Captain Eeelenore-Janes Saga - Component 1 - Valve 2 - The Sandsteamer Lives
Outside, as the steamer started moving and juddering into life, a large vacuum began sucking up dirt from the ground around it’s base. The structure lurched sluggishly forward and started spraying the vacuum collected dust and grit out of huge trumpet like funnels on it’s side creating a thick veil of sand and rushing air not to dissimilar from a sandstorm. The perfect defense and the perfect disguise.
R. slumped back in his chair checking all the gauges were correct, now and then fiddling with leavers and the dials. The room essentially was made of buttons and rusted aged girders; the ship was obviously hundreds of years old but never the less it was in working order. Back when the ship had been new it had used an autopilot to drive whilst the sand cloak was in action, as the thick sand veil obscures the windscreen. Unfortunately the autopilot had long ago stopped working and was probably somewhere amongst the heaps of computer paraphernalia cluttering up the majority of the cockpit floor. Therefore to drive the sandsteamer safely there needed to be a person above the sandscreen to see where they were going. And for that reason Eelenore and R. had devised a look-out system; Eelenore would climb to the very top of the sandsteamer above the cloud of sand and use her mahogany and gold plated telescope to watch where they were going, relaying everything to R using earpieces they had picked up at a junk yard.
Recently though they had rigged a periscope to the roof. It was an old video camera which linked into a monitor in the cockpit, the reception was awful, there was a couple of seconds delay and the display had dead pixels and static across 30% of the screen...but it worked its purpose. Despite this Eelenore still insisted on running up to the roof every time the steamer rolled forward. She once told R. it was because she needed to be there in case the periscope stopped working. Her actual words were; "It’s likely to fuck up because we built it outa crap crap and shit". But between you and me the smile that creeps across her face when she rides the steamer’s roof cries out of someone enjoying themselves, not someone who’s there for business.
R. picked up a dirty cloth that was hanging off a soft toy he had been given as a child. It was of 'Lenny', the side kick of a superhero from the show "Titan Wars". He used the rag to clean the visor which he wore - it gave him a heads up display of the ships important intelligence and at the moment everything was fine. He tossed the rag aside and glanced at the monitor feeding from the periscope. It showed the same vacant orange sea of dirt it had been relaying for over an hour now. He stared at it long enough that it started to blur and started to morph into his reflection. He'd been trying to keep himself presentable but his shirt was ripped and coupled with an ugly tie. He sighed in annoyance at his appearance he wanted a shower but they were low on water, and he had even taken to covering up his dirty brown hair with an old deer stalker he had found in their supplies, it didn't properly accommodate his visor and ear piece properly and for that reason it looked a little silly. Placing his hand to his left ear he said "Anything out there capin’?"
There was a short pause and a crackled "Nope...nuttin’" came back.
Now, you may not know this but travelling at 100 miles per hour through an arid wasteland for hours on end be quite boring and certainly for Eelenore and R. as it was very uneventful, yes at first it is exciting to feel the rush of the air and the machine beneath you pulsing like an animal, but soon the monotony leads to bordem. As night began to fall Eelenore had fallen asleep upon the roof in the crows nest. She was awoken by R. shouting in her ear about half an hour into her nap. "Captin! CAPTIN?" She shot up with a start with a wicker basket imprint upon her wind-lashed cheek. The sun had set and the sky was now deep blue and thousands of stars had come to watch them pursue their treasure.
"Yes (ahem) yes R. what?"
The cracks one sees in the desert planes, usually nothing more than creases in the ground, had been getting increasingly larger and at by this point they were gaping crevasses. Luckily at the moment the steamer was still able to ford them but it was still a strange occurrence, plus, they were still growing in size. Finding herself in a situation she wasn’t expecting Eelenore made a snap decision and ordered R. "Full steam ahead. We'll never find them unless we keep going". She spoke with an element of doubt in her voice which R. didn’t react to kindly to.
"Captin there is nothing out here. This place is gona turn out to be a canyon at worlds end! If we don’t stop well crash."
Eelenore wanted revenge for being left out in the middle of nowhere. It was a despicable act of cowardice not to mention un-chivalrous. She wanted to find the bastards who had mugged her and left her for dead. She had met them whilst in a bazaar in the city of Pisces where the black market thrives; for once she was looking for a legitimate deal to buy some hydrogen tanks to help reconstruct her ship to its former glory. She hadn't long been browsing when a small group of suited men who looked ridiculous due to the dust and mud trailing up their pinstriped trousers approached her.
(Next Valve - The Bazaar at Pisces)
