Challenge #01882-E058: Flakk it
After having done something stupid and dangerous to escape a hazardous situation
At the time it seemed like a good idea. Afterwards, it's a miracle that it worked without killing us all. -- Anon Guest
It takes a special kind of human to be the Ship's Human in a war zone. Crew need quick thinkers, Luckers of a certain calibre, and those with rapid improvisational skills. Or, as it was known amongst the Humans, "MacGyvering the shit out of things."
Human meme culture is strange, labyrinthine, and difficult to interpret into GalStand. Many do not try.
Reese "Flakkit" Jones was one of those humans. They had been on fifteen ships in as many GalStand Months, and the reason for their nickname becomes increasingly obvious the more time they spend on a vessel. This was ship sixteen. They were slowly leaking atmosphere, low on power, and facing their death through the pirates they had been trying and failing to fight.
Reese studied the map. Their most expeditious retreat lay that way. One-eighty degrees relative plane to the approaching pirates. One of their engines was threatening to explode. And if they ejected it... Reese said their famous nickname. "Flakkit. Let's do this. Okay..." And anyone who knew them for long enough knew that this was three Utterances of Certain Doom. In a row.
"Point the ship towards the wormhole. Engineering? Let's take that failed engine and rig it to overload."
Engineering freaked. "We just spent forty minutes trying to shut it down. We barely succeeded."
"Well, then, fire it back up. When it's lookin' like bad, bad news, jettison that flakker and then put all the batteries onto rear shields. Plug half of our remaining engine into life support, and... let's get all the non-essential stuff dark."
Desperate times and desperate measures walk through causality with hand in hand. The crew didn't question it at the time, but survival and retrospect had retroactive panic kicking in by the time they emerged on the Civilisation side of the wormhole.
"We could have died," warbled Srokk, their navigator.
"I did everything I could to make certain that we didn't?" rationalised Reese. "And the engine explosion definitely did a number on the pirates, so... bonus. Right?"
"It almost did a number on us," argued Srokk.
Reese sighed. "I'll go pack." They knew, without a doubt, that it would be the time it took to get to the nearest station before they were looking for ship number eighteen.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / artshock]
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