Writing Exercise: Science Fiction!

[StillStunned]

Not a phrase or writing technique this time, but a genre.

This is for all of us who love sci-fi, who grew up with Heinlein and Asimov and Harrison and Vance and McCaffrey, and cyberpunk and planetary romance and dystopias and time travel, and with supercomputers and mechas and teleportation, and with lasers and phasers and lightsabers, with spaceships and aliens and actually intelligent AIs and strange planets and slick Galactic criminals and rogue robots and overcrowded underground cities and nuclear fallout zones and planetary orbits and hyperspace jumps and all that.

It's also for everyone who's never been interested in any of that but would like to dip their toe into the waters. Write something about space marines suiting up for action, or a heroine from Earth swinging her sword (and her boobs) in the ruined cities of Barsoom, or the crew of a small rocket ship passing through the Asteroid Belt en route to Jupiter Station, or a meeting between embassies of alien races to discuss trade routes and blockades, or a hacker being sucked into a super-secret supercomputer, or anything else that you can think of. Let your imagination fly at warp speed!

Usual rules apply: nothing that wouldn't get past Lit's story approval process, and keep it to a reasonable length of about 500 words max.

 

[StillStunned]

Port Marin wasn’t the most glamourous station in the Cluster. Circling along the edge of the Erib Rockfield, its docking bays were lined with mining ships and bulk traders. Heavy equipment formed much of the horizon, outlining sharply against the reds and purples of the Haze.

Beneath the grit and the grime, however, below the decks and the tramping boots and the rumbling wheels, Port Marin guarded fabulous wealth. Because heavy ore and bulk metals weren’t all that were mined in Erib.

There were also star diamonds.

Discovered by hard-bitten miners, studied by clinical laboratorians and marketed by cynical salespeople, star diamonds were the most desirable gemstones in the Cluster: black as space, with a heart shining like a star.

And so the vaults beneath Port Marin’s industrial docks and factories held these prized treasures. Cutters and polishers sat hunched over their benches, traders haggled and argued, designers and jewellers selected the choicest of stones, and wealthy buyers were rendered speechless by the beauty – and the cost – of the treasures presented to them.

None of this was apparent on the station’s surface. Dust lay everywhere there, blown by the downdraft from the great mining and transport vessels that dominated the sky. So many and so large were they that sometimes they blocked out even the Cluster’s bright centre.

Buses filled the lower levels of the air, long metal shapes with workers clinging to the sides on their way to or from their ships.

The noise was deafening. It filled every register, from the low subliminal rumble of the industrial ships to the roar of the buses to the hubbub of voices and the piercing wail of a siren.

No-one looked up, despite the high-pitched warning, as the carrier eased in for its landing. A regular sight, the carrier arrived every few days, bringing new visitors and taking away the old.

The locals barely glanced at the newcomers. Neither low enough to deserve respect nor high enough to earn scorn, these people didn’t register among the hardworking, hard-living asteroid miners and factory workers.

That was just how Ranna diOtro liked it. No-one gave her a second glance as she stepped from the deck of the carrier onto the gangplank and walked to the grime-covered street. People everywhere were occupied with their own lives, their own concerns. They had no time for this slender woman, nor for the goodlooking man who followed behind her.

No-one would remember them when the vault was discovered open and the priceless star diamonds stolen.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Not a phrase or writing technique this time, but a genre.

This is for all of us who love sci-fi, who grew up with Heinlein and Asimov and Harrison and Vance and McCaffrey, and cyberpunk and planetary romance and dystopias and time travel, and with supercomputers and mechas and teleportation, and with lasers and phasers and lightsabers, with spaceships and aliens and actually intelligent AIs and strange planets and slick Galactic criminals and rogue robots and overcrowded underground cities and nuclear fallout zones and planetary orbits and hyperspace jumps and all that.

It's also for everyone who's never been interested in any of that but would like to dip their toe into the waters. Write something about space marines suiting up for action, or a heroine from Earth swinging her sword (and her boobs) in the ruined cities of Barsoom, or the crew of a small rocket ship passing through the Asteroid Belt en route to Jupiter Station, or a meeting between embassies of alien races to discuss trade routes and blockades, or a hacker being sucked into a super-secret supercomputer, or anything else that you can think of. Let your imagination fly at warp speed!

Usual rules apply: nothing that wouldn't get past Lit's story approval process, and keep it to a reasonable length of about 500 words max.

Damn you @StillStunned - I have stories I’m meant to be finishing !

 

[StillStunned]

Damn you @StillStunned - I have stories I’m meant to be finishing !

And in a few minutes you'll have one more!

 

[BeechLeaf]

'Oh yes. Yess! This is magic! How did you...?'

'What?' Elizabeth laughed. 'It's a personal allowance. I've got ten kilograms and I can--'

'Yes, yes,' Louisa interrupted, 'but that's for... not for zinfandel! Oh, thank you. I love you. You shouldn't have.'

'Frankly, I couldn't think of anything I really, really needed for myself. We're up here, it's bitterly cold, we're living on soya beans, so my luxury is...? Gee whiz, a hair dryer, a box of liqueur chocolates? Then I thought of you. Up here three months already. Probably gagging for a bit of vino.'

'Oh Elizabeth,' said Louisa, looking down at the bottle in her hands, weighing it up, which of course felt wrong here. She looked back up at Elizabeth. 'Do you know, this is... I think... probably... the first alcohol we've had here at base.'

'You're kidding!'

'Supposed to be bad for you.' Louisa reviewed her memories. 'Well, technically, there was a bottle of champagne when we first sealed the dome. And, frankly, one bottle between the thirteen of us... and of course we were sipping it out of plastic cups and bowls and things. Ooh yuk.'

'Ooh yuk,' Elizabeth agreed, and moved in for a hug. If she was lucky it would include a kiss. A kiss on the cheek. She dared not hope for more, almost three years after their peak, and not here, where there was no privacy. The radiation alarm began to ring at that point and they both sighed and pulled back.

 

[redgarters]

In a million years or so, Ravi O'Donnel would be dug up as archaeologists unearthed the ruins of the Emperor Mulhade'en's palace. His skull, titanium teeth and all, would probably be put on display in a glass box somewhere, in a sad museum people took their kids on a rainy day during the summer when school was out to get them out of the fucking house for a minute.

The rest of him would probably be dustbinned.

That is, if he didn't McGuyver his way out of this fucking trap in the next two minutes.

He set about disassembling his blaster, slowly so he wouldn't set off the tiny antimatter bulb, going for the plasma chamber. Drilling a tiny hole in the chamber with the tip of his knife took forever, leaving just about 40 seconds to dribble the liquid plasma into the lock. The countdown to the poisonous gas filling the vault rang in his ears. The Galactic Empire assholes who'd installed the security system clearly hadn't thought of how the countdown would provide potential thieves with an excellent time measurement while escaping.

Thirty seconds.

The thin blade of the stiletto knife slid into the lock, looking for the right push through it's melted security mesh. Ravi smiled wide when the clunk from the lock came with fifteen seconds to spare, the light glinting off a titanium tooth as he grabbed the Emperor's crown, slamming the door to the vault behind him just as the gas valves hissed open.

Suckers. Fuck if he was going to be stared at in a million years by some annoying kids.

 

[SmilingLez]

I do love microfiction



On the colony of Etil, he promised fame. They called it salvation.

One by one they surrendered doubt. Then memory. Then their names.

The neural link erased every difference until thousands of minds spoke as one.

They believed they had evolved into something greater.

They never realized they had become no one at all.

 

[Duil2]

Excerpt from a non-erotic sci-fi 24k story I wrote some time ago and might now revisit and publish here under that category or under non-erotic, perhaps.

“Happy New Year and Activation Anniversary, Ahaon,” read the banner on the wall of her residence. Today was the two hundredth and seventy fifth anniversary of the day she was activated as a hybrid.

“All hybrids report to the central plaza. Code red.”

The communication blasted in her ear via the implant that was constantly linked to the global communications network.

Ahaon left the room at a flat run.

Code red was highly unusual and as far as Ahaon could remember it had to be almost one hundred years since it had been last used.

The clatter of footsteps on flagstone and wooden floors echoed throughout the building and bodies sped from all directions answering the summons.

Pulling open the outer door from the western most building she barrelled into dense smoke. Before it could do her any harm her filtration system activated. It was wood smoke, she was certain. It had to be a forest fire and since they hadn’t occurred naturally for many years she could only guess that some New Year revellers had been careless and not properly dampened their camp fire the night before.

Cleaners, gardeners, field workers, roofers, porters, kitchen staff, laundry staff, garbage and recycling workers, shop workers, dressmakers, hairdressers, teachers, and all types of hybrid workers landed in the small area. Two hundred palace staff in all stood and awaited further instruction.

“Level up, four setting,” Chief Hybrid Handler, Professor Jackman called into the hubbub and silence fell.

Level four was another exceedingly rare occurrence and many of Ahaon’s fellow hybrids had never experienced it so it took them several seconds to acclimatise to the extra energy and vitality that now coursed through their systems.

“Access palace fire defence mode. Form hierarchy by activation date.”

Ahaon’s central processor accessed the protocol which provided all the necessary information and being the earliest activated hybrid she sprang into action organising those closest to her to tackle the tasks at hand.

“Professor, where is the Premier and his riding party? They should have returned from the forest by now.”

The human woman hung over the edge of the balcony that ran around the plaza, her arms waving. She was outside the living quarters of Prionsa Tionchar and his wife and son and Ahaon recognised her as a relative of Banpriosa Rowenna.

A door further along crashed against the wall. Prionsa Tionchar appeared, droplets of water flying from his hair and his open shirt billowing behind him.

“Magnus, have you located them?” he roared. The heir to the premiership strode along the upper walkway towards the weeping woman and coaxed her back inside.

“The Premier Guard are out looking now, sir,” Professor Jackman informed with no sign that their panic was infecting him.

Tionchar glanced down and in one smooth motion jumped over the balustrade and landed among the hybrids below directly in front of his childhood friend. He gripped the Professor’s shoulders.

“Redirect the hybrids to the search. The shield will protect the palace from the fire when that becomes necessary. We have to find my father and wife before…”

He didn’t need to finish.

“Hybrids, access search mode. Form hierarchy by activation date,” Jackman instructed.

Ahaon moved to get her group reassigned and realised the Prionsa was at her elbow.

“I’m joining your team, Ahaon.”

She’d known the Prionsa since his childhood and she understood how headstrong he could be, but her programming overrode everything else now.

“No, sir you are not. Your role is to go back to the offices of the Premier and take command from there. This is no time for misplaced heroism. You have your duty to perform and so do we. Please, Prionsa,” she replied without emotion.

With that she turned her back to him and continued handing out the roles and assignments necessary. Her enhanced hearing allowed her to track him as he alighted the wooden steps and walked purposefully along the balcony above. Another crashing door signalled that he was not pleased with what had transpired but he was safe and that was all that mattered.

 

[onehitwanda]

A nudge of secondary drive as I made the required course correction. A thousand kilometers ahead of me, Heba was still tumbling. The little bit of telemetry data that had trickled out in the aftermath of the Event showed failures across the board. I ran back and forth, trying to find some hint, some clue...

Yang would be deep into her oxygen reserves. I hoped she'd had the sense to put herself into one of the sleep pods and set it to a long cycle, but then Yang always astounded me with how illogical she could be under duress. I'd pointed this out many times; and she'd always laughed or changed the subject.

Q E fucking D.

I'd been stalking Yang and Heba since the assignment came through - close enough to keep an eye on them, far enough that Yang wouldn't shout at me for being there. Once, late and over wine, she'd confessed how much it helped to know I was there. Even when I shouldn't be. She'd said it made her brave.

She hadn't asked what it made me. Worried, generally. Fucking furious, often, in moments like this.

"You owe me a proper dinner with candles this time," I muttered to myself. "Selfish cow."

Still nothing from Heba's telemetry. A brief pang of sadness; she'd been a tidy little ship and whatever part of the ship came back wouldn't be the same.

But spacefaring was risky; I'd tag the ship's hulk so that a salvage barge could find her and bring her home. Maybe we'd be lucky and get her back and mostly whole. But something in a ship died when the lights went out; they came back different. Scared and small.

A brief chill; I shivered.

Yang was who I was here for. Heba could wait a few weeks for a fusion tug. It would make no difference now.

Six hundred clicks. Traces of oxygen, argon, helium-3. Heba was venting her life's blood into the void, watched only by the uncaring stars.

Behind me, I could sense the reflex arms of the Draysus, like golden mandibles of some giant prehistoric stag beetle. I'd lit local space like a supernova as I'd burned hard to close on Yang and Heba, but it would do no good now; I was too close, the intense X-rays would strip the outer skin of the tumbling ship and, probably, kill Yang if Heba's shielding was down. Which all signs indicated it was.

At least we weren't near a strong radio or X-ray source, I mused. Out here in the Deep, energy was sparse.

The distance clicked slowly down. I fussed and fumed - patience was not a virtue I had in abundance. I was going to tear Yang a new one - metaphorically - over this.

A hundred clicks. My first braking burn. Fifty clicks. Thirty. Another burn. Five, and I burned to match orbits. Now I could clearly see the gaping hole in the recon frigate's starboard hull, ablation plates physically shattered from the energy of whatever had hit the ship.

Astronomically small odds to run into something large out here, I thought. Even smaller odds for it to hit a small, fast frigate broadside.

This was deliberate. I filed that fact away for future vengeance.

Three hundred yards, a bit of me amused as always that the ancient measurement system was still the de facto parlance when we were at docking or boarding range. Mooring thrusters on, and I came to rest just beyond the sphere that Heba's hull would describe.

The ship was dark even at the range of touch; no telemetry, not even a flicker of her silicon and fullerene heart. Dead, I thought. I made a note in the log; I'd flesh it out later when I had more time. I tried the various distress and utility channels, and got a ping from the independent systems that ran life-support.

Yang was alive - just.

I selected the second port-side evac drone, the one with the lucky silver arm, and briefed it. We waited for an accident of Heba's crazy tumbling to open a gap, and the drone burned hard through the outer section of the crash sphere an into the relative safety around the ship's center of mass.

I watched the drone's telemetry and grainy telesense feed as it cut through bulkheads and maneuvered into the penetralia of the dead ship, and watched from its metaphorical shoulder as it found the sleep pod in which my friend lay, slowly dying. The drone isolated the various feed lines and caulked them for good measure against the hard vacuum of the Deep. Then it cut the pod free, followed its entry path back to the surface, and timed its exit perfectly, just missing the sweeping arc of one of Heba's glinting Draysus arms.

The drone brought Yang on board, and situated her in the surgery. I plotted a fast course for Leyte, the closest military outpost. Once Yang was strapped into a bed in the sick bay, I spun us to our new vector and lit the plasma core. One gee for now - we could accellerate harder later once I was sure Yang would be up to it.

Then I went to watch as the systems went through the complicated process of waking my friend from her crash-coma.

It was not without excitement - Yang's heart really hadn't enjoyed the synthetic Krait venom; it would take a few months for sympathetic harmonics to help them regenerate and she'd need a pacemaker until then. But the important thing was that she was alive, and her telemetry was getting stronger.

I dealt with things until she woke, and was there when she did.

"Oh Marissa," she whispered, the first words she said. "Oh, ship, I'm so sorry. I should have listened..."

I checked my backup and dual-redundant backups. I ran an aggressive diagnostic on the expert medical system, and then did it again so it would know I was watching for it to fuck up and that I'd slag it if it did.

Then I relaxed. She'd be okay.

"I am putting my foot down, Beth," I said. My voice didn't sound right, but I left it, it was a lesser problem and I'd run some diagnostics on it later. Probably just a stress artifact, anyway.

"You don't have a foot," she said - faint, but still with that smile I'd fallen in love with the first time she boarded me.

"Imagine I do. I'm putting it down right now. You are never going anywhere without me again. From now on. Swear it."

"Okay," she whispered. "Oh... oh, Marissa, are my eyes..."

"Your eyes are fine, Bethany. It's just your heart that worries me."

"Then... what's wrong with your screens? They're all... funning like water."

"I was scared. And I can't cry like you humans can. So I'm afraid that this is the best I can do for you," I whispered.

 

[StillStunned]

(Gentle reminder to keep an eye on the word count, people.)

 

[StillStunned]

An excerpt from my reworked WIP "Cyberpunk Demon Cat":

The Hard Centre was where it happened. Hazy Janey had her corner, her own little patch of Time and Money Square where she made her trades, for bux and for the know. Sell what people want and what people need, that was how you stayed safe and lasted another cycle in the City when the gangs popped in and out of the Night, and City Enforcement made their quota by rounding up anyone without protection.

Shit people, might as well be the motto for where she was headed. Supposed to be a club called Downside, which was a fuckin’ stupid name down here, not ironic like you’d find in the Hard Centre. In this shit quarter of the City it was just a description, like the mud clinging to the underside of a shiny set of headlights, down where the real stuff happens so the slick fucker sitting high and dry can look cool gliding by and pretending they don’t stink. But the stink is still part of the picture, and Downside was part of the City even if people didn’t want to see it.

Didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to hear it, but Downside was where the voices went, the voices that wanted to be heard, voices that shouted against the corporations. Shouted against the slick fuckers that ran them and then went home in their shiny headlights pretending they didn’t stink, pretending not to hear the voices, but if their headlights drove past Downside they might hear them and then drive on past fast. Oh shit oh shit oh fuck, don’t wanna know about this, just keep going, keep going, find the way out of this shit quarter. The voices might follow them all the way back to the safety of the Hard Centre, where their smoothness meant something, something that wouldn’t get them spat on or fucked up in an alley.

But they wouldn’t know. Wouldn't hear. How could they? Blind and deaf to everything but their own smoothness and their own wealth and power. And Downside didn’t show on the outside, you had to know to get inside. And once Janey was inside it was the same as ever, the same voices shouting, the same faces looking hard, the same empty words flying. Bring down the corporations, end the tyranny, freedom and access to the Night! Give us our rights or we’ll take ’em! Always the same.

“The same,” she said to Selfer behind the bar. Selfer never spoke, but he knew her order. Always seemed to know everyone and their orders. He nodded and got her drink, and she turned and looked at the voices. They were the same, of course, but tonight it was different. Not for them but for her. The same ain’t good enough anymore, the voices ain’t good enough, something needs to change. The way Janey felt tonight, something needed to break.

 

[Writer61]

Usual rules apply: nothing that wouldn't get past Lit's story approval process, and keep it to a reasonable length of about 500 words max.

Oh.

As it happens, my current WIP is an SF story, but it is already past 12k words.

Back to the drawing board.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Cindy watched the two moons of Yarbon4 rise above the horizon. The friendly blob entity toyed with her bare breasts, apparently fascinated by her nipples. The alien’s touch caused her to squirm happily. “I love space exploration,” she sighed.

Cindy’s friend Mabel arched her back and gasped as another of the blob entities pushed into her welcoming pussy. “You can say that again,” she exclaimed and then giggled.

 

[Writer61]

Borrowed a couple of characters and some names from my WIP and knocked this up. As always, constructive criticism is welcome.

~~~​

Squadron Leader Gibson smiled to himself as he guided the lander down to the surface. It was his first visit to Elizabeth Base, UK Space Command’s outpost on the Moon, so he was excited, but kept that in check as he focused on the controls.

They had yet to construct a proper landing pad at the base, relying instead on bulldozing areas of regolith. The only downside was that each landing kicked up loads of dust. While they waited for it to settle, Gibson turned to his co-pilot, Kath Forbes. Through her visor, he could see the enormous smile on her face and knew that he was grinning wildly too.

At last, a tractor pulled them to the docking bay, past several other landers. The craft lacked sufficient power to return to orbit, so they were stranded here until the mass driver was finished. Gibson’s lander, like several of the others that had been launched from Earth as part of the Endeavour 3 mission, carried the parts necessary to complete the job.

Clangs and bumps signalled that the cargo bay doors had already been opened. An access tube was attached to the crew hatch, and they descended the last few steps to the surface. This was to be their home for the next few weeks, then they were scheduled to pilot the first lander to leave the Moon's surface and return to Earth.

UK Space Command was a joint forces operation, so it was no surprise that the young man who greeted them was a corporal from the Royal Engineers.

“Afraid it’s rather cramped here until we get some more housing modules on Endeavour 4. That means you need to share a cabin. I hope that won’t be a problem, Ma’am.”

“Don’t worry, Corporal, there wasn’t much privacy aboard Endeavour, either. We will manage.”

They managed fine. Just as soon as the young soldier left them, they were ripping off their flight suits and underwear. Back on Earth, Gibson and Forbes had been screwing at every opportunity, but since leaving Space Command’s headquarters at RAF Scampton a week ago, they had not had a chance.

After five days of wearing the same clothes without a chance to wash, their bodies smelt ripe, but neither of them cared. Both were so desperate for sex that their foreplay was minimal; Gibson focused on making sure that his partner was ready.

As a child, he had dreamed of flying to the moon, alongside a sexy female astronaut, and then making love when they got there.

At last, his dream had come true.

 

[SimonDoom]

Lieutenant Dan Masters hated bugs.

Unfortunately, the bugs were coming for him and for his people in vast numbers. He stood at the gate, defending the humans in the city behind him with his blastgun.

Ten years earlier, a rogue company out of Albuquerque had begun genetic engineering on bugs. The bugs escaped. They multiplied. They grew to human size, or even bigger. They developed intelligence. They infected other bugs.

After a while, they asked themselves, "Why shouldn't WE be in charge?"

The bug-human war began.

An emissary of the bug army approached Masters. It looked kind of like a cockroach, but it stood on its hind legs, eight feet tall.

"There's no point in fighting us," it said to Masters. "Surrender, and we'll make this quick. No one needs to suffer. Fight, and -- "

The bug didn't finish, because Masters blew a hole right through its thorax with his blastgun.

He wasn't going down without a fight.

 

[TheLobster]

The bugs escaped. They multiplied. They grew to human size, or even bigger. They developed intelligence. They infected other bugs.

Software industry in a nutshell.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

"We're screwed. We are so screwed." said the space marine private being escorted to the bridge.

"Commander," said the captain, "what is this man babbling about?"

The first officer turned to the medical corpsman at the space marine's side.

The corpsman shrugged. "Best guess, ma'am, some kind of mental break."

"We're so screwed," repeated the private.

"Can you be more specific?" asked the captain, addressing the medical corpsman.

"Respectfully, ma'am, I'm trained to patch up bullet holes and plasma burns. This kind of thing is beyond my expertise."

The captain turned to the babbling space marine. "Get a hold of yourself, son. We've got enough firepower on this ship to kill anything. I just need to know where they are."

"Not this, man. You can't kill this. We're screwed. We are so screwed."

"Take a deep breath, son. Now why don't you tell me why you think we're screwed."

"Mommy milkers," said the marine private.

"Mommy--?"

The first officer spoke up. "Yes, captain, it's a slang term for a woman's--"

"Thank you, commander. I'm familiar with the term," said the captain. Then turning back to the private, she said, "What about these...mommy milkers?"

"It's like they've been planning it all along. Hiding out just beyond the event horizon. Biding their time. Growing their...ta-tas. We are so screwed, man!"

"Anyone else on the scout team report anything like this marine's story?"

The radar operator spoke up. "I'm seeing something on the scope, ma'am."

"On screen," said the captain.

"Sweet baby Jesus," muttered the first officer.

"To show up on the scope from this distance..." said the radar operator.

"Massive...mommy...milkers," said the captain.

"Weapons officer!" hollered the commander. "Target the--"

"Belay that order!" shouted the captain. "We need to investigate. Helm. Plot a course to the...massive mommy milkers."

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Captain?" said the first officer.

"You heard the order."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Helm. Massive mommy milkers. Full speed ahead!" ordered the captain, grinning. "Ain't war hell?"

 

[BeechLeaf]

'We are so screwed. We are so fucking screwed.'

'Shut up, Jamie. I mean, seriously shut the fuck up,' Helena recommended as she forced the bio card into the lock and pressed override. She had three seconds to jig the override and did not want to be distracted by people whining about the danger of being evaporated by the rail bots.

He watched her, knowing any stray sounds could spell doom, then began breathing again as the heritage tube blinged its light. 'Okay, so we get to the surface. What then? The robos wipe us? We won't last ten minutes there.'

'We don't need ten, we can do it in three. I've timed the run. Surface, out, salt mill, ion spreader, if we fucking run we can get to the blast strip.'

'If there's anything there!' Jamie wailed. He hurried on in her wake because from this point on, being found alone out here was worse than being caught red-handed hot-streaming a looper. which is what Helena thought would be a really good idea and their best chance of survival. Jamie could not see eye to eye with that but Helena was persuasive when she was mad, drunk, and squiffed up.

'See,' she whispered as they emerged. 'Three of them. Only one guard. A sand wetter maybe two, three minutes away? We've got enough time to grab it, sky up, I reckon we can make it to low orbit before the slitters find out.'

'Ha ha ha ha,' Jamie laughed happily and began to cry. He hopped and limped complainingly over to the pad, following his insane pod-sister, because from this point on it was his only chance of survival. They killed the net-slurper and settled into the cabin.

'You ever tried one of these?' Helena asked coolly and casually.

'Me!? I'm a mecha-cook, I do star bakes, you know, spawn cheese. They don't let me fly grippers. What kind of relaxant are you on?'

'Pity,' Helena mused. She examined the baffling array of knobs and levers in front of her. Behind her, klaxons and whooping and red lights were a gentle reminder that they should be off soon. 'Now, I think if I was Han Solo I'd press this button...'

'THE ASTEROID,' Jamie screamed five seconds later, and apologized as Helena found the super-temporal off-button and clicked it. 'Sorry, there was an asteroid.'

'Yeah, sorry, I know... I spotted it... Okay, now in Star Trek they always find a way of, um...'

Jamie gazed at her. 'You've never driven one of these things before, have you?'

She dithered before answering. 'I've done simulators. And... and I did used to watch Star Trek a lot, when I was a kid.'

'How difficult can it be?' Jamie moaned, and covered his eyes.