Millicent's Diary

[madaxe]

Right, I’m going to have to start making some notes, because otherwise this isn’t going to make any sense and I bet Professor Taylor will want to know more about what happened in some detail.

The day is, well I’m not sure what the day is really. The year would appear to be 2969, according to the paper. That strange Jess girl sold some Mars Bars to the squid-headed alien, which got us enough currency to buy the local paper. The local English language paper obviously, none of us can read S-H.

Erm, I guess I’m starting in the middle here. Just in case it isn’t the Professor reading this, I suppose I should try to organise things a bit better. My name is Millicent Carver, M. Sc. (Cantab) and I work as a researcher for UNIT at a base that I probably shouldn’t write any more about in case I get shot. Or imprisoned or shouted at or something. I’ve been assigned to a group that has the job of investigating a mysterious piece of alien transmat technology.
This is our first mission actually. The others seem kind of odd; Jess is what you’d call a scrounger I guess, like in the Great Escape. She always seems to want to sell us things, and she seems pretty sharp. Wasn’t here two minutes before she was bamboozling money off the alien soup vendor. The other two, Captain Spencer and Sergeant Wade, are the heavies, typical army types. They’re both in their forties, hard-looking and fit still though. Wade seems kind of withdrawn and grumpy, possibly because he’s forty-odd and still a sergeant.

Anyway, this transmat device seems to open a time-space corridor, but the Professor didn’t know where to. So here we are. The reason I’m writing all this down by hand by the way is because the machine scrambles any electronics that go through. I asked, and that includes unpowered stuff as well. Which, as you can imagine, is a real pain in the arse.

“Here” is apparently the colony of Zii-Jen, which is celebrating the end of human control at midnight tonight by killing any of us monkeys found wandering about afterwards. The guy taking over is President-for-Life Jussoon of Squallafex, who runs the rest of the planet.
The whole place has a sort of Hong Kong feel about it, all the signs are posted in both English and S-H. I really should stop calling them that, apparently they’re called Squallafex. That might be the name of their planet as well. We (that is the human race) have some sort of flying base overhead.

Anyway, Jess got us some cash and I started thinking about how I could locate the way back, If I can cobble together some parts I should be able to locate local temporal anomalies by tracking back tachyon dissonance waves. A place like this should have what I need. I told the others, and we went searching for electronic goods stores. Normally I wouldn’t expect to find a metaphasic argon condenser by going through the rubbish but I figure what-the-hell, it’s 2969.

We didn’t find one, so Jess decided to take the direct approach and talk to the shopkeeper. I think she was trying to get me a job, but I was as baffled as the poor shopkeeper. He was very helpful though, and in the end he agreed to give us the parts we need if we’d repair his flying car. It seems that he flew into a restricted area by mistake and was hit by a missile. A missile?

So we spend most of the day (local day, seems to have been about three days as I reckon them) fixing up his car, and in return he gave us a lift to the Skybase.

Where we nearly got arrested for not having any ID. By these huge rhino guys. With disintegrator guns (I asked but they wouldn’t let me examine one). One of these guys – Judoon apparently – went off and got a human officer which we were all greatly relieved by since the Judoon don’t seem very bright. The officer, Sergeant Thorn Omega, was very helpful even after our rather confused explanation of passport theft turned into a tale of time travel.

Time travel is apparently horribly illegal here, something to do with another bunch of aliens called Daleks (Sergeant Wade went white at that point, he seems to know something about these guys.)
But we can’t just be disintegrated in case that causes paradox, so Sergeant Omega gave us some temporary papers and went off to talk with the Governor.

Things got pretty confused after that. Someone blew up a bus outside (Iwas quite relieved to learn that the explosion wasn’t anything to do with our repairs), then we were left a disintegrator gun and a secret note when we went to the theatre. The note claimed that Xyz- wanted us dead and exhorted us to strike first. When we left, we saw some Judoon questioning people. One of them had an empty holster, so I sauntered off. The others went to hand it back, learning as they did so that I was wanted for theft.

Fortunately, we got to see the governor before I could be arrested. He was busy talking to Xyz- when we arrived. Xyz- is apparently for Minister for Re-Integration, which sounds really sinister. The Governor told us that it was his guys who shut down the time corridor, in case these Daleks were coming through it. Theoretically we just need to wait for the UNIT lads to open it again.

We decided to while away the hours, while the Governor was thinking things over, in the Observation Deck. Which then tried to kill us. The doors locked shut and a cleaning robot tried to eviscerate us. Captain Spencer managed to immobilise it and we used its circular saw to cut open the door.
I examined the murder-bot’s memory, and was able to determine that the kill order was transmitted to it from an external source, somewhere on the planet. We explained all this to the nice Sergeant Omega when he was called in. He decided it was probably safer on the planet and volunteered to give us a lift back.

[knasser]

Woo! Excellent, really excellent stuff. Hope you don't mind people adding in comments like this. I've just spent about ten minutes trying to work out how to spoiler comments on this board so it doesn't detract from the diary, but it doesn't seem to be possible. Hope to see more of this, it's excellent.

[vortexman]

Wonderful stuff.Bookmarked and karma.

[madaxe]

We’re back on the ground now, and Sergeant Omega is fishing some weapons out of the back of his car for the boys. I’ve managed to cobble together a Time Anomaly Detector out of parts I borrowed from the murder-bot (no-one will miss them I’m sure), and am picking up a signal from somewhere close by. Sergeant Omega has managed to track the kill signal as well, and it seems to be coming from the same place. He’s quite worried, because whoever is doing this seems able to override Skybase security with ease. I guess that’s why he’s lending us the firepower.

Well that was scary. And painful. We got to the source of the signal, which was some sort of shop. When we opened the door, a few Squallafex started shooting at us with disintegrator guns. Naturally the boys were in their element, but I panicked, a bit, and ran off. Jess and I then decided to find out if there was a more circumspect route in – one that involved less disintegrating – and headed round to the back.

As we tried to get in through the back door, we heard someone shout - not sure who, there was quite a racket in there - that the Squallafex were being “controlled”, and not to shoot them. Shooting didn’t appear to stop however.

Inside we found the open end of a space-time tunnel, leading into the past. Not really wanting to see what popped out, I used the Time Anomaly Detector to set up a tachyon interference field which promptly collapsed the tunnel. As far as I can tell, that caused the last of the Squallafex to fall unconscious, and the fight ended. We found that our attackers had little metal disks attached to the base of their necks, several of which had been shot out by Spencer and Wade. Lucky that they were pretty robust, or I think those guys would have been in no condition to appreciate their liberation from mental bondage. They all seemed pretty confused though. Fortunately the last one dropped when I closed the tunnel, so his controller was still intact. I had a look at it, but the technology looked incredibly advanced and I could make nothing of it.

I was still fiddling about with it when there was a tremendous boom. I think the shelves took most of the blast, but it left my vision cloudy and my ears ringing. And my nose bleeding. I should probably mention that the explosion wasn’t my fault, but caused by Sergeant Wade opening a trapdoor nearby. I guess it was trapped.

Underneath the smouldering trapdoor was a ladder going down. Wade headed on down, but came back up after reporting that the floor of the room below was electrified. So I went down to take a look.

While I was down there, something odd happened. It was quite gloomy, but some lights activated shortly after I got down. Two of the lights turned out to be attached to some sort of metal dome with a strange contraption sticking out of the front holding the third. This dome was on top of a metal structure covered with little hemispheres . When I pointed this out to the others, Wade started to panic and shouted for me to get out. I started to head up the ladder, spurred on by Wade’s cries of “DALEK!”

The thing started to move towards us, shouting in a mechanical staccato way. We scrambled out of the basement in a rather undignified heap, and slammed the door shut. No we didn’t, because Wade had already blown that up. So we tried to pull the shelves down over the hole, unfortunately I only succeeded in pulling shelves down on myself. Plan B was to run the hell away from the insanely screeching tin can.

Captain Spencer brought round the car, and we all dived into it. I was a little tardy due to my sprained ankle (falling shelves) so ended up hanging half out of the window as we zoomed off. The Dalek had obviously got upstairs by this stage because it started taking potshots at us from the building. We quickly lost it in the back streets, and Sergeant Omega called in the heavy mob.

Cautiously we returned to the shop, where lots of Judoon were wandering around, looking confused,
with big guns. There was no sign of the Dalek. About this point, the Time Anomaly Detector started registering again. As we headed in the direction of the new signal, we were overtaken by four Judoon carrying a particularly big gun – I mean it was taking all four of them to lift it – clearly heading in the same direction. We weren’t massively surprised to find ourselves going back to the alley we first arrived in.

Obviously the Dalek was there before us. Fortunately, so were the Judoon with their cannon, and they blasted the thing to bits. So I suppose these Daleks were behind the assassination attempt, and the frame-up and everything. And they can travel in time, and take high technology equipment through with them (must be shielded in some way). I hope they’re not the kind of people (?) who bear grudges.

We didn’t have time to stay and find out more for fear of the time-space corridor ceasing, so we made our goodbyes and headed on through. I’ve taken a bit of the shattered casing, which is apparently made from some sort of alloy called “Dalekanium” that is incredibly strong. I figure we can analyse this when we get back.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I’m writing this epilogue from the comfort of my hospital bed, wondering why the smart alecks who told me about Dalekanium neglected to mention that it is explosive. Well, the cast should be off in another week and the doctor assures me that there’s no permanent damage.

[The Historian]

Chello!

Sounds like you had a nasty little tiff on your first trip to the future!

[madaxe]

As you can imagine, we’ve been popped back through the time tunnel, which appears to have a nasty habit of picking our destinations without actually consulting anyone. I’m currently sitting in a church writing these notes, taking advantage of the brief lull. This time we seem to be in the Old West of America but I’m not sure exactly what year it is because I’ve been slightly distracted by the dinosaurs. Yes, dinosaurs. Now I’m aware that I’ve let my palaeontology studies slip over the last few years, but I’m pretty sure that’s not right.

On arrival we were greeted by a helpful cowboy/ bandit riding a velociraptor who explained to us that the nearest town was Silver City, but it had been taken over by bandits who had forced a lot of the townspeople to leave. So naturally we headed in that direction. Silver City is, was, a walled settlement with watchful guards manning big weird guns. Inside we learnt a lot of strange stuff; the local silver stamping plant is nuclear-powered, some people carry laser weapons (the big weird guns for instance), everyone seems to ride velociraptors, and a local shopkeeper has a nuclear powered fridge. Otherwise, it seemed pretty normal for a western town. We headed to the saloon for gossip.

It seemed our bandit friend was pretty much right. The barman directed us to the local preacher and with his help we were able to piece together some of the local history. The new mayor, Boss Drimes, and his sheriff Scar used to be bandit leaders who hung out in local caves. They took over about eight days ago, after a bounty hunter named James Carlisle arrived (from Iceland!?) looking for Scar. The old mayor was shot dead and the old sheriff had to go into hiding. I’m pretty certain Carlisle is dead too, but things seem pretty confused. The preacher loaned us some money and clothes, although only Sergeant Wade and I took advantage of the clothes. Needing money, we headed back to the saloon to try our luck.

Jess naturally tried to get into a poker game in order to fleece the locals in true Maverick style, but didn’t really seem to get anywhere on account of being a woman. She then moved on to assisting Wade in fleecing the locals, which seemed to work better. I noticed a piano in the corner, and asked if I could play a few tunes (I must remember to apologise to Mum later for whinging when she made me take those lessons) and that seemed to go down well. Between us, we made more than enough money to afford one of those laser pistols.

Captain Spencer spent the early evening reconnoitring the town. When he returned, he had grim news. He’d overheard people in the Town Hall discussing “killing the time travellers”, probably the mayor and sheriff. Wade had also overheard something, but from his account it only seemed to be the Captain and Jess at risk, because they were still wearing their fancy future gear. So they sloped off to parts unknown, and Wade explained all this to me when I finished my set. His idea seemed to be to sneak in to the Town Hall later on and steal things.

Which turned out to be a really really bad idea, and the reason why I’m sat here writing with fingers that feel like rubber sausages. We snuck in easily enough, and searched the place while avoiding the guard. We were going to take a peek in the guardroom while he was out, but that turned out to be full of guys, so we didn’t. Wade also reckoned that there was a sniper up in the clock tower, but I never saw one.

Anyway, we got upstairs and one of the rooms was locked. Wade had a go, but couldn’t get it open. We went into the bathroom, so he could take a better look at the lockpicks (poor craftsman blaming his tools?) where we found a rather mad journal (more on that later). So then I asked him if I could borrow his tools, and had a bash myself.

Which sort of worked. I got the door open, but it was booby-trapped and I got hit with some sort of poison dart. Hence the fingers. I’m feeling all woozy and light-headed, but at least we got the door open. There’s a big safe in there, electronic combination lock affair but that’s surprising nobody by this stage, and a desk. I furtle through the desk, Wade tries to crack the safe.

I found a load of technical manuals - “So you’ve bought a new Fusion Reactor” kind of things - dated to the 51st century. Wade didn’t have any luck with the safe though. So I suggested entering the most recent date from the manuals, guessing that was the year he probably left his own time. Yeah it was a dumb idea, but people do dumb things. And he had. The door opened and we were able to grab some sort of electronic device from inside, also there was a large stash of silver coins, some of which we pocketed.

By this time, I guess our clatterings had attracted attention. We had to get out before the guards came in, so we exited via the window. Not a good idea when you’ve been drugged. Obviously I fell, fortunately there was a large wagon under the window containing hay bales. I staggered off that and Wade and I ran off into the darkness, away from the rather angry men with guns who were now coming out of the building. One of them nearly hit us with a blast from his laser gun, which fried my retinas at least. I had to be led, half –blind, from then on by Wade until we managed to lose them in the back streets and make our way to the church.

Here we had a chance to have a brew and look through our acquisitions. Luckily – again – the flare damage was temporary and my vision soon cleared. The gizmo from the safe turned out to be a control unit for the nanomachines that had been injected into my system by the dart. Theoretically, I could be controlled from this unit, so I’m very glad I got it. First priority was to order them flushed from my system. I hate to think what would happen if I passed through the time-space tunnel while still infected.

The rest is rather confused, and only became obvious when the others returned. They did return, in the morning, and we were able to compare notes and figure out a lot more of what was going on.

From what Captain Spencer and Jess told us, they met up with the old sheriff outside of town, and he directed them to the grave of James Carlisle. They dug up his body and activated some sort of time thing that allowed him to speak to them from a sort of alternate future/now place. He knew he was dead, he also knew he shouldn’t be which is why he was able to speak with them. If at any point he should be dead, then he would be. I said it was confusing.

The mayor is using a time travel device to alter the world’s history in a sort of staggered mad way (this is borne out by his wacky journal), not in any kind of planned way. For instance, I think he just really likes velociraptors. He’s been doing this for eight days now. Carlisle is a secret agent from the 51st century whose job it is to stop things like this happening. I assume he chased the mayor here from the 51st century, but I never spoke to him.

He has a plan and it’s very weird. He apparently injected the old sheriff with some nanomachines that are carrying something called a Paradox Virus. This will destroy the time machine and undo all the changes it did, if brought within a short distance of it. This is why the old sheriff is remembering things the way they were before. This also means we mean to keep him alive.

I think we’re about to go into battle again. The time device is some sort of big armband affair with lots of buttons, and it’s probably on the mayor. So, we’re going to have to get it off him, somehow. I bet I get shot at.

[dave]

Sergeant Wade's Story

UNIT Interrogation Transcript 234/12/A5 : (Code name 'Last Man Standing')
Interrogator Captain Lucian Briars

BRIARS: Interrogation begins at 13.40 hours.
I'd like to hear it again
WADE: Again ! How many times do you people want me to repeat the same story.
BRIARS: At least one more time. From the start if you please.
WADE: Very well. My name is Matthew Wade and I was born in the year 2122 in the Midlands wastes.
BRIARS: You are sure of the date ?
WADE: Frankly no. Following the war record keeping was not the highest priority. Its roughly accurate though.
BRIARS: The war ?
WADE: The wars would be more accurate. Decades of wars, each one spiralling off from the last and with less and less of the world and the human race left at the end of each.
When the Daleks came there was nothing left to resist them. They conquered the planet practically overnight.
My parents were inducted into the camps to serve as slave labour for the Daleks. I was born in the camps. Starvation, back-breaking labour and the constant abuse of the Quisling guards were my entire life. One of them in particular, Stark, seemed to take a particular delight in singling me out for punishment.
I still remember the day it changed. Stark was about to take his whip to me again when the figures in the ragged cammo's appeared. I've never seen anything as sweet as the look on Stark's face when he swung round to use his whip on them and saw they had Disintegrators. Unless it was the look on his face as they used them on him.
They were on a raid for supplies but I was young and eager so they took me with them and I joined the Resistance. I didn't think we had a chance, I just wanted to hurt the Daleks before they got me. It was a complete suprise to discover we actually might have a chance to beat them.
The Resistance had discovered the trigger event that had started the wars. A conference of world powers held by a diplomat called Styles who had, for some reason lost to the records, bombed the conference. With stolen Dalek time travel technology we would go back to before the conference and assassinate Styles. Prevent the war ever happening. Leave the planet united and ready to defend against any Dalek incursion.
We knew the consequences would be that we would all die, would never have existed. But we accepted that fate with open eyes if it gave the Human race a chance of survival.
I turned out to have a talent with the time travel technology and was assigned as an assistant to the group using the stolen technology. When it was ready I was part of the first group sent through to test it.
It was a strange experience, like being stripped of all sensory input then having a hundred years worth rammed into your brain in a micro-second. We were all reeling when the world re-appeared around us. So in no shape to respond when that all too familiar "Exterminate !" rang out. The Daleks were there ahead of us.
The Dalek blast missed me by a fraction but it hit the wall right by my side. The blast burned my arm and side and drove splinters of brick into my skull. I passed in and out of consciousness for 14 hours before I was found by a UNIT patrol and when I came fully to three days later in a hospital bed it was all over.
BRIARS: Over ? How ?
WADE: Well there's the terrible irony. The bomb that destroyed the conference wasn't Styles, it was us. The bomb was our attempt to assassinate Styles. By going back we created the event we went back to prevent.
No one will tell me exactly what happened. Just hints and references to some 'scientific advisor' who no-one seems to want to talk about. But from what I can gather this time when the bomb went off only Daleks were destroyed.
The conference was a success. There was no war, my future ceased to exist.
BRIARS: Apart from you ?
WADE: Apart from me.
BRIARS: So why you ?
WADE: Honestly I have no idea. I'm a technician not a scientist. Even the men who put the time machine together were guessing as to how it really worked. I suspect that when the conference wasn't bombed, change flowed ahead from that point altering history as it went. From my position in the 20th Century I was behind the wave and so was left unchanged but that's only a guess.
BRIARS: So what do you want to do now ?
WADE: That's new. No-one has asked me that in all these days of interrogation.
But its an easy question to answer : I want to join UNIT
BRIARS: Are you sure ?
WADE: Absolutely ! This is the better world me and my comrades fought for. This is what we sacrificed everything for and I'm damned if I will let anybody or anything destroy it. We fought too long and hard to lose now.

EVALUATION: Considering Wade has lost literally everything he ever knew he has adjusted remarkably well ( his occasional bouts of depression notwithstanding). He is obviously burying his feelings beneath a fierce determination to ensure that the world he fought for continues. Given this drive, his experience in fighting Ogryn's and Daleks and his hands on experience with Time Travel technology ( and given we can't have him wandering around with the sensitive information he posseses) I recommend he be inducted into UNIT immediately.

Captain Lucian Briars

( Background refers to the Jon Pertwee story 'Day of the Daleks')

[madaxe]

Well, I was sort of right. While we were discussing our next move, Boss Drimes was initiating his. We’d popped out to do some shopping, more guns and things, when we noticed a lot of work was going on at the Mayor’s house, emitting a green glow that Wade identified as similar to that produced by ion engines. Then the Mayor himself came out of the top of his house riding some sort of floating motorcycle, and proceeded to threaten the local shopkeeper with a big cannon he had strapped to the underside. It seems he managed to track down his stolen currency. Obviously it was only a matter of time, and not much time at that, before it was traced to us, and so we split.

I headed out of town, intent on linking up with the former townsfolk, while the others I think went to ground in the town itself. Probably better than my idea, as during a brief stop I made to alter the nanomachine control unit it all went very dark and I woke up to find myself strapped to the saddle of a velociraptor. Ridden by Scar.

So I’m being bounced around as we head on back to town, and I’m trying to complain through my gag, and he’s about to shoot me with some sort of dart rifle, when Jess rides up. Obviously he didn’t know that we know each other, and she started to talk to him with her usual rapid-fire nonsense. I guess he didn’t want to shoot her for just talking, so he agreed to escort her back to town. Then she started trying to chat him up, which threw me. He obviously wasn’t interested but she’s pretty persistent and eventually he seemed to warm to her. They stopped, and chatted some more, and she asked to look at his rifle, and he agreed. And unsurprisingly to anyone who wasn’t Scar, she shot him.

She untied me then, and we tied him up and stuck him up in the branches of a tree. I discovered that he was using a dart rifle, as well as regular nineteenth century handguns, because he was wearing some sort of defensive field generator to block lasers which would work in both directions.

We headed on back to town to see what was going on. Things were a lot calmer, and after some wandering about we bumped into Captain Spender, sort of. He was lurking in some basement and explained to us, through the floor, what had happened. The Mayor had tracked down Sergeant Wade and threatened to shoot him, at which point Wade had jumped out of an upper story window onto his hoverbike and both had zoomed off. Later the Mayor came back sans bike and Wade. At that point we had no idea what had happened to him, but were hoping that restoring the timeline would help him out. We came up with a rather desperate plan.

Jess and I would set up a diversion on the far side of town, probably blowing something up, to allow the Captain to sneak into the Mayor’s house and steal the armband. We arranged to start this at 3 in the morning, and then went our separate ways.

We left town again, heading on out to the ex-villagers camp to borrow some dynamite. Using the nanomachine control unit we were able to home in on the ex-sheriff, or rather the Paradox Virus, very easily. When we got there, they gave us some high-tech charges to use rather than the dynamite I was expecting. Also Wade returned, having mastered the controls of the hover bike. Apparently the Mayor has set the engines to overload but being pretty unimaginative, the override code was the same as the safe combination..

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. All three of us went to the town, we set our charges and when they went off we let off a lot of gunfire into the air. However, the Mayor himself came after us, in a huge armoured battlesuit with two big rotating machine guns on the arms. He gloated a lot about how he’d spent two weeks on a beach waiting for it to be built in the twenty seconds after our explosives went off. Smug git.

We rode off very quickly, with the Mayor lumbering some distance behind us. We then came up with plan B – lure the Mayor back to the camp and within range of the Paradox Virus. To do this we had to split up, and the party the Mayor wasn’t chasing would have to race back and let the ex-sheriff know what was up. The Mayor chased after the Sergeant. I guess he was still mad at having his flying bike thing stolen.

Jess and I managed to convince the ex-sheriff to go along with our plan, although I guess he had little option looking back on it because we couldn’t have called off Wade if we’d wanted to. So eventually Wade showed up with Boss Drimes in tow. The big Iron Man suit thing strode into the valley and the ex-sheriff leapt out in front of it and shot it. NOT part of the plan.

We were quite surprised when Boss Drimes fell to the ground, bleeding from several bullet holes. No big battlesuit. No dinosaurs, when we started looking around. Even the photo I’d had taken of myself riding a velociraptor now showed me on a horse. Out of the townsfolk, only the ex-sheriff could remember the way things had been.

At this point Mr James Carlisle showed up, very much not dead. He didn’t know about the alternate time loop in which he’d died, but he was grateful that we’d sorted everything out. He also hinted we should keep quiet about the whole thing or we might have to be kept quiet, for the sake of the time line. We didn’t argue, sidling off back to town.

The bandits seem to have demoralised by the death of their leader, and disappearance of Scar (who we did retrieve from the tree and take to the camp, I forgot about that), so were packing their bags by the time we got there. The good Captain was lurking in the Mayor’s wardrobe, patiently waiting for him to return. We explained the good news, and headed back out to look for the time tunnel.
Which happily enough was there. We scooted through it, back to the friendly lab and Professor Taylor. He seemed happy enough with our reports, although I can’t help wondering if we’ve done something wrong because we’re being taken off this project and moved to another one.

[madoldcatlady]

My report: We went through a swirly time-tunnel and got shot at and then framed. We came back. We then went through another swirly time-tunnel and got framed and then shot at. We then came back.
Jess.

[madoldcatlady]

I have been informed that my report was too short. I think it only fair to point out that I kept my reports as concise as possible not for my benefit but for the benefit of the Unit. I am fully aware that time is money and therefore, as we now live in austerity Britain, it is very important that the management are able to make complete use of their time and not be waylaid by lengthy reports. However, as I always follow the wishes of the management, I will now expand my original report.

My report: I met up with these two military guys and a science geek and was sent down the swirly time-tunnel by this guy called Tinker. We were zapped thousands of years into the future and to a different planet full of squid people who wanted to kick humans off their planet. I provided excellent assistance to the military/science guys by cunning use of mini mars bars, obtaining funds via the local casino and negotiating with the locals so that science chick (she’s called Milly btw) could fix stuff to get us a lift. The Rhino police were a bit of a problem, but the governor was a nice bloke. We had a problem with a cleaning robot who tried to kill us. Eventually Milly got this gadget working and we managed to sniff out our time-tunnel home, but when we got there the squid-guy were being mind controlled and shot at us.

Inside we found the open end of a space-time tunnel, leading into the past. Not really wanting to see what popped out, I used the Time Anomaly Detector to set up a tachyon interference field which promptly collapsed the tunnel. As far as I can tell, that caused the last of the Squallafex to fall unconscious, and the fight ended. We found that our attackers had little metal disks attached to the base of their necks, several of which had been shot out by Spencer and Wade. Lucky that they were pretty robust, or I think those guys would have been in no condition to appreciate their liberation from mental bondage. They all seemed pretty confused though. Fortunately the last one dropped when I closed the tunnel, so his controller was still intact. I had a look at it, but the technology looked incredibly advanced and I could make nothing of it.

Everything was eventually sorted out and so we went back through the swirly time-tunnel and avoided the mice.

Grezelda Milan Jessica Angelcake

[madoldcatlady]

I would like to categorically deny the allegations that I looked at Milly’s report on the mission to squid-land. This is a scandalous lie. If our reports were in anyway similar it is just because we are so like minded with the same keen intellect and interest in all things scientific. I may not have a PHD in Astrophysics, or whatever she has, but I am equal in her scientific know-how with a vast knowledge of all things technical, I can

[madoldcatlady]

Sorry about that, I pressed send by accident. Anyway, on our second mission we went back in time to the wild west (with dinosaurs). I’m a bit tired now, so I send the rest of my report in later.
Jess.

[madoldcatlady]

Okay, here’s my update as promised.

My report: We went through a time-portal to the Wild West....with differences. We met a bandit on a velociraptor, you know, the quick things from Jurassic Park, “clever girl” and all that. Anyway, instead of robbing us he gave us directions. Turned out that the respectable townsfolk of a local town (Diamond Town? Silver Town? Gemsville? Something like that – ask Milly, I’m not too sure) had changed places with the bandits in the local bandit camp. All six-shooters were now lasers, all horses now dinosaurs, all stores now had nuclear powered fridges. However, gingham was still in. Unbelievable. I mean, a guy from stupid-into-the-future comes back to the old WW and brings weapons, dinosaurs and electronic flying cows YET he does not think to educate his fellow miscreants in the benefits of women’s emancipation! Did you know that you CANNOT get a game of cards in the old WW if you happen to be female? What a rubbish time period! I was happier in squid-land, at least they had casinos.

Anyway, due to my refusal to wear gingham I apparently looked a bit suspicious and the guy who done this stuff, a rogue time-traveller, figured we’d be a problem. So they sent out ‘the boys’ to kill us, i.e. me and Franky (one of the military types, he also refused to change clothes, however gingham was not his only option). Anyhow, to cut a long story short, we met this guy who’d been shot by the time-traveller, as the guy was also a time-traveller he was simultaneously dead and not dead at the same time, but he wasn’t ‘undead’ – I hope that makes sense. Best not dwell on it too long. So this dead/not dead guy said he was a time-cop and he’d planted a wibbly time-virus on the real sheriff. He said that if we got the dodgy time-traveller to meet the sheriff then the whole thing would be sorted out sensibly, and the time-cop SAS equivalent wouldn’t come down here and blast ANY time-travellers to hell, i.e. we’d be included for the ‘God will know his own’ list. Did you know about these time-cops? Because if you did you really should have mentioned them before, it might affect my stance on danger money.

Right, so, Wayne (other military guy) stole the electronic flying cow and provided a great distraction. However, the time-traveller guy who’s not nice simply zipped back in time and made an Aliens “get away from her you b***h” type thing and therefore chased us........right to the real sheriff! Fab. The virus-thing did its magic and everything went back to normal and then the dodgy guy got shot by the sheriff.

Job done. The A-team does it again.

Jess.

P.S. Milly got herself kidnapped so I rescued her. Wasn’t tricky, I persuaded the guy to give me his tranq-rifle then I shot him.

[monkeylite]

Feb 9, 2011 20:44:09 GMT madoldcatlady said:

I persuaded the guy to give me his tranq-rifle then I shot him.

lol

[jadrax]

UNIT CASE COMMENT: TOP SECRET

For those authorised, the location of mission Priory 3:Expedition Beta is belived to have been Silver City.

[dave]

Wayne (other military guy)

Its WADE goddammit !

[madoldcatlady]

[The Jess Report]

Before I begin I would like to thank the management for their thoughtful offer that I don’t have to hand in any more reports. I was really touched how you felt that my time was too valuable to waste. However, I’ve really got into the swing of things now and I don’t mind banging out these reports any more. Plus I feel that recent events in our latest assignment may be noted in a different way by my esteemed colleagues and I therefore felt that certain details should be brought to light so that the management benefited from a well rounded and complete report of information on said events.

My report: We were given a top diplomatic assignment, we weren’t doing the whole diplo thing, we were just around as part of the dippy’s entourage. I’m not sure if we’re the body guard or not, but apparently we’re experts on the Rhino alien guys, we met them before on squid-world. We’re transporting a criminal who was hiding in Peckham, or was it Islington? Well, definitely London anyway. Everything was going great until it became apparent that their translator-thing wasn’t working properly, for some reason they couldn’t understand the words ‘blimey’, ‘geezer’ or ‘yer’, plus apparently my accent was not recognised. WTF? Bizzaro. Anyway, I was told it was a crime to make the translator malfunction so I had to put on a posh accent and annunciate – very annoying.

So we were given an alright place to sleep on some mountain base, but no proper TV. Typical. Then we got on this spaceship and went off into space for a bit. Things were going okay until there was this suspicious breeze. To cut a long story short someone had gassed ALL the rhino guys. They were ALL dead, but unfortunately not dead enough – one of them had become a zombie! Might I quickly add, before I get sectioned, that they weren’t actually the living dead nor the Rhino-guys playing a prank on us (they do NOT have a sense of humour). The corpse had been shot by mechanical mice with tiny techno-stuff that took control of its muscles and made it move. Actually, if this isn’t confirmed by the rest of the team, maybe I do need to get sectioned. Of course the zombie didn’t embrace us warmly and give us tea, nope, it attacked us. Why is no-one ever pleased to see us?

Anyway Frankie killed the zombie-rhino. We were in the control room, there were a lot of dead rhino’s, but none of them moving. This is where the misunderstanding came about. I heard Milly say very clearly that we needed to sabotage the communications so that the bad guys, whoever they were, couldn’t talk to each other or see what we were up to. Therefore I carefully followed what Milly was up to and successfully altered the communication! Fantastic! Unfortunately Milly then changed her mind, you know how these dizzy scientists are, and I had done such a successful job that the communications couldn’t be repaired. I was informed that further assistance with the control panel was not needed and therefore offered my words of wisdom regarding the dead rhino’s, i.e. we should disintegrate them before they became zombies. There was a heated debate about this, my powerful argument being that they were dead so they wouldn’t care and they were safer as a pile of dust. Someone mentioned something about intergalactic relations and us possibly being blamed for their deaths. I solved the problem by saying that I wouldn’t destroy all of them and happily began the disintegration progress. Unfortunately they had some kind of armour, so the ray bounced off. So I tried to take it off, well, there was all these wires, so I obviously I pulled out a few. There must have been some kind of technical fault because that was when it blew up. Most of us got out OK, but the diplomat needed resuscitating and putting in the medical pod. As you can see, totally not my fault.

I will send this and the rest of my report when we get out of this mess.

Jess.

[madaxe]

So this new entry is for the benefit of, I don’t know, some UNIT high-up. Hi,whoever you are. We were flown by helicopter to a UNIT base in Mount Snowdon which felt like a bit like going into Blofeld’s volcano hideout. Here we were shown around by a little blue alien fellow who looked a bit like a Smurf dinosaur. Apparently there are only three of these guys, who are called Groske, here and they regard the mountain as theirs. We were told that at least three alien ships have crash-landed here in the past, but the Groske were the only ones we saw.

While we were waiting, we were joined by two other people that we didn’t know. One was a Dr Julian Askill, who is a civil servant. He was quite close-mouthed about what his role here was, and about what was going on, but it turned out that he is some sort of ambassador. The other was a UNIT captain called Hugo Fairweather, and his job here is prisoner escort. We also got to meet the Brigadier himself, he didn’t come with us, but it was awesome to meet the legend. He seemed like a nice, genial kind of bloke.

Eventually, after some conversation with them and the later briefing, we learnt what the situation was. A criminal from the planet Sto, some sort of mass-murdering loony, has been living in Peckham, and has finally been tracked down. A bunch of Judoon have come here on behalf of the Shadow lads to extradite him back to Sto, and we’ve been recruited as UNIT’s resident experts on the Judoon. Urk. Dr Askill is going to act as ambassador, presumably to either Sto or the Shadow lot. I can’t remember.

Once on board the Judoon ship we were shown to our horrid little cabins, which totally lacked leisure facilities but did have intrusive spy cameras. Kind of like Sheffield on a Saturday night. The Judoon are using some sort of electronic translator which allows them to speak our language (lip movements and breathing mesh with the words used) but they wouldn’t let me borrow one despite my best efforts. Before we had much of a chance to settle in, we were called for lunch at the similarly horrid cafeteria where we were treated to the exotically named “dead animal” with “dead vegetable” side. We were the only ones in, even the charming chef vanished while we were eating.

We discovered the reason for this after a little while. Someone, I can’t remember who probably one of the hyper-alert military types, noticed something odd with the ventilation units so we started poking around. The chef was dead in the kitchen, with no visible signs of injury. Further travels revealed no sign of anyone else until we reached the bridge. Here there were a load of dead Judoon in their funky space armour, slumped all over the place. Our best guess is that somebody introduced a species specific poisonous gas into the air supply.

I then checked over the bridge systems, to see if I could make head or tail of them. Fortunately the Judoon are quite well-organised and methodical, so the control systems were easy to figure out. It looks like some sort of virus has been introduced to the ship computers that is overwriting the operating system with a more primitive one. My only current guess is that whoever these mysterious attackers are, they’re actually less technologically advanced than the Judoon, and they want to able to interface with the on-board systems more easily. I was able to access the security camera network as well as the ship-wide PA system.

After that, things started to get weird. The captains (Spender and Fairweather) went off to check up on the prisoner, who seems to be held in some sort of stasis, leaving Wade on the bridge to keep an eye on me, Jess and Dr Askill. I was able to keep an eye on them using the security cameras, but it wasn’t perfect, as I missed out on what attacked them. All I got were shouts of alarm, and a couple of shots.

They obviously got it though, and were able to tell us that it was the cook from the canteen, back from the dead! In view of the fact that we had a bridge full of currently immobile corpses, we got them to hurry back. Meanwhile I was still trying to figure my way round the ship systems. Jess was rather gamely trying to help me, but I don’t think she knows much about computers. In fact, she managed to crash the security camera network I was accessing, however not before I managed to spot something small moving around on floor thirteen.

When the lads got back, we tried - after some discussion - disintegrating the dead Judoon. This had no effect, and after some experimentation we were able to establish that the Judoon issue guns only work on organic compounds. Jess then tried to strip the armour off one of the dead, and I guess her enthusiastic but undirected efforts must have triggered some sort of defence mechanism. Yes, once again there was a huge explosion near me. I managed to get out of the room before the warning beep reached its crescendo but poor Julian wasn’t so lucky. He’s still alive, but we had to cart him off, very carefully, to a medical area.

The boys then started carting the Judoon off to the cells, to stick them in the stasis field. Jess was attacked in the medical room by some sort of homicidal dart-firing robot mouse, possibly the same thing that I saw on floor thirteen. Wade wondered if the darts carried some sort of nanomachines capable of rewiring the nervous system of even a dead guy and operating it remotely. It’s an interesting theory.

We moved our base up to the next floor, very easy since all the floors seem to have the same layout except for engineering. Floor thirteen, surprise surprise, is cut off by some sort of emergency sealing system, and all the cameras are off. Which I discovered after managing to access Bridge 2’s as yet un-Jessed system.

Here we had a bit of a chat about what to do next. Captain Spencer wants to relase the prisoner and get him to help us, but as he’s apparently chock-full of cybernetic enhancements, and possibly the reason for the attack in the first place, we decided against it.

Engineering was interesting. We had access to the drive, which seem to be a set of gravity motors based on an oscillating graviton matrix, allowing FTL real-space movement. The others, led by Captain Fairweather wanted me to cut off the engines and bring us to a halt. I was able to isolate them from bridge control and stop the ship, also to install, again at Hugo’s request, an overload initiation protocol that should, when initiated destroy the ship. Seems very melodramatic, and looking back on it I probably shouldn’t have done it, but there were so many failsafes and backups on it I couldn’t resist the challenge. Whoops.

We then carted a load of gear back up to Bridge 2, and discussed how to make our way past the huge steel girders sealing off floor thirteen. There are gaps, and Jess managed to squeeze through to take a little look around. She had with her a little camera so we could keep an eye on what she was up to. She wanted to take her DustBuster up with her; I think she was planning on pretending it was a gun, but she was eventually persuaded to take the real gun. I felt much happier with her holding a Dust Buster rather than the disintegrator she ended up waving inexpertly around, but it couldn’t be helped.

There was another dead Judoon up there in the floor thirteen bridge. As Jess started poking around, it began to twitch and writhe, the armour breaking open to release some sort of metal jug-headed dog thing from the Judoon’s corpse. Disgusting. Jess had had some coaching from Captain Spencer however, and much to my surprise she managed to hit the thing, reducing the organic body to a gooey puddle.

Now, in my defence I have to say that I thought at this point that it was dead. So it was perfectly reasonable that I ask her to bring the metal jug-head back for analysis. And yes, it did try to kill her. Of course it had no idea that mere technology is no match for Jess, and she managed to get away from it, trapping it in a doorway before sliding back down the lift shaft to join us in our new, new base on floor twelve.

The big girders were still proving a problem. Using the transmat to get past it was ruled out for two reasons. One: there would no way of getting back down in a hurry, due to there being no transmat chamber anywhere but engineering. And two: I’m still not convinced that transmatting doesn’t just kill you and create a copy at the destination. The gear we have does include some cutting lasers but even those will take several hours to create a usable hole. In the end, we decided that was our only sensible option, and Sergeant Wade used the transmat to move the heavy duty cutting gear above the blockage. I seem to be the only one who can figure out how to work it, so I’m about to start work. Jess has volunteered to assist me. I politely declined.

NOTE: I’ve just glanced through Jess’s notes and she seems a little confused. No surprise really, it was bedlam in there, and I put it down to shock.

[madoldcatlady]

[The Jess Report]

Before I begin I would like to say that I have been doing something quite unprofessional. It has come to my attention that Wayne’s name is not in fact Wayne at all, in fact I have no idea what his first name is. Apparently I should be calling him ‘Mr Wood’, however he has started calling my Griz for a reason I can only believe to be malicious. My first name may be Grizelda but that does not mean I want to be called that! Anyway in retaliation I will continue to call him Wayne until he calls me Jess like the rest of the group. I hope that the management will understand my small act of rebellion.

My report:
Anyway, as I said there was a minor explosion which was not my fault. Thankfully the rhino guys (or Judders as I have reliably been told is their official name) have NO imagination and therefore built every floor of their spaceship identically. Thus we all went up to the next floor and Milly carried on her techno stuff on an identical control panel. It was then she told us the horrible truth about the Transporter – it bloody kills you! The ‘thing’ that appears on the other end is some kind of doppelganger. I am so never going through that thing. Anyway we wanted to get onto the 13th floor because it was hidden from the cameras and as a loyal employee of Unit we’re paid to be nosey. The first thought was to teleport Frankie, hence the whole doppelganger discussion, which even put the stoic Frankie a little off balance. So we decided to beam a camera up there instead. Anyway, the blinking thing beamed up okay, but was the wrong flipping way round! So, by now I was getting bored so when a volunteer was needed I bravely jumped at the chance. I was skinny enough to crawl through the gaps between some girders that led up to floor 13. I was going to bring my Dust Buster with me in case there were anymore mice, I figured that Milly would want to poke around in one of the little sods to find out how it worked, so I was going to suck it up. However everyone started banging on about wanting me to have a proper weapon so I was given a disintegrator – sweet!
Now we came to the devastating part. It weren’t too easy getting up through those gaps and there was some sharp bits. Several of the pockets on my trench coat got ripped (I’m just glad I left my hat behind) and the contents fell out! Everything really useful went straight down the shaft – string, bits of wire, chewing gum, stuff I had borrowed from the Unit gymnasium – all gone! I have attached a full list of important items lost in the course of duty and look forward to me swift reimbursement via the management.

Anyways, when got up to the control room on floor 13 it was pretty much more the same, there was a dead Judder slumped on the controls. Then the coolest thing I’ve ever seen happened – a chest burster shot out of him! OMG I almost used my pants as a temporary latrine! I have never been so terrified before but also thrilled at the same time. Well I remembered what Frankie told me about the gun (1. point and press, 2. don’t point it at Milly when you’re about to press) and sent a damn fine shot at the beast. Fizz-pow-zap! DEAD. Reduced to a pile of ash (the fleshy bit) with the electronic skeleton lying immobile in the middle. Awesome. So I was right chuffed and Milly asked me to bring it back for a deckers. So I picked the thing up and to my horror it started moving! I assume you’ve seen the Bodysnatchers? All those freaky tendrils searching for your nose and throat seeking to rob you of your life and replace you with something that looks like you, talks like you but is really a creature of darkness. So this thing sprang to life again trying to get its electronic strands into my head. It was busy wrapping itself around me when I rushed over to the sliding door and pressed close so it got trapped. I then released myself and throw myself behind the consol – just in time! It started shooting out these darts, no doubt the same things that the mice guys were using. I quickly unscrewed the back of the consol to make a shield to get back to the gaps safely and therefore back to the guys. Next thing I know Milly was getting all hysterical telling me not to fiddle with the controls! Turns out the camera was pointing elsewhere so the guys had NO IDEA what was happening. I pointed the camera towards the thing and they stopped getting their collective knickers in a knot.

I said nothing at the time because I didn’t want to worry them, but I think they didn’t fully appreciate that, because they couldn’t see what was happening, I could easily have been taken over by that thing and come back looking normal but would slit their throats in the night. Made me shudder that did.

Part 3 forthcoming.

Jess.

[madoldcatlady]

[The Jess Report]

My report:
What happened next? Oh yer, the rest of the group set about cutting through the girders until they could get up to the top and destroy the thing good and proper. We then went on a bit of an explore and found a bloody great big hole cut in the side of the ship, luckily there was a force field holding in the space or we would have been sucked out like in the Aliens movie. We reckon this was how the mice got in. So then Wood puts on this spacesuit (I wish I knew his first name – could you tell me? I don’t want to ask ‘cause that would mean admitting that I knew his name wasn’t Wayne) and goes to investigate. Blam! He got shot at by a cyberman head (apparently, I saw nothing personally) clamped onto the side of the ship in some kind of spaceship type thing. This then started a VERY long discussion about how to kill it. We talked about bombs, cutting underneath it, reprogramming mice to infiltrate it, transporting stuff on top of it (despite everything being weightless in space so there would be no sufficient force to hit it properly), so at last we came to water. Unfortunately water freezes in space. By now I was seeing stuff because everyone was talking such bollocks and were increasingly getting more elaborate. So I reckon the plan was to drop water on the thing and hope it froze after it covered the cyberman OR bombard it with ice. Best look at Milly’s report. Anyway there was a bit of a cock up, not my fault. They transported the entire ships supply into deep space. Suddenly our ship changed course and the ship started to started complaining loudly about depleted water supplies (hummm, I wonder why). At this point the cybermen started to try and infiltrate the life support system which was making us shift direction. Well now, I must say I was impressed with Mill’s at this point, it was just like watching Data off Star Trek, real fast – everytime the cyber guys tried to fiddle with the electrics she batted them back. It was like Tron tennis. So we had no idea where we were going, but we knew wherever the cyber guys wanted us had to be bad, so anything that they didn’t want was good, so we ran with it. Glad we did now – we ended up in an intergalactic petrol station. Everyone was dead nice, but I reckon it was run by Moto ‘cause we couldn’t afford anything they sold. Anyways, so they sorted out the diplomat and gave him some new skin and he looks 20 years younger (quite literally). I reckon his wife will be pleased. I suggest you make up some story about a fire at work and have him planted in hospital bandaged up like the invisible man for a couple of weeks. Then talk loudly about ‘revolutionary new burns techniques’ and have him come out looking good as new. Should work, if you can blag it right, I’ll do the talking if you want.

So then we got the prisoner officially given over to the guys we were doing this for in the first place. Big well done from the captain guy, as expected. Then we were zapped home by that infernal transporter. I don’t feel too bad being a clone, but I am considering having a wake for my former self, least I can do. Would I be able to advertise it on the UNIT notice board? As instructed I have stopped putting those notes up about the bargains that are currently available at knock down prices which include a special UNIT discount and certainly a bigger discount for those in a managerial position. By the way, did you get my memo about that chrome plated 4 slice toaster?

Jess.

[madoldcatlady]

UNIT STANDARD REQUISITION FORM XX9-4ZQ
REINBURSEMENT OF DAMAGED OR LOST PROPERTY IN THE LINE OF DUTY: PERSONALLY OWNED

NAME: Grezelda Milan Jessica Angelcake

MISSION NAME AND CODE: Rhino guys in space transporting a dodgy criminal back to his home planet. Don’t know the code.

START DATE OF MISSION: 2011
END DATE OF MISSION: 2011

SITUATION IN WHICH PROPERTY WAS LOST/DESTROYED: Struggling through a tight and sharp gap to fight an alien chest burster (see my report for details)

ITEMS CLAIMED FOR:
1 Ball of string
4 HB pencils, 1 4B pencil
1 Classic Nintendo (has vintage value)
7 UNIT canteen coasters
1 box of chalk and a green felt tip pen
4 meters of wire
1 Dust buster
1 Tennis ball
17 Assorted packets of chewing gum (minty fresh and spearmint)
3 Multi-packs of mini Mars bars
1 Multi-pack of mini Bounty bars
1 Sausage wrapped in tin foil
Useful metal toothpicks of assorted sizes for those hard to reach places in my mouth and used for nothing else of importance
1 Non-stick frying pan (also eggs, plain flour, water, milk, syrup, lemon juice, a small bowl and an electric mixer)
Alien-English dictionary and phrase book
3 Swiss army knives
1 Roll toilet paper
Chanel No.5 perfume
2 Rolls of gaffer tape
1 Box of plasters
2 Naughty seaside postcards
1 Handheld hadron collider

[madaxe]

Report continues.

That looks nice and official, and is nothing to do with the fact that I forgot to finish it. It's been a while since the events, so my recollections are a little hazy. Whoops.

After a rather tedious few hours operating heavy machinery - the sort of chore I went into astrophysics research to avoid - I managed to cut the girders apart and we were able to gain access to the floor above.

Up here, the others made a fascinating discovery. In the locker area a hole had been cut, or possibly torn, into the hull of the ship, fortunately hull integrity was being maintained by some sort of force field. Clearly this was how the intruders had gained access.

Another ship, looking weirdly like the lunar lander, was clamped to the side of the Judoon ship nearby, linked through to the Judoon computers via the camera system. I figured this last bit out after trying to get control of the computer system. Which failed, as I was stopped by a luckier hacker in the enemy spaceship.

We decided that we really needed to get rid of the alien ship. Down in engineering I was able to whip up a thermite bomb from the rather limited supplies and Wade used the transmat to drop it on the spaceship. Unfortunately he didn't quite get it on target, blowing a big chunk off it but not hitting the fellow inside. A fact which we only learnt when Wade went outside in a borrowed Judoon spacesuit and nearly got his head blown off by a beam weapon. I had to haul him inside double quick using the winch, and banged his head against the airlock frame. Ouch. He did confirm that the guy in the ship was some sort of cyberman.

Without sufficient parts for another bomb, we had to think of something else. We reconsidered Captain Spencer's earlier suggestion about talking to the criminal in view of what we found in the hold.

I'd managed to get the communication system to send what I think is a distress call. While doing so, I spotted another signal being broadcast, on the same pattern. We tracked down the source to a little robot disguised as a regular computer chip hidden in the hold. It had clearly travelled here from Earth, making us wonder if our dodgy passenger knew anything about this.

We woke him up from the stasis field and had a chat with him. He was creepy and strange, gleefully admitting to having eaten people to make a political statement. Apparently this statement was not "I'm a grade-A loony, shoot me now" but something more along the lines of "why do you people hate artificial augmentation so much?" I don't see the connection myself. The people of Sto have legends about evil cybermen from the distant past, and regard even hearing aids and glasses as wrong blasphemous enhancement. Which seems a little extreme, but cannibalism?
He didn't seem to know anything about our current predicament, so we shut him back down with much relief.

We spent a while trying to figure out a new plan. The others seem to have fallen in love with the transmat, which featured quite heavily in most of these plans. The final choice, much against my will, was to transmat a sizeable quantity of water onto the enemy ship where the subzero temperatures would cause it to freeze solid around the cyberman. As I feared however, not only did Wade manage to miss again, but the transmat treated the water in the ship as one solid object and we were left with a giant iceberg floating a few kilometres away. And no water.

This is when the computer attracted my attention again. It was issuing a warning about the sudden lack of water. And once again, my cyber adversary was online trying to lock me out.

This time I had the measure of him though, and managed to get access to, amongst other things, the health and safety section. It was trying to move us somewhere, but obviously the engines were still disconnected, so that wasn't happening. Since my adversary clearly wanted us not to go there, we took a risk and reconnected the engines.

The ship immediately set off, ultimately taking us to a massive space station. A filling station to be precise. Health and safety had determined that we were critically low on water and needed a top-up. What a bizarre way of sorting out our problem.

We let them know that we had evil robot aliens on board and could they call Rentokil. Once on the station things went pretty smoothly, we were able to hand our prisoner over to the local Sto representative (who seemed oddly scared of us) and managed to not get disintegrated by overly enthusiastic Judoon scanners. The Ambassador got some awesome medical help, which seems to have knocked twenty years off him. Going to be hard to explain that when we get back. And the Judoon agreed to transport us back to Earth after we filled in some pretty hefty forms.

What was going on? Our best guess is that the cyberman was trying to piggyback a ride to Sto so he could call in all his mates and take over the place.

[dave]

Given the fate of the UNIT team who went ahead of us on the last mission the subject of death has been on my mind recently. In an effort to distract myself from thinking about that too much I've been finding positive tasks to be about.
As part of this I've put together a list of my standard gear on these sort of missions in the hope that it may be of some use to the team that will have our job when our luck inevitably runs out.
Obviously the problem is what to take when the method of traveling means you can take no electronics or explosive material. I hope my ideas may help our replacements :

Glow tubes (10)
Medical Kit ( and somebody who can use it)
Knife (combat)
Water Flask
Winter clothes
Sleeping bag
Kagoul
Whiskey ( one bottle, for trade, honest)
Emergency Rations
Binoculars
Chalk
Knife (for trade)
Watch (clockwork)
Pepper Spray
Crossbow
Quiver
10 Quarrels
Empty pistol

If I have any advice to give it is NEVER shoot if you can talk and never trust time trave,l it won't solve your problems.

Good luck,
Sgt. Matthew Wade