Captain Disaster Episode Four - Mercenaries
Oct 06 '03 (Updated Jan 06 '05)
The Bottom Line It's episode four. Er... that's it...
Captain Disaster
Episode Four
Mercenaries
Teaming up with a band of inter-planetary, inter-galactic, mega-cool mercenaries was all very well, but they tended to talk about very boring things, such as being heroic, macho, cool and a lot of other things that Captain Disaster just couldn't relate to. So Zero-Bit took command of the ship, blew them up and decided to take on the current mission all by himself. Well, he (it?) decided for Captain Disaster that Captain Disaster should take on the current mission all by himself. However, as the current mission was to take a bowl of Acturan figs to a restaurant in East Acton, such minor quibbles were merely mere minor quibbles to the quibbless captain, who wasn't a minor, either.
"So what do we do when it's the Mercenaries Open Day then?", asked Captain Disaster.
"We run like mad and hope that they don't catch us and throw wet sponges at us", came the calm,balmy,docile, pacific,restful,serene,smooth and imperturbable reply. Which was, at the same time, quite insane.
"It's not their wet sponges that worry me, it's their high-powered, hi-tech, megablasting, pumping, kicking, ultra-sonic booming laser and missile capabilities", said CD. (As he shall be known whenever I get tired of typing Captain Disaster, which is, um, quite often really.)
At that very moment, a high-powered, hi-tech, megablasting, pumping, kicking, ultra-sonic booming banana-split was launched at CD's ship, Disaster Area. It was really just as well, then, that Zero-Bit accidentally dropped 300,000,000 KM out of deep space into even deeper space at that moment. Quite why he did this shall forever be put down to "pilot error", but we all know better, don't we?
"Quick, open communications", said CD, forgetting to say the words "sub-space" before the word "communications", which really shows this series up for the cheap and tacky series it is. That sort of mistake would never have taken place on "Star Trek". Or even "Buck Rogers".
Despite this disturbing lack of professionalism, Zero-Bit made it so. Captain Disaster spoke worriedly, as if worried. "Please leave me alone, I didn't mean to blow up your mates, it was my computer, he did it, I mean it did it, I mean... please don't hurt me", he wailed pathetically.
"That's right, drop me in it as usual", complained Zero-Bit. "After all the times I've saved your life, too!"
"OK, name one time when you save my life."
"Hundreds of times, when your back's been up against the wall, when you've had no chance, no hope, no future, I've come along and saved you."
"Name one specific instance."
"So many times I've saved you, and this is how you repay me!"
"Name one time."
Silence ensued loudly.
Just then a voice that would chill even a Drug Baron's heart came over on the communications channel. "Captain, you killed our little boys, our harmless little angels who never did anything wrong, well apart from blowing up grandma and they promised us that was a mistake.... Because of this, do you know what we`re going to do to you? We're going to tie you up and force you to watch the same episode of T.J.Hooker, over and over again, until you can give us the exact number of follicles in William Shatner's wig multiplied by the number of women he snogs who are even uglier than those he snogged in Star Trek. At the same time, we shall repeatedly hit you around the head with our atomic rolling pins, and give you a haircut. With an atomic meat-cleaver!"
CD was worried. He hadn't had a haircut for over a year now, and had grown accustomed to being a hairy mess. Or a messy hair, but that depends on your point of view. Either way, he wasn't about to become a fashion victim now, all for the sake of looking like a naked chef.
Zero-Bit, being possessed of an IQ of over 6,000, had worked out that they had been talking to the deceased mercenaries' mums. (Congratulations to all readers who had also worked this out - you must be more intelligent than you seem. It seems to me that anyone who actually reads this series must be a bit thick, but there you go. I stand to be corrected by a flood of MENSA members who are avid fans of Captain Disaster. Or then again, maybe I don't.) He needed to use every single brain cell he was possessed of, which was none actually because he didn't posses any brain cells, just an electronic imitation of a neural network, with electrostatic conversion of the data arrays to correspond to synapse activity in a normal brain. But we won't get needlessly complicated right now.
"Now look here, woman, your son was a thieving, conniving, evil, corrupt,depraved,malicious,vile and wicked person. And he supported Arsenal!", said Captain Disaster to the woman in the other ship, after looking up in his new book, "The art of tactful and diplomatic relations for the everyday man with mercenaries' mums on his tail, about to do something rather nasty to him with an atomic meat-cleaver".*
"I know, but that's his right, isn't it?"
"Um...", Captain Disaster thought furiously (well, he pretended to, and then fell asleep for a few hours, but he talks in his sleep so that's all right then), "Well, I think it`s my right to have blown him up then."
"So you did do it! I was going to let your computer off, since I think he's quite cute anyway, but now you have admitted responsibility. And it's my right, in that case, to blow you up. Nyah nayhsherh. Bleh. Blughdgfjh."
CD looked disgusted and threw up, while Zero-Bit looked smug and confused. "Nyah nayhsherh. Bleh. Blughdgfjh" was Altairian for "Excuse me, what is the best way to get to the next hyperspace-jump location?".
"Mole!", shouted Zero-Bit triumphantly after a moment’s thought that lasted several days. The mercenaries' mums' ship disintegrated in a surfeit of apostrophes.
Captain Disaster woke up three years later. "What happened?", he asked the computer.
"I just said mole and she vanished."
Captain Disaster thought about this. "Ah, that's Altairian for 'Excuse me, can you please disintegrate yourself now so that I can go to bed and lead an ultimately happy, successful and useful life', isn't it?"
"Um, no it isn't actually, but thanks for asking. I don't know what it means, I just said it for a laugh, that's all."
"And it worked?"
"And it worked."
"Oh."
"So much for Altairian?"
"So much for Altairian."
"Oh."
"This episode is finished?"
"This episode is finished."
"Ah."
"Ah?"
"Well, I just got fed up of saying 'oh'."
"Hang on, this conversation isn't meant to be part of this episode now!"
"You call this a conversation?"
"Well, not really, but still, it's the principle of the thing."
"What, you mean the fact that we stopped getting paid after 1.094 words?"
"Exactly."
Footnotes
· Available from all seedy bookshops from "How To Extricate Yourself From Unlikely Yet Dangerous Situations Press". RRP - Two frogs and a pomegranate.
Links
Episode One – “The Planet-Eater of Acturus”
Episode Two – “A Beta Burger”
Episode Three – “Wormhole”
----------
Read my review of
Red Dwarf Series 1-4
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.