Pulling out

Posted on Tue Jul 28th, 2009 @ 5:40pm by Walter Jones & Brian Mallory

549 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Session One - Jailhouse Rock
Location: Bridge/Pulling out of the starbase.
Timeline: Current

Jones went over to the Nav computer and typed in a few numbers into the system, when it beeped at him, he kicked it. The computer sat there and mocked him. He sat back into the captains seat and looked over at Mallory.

"Maybe you should get this heap going...." He reached into the side pocket of the chair and scribbled down a planet name. "We are headed to this spatial grid to drop the team off and then this planet, there is a port there... they are going to take one of the shuttles and meet the prison ship when we get closer." He handed the paper over to Mallory. "Care to take us out?"

Mal suppressed a good-natured smile at the Jones' computer trouble. "I thought you'd never ask, Cap'n." He read the note, then turned back to the helm station, looking up the coordinates for the Glausten system. B-list resort planets were sort of his specialty, but he'd never paid a visit to this one.

With the coordinates fed into the nav system, Mallory's fingers flew across the helm console with intimate familiarity. He cleared the ship's mooring lines, disengaged the external inertial damper, and set the preflux chillers to standby. Then he hit the intraship comm. "All hands, this is the bridge. Stand clear of the airlock and prepare for immediate departure. If you forgot anything aboard the starbase...well, better forget it altogether, then." A series of green lights flashed on the console.

"All aboard," he said to Jones. "Disengaging from airlock."

Brian hit the thrusters and Warden slipped away from Starbase 376. The viewscreen showed the receding lights of the station's docking bay, and then Brian switched to the forward view as the ship passed other vessels holding position away from the starbase.

"We're clear and free to navigate. Warp speed at your discretion, skipper." Despite himself, a flight of butterflies coursed through Mallory's stomach. After all they'd been through to get the Warden ship-shape, discretion might be the better part of valour.

"Well now is as good as any to get blown into a billion pieces I suppose. Go ahead and hit it, go to warp two till the engines get warmed up then we'll bring her up to full warp speed once the Matter Antimatter mix gets tuned." Jones buckled his lap strap and punched in a few numbers into the computer.

"Here goes nothing, then." With crossed fingers, Mallory hit the antimatter inducer. On the viewscreen, the stars blurred to points of light as subspace folded around Warden and the ship leapt past lightspeed and into warp. Brian counted to five, and then let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. He punched the air with his fist, tapped a few more commands, and turned back to Jones, smiling. "Piece of cake. No boom."

"I'm glad no boom, I haven't technically paid for her yet so I'm glad our atoms aren't smashed into a billion pieces." Jones unbuckled himself and stood up. "I'm going to go and see how the holding cells are coming. We should be at the meeting spot in a day or two. Let me know if anything bad happens." Jones smiled at Mallory and walked out of the deck.

 

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