Homestar Saga

Chapter 27: Bigger Guns

"I'd have had them installed by Tuesday," Migo's voice was defensive.

"The work was supposed to be done two weeks ago," snarled the Captain.

"The power grid couldn't handle the load," Migo explained. "We had to reinforce it. This is an experimental setup, Mims. There's bound to be complications."

"Then why didn't I get an N-mail informing me of the delay?" The human demanded.

"Cause you were dead!"

Mims didn't have anything to say to that.

After several seconds of silence, Migo nervously asked, "You're still gonna...I mean....this doesn't mean the deals off? Does it?"

"It means," Mims told him. "We're probably all gonna die."

"You don't really mean that?" Yvian asked, worried. "Do you?"

The human ignored the question. "Lissa," he addressed her sister. "Is the Jumpdrive online?"

"Let me see." Lissa typed into her console. "No. Jumpdrive's not connected."

"God damn it." Mims activated comms on his wrist console. "Migo, where is my Jumpdrive?"

"Jumpdrive?" Migo's voice raised in pitch slightly. "Are you leaving us?"

"If you've taken my Jumpdrive off this ship I'll feed you to the Vrrl myself," the human told him. "Where is it?"

"It's still there," Migo rushed to assure him. "We had to disconnect it while we were working on the power grid. You could hook it back up again in a couple minutes."

"Lissa, go." Lissa downloaded a ship schematic to her wrist console and ran off the bridge. Mims motioned to Yvian as he moved to one of the containers. "Help me with these." He pried it open.

"What are they?" Yvian peered into the container. It was full of neatly stacked disks, roughly half a meter in diameter. "Wait, are those..."

"Combat drones," Mims confirmed. "We need to turn them on and sync them to the ship's computer."

Mims took her through the process. It was simple enough. As Yvian set up the drones, the Captain opened another container. He pulled out portable shield units and started setting them up against the walls of the bridge. He set them up on the floor and the ceiling as well.

It took a full fifteen minutes for Yvian to activate all thirty six drones. Mims called Lissa on the comms. "Lissa, how's the Jumpdrive coming?"

"Working on it," she told him. "It was a long way to the engine room."

"Work faster," he ordered. "They'll be on us in six minutes." The Captain activated the shield generators on the walls. He set three more up in front of the door to the bridge, but did not activate them.

Mims opened the final container. He pulled out a turret. The turret had eight barrels grouped together in a circular pattern attached to a heavy looking block. He set it up behind the third shield in front of the door. He set a second turret next to it. The ship shuddered just after he turned it on.

Yvian rushed to her console. The Vrrl cruiser had finally entered firing range. Hundreds of bolts of plasma smashed into The Paradigm Shift. Yvian checked the ship's status, expecting the shields to be on the brink of failure after such a barrage. To her surprise, they had only fallen to ninety one percent.

"The Paradigm's got twice the shields of a standard carrier." Mims informed her. "I had to give up a third of her hangar capacity to make it work, but she's almost as tough as The Gunzerker." He sighed. "I miss that ship."