s future, then Mars”
JOHN: “But if earth is not going to be here now, how is it going to be here in the future?”
LUNA: “It won’t, that’s why we got to go now. I’ll have to explain more to you later. You will understand things as time passes for you. You, we are experiencing a paradox John. Sort of”
JOHN: “Sort of a Paradox?”
LUNA: “It might get bumpy the ride, make sure you are secure”
JOHN: “At least tell me where we are going to in earth’s future”
LUNA: “There are some things we need to collect from earth in 2049 on our way to Mars”
John has a beaming smile, and is massaging and rubbing the controls and panels on the console in front of him,
JOHN: “This is the wildest fucking alien dream I have ever had, that chicken salsa I had for lunch must had been off. Really, I am sick and unconscious and dreaming at home in bed. I met a beautiful female alien today, and now I’m going to time travel to 2049 , and visit Mars later!”
Luna stares at John with a look on her face like that he is under the impression that she has been misleading him. Luna looks upset, she knows that a time paradox has created this situation and she cannot tell him that they are in fact both very close and in love with each other.
Tears roll out of the corners of her beautiful eyes, JOHN: “I’m sorry, but this is just a crazy dream, it is a dream?”
LUNA: “Eh! No. This is as real as it gets. I wish you understood John”.
John looks at Luna, his smile goes as he sees her tears. Upset, Luna un-straps herself then gets up out of her seat to walk away but stops and turns back and walks over to John and kisses him passionately. Suddenly, she stops kissing him and gets herself strapped back into her seat. John does not smile but looks surprised,
JOHN: “Well, this is the first alien wet dream I’ve had without the wet!
John is grinning and is looking down at his groin, JOHN: “And look, no erection”
Luna starts the spaceship’s engines up,
John’s grinning stops and reality steps in. He pauses and thinks for a while.
JOHN: “Shit! This is fucking real! This is really fucking happening!
What was that kiss all about?”
Luna ignores John. She moves her hands quickly across the flight controls making adjustments on her console. She waves her hands above some parts, and presses against the flat panel in other parts. The console illuminates with graphs and graphic numeric readouts.
LUNA: “Let’s see if those imaginary repairs you have been dreaming about hold out John. Core starting up, 50, 60, 90, steady at 112 percent, good. Gravity proximity damping on, Ok, heading ok, calculating correction for time differential. Engaging time displacement. John, open that compartment down by your feet, use a glove under your seat and hand me the first Gyre in there, no need to undo your seatbelt, it will give out a bit”.
John leans down and opens the floor compartment. A cold white mist wafts out and disperses quickly, he gets a thick padded glove from under his seat and reaches into the compartment and gets out a round flat grey Gyre. He holds the round Puck shaped Gyre and turns in around in his hand looking at it.
JOHN: “What is this”
LUNA: “ An Endellion Gyre. It is used by the Endellion’s to remove whole planetary systems from time. We found other uses for them, it allows us to time travel,
John taps the Gyre of the open compartment lid, JOHN: “What is it made from?”
LUNA: “You. I mean I. My team found out that it is a super mass. It’s artificial, and it’s not a natural occurring substance. I’ll explain later.
Open the adjacent compartment and put it into the slot and close the lid”.
John does as instructed by Luna,
JOHN: “You know that time does not exist, time is a word invented for the continuous sequence of events”
LUNA: “I know, my species has a similar word for the movement of gravity though space, I like your word more than mine. Time”
LUNA: “We have to go to earth’s future in 2049 and six months and three days from now. Planet earth will be in a different orbit then, the planetary system will have moved, and the galaxy would have turned, so we have a short journey across space and time, so we will have to traverse across your system to get there. This ship will take care of the navigation and journey, and the Gyre will displace time”.
Luna leans across her console and taps away on various static and flashing symbols. The ship lurches, rumbles, and hums. Luna presses down with her fingers on her console and taps other places.
LUNA: “Forward, rear, side, top, base, viewing screens on”
Exterior views hang in the air in the ships bridge room in front of Luna and John. The desert floor quickly moves away like being in an extremely fast elevator. The view of a blue sky goes to black with a background full of stars. Luna pushes once on a yellow flashing square on her console, LUNA: “Here we go, it will only be a short trip, just a few minutes. we will pass the sun close.”
The ships engine hums, and the stars rush forward and streak on the view screen, the sun gets big very quickly on the forward viewing screen and
vanishes as they seem to pass through it. The interior of the ship goes blue,
JOHN: “What’s happening, did we just go through that?”
LUNA: “Moving faster than light, the spectrum shifts to blue John”
The blue light fades and normal white light inside the ship returns. A screens full of stars are on the various view screens now. Luna tilts the delta shaped ship downwards by tilting her now blue light illuminated left palm over her console and earth appears on the view screen.
The ships speeds though the clouds and across the sky then plunges dangerously fast towards the ground. Luna calmly waves her right hand high over her console and a red light illuminates her palm, she slowly tilts and lowers her hand towards the consoles surface and the red light on her palm changes though the spectrum to mauve, she brings the ship to a halt, its hovers for a few seconds and then the ship touches down.
LUNA: “2049, Earth. This is place where you work John”.
John and Luna unbuckle themselves. John gets up from his seat and follows Luna off the bridge and out and down the lowered ramp the car had been driven up earlier.
JOHN: “This is the back car park of my workshop”
LUNA: “Yes, let’s go into the workshop John, we are late”
JOHN: “You can be late if you time travel?”
LUNA: “Yes”
They both go through to the back workshop where Tombs is sitting on a work bench and Ghost is standing close by. Tombs and Ghost are sharing a fat cigar.
Tombs gets down off the bench as soon as John walks into the workshop.
Both Ghost and Tombs have big wide smiles on their faces when they see John. Tombs welcomes John with a big bear hug, picking John up off the ground.
TOMBS: “Wow! Your back, just like Luna said”.
GHOST: “Missed you man”
Tombs puts John down, Johns looks at Luna,
JOHN: “Do I know these people?”
TOMBS: “What?, hey, Luna, has his timelines merged, does he know yet”
LUNA: “No, I think it is too soon. I had trouble orientating when I returned”.
Porter and Dizzy walk into the workshop,
PORTER: “Sir! Your well and alive”
Dizzy is overcome with emotion and just stands there smiling and shivering,
JOHN: “Porter, wow, you look and act completely human now, and so do you Dizzy, you look wonderful”
PORTER: “Well off course, it was all those upgrades you did, remember?”
Luna is trying to get Porters attention without getting Johns attention.
Luna is crossing her head at Porter,
LUNA: “Er, Yeah, eh, Porter, John does not know. Yet”
Then Frank walks in. Franks hair is now long around the sides of his balding head, he is wearing a long Afghan sheep coat over a scooby doo T shirt and jeans and has open toe sandals on. John looks Frank up and down with a confused look and with half a smile on his face.
FRANK: “John! How are you. How is he Luna? does he know yet?”
LUNA: “Is everything we need being loaded Frank”
FRANK: “Yeah, the droids are loading the Ballerina now”
LUNA: “We have no time to chat, let’s all go then”
After the robots have quickly finished loading they all start to board the Ballerina. Luna and John walk up the ramp last following the last of the cargo.
Luna stops at the top of the ramp as she is alerted to a message she is getting, she pushes her fingers against the skin behind her left ear, LUNA: “Ok, Ioa, I understand, you have permission for emergency start-up and lift off procedure”
JOHN: “What’s up”
LUNA: “Ioa has detected a special type of radio frequency carrier wave that means the planet has entered a devolution phase initiated by the Endellions earlier than expected. They probably detected a crease in time when you and I arrived here in the Ballerina, go quickly, up to the bridge and get strapped in, we need to make an emergency take off, we could be in for a rough ride”.
They both rush to the bridge. As they are getting strapped in Porter updates Luna,
PORTER: “Ioa has committed SALON, so Engines are hot to go, power at 115 percent, navigation plotted, just punch it Luna”
With one hand still adjusting her seat strap she shouts a command…
LUNA: “Ioa, give me SALON access,
A red flashing button emerges quickly from her console, she punches it with her free hand and the ship launches vertically. Within a couple of seconds, they pass the moon, and the star ship is over 300 thousand miles away from earth when they come to an immediate stop, JOHN: “Fuck, that was some ride. What is SALON?”
LUNA: “Salon is short word for emergency engine start and lift off quick compute navigation, and avoid any obstacles,
JOHN: “That doesn’t spell out Salon, that’s ES-AL-NA-O..,ish”
LUNA: “No, but its quicker to say”
John smiles, Luna smiles back and rubs John lovingly on his thigh without thinking about it. John looks a little puzzled by her affection, LUNA: “Ioa, View screen, show earth, magnify times four, more zoom, stop!”
Earth has a glowing yellow cloud enveloping the whole planet, the yellow cloud stops glowing and disappears after a few minutes. Luna navigates the Ballerina back to Earth and takes some low passes to show John what the surface of the planet now looks like after the Endellion attack.
LUNA: “Just rubble and rocks, no life, all life is gone, just sterile”
JOHN: “Unbelievable. All the people, animals, all life”
FRANK: “Life? It never existed John, the clock wasn’t just turned back, it changed the way the planet developed. It required a huge amount of harnessed and controlled energy to do that”.
John un-straps himself and gets up to get a closer look at the view screen.
Dizzy gets out of her seat and walks over to John, she rests her head on his chest and takes Johns right arm and puts it around her neck and shoulder, she then looks sideways at the screen while hugging him. John seems a little surprised by Dizzy action.
DIZZY: “I’m scared of the Endellions John”
John hugs Dizzy back and sighs,
JOHN: “Yeah, this all scares me too Dizzy”
PORTER: “I’ve set a course for Mars Luna. Sending to helm control”
They all return to their seats,
LUNA: “Ok Porter, thank you. Course set in, here we go, we are setting off”.
The Ballerina turns around and zooms off towards mars……
John, laying on his bed aboard the Alice is looking into his nearly empty whisky glass,
JOHN: “It was a very quiet journey to Mars, remember Ghost? I don’t think anyone spoke”.
GHOST: “Yeah, And I had seen it all before, but for you it was the first time, sort of, although at the time you thought it was the first time you had seen it happen because of the time paradox. Even so, it must had still been a shock for you”.
John sips his whisky, then looks into the glass again and finishes it off.
John sighs,
JOHN: “Yeah. It was”
John’s bedroom door opens and Dizzy walks in,
DIZZY: “The drone John”
JOHN: “Rock and roll Ghost”
All three go to the bridge and look over the data on a view screen.
DIZZY: “The Endellion scout ship looks very still”
JOHN: “Yeah, that’s odd”
GHOST: “Do you think they ran out of gas”
John does a half giggle,
JOHN: “Maybe. I thought we were going to track the scout ship back to the destroyer, this could be a good opportunity for a different plan, Dizzy, get Tombs and Porter, we’re going in”.
With all the crew on the bridge John goes through his plan to get onto the destroyer. Holographic images of the Endellion scout ship and the destroyer hover in the air in a clear space on the bridge.
JOHN: “The scout ship appears to have shut down for some unknown reason, I’m going to use this opportunity to get to the Endellion destroyer ship by hiding and piggy backing the scout”
TOMBS: “And how you going to do that”
JOHN: “We’ll leave the Alice here and take the Ballerina because it’s smaller, easier to conceal, and harder to track. We’ll have to travel in stealth mode. When we get to the scout ship there is an area on its roof that the Ballerina will fit onto, we will be using the ballerinas landing feet. We cannot use grappling wire, or magnetic clamps and they could be detected by the scout ship.
So, I intend to glue the landing feet to the scout’s hull using a combination of a glue designed for extreme conditions mixed with liquid X-C-9 explosive injected down each of Ballerinas hollow landing legs to each landing foot, it will set hard in seconds.
When we have carried out our mission and go to take off from the roof of the scout ship the X-C-9 explosive can be detonated downwards, the ballerinas landing legs will be fucked, but they can be replaced or fixed.
And I don’t much care about the scout ship as the explosion will be directed downwards into their hull”.
Tombs and Dizzy are laughing at the idea of the scout ship being blown up,
GHOST: “You’re planning on the scout ship getting a tow back to the destroyer, I guess we will be cloaked then?”
JOHN: “Exactly, we’ve seen them getting towed back before. It will be a bit like the Trojan horse story, except we piggyback the scout ship back to the destroyer”.
TOMBS: “How are we going to get into the destroyer”
JOHN: “While the scout ship is being re-fuelled we will all suit up, spacewalk, and blow out a hatch on the port side of the destroyer, the Gyres are stored here”
John points at the hologram of the destroyer and shows the crew the hatch he intendeds to blow out, and the Endellion Gyres storage area,
GHOST: “So, steal the Gyres and get away the same way we came in and back to the Ballerina. Detonate the X-C-9 explosive, boom!, and we are gone”.
TOMBS: “Wham! Bam! Thank you Endellions! Sounds like a plan to me, when are we going”.
JOHN: “Now!”
The crew get the equipment they need packed into the Ballerina. John asks Ioa to put down ramp number one where the Ballerina is docked.
The crew board the Ballerina and they set off in stealth mode to find the Endellion Scout ship. They arrive and find a lifeless looking scout ship hanging in empty space. It seems to be marooned.
DIZZY: “I think we got here just in time; I’m picking up another Endellion ship on radar, looks like it will be here in around twenty-one minutes”
PORTER: “Doing low level scans of the scout ship, there running minimal life support, there on batteries, no high energy levels, their power core looks depleted ”
JOHN: “Dizzy, how are the screen emitters holding out, are we well hidden from them”
DIZZY: “They can’t see us John, they don’t know we are here, they can see the surrounding stars right though us”
JOHN: “I am just going to use the ships slow momentum and external dampers to land on their roof, nice and gently”
The ballerina comes to a graceful landing on the back of the scout ship, JOHN: “Great, nice soft landing, and now pumping X-C-9 down the landing legs. Glue setting, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, our X-C-9 customised mixture has set, and we are stuck firmly to the roof of the scout ship”.
GHOST: “I’m gonna go check the spacesuits and air-tanks”
TOMBS: “I’ll help”
DIZZY: “John, when will you do Porters and my software update for when we make an entrance onto the destroyer in case of a confrontation with the Endellions”
JOHN: “It’s already done”
PORTER: “Oh! I feel no different”.
JOHN: “That was the idea”
Ioa interrupts the conversation,
IOA: “Attention, proximity warning, large starship approaching”
JOHN: “Dizzy?”
Dizzy scans her console,
DIZZY: “It’s the destroyer”
JOHN: “View screen on, show view of approaching starship”
Tombs and Ghost rush onto the bridge,
GHOST: “We herd Ioa’s warning message”
The crew all observes an Endellion destroyer coming to a standstill not far from their own ship,
TOMBS: “This will test our stealth”
JOHN: “There here sooner than scheduled, Dizzy?”
DIZZY: “The destroyer came to rescue the scout ship at its maximum speed, looks like the Endellions downstairs in the scout ship are having problems with their life support systems, they have almost completely failed. I guess that’s why the destroyer came here, and they didn’t send another scout ship out to tow it back”.
The destroyer positions itself close to the scout ship, huge side doors slide open revealing a brightly lit interior of the destroyer. Then, the destroyer slowly starts to move sidesways,
JOHN: “Ioa, view screen on, 360 views”
DIZZY: “What is happening”
TOMBS: “The whale that swallowed Jonas”
PORTER: “What did you say Tombs?”
TOMBS: “Never mind what I said”
JOHN: “Looks like plan C”
TOMBS: “What happened to plan B”
JOHN: “Plan B was my plan A”
Tombs frowns at John,
TOMBS: “Oh! How is plan C looking”?
JOHN: “Not good Tombs, not good”