It was amazing. The Guardians actually fought decent, and supported by a few of the older Havocs, they wreaked fiery havoc (no pun intended) on the simulated gunboat. Matts jaw hit the floor, and so did Johns. Langst stood there, soaked in booze, laughing so hard that he was doubled over. By video, the jaw of the Navy officer judging the LPIs performance hit the floor. Langst just kept on laughing like the drunk he had become.
Well, I dont think Im saying this the Navy man begins over the video conference (apparently they had loaned them with the intention of taking them back when the LPI proved incapable of using them), but you can keep em. With that he cuts the video feed.
Matt and John promptly do the body slam, jumping into the air and bouncing their beer guts off each other. Any normal human that attempted to try this with them would not survive. With that, the Guardians started getting ready for service, to be jointly used with the Havoc bombers.
John Clements stood on the bridge of the Rusty Donut, staring out over Fort Bush, the base it was moored at. The "renovations" were done, changing it from a decommissioned Dreadnought from mothballs into a shopping mall/circus/everything but a better Dreadnought. The hull was still a tad rusty, as it should be to deserve its moniker.
"Engines to full!" John yelled, bracing himself for the G-forces that would be put on his body when the ship lurched forward.
"Err... sir? Don't we have to undock first?" said the man that was at the wheel.
"I dun care, just get us outta here!" he yelled.
Eventually the massive ship lurched forward, ever so slowly... so... slowly... then the lights flickered and the ship shook.
"Wut just happened?!" John yelled. Several officers playing Pac Man on their consoles quickly slammed the controls to exit the game and pretend to be reading something like War and Peace off their screens. Eventually, one got up the courage to say, "The engines failed, sir."
"Then we gonna have to go to manual!"
He took the stairs down to a lower level, the stairs that were conveniently placed all of five feet from his chair. Down to a long and narrow room, basically an aisle between two rows of benches, each having a ragged-looking person with their hands on a stick that went off to the wall and disappeared. John pulled out a whip and cracked it.
"Row, durn you, row! Get da beat goin', drum!" Slowly, ever so slowly, the ship moved forward. Then broke the trade lane, as it wasn't built for a ship on rowing power.
"Jump!" Clements yelled, partially sitting up from the command chair on the deck of the Rusty Donut. The ship was in front of the jump gate to Colorado, preparing to enter the sequence. Out of no where, a mechanic yells in a thick brogue:
"I canna change da laws o' physics, cap'n!"
Clements was out of his chair in a heartbeat and his thick legs thumped across the steel floors. He walked down to an average-looking (for the LPI) officer, grabbed him by the collar, and slapped him. "Speak the Queen's English, man!"
The engineer cleared his throat, and spoke in a British accent. "I can not change the laws of physics, sir!"
Another slap from Clements. "Whaddya mean, foo?! And why you gettin' all fancy on ma?"
"I mean that the ship can't jump! The structural integrity is too unstable, and the fact that we added a shopping mall AND circus, full of elephants, makes it impossible! Everyone knows that the elephants would implode!"
Slap. "I do na care! Jump!"
"But sir!"
Slap.
"Jumping, sir," said the engineer that now lacked a few teeth. An old-fashioned microphone fell from the ceiling, and the engineer took on a Brooklyn announcer accent: "All hands, secure stations! Close all shops in the mall! Secure circus animals! Secure LPI flab control stations! All hands
Hes interrupted by Clements ripping the microphone away. JUMP JUMP JUMP! The ship goes into the jump gate, and enters the jump. G-forces come from all over the place as the ship tries to jump. Everyone on the bridge had to pause their Pac Man games to hold onto something to keep from becoming splatter on the wall. Clements was screaming kind of, hard to tell when your voice box is in your feet and it sounded something like ABORT THE JUMP!
A few seconds later, they were back out on the New York side. Clements, from the floor, raises his right hand and tries to stand up. He weakly says, No morejumps, before fainting.
All was quiet on the bridge as the officers assiduously played Pac-Man and Pong; however someone must have been watching the scanners. How odd. Clements was a bit confused, and angry.
WHADDYA MEAN UNCHARTED PLANET?! Were in New York! We cannau jump! Da entire system is charted, cept fer dat blind spot that is huge and near Norfolk. What be da planets name?
Scanners are showing it as Maine, sir.
Then how it be uncharted?
I dont know sir, it just is!
As the idiocy of the conversation hit home, Clements did the classic facepalm.
Yer fired. Bring in da back-up Red Shirt 1564! Two LPI flatfoots came onto the bridge and grabbed the old guy by both arms, forcing him off the bridge. Some other random guy came in and took his place.
Well? What ya got ta say? Clements asked in a threatening tone.
Theres an uncharted planet on sensors, sir!
Gritting his teeth, he said slowly: Well then send down a search party. The barely controlled anger obvious.
Right away, sir. A couple of Patriots took off and landed. Soon after, a voice crackled over the comms.
Sir, weve found an alien spaceship thats crash landed!
WHAT?!
Our thoughts exactly sir. Were bringing it back up.
At the launch deck
The two Patriots flew in, towing in what appears to be a crashed Patriot. Clements was beside himself. What ya mean alien spaceship? Dat be a Patriot foo!
Thats what we thought, sir, said the first guy out of the first Patriot, But we found alien life.
And you brought it here?!
You told us to.
I did nau! Get eet off ma ship!
Right away, sir
Before he could move, the ships canopy opened and starved ferrets were everywhere, gnawing and biting and scratching everything.
AHH! MY LEG! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! screamed some random person, and complete pandemonium ensued. Clements pushed his way to the front of the screaming and milling mass of people, yelling Im more important than all you, outta ma way!
The lights dimmed and ominous music started playing. Clements was running, but had to stop to catch his breath. This random LPI officer ran up, yelling. Hey man, we gotta move! Theyre everywhere! They catch us, its GAME OVER man, GAME OVER!
Clements slapped him, saying Get a hold of yourself, man! Just then, the ferrets came. Wave on wave, they blanketed the floor decks in a furry, writhing carpet of ravenous hunger.
We gotta MOVE, man! the guy yelled, grabbing Clements and running in the other direction. Clements, making a decision, pulled out his cell phone and called for help.
In the end, the Girl Scouts deployed a Cruiser, their well-trained shock troops easily cleaning out the Rusty Donut of the 'alien infestation'. This left Clements to think... think of the sad state of the LPI. He saw them, the fat, lazy, incompetent fools. He saw a problem, and went about fixing it. First, he pulled some strings and got the WLPFOOLPIP started, the revolutionary diet for LPI officers. That wasn't enough though. He lost weight himself, almost reaching what he had weighed in the Navy.
He started dressing down the LPI flatfoots, and lost the accent. Soon, they were disciplined. Soon, they were back to what they had once been. A force that instilled fear in the pirates of Liberty. Though it came at a price... corruptness ran rampant. It was all about the bottom line, the cash payout, which came from locking the criminals in their prison stations/factories. But overall, Clements was happy.
Now, the Rusty Donut was a force to be reckoned with.
Clements watched as a Heavy Lifter with attachments to clean and paint capital ships painted over the name of the ship on the bow, "Rusty Donut". Replacing it was the name of a prison from old Earth - Leavenworth. He smiled, looking at the view screen. The next time someone joked about the LPI, they were in for a surprise...
Sparks flew as a group of grease-monkies with wrenches and power saws went to work on the shield generator of the Leavenworth. Clements watched on, a little confused.
"I didn't know we had any scheduled maintenance to the shield generator..."
Just then, the shield generator was unattached, picked up by a Heavy Lifter, and all the people jumped in. It rocketed away.
"You have got to be kidding me," Clements muttered, slamming his open palm to his face in disgust. When he found out they made off with a few turrets as well, he just about kicked the LPI flatfoot in the shin that told him.
Clements' jaw worked without producing sound as he stood in front of the Board of Directors of the LPI.
"What do you mean the Leavenworth is an 'extravagance'?!" he yelled at the very people that had mandated the decommission of his ship.
"John, you gotta understand... we got no choice. Our budget is tight as it is, and we can't afford a new shield generator and the guns. You'll be receiving a Liberty Gunboat instead, strip down what you can from the Leavenworth and put it on the Gunboat. Dismissed."
Clements left with a bruised ego, as the ship he had worked so hard to get disappeared forever.
A Heavy Lifter fumbled through the debris field, one of many that was armed with heavy equipment and scores of engineers. John Clements stood on the bridge of one, an eager glint in his eye. It had taken some time, but he had called in as many favors as he had left in his lifetime and he was sitting on a small fleet... to restore the Leavenworth to pristine condition. Some called him crazy. Others wanted him to disappear. The CEO of the LPI let him do it just to make him shut up. He had made a plethora of noise throughout the ranks of the LPI, raising hell and making a demagogue of himself. Clements was damn lucky he hadn't been fired.
And now, a dozen Heavy Lifters latched on to the Leavenworth's depressurized hulk, spewing out envirosuit-fitted engineers to restore pressure. First point of repair was the engines, then they'd move the ship to Baltimore and get the structural integrity restored to be capable of jumping. The rest of the ship systems were slated after that, but by the schedule and plan, it should be completely restored in a manner of months. Clements had some of the most dedicated engineers, each of them friends or former-underlings of his from the Navy, working on this.
* * * * *
A short time ago
The Onatrio incident shook up the higher-ups of the LPI something fierce. Nearly losing an entire system to the SCRA was unacceptable, and they realized that holding more firepower in their collective pockets would be a very nice thing. So they investigated Clements' progress, and found a team of engineers falling about, sleep-deprived from being pushed and pushing themselves too hard. Considering the costs and the benefits as they saw them now, as opposed to how they saw them when they ordered the ships decommission, the Board of Directors allocated resources to repair the ship.