And now for somewhere completly different

Posted on Thu Dec 13th, 2012 @ 8:11pm by Elijah "Eli" Samuels

Mission: The Struggle Within
Location: Uncharted space Delta Quadrant-roughly 8 light years from wormhole
Timeline: current

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

Yeah, that pretty much summed it up, in Eli's estimation. Sparks flew behind him as the Joliett's Revenge rocked once again as a volley of fire from the stubbed nosed ship pursuing it glanced off her shields.

"That was a little close for comfort."

For the umpteenth time, Samuels glanced at his sensor readings, trying to get a good feel on just what flavor of directed energy weapons the aliens were using to adjust his shield modulation appropriately. He assumed it was something close to a standard disrupter but couldn't get a feel for the variations he saw in the gas emissions. Not for the first time, he wished he had been able to upgrade his multivector gasometer in his sensor suite.

"Never enough latinum.", he mummered as he sent the JR into a tight portside turn.

Once again he tried to comm the aliens.

"This is free trader Joliett's Revenge. I have cargo consisting of food stuffs. I'm just looking for clear passage here guys."

"Monkey chainsaw happy disembowelment. Up stock mayflowers."

Eli slammed his fist into the comm, shutting it down.

"Fuck me sideways. JR, take a note never to buy translator algorithms from a Ferengi again."

"Log notion made."

It'd been like this for the past 20 minutes. Samuels had dropped from warp, hopping to make contact with a race the Tallaxian trader he'd run into called the Misum. Apparently anything containing caffeine was highly sought after. He'd brought 3 crates of coffee and 2 of various teas to see if he could make some quick profits. What the Tallaxian had failed to mention was security procedures or offered any vocal communication algorithms to communicate when he did make contact.

For all Eli knew his "hello, how are you?" had went out as a dire insult to the patrol craft after him captain's mother. Even if it had only be the gibberish he'd received in return, the smuggler had no desire to find out what the correct translation for "happy disembowelment" was.

Seeing that he now has a good vector to go to warp, Eli gave a slight smile.

"See ya."

With that he threw the JR up to warp 5, and....stayed at 3/4 impulse.

"No! Nonononono!!! C'mon, not now."

The flashing light on his console confirmed his fear. The breaker on the port plasma injector had tripped again. It only took a matter of seconds to reset, but he'd need to get to the engine compartment to do it. Time he didn't have while making evasive manuevers.

"Lovely."

A quick scan of the solar system he was in gave him a quick idea. Face set in a grim line, he threw the JR hard to starboard, breaking toward the systems asteroid belt. Because, as anyone knew, only an idiot or a crazy person would fly 3/4 impulse into an asteroid belt.

Thirty seconds later, he killed the promity alarms as he zipped the modified romulan shuttle between boulders the size of small cities.

As he approached the center of the field, Eli dropped back on the throttle, looking for a place to set down to rest the injector breaker so he could get the hell out of here at maximum warp.

Sparks flew as the whole ship bucked.

"Oh, give me a break!"

One glance at his sensors showed that, apparently, the captain of the interdiction ship was either as idiotic or crazy as Eli, himself. Slewing to port, Samuels jacked his speed back up.

"That the way it's gonna be, huh? How 'bout this?"

Looking ahead he saw what he was looking for and keyed the tractor beam to power it up.....it answered with a flashing red light.

"You too?", he said giving the offending light the full power of his 'work dammit' stare.

Unfortunately, his stare also seemed to fall in the catagory of things not working today. With a sigh, he powered down the tractor emitter and flipped another switch.

"This oughta be fun."

Below the aft portion of the modified romulan shuttle, a small gun with magnetic grapple decended. Grappling lines had went out of fashion over a century ago, but for once, Eli was damn glad he'd installed one as a backup.

At near full impulse, the JR sang along near a huge asteroid, gaining even more speed, it's pursuer losing ground but still firing. As the Revenge came close to the large space rock, Eli fired the grapple, hoping it wouldn't throw off his trajectory too much. With a sound clunk, he felt it make a good grab on snapping onto a free floating piece of nickle iron roughly the size of a ground transport. The whole frame of the JR shook as she took on the added mass.

Not slowing, the shuttle sling shoted around the large asteroid, the smaller one in tow. Speed building, the smaller asteroid's vector pulled the rear of the JR almost out of control. Fighting to keep from spiraling into the asteroid whose gravity he'd used for the slingshot manuever, Eli looked ahead.

There it was, roughly three times the size of the Joliett's Revenge, weapons ports glowing red hot and bearing down on him, the patrol vessel that had bad intentions written all over it.

"Structural integrity failure imminent."

"Shuddup.", he growled, killing the alarm. Glaring at the oncoming ship, he laid in his course....dead ahead, full speed. The distance between the ships closing quickly. At 80 kilometers away, 'whites of their eyes distance' in space travel, Eli banked hard to starboard, disengaging the magnetic lock on his grappling hook as he did so.

Earth scientist, Issiac Newton once said that a body in motion will stay in motion, unless acted on by an outside force. Outside forces are hard to come by in a vacuum. So, the small asteroid in tow behind the Joliett's Revenge continued on the vector it had been set upon, at near full impulse speed.

That is until it made contact just off center of the forward weapons port of the advance patrol vessel. The resulting demonstration of physics was quite impressive to behold.

Belching fire and atmosphere the alien craft listed hard to port, obviously dead in the water. With a sigh, Eli flopped back in his seat, bringing the JR to a near all stop to survey the damage to his own vessel. He did take time to check the comm to make sure there was a distress signal being broadcast from the other ship. That or they were ording camel pizza.

With a shrug, he assumed that was close enough and he'd let their own people retrieve them (or bring them a pizza).

True to his estimate, resetting the injector breaker took less than a minute. In less than 10 minutes the shuttle turned freighter, Joliett's Revenge was heading back toward the worm hole at warp 4. A small leak of plasma and a broken security vessel the only evidence of her passage.

Eli Samuels
Really wishing he'd paid attention in spanish class.