h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*Writes a big sign and hangs it up on the door*

CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

*Walks into the cantina, closing the door behind him*

If so, you wouldn't mind if I tended it for a while, would you? I would hate to see the demise of another promising space area. Besides, I'm bored. I can just see it now: Venom, Head armory person and keeper of big guns!

Nononono!

The armoury is me and Njan's special place...

...we've got our own reasons for keeping it closed at the moment... which we're keeping to ourselves...

Alright then...

*Drags in a shuttle behind an old-fashioned diesel tractor*

Hmm... right... where were we?

*Kicks the shuttle until the engine inspection hatch falls off*

*CV pops out of the hatch* Uhh, I think I was trying to keep from suffocating on those diesel fumes, but before that I was working on propulsion

Oh, right, yeah... um... yeah, keep at that and I'll look at the control computers...

*Wanders to the other end of the (very small) spaceship*

*inside the hatch, the words "this wont do at all!" are heard. A type-3 ion drive comes flying out, followed by CV. The ion drive is obviously broken beyond any possibility of repair, and it resembles the nasty, black, burnt potato chip at the bottom of the bag. CV walks over to a small cupboard (his forum armory), walks inside, and comes out with a hydraulic lift and a new type-4c ion drive* There, better.

*A sizzling noise is heard, followed by a scream, running footsteps and a loud splash*

That hurt! lack of insulation on power wires!

*walks in, and smiles*

*walks over to a cupboard and gets out a large oxy-acet torch*

*sits on a stool and thinks*

*gets out a tapemeasure and measures the side of the hull*

*flips down a very charred visor and starts melting the hullplating mountings off, taking off sheet after sheet of defunct, burnt, cracked hullplating*

Oh no! Some of those sheets of defunct, burnt, cracked hullplating were like old friends! ;-(

Well, they can be old friends in the skip.

If not, I'm sure we can find an old cupboard somewhere in the hanger complex where you can sit and be old friends with them for hours, Krans.

*Njan sets the flame settings right down, to spread, reduces the supply of oxygen and the amount of gas, and uses the torch to clean the junk off the pressure hull, having removed all of the external armour hulls*

Armour hulls? Armour hulls? I don't remember any armour hulls? This is a shuttle, FFS!

Yes. The hullplating.

It's armoured. How else is a shuttle going to avoid getting shredded by, for instance, small particles of matter in space? It may be sub-light, but that doesn't mean that space isn't dangerous.

It's not combat armour. That would be over the top. It's hullplating armour.

You see? *picks up a shard of battered, darkened, notverythick titanium*

*After a short period of 's, Venom hops out and grabs some cable insulation*

*Grumbles and gets back into refitting the control systems, taking some very nice touch-screen flatplanels with him*

*Venom hops out, hops back in with his signature Kill-O-Zap plasma rifle for lack of a torch, sets the rifle on stun and starts welding the new drive in place, a process that should be finished in about 2 posts*

*sneaks in behind Krans with a few conspicuous boxes saying "Geforce 4: Ti4600" on them*

*puts them quietly on the ground behind Krans and sneaks out*

*gets back to refitting the hull with extra-strong phase-aligned armour plating*

*stands back*

*yells "Fire in the hole!!!"

*gets out a large plasma rifle, and - before the armour's set into place - shoots out two LARGE holes on each side of the ship*

*shoots out one underneath the hull*

There. Sensor mounting and weapons-mounting points. .. Far from me to put effort into setting the hull around the arrays.

*Venom's head, complete with charred hair, pops out of the "weapons mounting port"* Hey, watch where you shoot that thing! *he then gets to work installing weapons control wires behind the new "port" and some airlock stripping on the outside*

And I have to use a soldering iron...