To Hell and Back (Hellworlder pirates)

Ch28 The Fleet Assembles

The Fleet Assembles

The injuries were getting dumber every day, today they had rigged some hand trucks from engineering with makeshift EM thrusters and had raced through the halls, and apparently a whole other group of idiots had the same exact idea and set up a race of their own starting from a different side of the ship. The two groups collided at speed and now Alwen Had to spend her morning setting bones; she wasn't exactly gentle. Maybe she would have been a month and a half ago, but after an impromptu sword fighting competition, that ended when someone inevitably impaled themselves, changing the soap to turn people skin green, which also acted as a nasty skin irritant on Alwen's skin, and the replacement of some of Adela's cooking oil with unscented soap that resulted in ship wide diarrhea.

Not all of the restlessness resulted in stupid stunts, some of it was very constructive, like the ships new book club and card nights. It was just the really stupid ones that stuck in her memory, mainly because the really stupid ones interrupted Alwen's research, which was only now hitting its stride. She had just developed a solution that could safely remove unwanted tattoos, something she started working on after the crew began making their own tattoos with less than stellar skill. Now if it would stop leaving large bleached patches on the skin she could remove Isabela's back tattoo of a 'bald eagle' that looked more like a 'retarded turkey', Alwen had no idea what either of those birds looked like, but she could tell that the monstrosity on Isabela's back had to go.

She had tried talking to the Bosun about increasing punishment, but he just laughed. "Lass, I cud work'em until de'are dead, an dea would stell manage to cause mayham. All I can doo es work sam o'dea ecess stupid out o'em"

"Besides" Chief Heizer interjected "Sometimes these stupid stunts result in impressive innovations. Three years back they dubbed one of the cleaning drones 'Stabby' after taping a knife to it, it wasn't very good at stabbing people until some of the communications officers began messing with its code. Not only did they subtly alter its code to stab the crew more often while still appearing to be accidental, they even coded in precision targeting to prevent from it from stabbing anything vital. Then they coded in stealth ability's so that it would move around unnoticed by flying in people's blind spots and blending in with the background. They were eventually found out when Stabby found a kink in the captain's armor three times in a row. She was so impressed with how sophisticated Stabby's code was she wasn't even mad about the knife in her arm. We used that code in developing new tracking and targeting systems for our missiles, and even developed a line of Drones for the Tempter's based on that cleaning drones programming." He explained.

"Aye, I heard dea Stabby class drones are a real menace" the Bosun added with a nod.

"Your own research in dermal tattoo removal might eventually prove to be useful in helping people with heavy metal poisoning." Heizer added pointedly. "At the very least we have laser-less tattoo removal

Alwen had to admit that despite the asinine nature of the pranks, they were pushing the limits of her abilities in new and interesting ways. She just wished it wasn't so stupid sometimes.

She would have been growing restless from the long journey as well but her research, and her training with the marines was consuming much of her free time. Her two intense two-hour sessions with both marine teams were so thoroughly exhausting that she had to start asking Adela for triple portions every meal just keep up with the energy drain. Butch had just smiled and put her on the 'marine diet', which meant no breads, no deserts, just whole grains, and protein, with an assorted medley of vegetables. They tried to make her eat cheese and yogurt, but the idea of consuming another mammals lactation was just flat out gross. It was fine for little kids to do that, but a grown adult had no business in drinking milk. Even the fake powdered substitute they used aboard the Astaroth was too similar to the real thing for her.