**ACTIONETTE** BACK ONLINE

<snip>
The air rushing past Efof was now too much for him. He was sucked closer and
closer to the precipice, and finally was pulled over it. He spun, holding onto
the edge with three hands (his other was clutching Jay), and his legs dangled
over the edge.
"I can't hold on much longer..." He gasped.
</snip>
Cass slapped the door access panel, and waited for the door to iris open in
front of her with a low hiss, which quickly turned into a howling roar, her
clothes and hair unexpectedly whipping violently around in the gale that had
sprung up from nowhere.
"Smeg's sake..." she sighed, turning back to the door control panel
The whole 'being exposed to hard vacuum and open space' thing, had quickly lost
its adventurous glamour, and had was fast beginning to seem like just another
one of the many bloody dangerous nuisances involved in living and working on the
Blue Dwarf
'I wonder which cretin left the core opened to space?' Cass idly wondered to
herself as she flicked her fingers over the control panel, cycling through the
various options, and moving deeper into the submenus
"Ah. Got you" she smiled, selecting the option to reseal the core, reflecting on
how fortuitous it was that vital functions like these weren't dependent on Holly
actually being active
Cass turned, and walked quickly down the access corridor towards the main
computorium, the gale dying around her as suddenly as it had began, as the core
resealed.
It had taken three and a half agonisingly worrying hours to get here, and had
been from start to finish, one of those journeys that simply couldn't go quickly
enough; especially with its urgency punctuated with the increasing frequency and
strength of the tremors that were now rocking through the ship at irregular
intervals, as the as the drive cores slowly span out of phase into their
destructive chain reaction
To her mild embarrassment, Cass had found herself uselessly holding her breath,
eyes closed, as each quake hit, rattling her inside the lift she was in, and
making her wonder if this was one that heralded the end her life, miserably
trapped, alone but for a couple of suitcases, in a tiny tin box, hundreds of
light years from what could laughingly be called home.
Thankfully though, her worst fears hadn't come to pass, as evinced by her
continued existence, but the ever increasing frequency and violence of the
tremors meant that there was little time to lose getting the new Holly installed
"Um... Help?"
Cass raised an eyebrow
"Oh? Hello...?" she walked out onto the gantry that the corridor led onto, and
around to where three blue hands were hanging as tightly as they were able onto
the edge of the precipice where the old core had until recently been
Efof looked hopefully up at her "Hello pretty lady"
"Huh. I don't know about that; last time I saw a mirror I looked a bloody mess"
Cass smiled wanly "I do know about you though... It's F'Queue, isn't it?"
"No, no, that was my mate at school. I'm Efof"
"Well, nice to meet you Efof; I'd offer to shake hands but I'd say that it looks
like you pretty much need them all for the task in hand"
"Huh?"
"Don't let go sweetie, that's all I'm saying"
"Oh, ok..."
"Quit smegging around with the chat Jones, and help us up..." Jay started
"What the smeg is that you're holding!?" Cass snapped, her eyes widening in
disgust at Efof "It's not some sort of sentient, greasy, shaved gerbil or
something like that, is it? If you're into that sort of thing, then so help me,
I'm stamping on your fingers right now!"
Efof had the good grace to just look confused "Umm. Jay..." he began "I don't
know what the lady's on about. What should we do?"
"That's no lady, son..." Jay began
Cass leant in close
"Just remember who's hanging over the edge of the precipice..." she hissed
menacingly, her tiredness and nerves temporarily getting the better of her
otherwise less confident nature
"I'm... sorry" Jay admitted, bristling somewhat, but wisely allowing the finely
honed tactical appraisal skills that Space Corps drilled into you, to finally
kick in
"So, what is that you've got there in your mitt?" Cass asked Efof
"It's *Captain* Chrysler" Jay snapped. The usual lack of respect from his own
crew was bad enough, but to be ignored and talked down to by a bloody
stripper...
"Oh right. Hi Jay. How's your girlfriend? Does she know you've turned now you've
found miniature, greasy alien love in the multi-armed embrace of your friend
here?"
"Just cut the crap Jones, and help us up"
Cass smirked and offered her hand just as another quake hit, nearly pitching her
over the edge, and forcing her to drop to the floor, while the tremor rattled
itself out
"I really can't hold on for much longer..." Efof moaned
"Oh shut your whining and give me one of your hands..."
"Whatever those quakes are about, I've got to admit that I'm pretty worried
about them" Jay admitted after Cass had finally helped Efof up onto the
inspection gantry "I don't suppose you know anything about what's causing them,
do you?"
"How technical an explanation do you want?" Cass asked
"An executive overview will do" Jay said, cringing with shame at asking for such
a thing; such were the pressures and necessary evils of captaincy: you just had
to know when to act like a wanker
"Ah, right: Dumbed down, management level. Ok, well, basically, it's your basic
drive core basically collapsing; so unless we get Holly reinstated (sorry that
was too long a word), I mean *fixed* quickly, were all going to be rapidly
cooling hot plasma drifting on the solar winds - Screwed, in other words" she
added, looking at Efof's quizzical expression
"Or to be more accurate" she continued, "The containment field for the drive
cores is slowly degrading as their automated systems struggle to cope without
Holly's constant monitoring and updating of the core field; the quakes are just
the fields snapping back into phase, but pretty soon they'll go completely and
when they do, we won't even know about it until it's too late..."
"How... How do you know this sort of crap?" Jay asked suddenly "I don't mean to
be rude, but I mean you take your clothes off for money... I've seen you in that
rubber outfit... It just seems a little incongruous..."
"I had a miserable childhood" Cass said flatly "Why don't you tell me how it is
that you're mister diminutive now instead? I promise not to make any jokes about
size *honestly* not mattering..."
Jay scowled and took a deep breath before beginning to relate the events of the
last few hours
"So," he finished "we were all hit by the quark miniaturisation ray, and now
Efof and I are here to install the new core and hopefully reverse the effects,
so we..."
"Um... Jay... I mean, Captain" Efof began "...About that new core..."
"...What?" Jay managed dryly; he could see where this was leading and strongly
suspected that it wasn't going to look at all good on his record
"I don't suppose you remember where it got left, do you?" Efof asked, mustering
as much innocence as he could
"Don't tell me you dropped it?"
"I... um... I mean.... uh... maybe... I mean it all happened so quick; you were
cupped in the palm of my hand and I had you clasped to my chest when we both got
sucked off... It was so exciting and happened so fast, I must have lost my head,
and just forgotten what I was doing..."
"...So it's floating out there in deep space?" Jay sighed "We're ...buggered..."
"I always suspected it was like that in the space corps, but enough of the
double entendres" Cass sighed "The damn thing would never have worked anyway;
quark miniaturisation is notoriously flaky, and was probably just ordered in by
some JMC bean counter, trying to cut corners with you. It was screwed the moment
the admiral dropped the suitcase"
"Oh, well, I feel so much better about it now" Jay moaned "I'm going to have to
give the order to abandon ship, and then I'll probably be demoted so far down
the chain of command, that Efof will be giving me orders"
"On a positive note" Cass pointed out "You're small enough to unblock vending
machine soup nozzles without having to use one of those little cotton bud
things..."
"But don't worry" she continued "I've a solution to our problems"
"You!" Cass snapped at the pink suitcase loitering discreetly out in the access
corridor, hoping it might get away without being noticed "Over here!"
The suitcase trundled over with a hangdog air about it as Cass massaged her
temples - tiredness and nerves were making her uncharacteristically snappy
"What you need" she began, as she pulled the case over onto its side and
unzipped it "...is one of these!"
Cass pulled the toaster out, holding it proudly up to Jay and Efof
"It just looks like a toaster to me Jay" Efof whispered
"It *is* just a toaster" Jay sighed "For a minute you had me thinking we were
all going to be alright there Jones"
"Oh we are. All I need to do is wire it in and we're good to go: Drive cores
stabilised, lives saved, and all that. But first, I need to get down to the
bottom of that shaft. Some dramatic lighting would help too, but it's optional;
we can sort that out later"
Another big quake rocked the ship, this one lasting for well over a minute; the
drive cores apparently having a well developed sense of dramatic timing
"We really need to get a move on" Cass murmured nervously "Another couple like
that and I think we're going to be history"
"I'm not sure about this" Jay started "It's a bloody big leap of faith you're
asking of me Jones; I need to give the order to abandon ship, how the hell's a
toaster going to help?"
"I hate to be the one to break this to you Captain, but the chances are that
only a handful would be able to make it to the escape pods" Cass retorted
levelly "And even they wouldn't make it far enough away to be able to survive
the blast. You're going to have to trust me..."
Cass winced at this: What after all, had she done to deserve the Captains trust,
and more to the point, how come she was suddenly spouting clichés?
It must be the lack of sleep
"Ok" Jay sighed "Let's get going. There's a service ladder over there, we can
use it to climb down into the core"
It didn't take them long to climb down to the bottom of the core where Cass
quickly crouched, slotting the toasters plug into a wall socket and looked up at
her compatriots
"Ready?" she asked, finger on the switch
Jay just nodded, while Efof gave her four thumbs up
*click*
"There" Cass settled back on her haunches to wait while the toaster warmed up
"Is that it?" Jay asked incredulously "I thought it would be a little more, you
know... involved"
An overhead screen flickered to life showing Holly's floating, disembodied head
"I engineered this to be idiot proof" Cass murmured "This is the Blue Dwarf,
after all"
"Alright, what's happening dudes?" Holly asked "Oh right. Drive cores. Hang on a
tick..."
The face disappeared for a few seconds before reappearing again
"There you go. Sorted"
"As easy as you like" Cass smiled
"...And who's been playing silly buggers with quarks in Parrotts?" Holly
continued "You're lucky the crew in there didn't get over miniaturised and fall
through the gap between realities - it's not a nice way to go; Just think how
the thousands of cockroaches felt. Let's just sort that out too..."
A wall of purple light briefly wafted, ghostlike throughout the ship restoring
the shrunken members of the crew back to their original size
"There you go, all back to normal now. Right, I'm off integrating subsystems for
a bit, so if anybody needs me, just leave a message"
Holly flickered off again, leaving a blank screen
"My work here is done" Cass announced with a smile, turning to make her way
towards the ladder before stopping and turning back to the Captain
"You'd better go first Jay; if Amber gets wind of the idea that you were ogling
my arse while I was climbing up in front of you..." she let the idea of the
threat hang "C'mon, let's go and get drunk"
<OOC - there you go - all back to normal; Everyone's back to their normal size,
and Holly is now a dramatically lit chrome toaster sat in the middle of the
massive empty core>