Best moments ever thread 2.0 - Printable Version

Yesterday I was captain on Destiny, watching the place fill up. While at first the crew was only a handful of people, the ship gradually filled. Notable arrivals were Cash Clewett the HoP and Nadia Kilbride the HoS.

Fair soon Cash started living up to his name by filling up the budget. I made it very clear to him that I didn't know how he was doing it. In fact, I also didn't know what happened to the remains of the ill-looking fellow after the RD somehow got them to Research. And I definitely didn't know what had happened to that corpse I dragged to cloning which went missing while its previous owner was in the cloning pod, and the thing I didn't know about the most was what Cash was doing in the operating theatre that required so much privacy. Hey, he was making good money, why would I complain?

For a good while nothing much happened, the only relevant thing to this story being that Cash kept dropping tapes of "budget meetings". Whatever they were for, they didn't stop people from finding his stash of human heads. I kept well away, simply noting to the HoS that if there was a trial I wanted to be there. Eventually the case seemed to dry up and Cash was left to wander freely, which I decided not to think too hard about.

The point at which things became strange was when I was in a "town hall" meeting hosted by Roco Berry, regional director, where I started getting very strange PDA messages. The sender was an "Unknown External User", who just about managed to tell me they had been trapped somewhere for days without the clearance to leave, after which their signal dropped. I told the full story over the command radio channel before heading to the chapel to collect volunteers for a search party, when things became even stranger. The external user started sending bridge announcements. Soon the messages resumed, talking about markerlight and ascension and fallen brothers. I told the full story to the crew, feeling that this was now a matter of ship-wide importance. Moments later, just before a solar flare, I got a final message: whatever this thing was, it had a host.

After the flare finished I started hearing reports from Everett Roberts, Medical Doctor, that Nadia was acting strangely, swearing at him and running into Sec. I found her sealing herself in, building walls and shouting about being infected and needing isolation. I tried desperately to get her to explain but got nothing but incoherent shouting. I broke into Security with an RCD and found she had retreated to the brig and had taken arms with a laser gun. Hiding around the corner, I saw somebody new. Cash. With his reddish suit and his hands covered in blood, he demanded to record all this. He climbed into the chute. I didn't see Nadia, but I saw Cash Clewett standing there. And I heard her screaming over the radio, saying she was dying. Soon, Cash turned to me. He said he was God. He said he could not die. He said they had made him immortal. I asked him who. "The people I killed".

It was all a blur after that, but I remember I went to the bridge. The AI was just shrapnel. I called the shuttle, and I left the bridge. Then I heard Cash over the command radio, he was saying he had something for me. I found him in the bridge, and I refused to enter. Then, completely out of the blue, a streaker with a stun baton stunned Clewett, letting me cuff him. It ended up with three of us in the bridge: Me, Cash and Cluncho McChunk the Geneticist. In hindsight, I don't know what Cluncho was doing there. In between the streaker interrupting us Cash told me to open a locker in the corner. It was full of body parts. I did not recognise many of the names. Then Cash told me to fetch his briefcase from the corner. Inside were the two budget tapes. As soon as I started to play it I realised just what Cash Clewett was. It was a monologue, a rambling stream of conciousness, and it was all about murder. At first, I just stood there. Cluncho realised that Cash had run out of air in his tank and disconnected it, but by that point he was already dying if I didn't get him help. I didn't.

Near the end of the first tape, as I found out what had happened to that QM to give him treads and one eye missing, I told the crew everything. I told them it was all my fault, that I knew he was selling organs, that I did nothing to stop it. I told them I was sorry. And I told them they wouldn't see me again.

As the shuttle reached Centcomm, Cash breathed his last breath. It was laughter. And I was glad I had an egun, because I had a very good use for it.

There was not a single traitor that round.