Oh, Smeg...
Disclaimer and Authors Notes: Dear gods. I can't believe I wrote this thing...it's scaring me, frankly. I intended it to be one of those blatant, stupid parodies, and look how it turned out...one of my friends told me it read like JMS' subplots. So. Be scared.
Don't blame me for the plotline; that belongs to John Deppe. Go ahead and e-mail him with complaints about it...eventually this may actually morph itself into a subplot for a Crusade episode...you can see the little fill-in bits from time to time. You know what I mean.
Oh, yeah...all characters belong to the Great Maker, Smeg belongs to whomever owns Red Dwarf...
The Excalibur's mess hall was its usual chaotic mess this morning, Lt. John Matheson reflected as he gathered his tray of rather questionable Earth breakfast foods and sat at the far end of a relatively empty table. He was expecting it to be a fairly normal day. That is, Galen hadn't revealed the location of any amazing new power sources, and Earthforce hadn't recinded their current mission - yet. The main schedule consisted of travelling through hyperspace - on the beacon, for once - toward a rather isolated planet in the depths of what had been Shadow territory. All in all, a fairly normal day.
Suddenly Matheson realized he was picking up extremely agitated thoughts from a security guard who had sat down across from him. He tried to block it for a few minutes, failing miserably. Finally he managed to solidify the telepathic walls that had fallen into disuse, and relaxed slightly. That was when one word slipped through - "Smeg!"
Matheson gave the security officer an odd look, which fortunately went unnoticed. "Smeg?" he thought to himself.
*
The morning went down from there. The Excalibur was once more travelling through hyperspace, heading for another world the Rangers had thought a possible source to help in a search for a cure to the Drakh plague. Matheson desperately hoped that the planet would be worth it, because the hyperspace trip was becoming more tedious by the minute.
Nearly everything that could have gone wrong had - the jump engines were showing serious signs of wear, the main scanners had gone berserk, and in an attempt to restore those, gravity had been lost in the rec center. And to top it all off, Max Eilerson, resident IPX agent, was on the bridge, complaining about the delay. Matheson was starting to wonder if knocking Eilerson out telepathically would be justified, under the circumstances.
A report came through his console; the rec center had gravity again. He let out a huge sigh of relief, but as soon as he let the breath out, all the lights on the bridge died. At a loss for anything else, he said the first thing that came to mind.
"Smeg."
If the lights had been functioning, Matheson would have seen the confused look Eilerson had directed his way. Of course, if the lights had been functioning, Eilerson would not have wandered off the darkened bridge and into the corridor, turning the word over and over in his mind. "Smeg. Smeg?"
*
The word was still running through his brain when Eilerson encountered Galen in the hallway. At first he wandered right past the Technomage, but then Max realized who he'd just passed. "You!" he shouted, turning abruptly to point at the other man.
"Me?" Galen said in an incredulous tone, turning to face the irate linguist.
"Yes, you!" Eilerson snapped. "Everything's been going wrong today; so much that it can't be coincidence! Nobody else could be doing it; it must be your fault."
"Really," said Galen calmly, regarding Eilerson with the interest one might give a particularly irritating insect. "Well, I'm sorry, but I just came on board. I've nothing to do with it." With that, Galen turned and headed off the way he'd been going before Eilerson had stopped him.
Though he was halfway down the hall, the Technomage could still hear Max's complaints. "Honestly, you'd think everyone on this ship is out to get me. What the smeg is wrong with you people?"
As he headed for the captain's quarters, Galen considered the significance of the last phrase. Where did "smeg" come from, anyway?
*
Galen entered the captain's quarters unannounced though Gideon turned around as he heard the door whoosh open. "Galen, good, I've been wanting to talk to you," he said.
"Really? Well, if it's about the problems with the ship, I had nothing to do with it," the Technomage answered with a slight note of irritation.
"Nothing at all, huh?" Gideon replied skpetically.
"Not a thing," Galen said.
Gideon stared at him skeptically. "I suppose that means you don't know why the bridge is losing power, we're three days behind schedule, and the Rangers can't even find us?"
"That bad?" Galen queried. "Smeg. Well, I'm terribly sorry, but I haven't the faintest idea," he finished with an irritating grin.
As the Technomage turned to leave, Gideon sighed helplessly and went back to what he was doing, but turned suddenly to question his visitor. "Galen...why were you here in the first place?"
But the Technomage had already gone.
*
Gideon stared at Dureena over the cluttered table. "Do that again? Slower, this time."
"All right," she replied. The captain dealt out the cards, then lined up the deck and set it between himself and the ship's resident tunnel rat. He studied his cards for a moment, then discarded two, carefully keeping his eyes on them as he picked up two more from the deck. As he shifted his gaze to his new cards, he thought he saw a flicker of movement through his peripheral vision.
"All right, I got it that time," he said quickly, and Dureena laid down her cards...including the two he'd just discarded.
"Good. You're getting better at this. Your turn," she responded, adding her cards back into the deck.
"Right," Gideon grimaced, but he handed the deck to Dureena to deal. He watched her carefully as she discarded and drew, then reached out a hand towards the discard pile in the middle. Her hand caught his wrist more quickly than he had thought possible.
Dureena grinned at him. "Not as ready as you thought you were, huh? Fork over that bet."
"Smeg," he muttered to himself as he reached for his wallet. He missed the strange look Dureena gave him as he was rummaging around for his credit chit.
*
Finally. They'd reached the planet.
It was a small planet, and not very interesting, as far as Gideon was concerned; Eilerson was having a blast, though, and Dureena had disappeared, so at least someone was enjoying it...
As a matter of fact, Dureena was enjoying herself. She'd discovered a network of tunnels above the group of caves they'd set up camp in, and had curled up quite comfortably in one that she judged to be just above the main cave. She'd been spending too much time in the Excalibur, with it's huge corridors and even huger rooms; she was used to smaller spaces. Much smaller - like these tunnels, for example.
Just as she'd gotten settled, and was thinking about perhaps going to sleep up here, a weak spot in the tunnel floor just under her right arm fell through, taking Dureena with it. She collapsed in a little ball in the middle of the huge cave, surrounded by most of the main crew of the Excalibur. She hadn't expected them to hear her over the din of the collapsing rock and dirt, but somehow they all caught the expletive that slipped out of her mouth on the way down..."Smeg!"
She doubted that she ever would have known they'd caught it, either, except for the sudden explosion of questions that assailed her from all corners. "What was that?' "Where did you hear that word?" "Do you know what the hell it means??"
And, from a security guard a few paces away..."So, there are other people who watch old scifi TV?"
Everyone turned to face him, giving him scalding glares that spoke more eloquently than any 20th century swear words could have. He merely gained an extremely confused look. "What? Was it something I said??"