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Zeus23@POOHEAD189 Don't be so skeptical, if history teaches us anything its that times of government weakness, absence and collapse are always utopias of peace and plenty!
Penny Member
STATUS: Ethical issues aside, AI prose is just really bad. 20 days ago
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20 days ago
Current
Ethical issues aside, AI prose is just really bad.
3
likes
28 days ago
She wanted to read, she wanted to write, but the main thing she wanted was something to fight
4
likes
1 yr ago
Make it clear that you don't need him to be reading Dante tomorrow. Also suggest it would be fun if you had a private language that you could use to mock English speakers in secret.
5
likes
2 yrs ago
Luckily history suggests an infinite ability for people to be shit heads ;)
1
like
3 yrs ago
Achmed the Snake
1
like
Bio
Early 30's. I know just enough about everything to be dangerous.
Most Recent Posts
Junebug scuttled up the ladder with the ease of a trooper who's life had depended on unassing a burning vehicle in a hurry on more than one occasion. A broad smile was on her lips when she reached the waiting pair, as the slight rocking of ship was already evidence that she had been successfully floated. The world had only very slight solar tides and no moon for which Junebug was profoundly grateful. That would have made this whole plan a hell of alot tougher.
Neil and Sayeeda had stayed up late into the insect infested night, drinking whiskey and coming up with various plans to get the Highlander operable again. The key problem had always been that the repairs necessary were next to impossible while the ship was in the water and there was no way to lift her and set her down safely on dry ground. After many belts of whiskey and a good deal of cursing inspiration had struck. If they couldn't get the Highlander on dry ground, then they must bring dry ground to the Highlander.
The solution, as insane as it initially seemed, was surprisingly simple. Patch the holes and float the ship, then drag it as close to the shore as possible using braided engineering cable as hawsers. The final stage was to build a dam of structural plastic and local lumber around the ship and a cradle to take the weight on the side sloping down towards the bottom of the estuary. Once done they could use the same pumps that floated the ship to pump the dam dry and conduct repairs. It was on the crazier side of plans Sayeeda had tried but neither she nor neil could find any reason why it would work, other than an unexpected typhoon.
It was invigorating to have the first stage come together so easily but there was alot of work ahead to get them back into space.
"Well that is stage one com..." alarms pinged in her helmet and in the ship.
"Shit its the motion detector in the jeep, we are about to have company."
Neil and Sayeeda had stayed up late into the insect infested night, drinking whiskey and coming up with various plans to get the Highlander operable again. The key problem had always been that the repairs necessary were next to impossible while the ship was in the water and there was no way to lift her and set her down safely on dry ground. After many belts of whiskey and a good deal of cursing inspiration had struck. If they couldn't get the Highlander on dry ground, then they must bring dry ground to the Highlander.
The solution, as insane as it initially seemed, was surprisingly simple. Patch the holes and float the ship, then drag it as close to the shore as possible using braided engineering cable as hawsers. The final stage was to build a dam of structural plastic and local lumber around the ship and a cradle to take the weight on the side sloping down towards the bottom of the estuary. Once done they could use the same pumps that floated the ship to pump the dam dry and conduct repairs. It was on the crazier side of plans Sayeeda had tried but neither she nor neil could find any reason why it would work, other than an unexpected typhoon.
It was invigorating to have the first stage come together so easily but there was alot of work ahead to get them back into space.
"Well that is stage one com..." alarms pinged in her helmet and in the ship.
"Shit its the motion detector in the jeep, we are about to have company."
Love that movie so much...
Junebug tried to stifle a snicker, but the events of the last couple of days caught up with her and she snorted out a peel of laughter at the dangling Neil. He hung from a snare wrapped tightly around his ankle looking distinctly unimpressed.
"If you're quite finished?" he asked acidly. With some difficulty she smoothed her face and grabbed hold of Neil's arm dragging him down towards the ground and bending the limb which had been cunningly bent to bear the weight. With a quick slash of her utillity knife she shredded the braided vines that wrapped the pilots boot and dropped him unceremoniously to the ground.
"Well I guess that answers the question of if we are alone here," she commented as Neil picked himself up on the ground. There had been no real heat signatures on the IR but that was only good out to a few clicks. Also it supposed that whoever had laid the snare was warmer than the ambient, which was likely but not certain.
"Maybe that works out in the long run," she added skeptically. Any society with a tech base that included snares was unlikely to run to starship repair but there was always hope. Perhaps a survivalist or a less advanced group on the fringes of a more complex society. Of course it also dramatically increased the chances that someone out there might be about to murder them, a frequent problem with people in general.
"We'd better get to work."
________________________
Junebug had not spent alot of time underwater in her career. There had been occasional insertions through swamps but the difficulty in keeping advanced weapons functioning made it impractical to attack through water. Consequently working underwater in the airsuit was not a comfortable experience. She pressed the structural plastic against the side of the gaping wound in the side of the Highlander and triggered the magnaweld. The strip flared briefly as it bonded the strip to the hull, patching the hole.
"OK fire up the pumps," she said over the comms. Raising the Highlander was priority one.
"If you're quite finished?" he asked acidly. With some difficulty she smoothed her face and grabbed hold of Neil's arm dragging him down towards the ground and bending the limb which had been cunningly bent to bear the weight. With a quick slash of her utillity knife she shredded the braided vines that wrapped the pilots boot and dropped him unceremoniously to the ground.
"Well I guess that answers the question of if we are alone here," she commented as Neil picked himself up on the ground. There had been no real heat signatures on the IR but that was only good out to a few clicks. Also it supposed that whoever had laid the snare was warmer than the ambient, which was likely but not certain.
"Maybe that works out in the long run," she added skeptically. Any society with a tech base that included snares was unlikely to run to starship repair but there was always hope. Perhaps a survivalist or a less advanced group on the fringes of a more complex society. Of course it also dramatically increased the chances that someone out there might be about to murder them, a frequent problem with people in general.
"We'd better get to work."
________________________
Junebug had not spent alot of time underwater in her career. There had been occasional insertions through swamps but the difficulty in keeping advanced weapons functioning made it impractical to attack through water. Consequently working underwater in the airsuit was not a comfortable experience. She pressed the structural plastic against the side of the gaping wound in the side of the Highlander and triggered the magnaweld. The strip flared briefly as it bonded the strip to the hull, patching the hole.
"OK fire up the pumps," she said over the comms. Raising the Highlander was priority one.
Not if I want that joke to work.
Well the AD in 2017 AD is for Ad Hominem
Naturally Junebug did. The picked their way through the scrubby forest in the jeep, Neil expertly juking around foliage which a heavier vehicle would simply have plowed over. As they climed a rise that was part dune and part low hill Junebug pulled her helmet down over her face and toggled it to infrared. The landscape lit up in a series of pastel yellows and blues. Here and there she saw an orange flash of heat from what might be small aninimal. Behind them the Highlander glowed hot in a number of places, still cooling from the rapid decent. As they crested the rise she switched back to regular vision.
Before them stretched a wide forested plain, rising towards a greenish blue range of mountains in the far distance. The landscape was split by a surprising number of creeks and swales, many of them as large or bigger than the small river the Highlander had put down in. The trees rose high, up to thirty meters in places, but so unevenly distributed as to make the landscape look wavy and unnatural. The leaves were green but seemed to be more like collections of hair or cilia than true leaves of Terran extraction. A few animals chattered and hooted and though she could see a few heat signatures nothing jumped out as immediately alarming. There was no sign of settlements or technology as far as her magnified vision could see.
"Well if there is an infantry battalion sneaking up on us, they have some damn good camo," she observed sourly.
"Looks like we have the place to ourselves."
"Lets hunt up some food and see if we can eat the local, then we can get our mind to repairs."
@POOHEAD189
Before them stretched a wide forested plain, rising towards a greenish blue range of mountains in the far distance. The landscape was split by a surprising number of creeks and swales, many of them as large or bigger than the small river the Highlander had put down in. The trees rose high, up to thirty meters in places, but so unevenly distributed as to make the landscape look wavy and unnatural. The leaves were green but seemed to be more like collections of hair or cilia than true leaves of Terran extraction. A few animals chattered and hooted and though she could see a few heat signatures nothing jumped out as immediately alarming. There was no sign of settlements or technology as far as her magnified vision could see.
"Well if there is an infantry battalion sneaking up on us, they have some damn good camo," she observed sourly.
"Looks like we have the place to ourselves."
"Lets hunt up some food and see if we can eat the local, then we can get our mind to repairs."
@POOHEAD189
Junebug looked around the scruby forest that covered the shoreline. They seemed willowy and sinuous compared to the Tara pines of her homeworld, but she had been on many planets and seen many different eco systems since then. There were no animals in sight, which was good because Junebug was pretty sure she didn't want to meet any animal that calmly accepted a thousand tons of starship crashing out of the sky.
"Damn," she said as she got her first look at the great rents in the side of the ship. Whatever had savaged them in the RIP had torn long diagonal slashes, the force of which had left the jagged edges raninbowe with heat stress. As she watched water gurgled lazily into the open holds and she felt the ship shift and then grind softly onto the pale sand beneath them. The eddying water slowed. They were in an estuary or a small river mouth with only thirty meters or so to shore on either side of them. They must have come very close to breaking the back of the ship when they hit. She suspected that Neil's last minute burst of thrust had saved them and there was a smell in the air like molten glass and burned mud that suggested she was right.
"Power reserves at critical Cap'm," Lonney's voice chimed in her mastoid radio.
"Roger that Lonney shut down if you need to."
"Aye Cap'm but what about Popsicle number three?" Sayeeda frowned trying to puzzle out the AI's meaning until she realised that Taya was still in the pod and would likely die if the power went completely out. Lonney must be channeling the last few watts of power into keeping her alive.
"Start the thaw cycle Lonney we will be down in a sec," she snapped and spun to drop back into the Highlander. A minute later she was cracking the seal and helping a shaken looking Taya out of her cry pod and into some dry clothes.
"First thing is first we better get the gun jeep onto dry land," she told Neil as she returned, leaving Taya in the cryo bay to recover her senses. The pilot had obviously been surveying the damage and looked rather mournful.
"From there we can run lines out to the ship to at least keep the lights on, even a small fusion bottle is more than enough juice for that." She sank down to the deck and peered across the narrow stretch of water at the pale sandy shore, it was almost pure white.
"I didn't see any tech on the scopes on the way down, the Goddess alone knows how we are going to get Her to lift again."
@POOHEAD189
"Damn," she said as she got her first look at the great rents in the side of the ship. Whatever had savaged them in the RIP had torn long diagonal slashes, the force of which had left the jagged edges raninbowe with heat stress. As she watched water gurgled lazily into the open holds and she felt the ship shift and then grind softly onto the pale sand beneath them. The eddying water slowed. They were in an estuary or a small river mouth with only thirty meters or so to shore on either side of them. They must have come very close to breaking the back of the ship when they hit. She suspected that Neil's last minute burst of thrust had saved them and there was a smell in the air like molten glass and burned mud that suggested she was right.
"Power reserves at critical Cap'm," Lonney's voice chimed in her mastoid radio.
"Roger that Lonney shut down if you need to."
"Aye Cap'm but what about Popsicle number three?" Sayeeda frowned trying to puzzle out the AI's meaning until she realised that Taya was still in the pod and would likely die if the power went completely out. Lonney must be channeling the last few watts of power into keeping her alive.
"Start the thaw cycle Lonney we will be down in a sec," she snapped and spun to drop back into the Highlander. A minute later she was cracking the seal and helping a shaken looking Taya out of her cry pod and into some dry clothes.
"First thing is first we better get the gun jeep onto dry land," she told Neil as she returned, leaving Taya in the cryo bay to recover her senses. The pilot had obviously been surveying the damage and looked rather mournful.
"From there we can run lines out to the ship to at least keep the lights on, even a small fusion bottle is more than enough juice for that." She sank down to the deck and peered across the narrow stretch of water at the pale sandy shore, it was almost pure white.
"I didn't see any tech on the scopes on the way down, the Goddess alone knows how we are going to get Her to lift again."
@POOHEAD189
The Highlander lurched into RIP space with a violence that Sayeeda had never experienced. The containment protocols for anti matter were not so different but the instaneous jolt of energy was very different from the normal slow continous feed of power. For a moment she felt like the ship itself hand vanished and greasy coils of rip space were wrapping around her body, pulling her apart with the inexorable strength of glaciers. Her mouth opened to yell but as soon as her lips parted the sensation faded. For a few moments all was calm and then the Highlander crashed out of the RIP, its short hop completed.
Alarms screamed as Sayeeda grabbed for the controls. Neil was already pulling at the flight yoke but there was a sickening crash.
"Atmospheric bounce!" he yelled over the grinding of over stressed metal and then the sensation of falling took hold in the pit of her stomach. The PPI confirmed that the Highlander had come out of the RIP far to close to the planet they were aiming for. That was a reasonable outcome given the fact that the most accurate R.I.P data they had was years out of date but it was a damn poor time for a stroke of ill fortune.
The ship plunged uncontrolled into the atmosphere as Sayeeda punched up the damage report.
"We have lost starboard three and port one and two," she said with the calm of a combat vehicle driver for whom life depended on reporting the situation accurately. A dozen other sub systems were in the red but that hardly mattered right now. Aft airlock B wouldn't be much of a concern if they were smashed to flaming debris on planet fall.
"Tell me something I dont fucking know," Neil yelled as he continued to fight with the control yoke. He had obviously noticed the lack of thrusters when he tried to maneuver.
"The Atmosphere reads as breathable," she responded tartly. Neil looked back over his shoulder in puzzlement, sweat beading on his face.
"What?!"
"You didn't fucking know that," she responded her hands still flying over the console.
"Oh very fucking clever," he responded but there was a hint of a grin in his voice as he turned back to his task.
Sayeeda pulled up the limited topographical information the sensors could detect. The planet was lightly wooded with no local technology centers registering. She tapped the map twice highlighting a stretch of coast that read as as tropical estuary and fowarded it to Neil's terminal.
"Are you c... you know what never mind," the pilot said shaking his head. The landmass swelled into focus beneath them as they tore through the clouds, the nose of the vessel red hot from air friction of the barely controlled decent. Sayeeda checked her harness and braced herself as the tropical lowlands raced up at them at a suicidal rate.
"Venting ventral B!" Neil yelled and flipped a series of switches as he hauled up on the controls. Metal shrieked and their was a sound like a vast explosion as the seat punched up into Sayeeda. She had a split second to realize that he had vented the fusion chamber at the last second to give them a last minute burst of thrust. For a moment everything was confused and their was a vast rushing sound like an anvil hitting a swimming pool at terminal velocity. Dark water closed over the view port for a moment and then the ship up thrust like a breaching whale. Water rained down from a column that must have stretched three hundred meters into the air and local wildlife scattered in all directions. The ship bobbed violent for a moment and then began to settle.
"Well," Sayeeda said with careful understatement, "We are down."
@POOHEAD189
Alarms screamed as Sayeeda grabbed for the controls. Neil was already pulling at the flight yoke but there was a sickening crash.
"Atmospheric bounce!" he yelled over the grinding of over stressed metal and then the sensation of falling took hold in the pit of her stomach. The PPI confirmed that the Highlander had come out of the RIP far to close to the planet they were aiming for. That was a reasonable outcome given the fact that the most accurate R.I.P data they had was years out of date but it was a damn poor time for a stroke of ill fortune.
The ship plunged uncontrolled into the atmosphere as Sayeeda punched up the damage report.
"We have lost starboard three and port one and two," she said with the calm of a combat vehicle driver for whom life depended on reporting the situation accurately. A dozen other sub systems were in the red but that hardly mattered right now. Aft airlock B wouldn't be much of a concern if they were smashed to flaming debris on planet fall.
"Tell me something I dont fucking know," Neil yelled as he continued to fight with the control yoke. He had obviously noticed the lack of thrusters when he tried to maneuver.
"The Atmosphere reads as breathable," she responded tartly. Neil looked back over his shoulder in puzzlement, sweat beading on his face.
"What?!"
"You didn't fucking know that," she responded her hands still flying over the console.
"Oh very fucking clever," he responded but there was a hint of a grin in his voice as he turned back to his task.
Sayeeda pulled up the limited topographical information the sensors could detect. The planet was lightly wooded with no local technology centers registering. She tapped the map twice highlighting a stretch of coast that read as as tropical estuary and fowarded it to Neil's terminal.
"Are you c... you know what never mind," the pilot said shaking his head. The landmass swelled into focus beneath them as they tore through the clouds, the nose of the vessel red hot from air friction of the barely controlled decent. Sayeeda checked her harness and braced herself as the tropical lowlands raced up at them at a suicidal rate.
"Venting ventral B!" Neil yelled and flipped a series of switches as he hauled up on the controls. Metal shrieked and their was a sound like a vast explosion as the seat punched up into Sayeeda. She had a split second to realize that he had vented the fusion chamber at the last second to give them a last minute burst of thrust. For a moment everything was confused and their was a vast rushing sound like an anvil hitting a swimming pool at terminal velocity. Dark water closed over the view port for a moment and then the ship up thrust like a breaching whale. Water rained down from a column that must have stretched three hundred meters into the air and local wildlife scattered in all directions. The ship bobbed violent for a moment and then began to settle.
"Well," Sayeeda said with careful understatement, "We are down."
@POOHEAD189
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