Mossfoot's Tales of Woe...

[spud42]

you see, Fleabag has this special collar that Mosfoot bought him on a T14 world.. when it senses depressurisation it auto inflates to protect the "Beloved " pet from harm....

[Diziet Sma]

you see, Fleabag has this special collar that Mosfoot bought him on a T14 world.. when it senses depressurisation it auto inflates to protect the "Beloved " pet from harm....

So.. as suggested earlier, a RemLock for a cat, in other words..

[spud42]

I prefer to think of it as a Resuscitation System to Prevent Cat Asphyxiation Or RSPCA for short...

[ClymAngus]

I love that. That's fantastic. Ok for people who don't really want to read about 28 cats getting a big bite of brain fart sandwich thanks to biologists cutting off their air supply. Cat strangling in the name of progress? A little too emotive when discussing ground breaking research? Hmm, ok. I'll give you an over view. No oxygen: BAD. No oxygen + low blood pressure: REALLY BAD, No oxygen + high blood pressure : Better, for a short period of time then BAD.

In short brains and lactic acid REALLY hate each other. When suffering from hipoxia getting that acid away from the brain is key to longer term recovery of that organ. Fortunately the rest of the body loves lactic acid, it is very useful. So if you want a chance of saving the cat;

1) you want that animal as panicked as possible before it goes unconscious (being shot into deep space that's not really a problem)
2) After the cat succumbs to hypoxia, it's heart rate will slow and now the clock is really ticking.
3) as soon as you get the cat back on board: You would need a cocktail of heart stimulants AND put it on pure oxygen. Maybe low voltage electrical stimulus, but only low.

The stimulants will increase heart rate, removing the acid from the brain and burning some of it off. See point 8 below.

http://www.delano.k12.mn.us/high-school ... actic-acid

The oxygen well, what do you not have in your animal at the moment numb nuts? Oxy! That's what!

Low level exercise can also reduce levels of lactic acid. It's the preferred burn for several muscle types. Hence the spine based shock treatment. Remember long pulses NOT short ones. You want to be stimulating Slow muscle twitch (brown meat) not fast (white meat).

Congratulations! You have officially finished your first aider course on "repairing your ships cat when it has been inadvertently blow out into space!"

[mossfoot]

And yet nobody questions the fact that Mossfoot himself has been spaced... twice.

[ClymAngus]

And yet nobody questions the fact that Mossfoot himself has been spaced... twice.

We assume he was smart enough to be wearing his rem the first time and he got scooped seconds after the second laser demarcation.
Since the dark wheel there has been a convention in place to "explain" such things. But not for cats though. Congratulations, your officially in virgin snow when it comes to canon. Write wisely.

[Malacandra]

And yet nobody questions the fact that Mossfoot himself has been spaced... twice.

Well, you know how it is. People will read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and uncritically accept stories about talking beavers and witches who can turn people into stone statues, and instead choose to argue about where in the world Tumnus could possibly get a tin of sardines from.

[Paradox]

And yet nobody questions the fact that Mossfoot himself has been spaced... twice.

But what happens to you is based on the results of your own decisions, and with full knowledge of the possible ramifications thereof. The poor cat however... };]

[mossfoot]

The Constrictor was one of those ships you read about in Jane's Fighting Spaceships where about ninety percent of the stats on it are listed as CLASSIFIED. I'd heard rumors of what it could do, but that was nothing unusual. Everyone had heard rumors.

Some said she could break the 7 Light Year jump barrier, others that she could run mil-spec lasers without over heating. Some believed she carried a cloaking device, while others thought the hull and engine were specially treated to survive a Q-bomb, allowing it to be in the center of a blast and be the only one to walk away.

Really, the only things I knew for certain about the Constrictor were this: she was incredibly fast, she was unbelievably maneuverable, and she was inexplicably pointed right at me.

The Cobra didn't even wait for it to fire on us before switching to Red Alert. Let me put that into perspective for you--a ships computer, without any kind of A.I. to make a judgement call, took one look at that ship on its radar, its heading and its power output, and effectively wet itself.

That's the Constrictor.

The moment the Red Alert klaxon rang, Violet's seat swung around mine ninety degrees. Before she was sitting beside me, now with a single smooth pivot, she was directly behind me, facing another terminal. She quickly figured out what that terminal was for--rear weapons mount, ECM and missile management.

"That's better," she said. "A bit retro, but I like it. Wait. This has a turret?"

"Only a 30 degree arc," I said.

"It's enough," she answered. I'm pretty sure she cracked her knuckles. "Just keep it in my sights."

Since that was basically the same as saying "run away as fast as you can" I had no problem with this plan.

"Attention Cobra. You are ordered to cut your engines and prepare to be bombarded."

I was pretty sure I recognized that gravelly voice, even though I'd only ever heard it once before. It was the voice of a mountain that somehow got its pilot's licence. I guess being clubbed by a fire extinguisher wasn't enough to keep the real Mossfoot out of the fight.

"Uh, don't you mean boarded?"

The laser blast that hit our rear shields told me no, he did not.

"Any chance we can negoti--" another blast made his position perfectly clear. I dove and pulled up, banked and rolled, trying to make myself as hard a target as possible.

"He's too far out of range," said Violet.

"That's impossible. This thing has Mil-spec weapons fore and aft."

"Maybe a hundred years ago," she said. "I doubt they're even civilian grade now."

With coordinates to another system already set, I activated the hyperdrive and kept dodging the Constrictor's beam. Fifteen seconds was a damn long time to stay alive in a dogfight, especially when you were outmatched. As the final seconds ticked by I had to steady out if I wanted to make a smooth jump.

"Five, four, three, two--"

The constrictor fired, I had to dive or be fried.

"--one...warning. Malfunction. Warning. Malfunction."

You never jink going into hyperspace, it's just inviting disaster, and given how old this ship was I was probably inviting it anyway. Instead of the friendly blue tunnel that looked like an acid trip, witchspace was crackling with purple lightning instead. Then it felt like something was pulling us out.

"Ohnonononono..." The Cobra was ejected into interstellar space, light years away from any system. Only we hadn't just been spat out. We'd been caught in a net.

"Thargoid!" I dived just in time before the green and red Thargoid battleship that had drawn us to its position opened fire. It was already releasing remote control drones after us, and to top it all off, the Constrictor had followed us through our own wormhole.

"Well, this keeps getting better and better," I said. I kept the throttle down but didn't use the injectors, they'd waste what little fuel we had, and I needed it all for another jump. Fortunately, the Thargoids aren't terribly picky on who they attack, and were giving the Constrictor a hard time.

Violet got out of her seat. "I've got an idea. Try not to get killed until I'm back." She ran out of the cockpit.

"Where are you going?" I yelled at a closed door. Damn. I went back to the controls. We were still within range of another system. I leaned over to lock the coordinates and start the hyperdrive again, just before I spun away from numerous beams and pulses lighting up the eternal dark of interstellar space. The Cobra MKIII was a slight improvement over the MKII in most respects, but she had one advantage over her eventual successor--maneuverability. And I made the most of it.

"Incoming missile," the computer trilled.

Ghah! Why didn't I have access to the ECM as well? I unbuckled and leaped over into Violet's seat, activated the countermeasures, and leaped back into the captain's chair. I'm sure that little design flaw would have been worked out before this ship hit the production line, but that didn't do me any good now.

"Hyperspace in 5....4....3...."

I dove again and jinked, forcing the Constrictor and any bug-eyed aliens to readjust and not get a bead on me too quickly, then let go and few straight for the last second and a half. I actually let go of the joystick, not wanting to jinx the moment.

Be were back in regular witchspace. Thank God. When we emerged, it was in a normal system with a normal star. But it wouldn't be long before the Constrictor followed. I just hoped it was the only one.

I spun the Cobra one-eighty and flew through my own witchspace wake, then spun back. If the Constrictor followed, it would be facing the wrong direction. That would at least give me a chance to strike first. Laser hot. Missiles armed. Get ready to hit it with everything I had.

Violet got back inside. "I'll give this ship credit, it's got great compensators. I barely felt how much you were bouncing us around back there. What are you doing?"

"The Constrictor's coming. I want to get first crack at it. We might get lucky."

"No, you fool, run away!" She got back into her chair. "Do what you're best at already. You're not going to live through this with a stupid act of bravado."

"No need to tell me twice," I said spinning back around. "I was iffy about the whole idea anyway."

But we'd only made it a few klicks before the Constrictor appeared on the rear radar and the ship wet itself into Red Alert again. There was an intense blast of laser fire. It sounded like our shields were being shredded. Then, almost as quickly, it stopped. The radar was clear.

"The hell?" Dammit. It did have a cloaking device, didn't it? It was coming around for a final pass but didn't want me to know which direction it would be coming from.

"I got bad news, and I got good news," said Violet.

"What's the bad news?" I asked.

"The bad news is our rear laser has completely melted."

Well, that was the turd cherry on the crap ice cream sundae.

"And the good?"

"You now have exclusive rights to the handle Mossfoot."

I checked the rear view camera. Sure enough, there was debris floating around the fading blue witchpoint.

"How?"

"I removed the limiters on the rear laser and boosted its power output. It was never going to survive the heat, but I figured it was our only shot. All-or-nothing isn't normally my style, but..."

I nodded. Desperate times and all that.

With the crisis over, I had Violet's chair swivel back to its co-pilot position. For a moment, we just coasted towards the planet and caught our breath. It was funny, I'd ended up back in the same system as when I had left with that damn black box, hoping I'd find some answers. Be careful what you wish for. Geeze. I hope dad found that box as well, but Adams might have already blanked it.

We'd been in the belly of the beast and made it out alive. We'd found ourselves in the middle of some kind of galactic intrigue, possibly having seen only one small facet of something larger and more terrifying. Paradox was right. Adams wasn't the head of this dragon, just one of its claws. I just hope dad managed to chop it off before it was too late.

If the events that came from 4004 taught me anything it was this: whoever orchestrated it did not care what happened to any one person, or even entire planets. They had designs on the galaxy as a whole, and there would be no squeaky wheels getting any grease--only nails sticking up that needed to get hammered down.

[Paradox]

"Attention Cobra. You are ordered to cut your engines and prepare to be bombarded."

Good one! };]

[Malacandra]

Top episode.

[mossfoot]

"So, what next, flyboy?"

"Oh, it's flyboy again, is it?"

"You have a ship again."

"And you don't."

Violet sighed. "Yeah, insurance will cover just about everything, but not naval confiscation. And I doubt I could collect it from whatever impound lot its on, assuming I could even find it." She looked over to me and smiled, probably the first friendly smile I'd gotten from her since the Atomos. "Still, I'm alive, and I guess I got you to thank for that."

"Likewise." I looked Violet over, sizing her up like I had before in the brig. Not in terms of measurements (though those were locked away in my memory), but in character. What kind of person was she? Could she be trusted? What do I do with her now?

"What would you say to a partnership?" I asked.

Violet shook her head. "You play things too safe for my liking."

"True, but for the foreseeable future that's exactly what you need to be doing. You think whoever Adams is working for wants us out here knowing what we know? But right now we have the advantage. We're in a ship that officially doesn't exist with an identity crystal that can slip past just about anyone's attention. This ship's got twice the cargo of your old Mark I, more if we shift things around a bit, so we could make some decent money laying low. We earn you enough to get yourself a new ship, and go our separate ways. Or we start our own biker club out on some Anarchy system's asteroid belt, make matching jackets. In the meantime we have a good time and watch each other's backs until the coast is clear."

Violet considered this. I wondered if adding my own insight about her might help the deal. As I've said before, I'm fairly good at reading people and sizing them up.

"If you think about it, you'll realize my plan is better than the one you're considering."

Violet half-snorted. "What plan would that be?"

"The one where you knock me out and dump me on the nearest station, take my ship and my ID, sell the Mark II to a collector, and use that money to get a much better ship and try to disappear. Right now your hand is on that pocket knife you took from the guard in case I try anything funny." My eyes hadn't left hers, but they didn't need to. I'd seen her hand slip down to her pocket the moment she tried to thank me.

"I could let you walk off the ship," she said. "You know you can't take me in a fight."

I nodded. "True. But your plan is exactly what someone looking for you would expect. Any collectors who could afford this ship will be contacted or monitored. Meanwhile we could be slipping around from planet to planet in a ship that nobody recognizes and assumes is some kind of custom job--at least, they will once we give it a new paintjob and some other little tweaks. I'd like to keep this ship in the family, but some of the controls here really do need a co-pilot to work properly."

Violet considered this and reluctantly conceded the point.

"But aside from the fact that my plan makes more sense, consider this. I knew what you were just planning to do to me, and I'm still letting the offer stand."

Violet's eyes narrowed a little. "Yes, and I'm wondering why. You know my angle. What's yours?"

"I'm guessing by how quickly you were planning to dump my body on the nearest landing bay that you haven't worked with many partners before. Or, more likely, you have and got burned by each and every one. Betrayed, ripped off, abandoned. Something like that." Yikes. Her reaction made it clear I hit the mark on that one. "Remember that time you almost killed me? You'd asked yourself if the universe would be a better place without me in it, and realized that maybe there was something in me worth keeping around."

She nodded.

"Let's just say I'm looking for the chance to prove you right, and that I feel the same way about you."

"I'm pretty sure I called you an asshole as well."

"I skipped over that part."

Violet bit her lip like she was at war with her inner nature. Just how many times had someone screwed her over to be that reluctant to trust someone again?

In the end she pulled out the pocket knife and held it in front of me, then laid it down on the dashboard between us. She offered her hand. "Partners."

I took it. "Partners." I sat back in my chair and took hold of the controls. "Set course for the nearest RRS station and request permission to land, Number One. First order of business, you install a tea maker, while I look up an old friend."

Violet grumbled. "I am so going to regret this..."

[Neelix]

"I'm pretty sure I called you an asshole as well."
"I skipped over that part."

*snickers*

It'll be interesting to see how this works out...

- Neelix

[Bangbangduck]

Great stuff! I got a mention to!! Cheers!!

B.B.Duck

[mossfoot]

I found Brother Mathias on board the RRS station as I had hoped, attending another rescue mission briefing.

“You look troubled, my son.”

I was. “Um… do you remember how you found my body? How you defrosted me, repaired the cell damage, got the brain working again and all that?”

Mathias nodded. “Yes…”

I held up a freezer box. “Do you do pets?”



A few days later, back on Ceesxe, Redspear was just finishing up the paint job on my ship. I ran my hand down the fresh coat of paint. Red had never been my color anyway.

“Looks good,” I said. “Thanks. And the registration?”

“Taken care of. Seems a shame to paint up a piece of history like that,” he said. “But I’ll grant you, it’s still a sweet looking ship. And I set the computer to broadcast herself as a Cobra MKIII. They’re about the same size, not all that different. People will just assume she’s a custom job. Lord knows there’s enough of those out there. Chopped Cobras, Cobra Couriers, Cobra Rapiers… even saw a gold Cobra once. Everyone wants to pimp their Cobra, it seems. Had to ditch the weapons, though. Rear laser was fried and the front’s an antique. Put a starter weapon in there for you.”

“But she’s good to go?” I asked.

“Fit as a fiddle. Your dad sure took good care of her. Hope you do the same. She’s a fine ship, really nice crew cabins, too.”

I smirked. “Part of the reason I borrowed her so often. You know what they say, ‘If the Cobra is a rockin…’”

“There must be something wrong with the lateral stabilizers?”

“Smartass.”

"So what about your radio show?" Redspear asked. "You going to keep doing it?"

The fact was I hadn't had a broadcast since my capture, and given how much was known now, I wasn't sure I should. "I don't know, it might attract the wrong kind of attention."

"Eh, I wouldn't worry about it. Just keep changing the stuff that could lead back to you... Or me for that matter. These days your show is considered lunatic fringe, from what I hear. The only people who believe you tend to also believe in aluminum foil fashion accessories. Most people at the bar think it's some kind of viral marketing campaign or that you're a kook too. But they all think it's entertaining as hell."

"A kook, huh?" I shrugged. "I've been called worse."



I met Violet back at the Last Tap, where she was nursing a drink and watching the news.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“Nope. Just the same old hit parade.”

The hit parade she referred to was on right now, covering recent events on the Atomos. An attempted coup by the Captain’s own XO, Commander Adams, who was now believed to have orchestrated the sale of naval fighter coordination software, which directly led to the events of 4004. A number of Adams men had attempted to seize the bridge, while others had engaged the Atomos’ own fighters to establish space superiority.

Fortunately for everyone, while Adams had a lot of men under his sway, more than I ever suspected in fact, the Captain had surrounded himself in men of quality. Delta Squadron quickly reclaimed the skies, so to speak, while his crack marine company suppressed Adams’ men at just about every corridor. Ultimately most had surrendered.

During the battle, Adams tried to claim a conspiracy on board involving the Captain’s own son, a known rogue and troublemaker, who was the one actually involved in selling the navy secrets. But, as the Captain later pointed out, his son was dead, and in the aftermath it came out that it was Adams’ own men who had killed him, months ago in an asteroid field. He even spoke to the press about it.

“The knowledge that my son’s death was a direct result of Commander Adams betrayal of Her Majesty’s Navy saddens me more than I can say. All I can hope is that he’s found some peace in the deeps of space he loved so much.”

Violet raised a glass to me. “To the dearly, or should I say, nearly departed.”

I raised my glass to hers. “Let’s hope he stays nearly.”

The Captain had been hailed as a hero. He’d already been on the fast track to the Admiralty, now it seemed like that track got a bit faster. I smiled at the monitor and raised a glass to him as well. We both knew he was going to kill me for stealing his prize Cobra if we ever met again.

I could live with that.



Brother Mathias met at the top of the loading ramp to my ship, holding my cooler in his hands.

I sighed. “No luck, huh?”

“It was a partial success,” he said, opening the cooler. Fleabag’s head popped out. He had a white eye patch covering his left eye. Mathias sat the box down and Fleabag hopped out, running inside the ship.

“Looks like a total success to me,” I said. “Well, other than the eye.”

“Yes, well, the damage was a little more extensive than that, I’m afraid. We did what we could, but I’m afraid a little… augmentation was required.”

I looked behind me back at the ship. Fleabag was sitting at the top of the ramp looking at me.

“Me-ow.”

It sounded like a man had sneezed the word through a kazoo.

“Well, that wasn’t creepy at all.”

“Cybernetics. It’s more or less filling in the gaps for the parts we weren’t able to save.”

“Neat!”

Brother Mathias rolled his eyes. “Neat. Revolutionary life saving technology used on a stray feline, and he says it’s ‘neat.’ You do realize the only reason I did this was because I had an acolyte who required practice in such things before working on humans. That, and I had also heard about what happened on your father’s ship. Not what the media reported. The true story.”

“How…?”

“My order doesn’t just deal in missions of mercy, but the trade of information. True information, which I assure you is much more valuable than what’s commonly on the market. Now, the correct thing for you to do at this point is to say thank you.”

“Hey, why didn’t you fix his eye?” I asked, not really hearing him. “I mean, you were there putting chips in his brain already, right? Never mind, he looks cool with the patch.”

Mathias looked to the heavens for strength. “Fair well, ‘Mossfoot’. I hope we don’t see one another again.” He turned to leave, but stopped at the bottom of the ramp, looking at the ship's callsign.

"Where did you get the name from, if I might ask?"

"Eh, I dabbled in Latin. It's not a perfect translation, probably got a word or something missing, but it's good enough."

Mathias nodded. "It is... strangely appropriate for you."



“Viaticus Rex, you are fueled and ready for launch,” the station's traffic control system announced. “Standby. Launch in ten seconds.” Fleabag sauntered off to find a spot to call his own. Once or twice his head ticked to the side.

“So what’s next?” asked Violet. “Do you have a plan about where we’ll go next? What routes we’ll use? Where we’ll stay away from? Contingencies for if your so-called space ninjas come looking for us? Have you thought about this at all?”

“Five…four…three...”

I looked over at her and gave her a smile. “I say, enough of this thinking garbage, let’s have some fun.”

“Viaticus Rex: Launch.”



----

End