Captain Smith and Mister Price

 The Adventure of Captain Smith and Mister Price

             Never before in the history of Pangea has space travel been more fervently researched than since the recent contact with Holder Trow. Though diplomatic relations broke down, their technology, or at least what crashed to the surface, has inspired Pangean scientists to create some of the first deep space crafts in the Milky Way Galaxy. However, none of these are THE first Pangean deep spaceship. That title goes to a ship lost to history; The E.N.V. Corporation.

             Close to 150 years ago, during the same technological revolution that brought about the discovery of steam power, Dr. A. J. Kline proposed a plan for an airship. This airship would be massive, more than twice the size of any structure made up until that point. It would be capable of exiting the atmosphere and surviving for several years without need to refuel or resupply. Most investors saw the idea as a disaster waiting to happen, but the Emerican government saw it as a chance to get the leg up on Europa and Australious. The ship would be called the E.N.V. Corporation, ENV designating it as an Emerican Naval Vessel, and the name Corporation to show Emerican support of free markets. With some financial support from “anonymous benefactors”, construction went underway.

             Within a few months the ship was well on its way to completion. As construction entered its final stages, it came time to select a crew. Naturally, the Emerican government filled most of the positions with its top champions, but Dr. Kline had final say over the two most important positions, the captain and the chief navigator. He chose two of his personal friends, who from that day on were known as Captain Smith and Mister Price. Smith and Price were actually non-champions, which caused quite an uproar amongst the crew and the missions benefactors, but it was this reason that Kline chose them for their jobs. Kline understood the allure of space travel was strong, and the chance to visit a patron gods’ planet would almost certainly prove too powerful an urge for some of the crew, so the captain and navigator would have to be unbiased to ensure a successful mission.

             Shortly after the announcement of the captain and chief navigator, the ship was declared safe for space travel. Outfitted with engines created by champions of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and a crew numbering in the thousands, it was the largest air vessel to be created on Pangea for decades to come. On the day of the launch, however, the first tragedy of the ENV Corporation struck. While doing a last minute review of the ship’s plans, Dr. Kline realized something had gone horribly wrong. The engine was an amalgamation of smaller thruster, with different groups designing clusters of thrusters. Each group, as it turned out, had created their thrusters so that they could take the ship beyond Pangea’s atmosphere BY THEMSELVES. The result was an engine providing thrust almost fifty times what was necessary. The ship would either tear apart as it tried to maintain its ridiculous speed, or the ship and its crew would quickly move beyond the solar system and be unable to return. Dr. Kline was about to call and stop the launch, but the assassin seven got to him first. It seemed that the assassin seven didn’t believe Pangea ready for interstellar travel, and Dr. Kline’s death would bring Pangea’s space program crashing to a stop. The last thing Kline saw before he slipped off the mortal coil was the ENV Corporation taking off on the horizon and quickly leaving the atmosphere, intact but doomed. Within minutes, radio contact was lost with the crew, and the ship was assumed to have been destroyed somewhere in space. The project was covered up and sealed in a mountain of red tape, and the world eventually forgot about the Corporation and its crew of champions. But that is not where its story ends.

             The crew aboard the Corporation knew that something was wrong as they watched how quickly they passed Luna and eventually Mars, Jupiter, and the subsequent planets. The engineers stopped the engines as quickly as they could, but there was little they could do to reduce their forward momentum. It didn’t take long for the first mutiny to occur. Second Technician Reynolds, a champion of Mars, led a small group of crewmembers to try and remove the captain, whom they blamed for the whole mishap. Captain Smith, with the help of Mister Price and one of the ships medics, managed to sedate the crowd and move them to the brig. After the first incident, fights grew more and more common until the ship was nothing but a giant, floating war zone. Smith and Price tried to contain the crew for as long as they could, but eventually they had to hide for their own safety. They locked themselves in the cargo bay with all of the packaged food and supplies, hoping to simply wait out the chaos. And they did. They waited for a year as the crew killed, and in some cases cannibalized, each other. Some tried to break into the cargo bay, but they were usually killed by some other group of crewmembers also trying to break in. Once a month had passed with no one trying to enter, Smith and Price rightly assumed that the last of the crew had died, and left the cargo hold for the first time in over a year.

             Mister Price tried to ascertain the ships coordinates in space from the bridge, but because they were so far beyond their solar system, any star charts they had were useless. Without any sense of direction and any human interaction other than each other, Smith and Price suffered a crisis of identity. They had food to last for decades, as the ship was originally going to feed thousands, and the ship self generated oxygen thanks to a system hooked up by several champions of Gaia, so it was not a question of how long the ship could last, but how long could they? Eventually they began to return to their original duties to abate the boredom, waiting for the inevitable. Sanity waned, and soon Smith and Price were hollow shells of what they once were. All seemed lost.

              The ship drifted through space for 10 years. Captain Smith began to identify with his role as captain more than his actual name and spent most of his time ordering Smith to do superfluous tasks. Smith remained much more mentally cognizant, having his reading to keep him sane, but the captain’s orders gave him direction and a sense of purpose and usefulness, so he went along until it became a logical habit to him. The captain trained physically everyday, as is the “captains duties”, maintaining his peak physical condition during this ten year span, while Smith allowed himself to become weaker. Ultimately, they survived this stretch of time because where one decayed, the other survived. And it was this decay that saved them.

             After their ten years adrift, the Corporation’s quiet journey was suddenly upset as it entered a debris field. Chunks of rock and ice pelted the ship from all sides, damaging the hull and causing stress on the systems. Mister Price steered the ship as best he could, but without a full crew it suffered heavy damages. Price began to try to turn the ship around to escape the debris, but Smith told him to head further into the field instead. Having nothing to lose, Price held course towards what they assumed was the center of the chaos.

             After a while, they seemed to have found the source; a strange planet emitting a pale green glow. Even as they watched, chunks of the planet seemed to simply separate from the itself and float away, revealing more and more of whatever was shining through its center. As they came nearer and nearer, Price noticed the ships readouts becoming extremely erratic. Soon the forward velocity began to drop exponentially until the Corporation’s came to a complete stop for the first time in years just within the planet’s orbit.

             Price and Smith stood on the bridge stupefied, and Captain Smith kept yelling at Mister Price to put full power to the thrusters. Price tried to get the ship to move, but all he was doing was draining the ships energy. As he pressed a large green button, which he had forgotten what its original purpose was, a flash of green light and the smell of rot filled the bridge. When the two men could see once more, there was a strange man with gray hair and white eyes standing in the center of the room. His clothes were dirty and torn, his skin seemed to be peeling off in several places, and as he breathed, small clouds of dust and smoke escaped his mouth and nostrils. The man let out a series of rough coughs, doubling over momentarily, and as he stood, he smiled at Smith and Price and said, “Hello gentlemen.”

             “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Morior, God of Decay and Rot. You are the first people to witness my glory in millennia. Once I was part of your silly solar system, circling the sun like a fool with those other ‘gods’, but then I went my own way. I decayed my orbit until I eventually left them behind, and now I’m my own solar system! Now, I what you boys are going to do…” The captain was the first to speak.

             “Hey, I’M captain of this ship, and no one tells my crew what to do except me. Isn’t that right crew?” Captain Smith turned to where the crew would normally be, un-phased by the lack of supporters. Mister Price let out a half-hearted cheer before falling silent once more. “Now, Mr… Moria, was it? Seeing as I’m in a generous mood, I’ll let you make your request, and I shall let my crew vote on whether we help or not.” Captain Smith crossed his arms and stood defiantly. Morior stood looking at him with his mouth agape. Price backed up, the only one of the two who actually understood the gravity of the situation. The god looked back and forth at the two… and burst into laughter.

             “You two are completely insane! This is perfect!” He walked over to Price and Smith and put his arms around them. Price and Smith awkwardly looked at each other as Morior continued to speak. “I’ve been looking for some capable guys such as yourself to help me with a little problem. You see, for a while, being out on my own was great. But, my planet began to decay, and I couldn’t get anyone to help me stop it, so it’s on its last legs, as you’ve probably noticed. I need some champions to vent my powers, do my bidding, (carry the celestial core of my planet), you know, basic godly stuff. So, how about this. I make you guys my champions and make sure that you stay alive for centuries to come, and in return, you carry and protect my celestial core and bring it back to Pangea. What do you say, help old Morry out a bit?”



Mister Price spoke up for the first time. “Wouldn’t it be incredibly dangerous to have to core of a planet on our ship? Also, the Corporation is big, but what even makes you think it will fit on here? And finally, how are we supposed to get back to Pangea? We couldn’t navigate these parts of space even if we tried.” Morior released his grip on the two and pat Price on the back.

             “This isn’t the first I’ve thought on this boy. I can get us back to Pangea; I can sense the human decay of it from here. Plus, I’ve figured out a way to shrink my core down to a manageable size, no bigger than your fist. Granted, it will destroy my planet, but it’s the core that matters. And trust me, its perfectly safe. Just don’t handle it too much. And don’t touch it without lead gloves. And don’t look at it too long. Or stand too close to it. Or think about it too much…” Captain Smith pulled Mister Price away from the decayed one.

<p class="MsoNormal">             “I will not endanger my crew just to help out some creature whose reach exceeded his grasp. If assisting you could bring harm to my crew or my ship, then I’m afraid that I will have to ask you to leave.”

<p class="MsoNormal">             “Come on, I’m offering you guys what is essentially immortality and the chance to be something greater. If that means a little risk, I don’t see the harm. Besides, what else are you gonna do? Float some more through space til you die? I’m offering you life, I’m offering you power. I’m offering you purpose.” Smith and Price huddled together to discuss what to do. They were worried about the dangers of carrying the core, but in the end, they weren’t really living anyway. Anything was better than 10 more years of the aimless wandering. Captain Smith turned back to Morior, who stood patiently while they had discussed.

<p class="MsoNormal">             “Alright, Morian, we’ll help you and become your champions, on the condition that you do nothing against my crew and I and provided you can get us back to Pangea. I’m sure they’re all worried about us.” A look of shear joy crossed over Morior’s face as he gave a little dance of excitement. He then disappeared in a cloud of dust, smoke, and ash. Smith and Price felt a stinging in their right hands as the symbol of Morior appeared on them. They turned to each other to speak, only to be interrupted by the shaking of the ship. As they faced the window, they saw the planet lose it’s green light, and as the light faded, larger chunks of the planet began to separate faster and faster, until nothing was left but a maelstrom of meteors hurtling in all directions.

<p class="MsoNormal">             “Alright, lets go lets go lets go!” Morior had reappeared on the bridge; giggling madly and holding a small stone that glowed bright purple and green. “This is my core, the source of all of my celestial power. Incredibly durable, you could drop this thing from the top of Mount Everestia and it wouldn’t get a scratch. I’m entrusting you two with this, and I expect you to protect it with everything you got. While it’s hard to destroy, if it fell into the wrong hands, the results would be terrible. Also, since I’m going to be keeping you alive for as long as possible, it’s not just my ass on the line. Now, I’m going to return to my celestial form in the core and rest, this form takes a lot of effort to keep up. We’ll be in touch.” In one final plume of smoke, Morior disappeared and the crystal dropped to the floor. Captain Smith approached the crystal carefully, and slowly picked it up. He looked at it quizzically, placed it in his pocket, and turned to Price.

<p class="MsoNormal">             “Well Mister Price, I suppose its time we returned home.”

<p class="MsoNormal">             It took Smith and Price 100 years to make it back to the Pangean solar system. They had forgotten that, as they moved away from Pangea, Pangea continued to travel through space and become farther from the lost ship. The food had run out after forty years, the water after 50, but Morior made good on his word and kept them alive by slowing the decay of their bodies. Smith remained in relatively fit physical health, his muscles strong and durable from years of training, but sadly his brain was rather worse for wear. A good deal of his memory before the original mission had left him, and he often took his role as Captain as something much more than it was. Price’s body continued to weaken, becoming gaunt and skeletal in appearance, but his mind remained sharp. He too suffered a sort of insanity that comes with extreme age combined with the isolation of space, but he was much more capable of advanced thought than the captain.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"> Smith and Price decided that the best way to protect the core was to disguise it. They coated it in metal to cover up its glow, and they attached it to a necklace chain that the captain would wear. Morior would have preferred a shining gold pedestal, but he took what he could get. Morior provided some entertainment, and the three of them got along surprisingly well, but boredom was still a constant challenge. With little else to do, Smith and Price honed their powers and their capabilities as best they could, and about 80 years after encountering Morior, they found an applicable use for them.

<p class="MsoNormal">             On the crew, close to 90 years ago, there had been two champions of Saturn on the crew. During the mutiny, they gathered a champion of Mars and a champion of Gaia, and they separated themselves from the current timeline, placing them in a form of stasis. One of them maintained the field while the other used the champion of Gaia to tell when they were close to returning to the Pangean system. When the ship drew closer to Pangea, only 10 years away if Morior was correct, they reinserted themselves into the timeline. They appeared on the bridge as Smith and Price pretended to eat lunch (they had found that they enjoyed eating meals together, and they wouldn’t allow a lack of food to stop that). The rogue champions attacked, thinking they could overwhelm the old and, as far as they knew, non-champion captain and navigator. If the champions had bothered to check the year, they would have realized that the only way they could have survived was with divine help, but it was too late. As they attacked, the captain took on the champions of Gaia and Mars, while Price handled the champions of Saturn. The champion of Gaia, formerly one of the medics, tried to sense the state of Smith’s body so as to ascertain the best spot to hit, but the internal decay that had become such a part of him was great enough to only cause her confusion. While shocked, the Captain delivered a devastating blow to her head with a nearby pipe, killing her almost instantly. The champion of Mars imbued his hands with the power of flames, but before he could land a blow on the captain, he felt a strange sensation. An old scar on his shoulder, long since healed, suddenly putrefied, and soon his entire arms fell off as the flesh fell in blackened pieces from his joint. He screamed as the rot spread, eventually enveloping his entire body, reducing him to a pile of decayed meat.

<p class="MsoNormal">             The champions of Saturn needed only to look at Price to know they had the physical upper hand. One of them slowed down time around them so as to move at superhuman speeds, while the other used his abilities to predict the actions of Price. The first champion pulled out a blade, cutting Price, but the blood that came out was slow and semi-congealed. Price countered by raising his hands towards the blur and channeling the powers of Morior. While nothing physically appeared wrong with him, he felt it was becoming more and more difficult to concentrate. Soon he couldn’t carry a single thought for more than a nanosecond, causing him to lose control of his power. Time slowed down even more around him, but he aged normally, sending him through his adult life, middle age, and finally senility, until he died of natural heart failure. The second champion of Saturn was disturbed to see his companion unnaturally aged to death, but knew to keep his mind on the task at hand. He and Price swapped blows for several minutes, until Price once more raised his hands, corrupting the champions mind. While not as severe as the first spell, as that had required quite a bit of celestial energy, but it would misdirect his foresight. The Saturn champion began dodging erratically from imaginary blows, allowing the captain to approach from behind and brain him with the pipe.

<p class="MsoNormal">             Smith and Price put the bodies with the bones of the rest of the crew in the brig. While more violent than they had wanted, it had served to show that the powers of Morior were not something to be taken lightly. They thanked Morior once more, though Smith’s thanks was “on behalf of the crew” and not personally himself. They returned to their posts as they came closer to their long lost home.

<p class="MsoNormal">             When Pangea was in sight, Smith and Price wept tears of joy. Morior, however, seemed troubled. “There’s something I was supposed to remember, but I can’t remember what it was. Hmmm…” There was a bright blue flash of light from the surface of the planet. “Oh yeah, that. So, there’s this one guy named Seraphim, a real asshole, but he and I didn’t exactly part on the best terms. From the looks of it, he’s been busy, and while I have a lot of faith in you guys, I don’t honestly think you could beat him. Not even a little bit. So, when you’re on Pangea, I’m going to increase the decay on your celestial energy. Nothing serious, but while you would normally seem like powerful champions, which you are, your auras will be equivalent to very weak champions. Most people who can sense celestial power may not even notice you. I’m going to do the same to my core, so it will come across as a simple celestial item, but NEVER let it out of your sight. I don’t care what else escapes your rotten minds, NEVER let ANYONE take the core. Now… you should probably brace for impact.” Morior disappeared, and Smith and Price turned to the window to see the planet’s surface fast approaching. As it struck, everything went black.

<p class="MsoNormal">             Smith and Price crawled out of the wreckage relatively unharmed, but a large amount of the ship had been reduced to twisted scrap metal. Captain Smith brushed himself off and helped Mister Price up. Looking around, their eyes slowly adjusted to the bright sunlight. Captain Smith smiled, turned to Price, and said, “Well Mr. Price, I do believe we should tell Dr. Kline that his ship worked!”

<p class="MsoNormal">              “Aye aye, Captain!”

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