Kevin's Watch

It was then, when Mallory was working out how to best propel himself back to the ship with two knuckles, when Mick Axbrewder arrived, bruised and bloody, leaping from the back of a white shuttlecraft (which was not his, but had been, until very recently, commanded by an innocent and pure maiden) as it drifted nose-first past Mallory, while swinging a glinty steel rescue unit (ditto), and crying "Damn you, Ginny!"

Mallory, who owned but had not read any of "The Man Who" mystery novels written by noted science fiction and fantasy author Stephen R. Donaldson and didn't quite understand what Mick was referring to, frantically grasped the rescue unit, which took the form of a red and gold suit of metallic armor that automatically wrapped itself around Mallory, sealed itself from the vacuum and cold of interstellar space, and instantly pressurized itself allowing Mallory to finally gasp for breath which he took in great, ragged gulps; the armor automatically powered up a heads up display in the helmet that showed Mallory a wide variety of information via readouts of his heart rate, blood pressure, suit power consumption, internal and external temperature, weapons status, radar display, nearby energy sources and detectable data transmissions, all while energy units in the suit's boots activated and applied thrust to take Mallory back to Southerland Castle.

Mick watched Mallory drift towards safety, and as the rescue unit entered the Castle, with a rare look of satisfaction on his craggy face he waved a salute and drifted away like a hallucination.

Using his new armor's power, Mallory forced his way past the rush of escaping atmosphere and managed to climb back inside and while clinging to the broken work stations and equipment, he slowly make his way to the inboard hatch of the bridge; once there he grabbed the door with both hands and wrenched it with assistance from the armor's exoskeleton power enhancement; after a few desperate moments the hatch finally slammed shut with an ear splitting clang, preventing any more the life support atmosphere from escaping.

aTOMiC wrote:Unfortunately the hull breach was sucking...s.

That's not the only thing sucking in this thread.

The hull breach had caused a split-second reality leak, opening a portal to the next-closest thread and allowing an interstellar muck-sucker to ooze aboard in search of muck to suck.

Just then Mallory noticed that a THOOOPT crashed through the hole in reality and he wept like a waterfall made of orphans tears.

Which is a difficult thing to make, when you think about it.

Fighting against all his instincts, against everything inside him that wanted to utter a scathing retort, Mallory focused through his tears on what was before him, which was the bridge, and on the bridge was the nav console, and blinking on the nav console was the course that was plotted into the galactic GPS unit, and the end-point of that course was blinking in bold letters, and Mallory read those letters, and cringed, because now he knew what King Daniel was up to, and nothing could dry ones tears like knowing what that dastardly sovereign was up to.

But Mallory could only read the most basic bits of information as he was separated from the nav console by some twenty-five feet, the damaged plexiglass window of the hatchway door and the near vacuum of the bridge's atmosphere as most of the air had already escaped into the interstellar void, however that didn't stop him from planning a suitable course of action that would inevitably see King Daniel's plan in ruins and the despotic monarch hanging from the end of a noose; the only thing missing was the details of how such a thing could be accomplished and Mallory wasn't sure he still had enough gumption, fortitude, courage, strength, determination or interest to fill in the blanks.

(He was feeling a bit stupid after sealing the hatch and then realizing how much better it would have been if he had been IN the bridge rather than out, but he was resilient if he was anything, so he carried on.)

Just then Mallory began to feel suddenly weak and dizzy; he shook his head vigorously to try to clear his vision but the sensation only became more and more pronounced until he was forced to slump down to his knees; Mallory struggled to keep conscious but he felt his awareness steadily bleeding away and after one final attempt to regain his feet he finally tumbled over onto his back and as he lay there, with the darkness rapidly clouding over his vision, he thought he saw King Daniel standing over him with an odd device clutched in his hand and a grim expression on his face; Mallory tried to speak but ultimately lost his last grip on reality and was swiftly swept into a netherworld realm of unsettling dreams and horrifying nightmares, "Mallory, you magnificent bastard!".

An acrid wind blew through Mallory's mind, kicking up clouds of memories, and causing the trees of his ambitions to sway and creak, while crows of offended principles tried to flock, failed, and blew out into the turbulent sea of his emotions, lashed by torrents of grim notions, while Mallory's body stood and, under the direction of his exo-skeletal autopilot, adopted a martial stance, while the targettng lasers in his helmet scanned about for a target.

Mallory remained unconscious as his arms, legs and head were propelled and manipulated by his armor's automatic defensive systems; the on board scanners quickly identified that the area was free of lifeforms as everything that had not been secured had been sucked out of the ship through the hull breach, but inexplicably the infrared scan detected a faint heat source in the form of rapidly cooling footprints that led away from the bridge and down the steps to the lower levels, while Mallory remained blissfully oblivious, the armor's rudimentary artificial intelligence chose to investigate, detect and eliminate any and all threats to its slumbering occupant.

But within the walls of Mallory's mind, a perverse battle had already begun, for a clear and placid space had opened within the storm of his dreaming, and Mallory's sentient core found itself upon a cracked and blasted plain, standing before an alien countenance whose fierce and avid form conveyed eternal enmity, and it's harsh demand cried like a forlorn wind, and Mallory knew that his soul must answer, truthfully, or it would be snuffed out like a piece of bacon in a poodle farm.

"Where is my salami you wretched creature?!", the countenance bellowed while vibrating the floor of Mallory's sub-conscious with enough force to knock Mallory off his feet and crush him down into the dry, barren soil of his nightmare; "Youuuuuu will answer me nowwwww! Youuuu will answer or I will flay the flesh from your very sooooooul!", it shrieked like the haunting cry of a damaged thing, a throat rending wail that needed no lungs to fuel its passion, no breath to give it life, just the sound and fury of a tortured spirit filled with an unyielding, unquenchable need; "Salami?" Mallory responded the way a small child would whisper whilst attempting to understand the concept of a tax bracket.

In his panic Mallory had a flash of insight, and he knew without a doubt that the salami was only a metaphor, and so he answered with the truthfulness of the damned and a saucy wink, "I've hidden it."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! Sorry to break character but that was awesome.

You pitched me a meatball ; I knocked it out.

The countenance howled in pain as it got the joke and struggled with all of its power to keep from busting a gut laughing, however it managed to keep its composure and made its demand once again, this time with the sort of unbridled enthusiasm that really made Mallory nervous and which caused him to lose what little self control he possessed and he metaphorically wet and shat himself in abject terror.