Snazzy Editing Technique No.6

Posted on Sun Oct 29th, 2023 @ 8:01pm by The Narrator

561 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: World Wide Web
Location: The Schrimshaw Star
Timeline: After Sun Watchers and Curb Side

With the probe's odd proportions and the distinctive teardrop shape of a Starfleet standard issue EV pack, it is quite possible to see how Captian William Maddox mistook the cludged-together decoy for Suda making room in the DSRV to put his feet up. Had the probe an ounce of self-awareness, artificial or otherwise, it might have been touched at the concern given to it. If ever so fleetingly.

But it did not, so it let its resting bitch face continue to glare at the universe.

Something ropey and rock-shaped smashed into the decoy. The rock spider, a tooth monstrosity which was probably shunned by rock spider society for being such an abnormally toothy and monstrous specimen of the breed, wrapped its segmented legs around its prey. The casing of the probe cracked, and the cold gas bottle of the micro thrusters popped with a cloud of expanding vapour.

And for a brief, shining moment, the spider was happy to have caught and killed its prey. This would be a red letter day among its people, the day one of they had succeeded in catching a small flying bit of debris without hurtling off into space to die-

A tendril of plasma tens of thousands of degrees hot washed over it, a casual brushing of the magnetically contained matter. This was more than enough to blow the solid matter of spider, probe, and jet pack, straight into subatomic particles that wizzed off to meet up with Entropy at the end of the universe.

The plasma leviathan barely registered the momentary inconvenience of hitting solid matter. Being a creature composed of magnetic fields and superheated gases, with some very unique internal meta-materials keeping it all functioning, Plasma Levithans rarely have to worry about matter unless it's a naturally occurring superconductor. Mass and density were states of being that happened to other people.

So when a strange and highly energised thing had entered its pod's territory, well, curiosity got the better of it. Also, given the number of wrecks in orbit of their star, you'd think plasma leviathans would find a starship to be ho-hum. But it broke up the monotony of swimming through a sea of crushing gravity and nuclear fusion.

But a meeting of the minds would be as disastrous for the leviathans as it was for the USS Daedalus. Apart from being just chock full of artificially created superconductors, even a usually unphased leviathan would find an antimatter explosion to be far from its liking.

To that end, the USS Daedalus did not hang around. The DSRV, expertly piloted by Fox, slammed into the docking cradle within the clamshell. Had there been atmosphere, the sound of metal on metal colliding at speed would have been...impressive. Seconded only by the scream of pure hatred from any nearby engineer. But the shock absorbers absorbed the shock, the engineers who built the DSRV knew their stuff.

And an unlucky rock spider that had clung on through thick and thin, on the other hand, was little more than foul-smelling machine grease between the two vessels.

But it was done, and with a quick turn about and closing of the clamshell doors over the DSRV, the Chariot class USS Daedalus went to warp.

Thus bookending their first foray into the Reef Stars by ding dong and ditching the first Reef Star megafauna they had found.

 

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