Challenge #01692-D231: Items of Mass Destruction

It was hard not to admire a four-year-old who could disassemble a hygiene unit into so many pieces it took three engineers most of a duty shift to put it back together. -- RecklessPrudence

Of all the destructive items that humanity has in its collective repertoire, the two that cause the most amazement and confoundment are: the average pants pocket, and their own young. Left unsupervised, they can cause more chaos, destruction, and all-out-entropy than the tools actively designed to do so.

Delthrax stared at the prisoner/hostage. This was a human youngling. Barely past the age of controlling where they expelled their waste. Not only had hir capture failed to quell the human attacks on the S'dorath fleet, but this near-infant had managed to disassemble the entirety of hir containment cell and then proceeded to wreak utter havok wherever it went.

The trail of destruction was quite impressive. From hand-prints on the walls, through half-eaten ration portions and small objects scattered with foot-wounding precision all over the most-trodden corridors of the ship, to random disassembly of equally random, yet vital, ships' instruments and control systems. It would take teams of engineers days to undo that which this... child had done in mere hours.

Now that ze had an entertainment device to occupy hir attention, ze appeared to be defused.

Delthrax interrupted hir play, and asked in careful Galstand, "How do you take apart all the things?"

The human child reached inside hir clothing and pulled out a body decoration that ze would not allow the guards to take away without an injurious level of noise. And quite a surprising amount of struggle. It was a fine chain, and what looked like an ancient coin with a hole in it.

"Screwdriver," said the child.

Without taking the decoration off, Delthrax examined the ancient writing. Pre-shattering English, but she recognised one word in amongst the others. Australia. The island-continent on Earth that earned the planet it's Deathworld rating of Four Point Five. Leave it to that country to invent coinage that could also be used as a tool in a pinch. It even bore an illustration of one of their hostile animals. The spiky one that was neither mammal nor lizard.

Delthrax said, "That's why you screamed when we tried to remove it. Isn't it?"

The child shook hir head. "Nuh-uh. 'S Gramma's. It's special. Mama says it's an air loom 'n' I can't lose it or else."

Delthrax had to go and rest in order to understand the enormity of her bad choices. When she recovered, the fleet was in serious danger of being on the wrong side of a last stand, and the humans were readying the serious weapons against the fleet. Wisely, Delthrax opened all communications and surrendered. It was the only way to survive.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / asafeliason]

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