19118 ~
Credit for this terrible idea for a Captain Seymour DickLogic special goes to Dave Brown, who said "Space helicopters" to me on stardate: 20180627.
It's all his fault! Blame him! Ration his ice-cream!
He who crashes first misses the end credits!
The Upskirt was haddocking around in space, waiting for a space in the space car park. Curiously, they were near the Navel base of Carpets Match, having returned to the very edge of Known Space to stock up on a serious surfeit of Science and Research Probes. A regular load of Science was barely enough for the season finale and the Summer Special was coming up.
Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser was manning the sensors, which being female meant she wasn't supposed to rest her ample bosom on them. "Sensors indicate a turquoise hue!" The Science officer dug in the emergency cabinet and handed her the hammer of healing. The application of kinetic energy in the right place soon fixed them. "That's better. Sensors indicate an Azure Hue!" She beamed at the First officer. "I think we have a few dead pixels too."
The science officer leered at the sensors for a moment, "I wonder if we can get it repaired under warranty?"
Captain Seymour DickLogic looked up from his script and hastily tucked the reading glasses in the hidden pocket of his new captain's chair. This one was black leather and came complete with a fluffy white ship's cat. "Why is the driver wearing sunglasses?" He grunted casually. Today's episode required him to be manlificient so he was saving his manliness for a show of farce later.
"Helmsman, sir." The first officer corrected.
"What if he is a woman?" The captain was all about equality. Explosions didn't care what gender they were so why should he?
"Still a helmsman. Today's special guest, Wonderstevie." The first officer had memorised the bridge crew roster already. Although the Announcer's Corner had had a last minute replacement due to swooning.
Meanwhile, over at the sensors, both communications officer second class Slime Dispenser and the science officer were huddled over their sensors and breathing heavily. The cause of their concern, well one of their concerns being the science officer's beard tickled her in ways she wasn't used to being tickled, at least not outside of her cabin with her space onesie on. The other cause was the dead pixels, "they moved!" communications officer second class Slime Dispenser breathed breathily.
The science officer, who was now growing a distinguished beard to cover up something, had seen this before. "Great. Undead pixels. First up the Space Sonar!"
Ping!
Silence...
More Ping!
more silence...
"Well, that's to be expected I guess. In space, no one can hear you polka disco." The first officer
looked at the wall of blinkenlighten. "Number two is out again."
"If it doesn't show up on the Space Sonar-" Captain Seymour DickLogic furrowed his brow, just a little.
"They might be soundproofed, sir." The first officer offered optimistically.
"Curse that noise cancelling technology."
"What about the Space Radar?" The first officer asked optimistically. He realised he was being uncommonly optimistic and wondered what the doctor had put in his coffee and would his space onesie hold out against the uncommonly optimistic strain?
"Still downloading updates." The science officer reported sadly, "we might have to get the old one out of the space dumpster."
"Binoculars?" Captain Seymour DickLogic suggested manfully, he had one that telescoped manlificently, but it was in his mancave, possibly with the long missing Ensign Lovelyjugs. He missed that telescope, it had adjustable focus too.
The bridge balcony was a cold and forbidding place. Dark, cold, unpressurized and littered with dead plants. It was outside too. Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser checked her safety harness was connected to the safety thing that was supposed to make everyone feel safe. "The hammock looks a bit sad," she commented as she tried to move around like she was in a vacuum. The outside-the-ship all new see-through space condoms were now made of cosmogalatiplastic and unbelievably thin but the water-based lubricant that made it possible to get them on had issues. That and the helmets took fingerprints far too easily. They also burst if you were too enthusiastic, or had a bad case of bottom burps.
The science officer had issues with his space condom too. It clashed horribly and the stripes made him look fat. "It never really recovered from that unspeakable incident on Planet Brylcreem."
"Ah, the fires." Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser reminisced mistily. "Actually, I quite enjoyed that episode, I almost-"
The Astrogator looked peeved, his space condom was that colour and it really didn't hide his developing paunch from trying to out drink an Engine room Nurse. "We're actually here to look for undead pixels, not talk about the noodle incident." He wondered why he was wearing a space condom anyway, being a robot.
The science officer consulted his remote azure hue detector, "they should be over there on the right, near the back and down a bit. Maybe a bit left of the old W.C." He twirled around a bit and managed to get himself thoroughly tangled in his safety thing. "There, do you see it?" He pointed pointedly with his finger of pointing. It was completely unmanly which was actually for the best as his space condom was turning puce.
"See what?" The Astrogator was admiring something in completely the wrong direction, one of the distant cosmogalatiliners in the car park had simply the most gorgeous Astrogator Maria.
"The light. Do you see the light?" The science officer was now so entangled in his safety thing that he was in danger of asphyxiation.
"The band!" The Astrogator's head rotated around slowly until it was facing the right direction although he was still looking in the wrong one.
Fortunately Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser was looking in the right direction and did have the space binoculars of seeing things very far away as if they were closer. "Yes, yes! Jesus H. Tap-dancing christ I have seen the light!" She got more than a little carried away in the excitement, her safety thing reeled her back in before she could fall to her death. In space. Her ensign nappies beeped sadly but no one could hear that because they were supposed to be in a vacuum.
"Okay, nowhere near that." The science officer sighed, then pointed at two strange streamers of high-energy particles that were leaping enthusiastically between the two blue supergiants that made up the stellar object that was Carpets Match. "I forgot my suntan lotion." He moped for a second, then saw it. "There! Near the streams!"
Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser saw them! "Oh, They just crossed the streams," she noted, "that's bad isn't it?"
"Not really." The Astrogator robot gave up and took the stupid helmet off, after all he was a
robot, wasn't he? "It's a black shape, on a black background, lighting up black. It's so black
even the white bits are black." His amazing telescopic eyes zoomed in on the things occluding the
exciting plasma streams, one of them anyway, the other was counting rivets on the bottom of the
gorgeous astrogator Maria of a Cosmogalactisuperliner. She had just the right number too. He held
up the monitor to show a close up of rivets, lots of them the shape. "Space Helicopters."
The science officer suffered Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser untangling him from his safety thing, fortunately not jeopardizing the safety of his thing, "Bridge, those aren't undead pixels, they are space helicopters."
The bridge grunted at them so manfully that for a picosecond the astrogator considered flipping his gender bit. "Out here? First officer, call accounting, it's always their fault."
"it could be worse... Somehow. Remember the space yodellers." The first officer cringed at that thought, that had been a really bad episode, highest ratings in season one until the costume malfunction engineered by The Vagendra of Manocide that had had them all fined and the ice-cream rationed.
"I try not to," Captain Seymour DickLogic grunted manfully and furrowed his brow. "They'll never follow us into the space carpark will they. Helm, make it so."
Meanwhile, on the balcony... "This space stuff is really weird, I mean, look at that!" Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser pointed.
The Astrogator was running out of eyes. He spared a glance in the indicated direction. "That appears to be a seam in the space time continuum. You really do not want to go near those. Not even the Hive Collective is that stupid." He completely changed colour when the distant Maria turned around and waved at him. Love across the light seconds! "Who's driving?" He suddenly realised, because that was a space carpark and they were not for the faint hearted.
"This week's special guest, Wonderstevie."
"Good, but does he know how to park?" The astrogator pointed out as they heard the space beeper.
"We're going backwards!" Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser wibbled, her ensign nappies were now dangerously full.
Captain Seymour DickLogic tucked the script down the side of his Captain's Throne of Evil(tm) and grabbed the wheel. It was time to be manlificent, at least according to the script it was. He spun the wheel manfully and slammed the Chadburn from Full Astern to Full Ahead so manlificiently that the redskirt in the announcement corner pressed the wrong button again!
HMS Upskirt entered the space carpark sideways, under impulse drive and it was quite impulsive too. Some of the space helicopters never knew what hit them as their crews were having trouble reading the script with the lights out.
Meanwhile, on the balcony... and wishing they weren't. "Well, we seem to have lost all the plants," the astrogator declared cheerfully, "the hammock still looks sad though."
Quack!"
"My script says that is an exploding space helicopter." Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser wibbled at the science officer, which had the unlikely side effect of hypnotising him.
"Space taxi in disguise?" the science officer could see only gyrating things, fortunately not the gynoid that was trying to hypnotise the Astrogator.
"We're doing mad manoeuvre's in the space carpark. Are you sure Wonderstevie is driving?" Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser asked, "sorry, I think this is your script." She tried to hand it to the science officer just in time for a wall of bright yellow jelly to splash all over the place and obliterate the last plant.
"C-stoff flavour!" The Astrogator declared cheerfully, for like gender, happiness was just the flip of a bit. Well, quite a few bits but Hydrazine was good for that.
The HMS Upskirt slewed around into the parking space between a great-yellow-rubber-duck class cosmogalactispaceliner and a double-spliff destroyer. After a while, bits of space helicopter stopped zinging off things and causing everyone to duck.
Communications officer second class Slime Dispenser was hiding under the sad remains of the hammock, "when did Wonderstevie pass his space driving test?"
"We should ask him," the science officer was cowering behind the barbeque, it appeared to have taken a fatal head shot from a large piece of black plastic.
The first officer called them on their walkmen, "While you're out there, scrape those yodellers off the front right please."
The Astrogator groaned, now thoroughly zorched on the bright yellow jelly that was starting to boil in the light of the twin suns of Carpets and Curtains. "Just what we don't need. Klingons on the starboard bow."