&chapter=Chapter 10 Crash!!!! Went the U.P. ship that moaned with structural agony. Sanjit's head swirled in a dream about Vivian Waterston a female creature he met in the outer rim of the Stemma system. Sanjit's own tolerance for nightly disruptions was quite high, but not even his 3 million years of evolution could have protected his stasis from the onslaught of the crashing noise outside. Soon there was another crash followed by some mumbled shouting. Sanjit's lovely dream of finally getting to remove the clothing of this enchanting beast was about to be disrupted once again. For some reason life had not wanted Sanjit to realize his ultimate dream of making love to this four legged creature. Crash!!!! "Don't worry, I've got it all figured out!" a voice sounding very much like Hitchmouth screamed back. That's when Sanjit knew that whatever was indeed causing that crash would have to be explored at once. Visions of Hitchy shooting at shadows in the night were not as comforting as they might have been two and half years ago when Sanjit was first introduced to Hitchmouth. Since that time he had seen Hitchmouth start on two specific occasions international war for the Dramada system, and most recently the near fatal wounding of one Commander Hunt. As Sanjit made his way down the corridor trying to spray his private bits enough for public consumption, the voices grew louder. "Look, I've got it all figured out! I had a dream!" Sanjit rounded the corner of the central mess hall and saw the first portion of the disturbing story. A Homaltine spice bag was laying helplessly on the ground next to the dysfunctional microwave oven. Homaltine was not any ordinary spice. Sanjit was not actually permitted by law to carry the substance onboard, but that didn't seem to matter. Homaltine was used sparingly to induce visions of nirvana in soldiers who had recently suffered from severe trauma. Banned for it's numerous side effects, Sanjit liked to delegate copious amounts to subjects like Hitchmouth to calm them down during uncontrollable bursts of violence. He had only just tried to administer an ample supply to Hitchy the night before promising to "hide the taste" of the Chicken Korma. Of course a hefty supply of Homaltine would be more accurately described as a slight pinch between the index finger and thumb. The mere fact that Sanjit had a one-pound bag suggested that he would be up on charges of distribution if caught, and now the entire bag lay in plain view for the Commander to see. He impulsively grabbed the ripped open edge of the bag and slid the remaining contents into an open compartment. Sanjit made a mental note to find a better hiding place once he put a stop to the horrible slamming sensation seemingly coming from Hitchmouth's crazy nightly charade. Sanjit quickly approached the decompression chamber slash entryway of the now beat to death U.P. ship. Save a small dot of clothing spray on the tip of the Commander's flag pole, he was otherwise once again "genital free" and yelling at Hitchmouth over a hand radio. "Now listen here dear boy! I'm giving you an order, stop this madness at once! I have to take responsibility for this!" screamed the Commander who up until this time hadn't shown his true commanding colours until this very moment. The front of the U.P. ship had been horribly damaged by what appeared to be the ship of Princess Hhhhooouuouuuuuull being backed into the front of their already highly damaged vessel. Sanjit just stood and stared as the final adjusting slam of the Princesses spaceship was backed into the front end of the U.P. ship. The Commander had now taken notice of Sanjit and turned to plead for help. Normally a pleading officer of his stature would come with great motivation and reverence, but this time it was different. Flopping in the air before Sanjit's face was the eight foot tall Commander and his free genitalia asking for help. Luckily for Sanjit, Doctor Smutts burst through a floor panel covered in various colours of clothing spray looking very very upset. "What in the hell is going on here, and why is your knob hanging out?" she demanded. "Private Hitchmouth has gone mad!" the Commander shouted. "Well make him go un-mad! I've got to get my sleep or I won't be able to organize the wedding!" "Oh, actually that won't be necessary." "What?" "The Princess or shall I say Prince left a couple hours ago with her or perhaps his entourage." "Left?!" "Yes. Oh, and with that wiring Hjmugh as well." "Left?!" "Yes. Well it turns out that she is a he." "I'm NOT following you." Said Doctor Smutts. "Yes, well I found it a bit confusing myself." The commander soon explained that there had been an ever-critical oversight from their local historian Sanjit, who failed to learn that the race in which the Princess comes from actually supports a reverse in genitalia. The King was actually a Queen by Earth's standards. To make matters worse, it also turned out that the Princesses is by all galactic certifications a raging homosexual. Ironically having just heard from the Commander about his "genital free" theory, the Commander soon discovered by way of a surprisingly sexual evening with Princess HHHhhhhhhoooull, that much of Hitchmouth's stodgy homophobic banter is sadly more in tune with his own very heterosexual programming. He finished by explaining his ever so present "gag" reflex that even the most liberal "pride" supporter can experience when trying to wager with one's own sexual preferences. "I can't believe it! You're not getting married!" asked a furiously feminine Doctor Smutts. It turned out that Doctor Smutts was deeply looking forward to aiding in the mounding moment of matrimony. Crash!! "Oh bloody hell, what is the maniac doing!" Doctor Smutts uttered finally focusing on the reason why she was wearing only 10% of the spray on clothing she normally fashions. A sudden collection of hatches and air-locks begin to sound through the bowels of the now adjoined ships. Heavy footsteps that could only belong to one six foot eight bloodthirsty Neanderthal approached. An air lock that had sealed as a matter of automatic precaution when the first impact rang out, started to disengage from the other side. WHOOOOOSH...and in stepped a very deranged Hitchmouth. He looked cheery. He was fully clothed. He had a shaved head, and he was covered in Homaltine spice. Sanjit could feel the blood in his face begin to heat with terrified embarrassment having to explain how Hitchmouth had manage to ingest more Homaltine than any known living creature in existence. The spice must have made him go mad, Sanjit thought. "Hi guys!" a bright eyed and somehow serene Hitchy said. "Was that you making all that damn noise?" Sanjit blurted out to his own astonishment. "Yeah, but it's okay! I've got it all worked out! I had a dream man. A friggin" dream man! I figured it out!" Hitchmouth went on, "I'm going to get us the hell out of here!" "Young man, we are stationed here. We have not been commanded to leave." The Commander affirmed. "Yeah well...what you don't know yet sir is that there are twenty thousand Mullambimbi's waiting to blow us to bits! You see I know, I had a dream! I saw everything! Blast cannons, impulse grenades, something called a "Ripper," a machine with the writing on the side saying "singularity-missile," it's going to be hell on Mullambimbi in just under four hours mate. " "You've got to be joking! You had a dream and now we have two incredibly destroyed ships in the middle of a planetary battlegrounds!" Doctor Smutts cried. "Don't worry Doctor" Hitchy managed in a vocational accuracy never heard before as he placed one Homaltine covered hand on the Doctor's shoulder, "I've got it all figured out!" he continued pointing to his oversized cranium with his other free spice covered limb. "What have you got figured out Hitchy?" Sanjit said involuntarily, about to gag at the notion of how mentally disturbed Hitchmouth must be with an incomprehensible amount of mind stimulants flowing around this synaptic mesh they call his brain. "I went to bed last night and had a dream that made everything alright! I suddenly realized how to get this boat we call a ship out of here! We're about to be attacked man!" Hitchmouth wasn't the same. Something about his speech was clear and concise, yet entirely demented. "Who is going to attack us? The Mullambimbi's?" continued Sanjit questioning. "You're damn right they are! I've seen their weapons. It's bad man, really bad. They got a cannon that shoots black holes for God's sake!" "Oh dear," the Commander paused. "Hitchy, nothing you've seen is real my friend. You've just had what must be the largest single delusion of any pour human's life." Sanjit assured. "What are you talking about Sanjit?" interrupted Doctor Smutts. Sanjit took a deep breath and prepared to incriminate himself in front of a superior officer and perhaps face a court marshal in the process. "Let me ask this one question Hitchy. Did you have your dream "after" breaking into my spice rack?" Hitchmouth's eyes starting to dial around in their sockets looking for the past memory which he wasn't certain actually existed anymore. After a few detours through his visual cortex, the answer arrived in a blasted shout. "Yes!" "Hitchy, what were you doing in my spice rack?" Sanjit scolded with all discipline. "Chicken Korma man! fucking hell. I couldn't get that horrible taste out of my mouth!" Hitchmouth replied defensively. "Well, I know what he means there. I had to suck on my tooth atomizer for 30 solid minutes before I could taste anything, but the what reminded me of a sofa that had been sitting in a public place for a prolonged period of time." said Doctor Smutts. "Here, here. That must be why my bowels haunted me all night with sporadic clouds of toxic land grenades." Added Commander Hunt. "Alright, alright! I'm not trying to solicit food critiques of my ability to turn common rodents into edible food! I'm merely trying to ascertain when Hitchy here started ingesting what appears to be giant doses of illegal hallucinogens!" Sanjit shouted at the top of his now injured ego lungs. "What?" said the Doctor. Hitchmouth just looked on trying to understand the relevance of Sanjit's line of questioning. Sanjit took another deep breath and began to explain the effects of Homaltine and the fact that Hitchmouth had found an opened bag in the kitchen which appears to have found its way onto the face of their beloved friend Hitchmouth, who is now claiming to have visions of grandeur and imminent danger. By the time the conversation was over, Hitchmouth was nowhere to be found. "How the hell did you let him go?!" screamed Sanjit who was not feeling very vulnerable and partially responsible for this late-night disruption. "I thought he had gone to wash up." Said the Commander now looking oddly normal with his genitalia flying free before the lot of them only covered by a single black dot on the end of what appeared to be a disturbing large member. Just as the silence in the room grow to an uncomfortable high, a screeching howl of metal ripping could be heard through the hull of the ship. Something was happening outside, and that something had to be Hitchmouth going on with his paranoid plan of planetary pulverization. Sanjit quickly entered the air-lock and engaged the external release sequence. Dawning his custom fitted bio-suit, Sanjit was ready for the crisp jungle temperatures that were common place in the dead of night on Nafoolina. Sanjit was starting to get angry. It wasn't his fault that this planet didn't have ducks and cows and strawberry fields. I mean, what was he supposed to do? Let them all starve. He always thought that he had been very clever to fashion an edible meal from what most residence of this planet referred to as "land-rats." Sanjit decided that he was going to be firm with Hitchmouth and put an end to all this madness. Soon the air lock opened and out stepped Sanjit into a flurry of sparks raining down from above. Hitchmouth was atop of the ships welding portions of the intersecting hulls together. Sanjit carefully found a lift that had managed to continue working despite the repeated structural breaches of Hitchmouth's makeshift antics. Approaching the topside of the ship, Sanjit could barely believe his eyes. Hitchmouth has in less than ten minutes assembled a collection of welding tools, dressed himself in construction gear and started what appeared to be a quite professional act of welding their two ships together. "Hitchy?" Sanjit said with a much-reduced amount of anger than previous anticipated. Hitchmouth looked up from his welding wearing the standard eye goggles appearing to look very professional in some oddly never before seen way. "What are you doing?" Sanjit continued. "I'm welding our ships together. Does it look like I'm doing something else?" Hitchmouth rebutted. "No, actually not. Why are you welding our ships together?" "Because our ship is shite man! We can't fly out here with all the damage done to the main drive." "Hitchy, we're not leaving here. Do you understand that? What you dreamed last night was not real. It was just a delusion caused by the spice." Sanjit pleaded with Hitchmouth. Hitchmouth paused for a moment and turned off his welding torch. He slowly stood to his towering six foot eight and waved for Sanjit to come over. Sanjit reluctantly joined Hitchmouth still covered in spice from head to toe. Sanjit assumed that Homaltine must be able to absorb into the blood stream from topical contact. This may account for the reason why Hitchmouth continued to talk nonsense. "Come here." Hitchmouth said gently. Sanjit obliged. Hitchmouth withdrew a pair of high-powered binoculars from his utility belt and handed them to Sanjit. "Look right over there." Hitchmouth said extending a finger towards the invisible landscape hidden in black of night. Sanjit drew the lenses to his eyes and soon realized that Hitchmouth was not basing his hysterics on a spice induced delusion, but the very present band of 20,000 Mullambimbi's amassing on the county side about ten miles out. "Oh dear Lord! What are we going to do?!" Sanjit shouting through a whisper. Hitchmouth slowly took the binoculars back and hooked them on his overly populated construction suit utility belt. "It's alright man, that's where my dream comes in." Hitchmouth said as if an alternative personality had decided to push its way over the constantly destructive madman that always seem to screw things up in a vacuum. "Our drive is shot to shite right? But the Princess has a state of the art hyperdrive. Now I've had to go over the numbers a bit and I've worked out that I can recalibrate the Princesses hyperdrive to account for the added mass of our ship, but before I can do that I have to make sure that our ship hulls are sufficiently welding together. Luckily for us, the design in ship hull technology is structurally very similar. Couple titanium beams here, atonmium sheets there, and we have one ship! But we haven't got a lot of time! I completed a recon mission earlier last night before going to sleep and I overheard their plans to take our position by dawn. Dawn is three and half hours away!" Hitchmouth sat down and flipped his welding torch back on. Sanjit stood feeling for the first time less intelligent than Hitchmouth. Before Hitchmouth could get started, Sanjit interrupted. "Um, Hitchy..." "Yes." He replied looking up from where he left off. "How is it that you went from out of control gunman to hyperdrive engineer. Don't get me wrong, I always knew you had it in you," Sanjit lied, "but why now?" he insisted. Hitchmouth just stopped for a moment and then paused to look down at his spice covered uniform wondering the same thing. "I don't know really. I just had a dream." "What sort of dream Hitchy?" "There was like all this math floating around and the knowledge of impending doom. My mind sort of worked it all out. Granted there was a very odd smell about my dream, and it seemed that the deeper I breathed, the more solutions would come into view. It's all really puzzling actually." Hitchmouth paused struggling to put the unexplainable into words and finally continued with, "can I get back to work now? I have a lot of welding to do and not very much time." Hitchmouth looking unprecedented. He was actually calm and rational. Sanjit figured that Hitchmouth must have relaxed enough with the mounds of Homaltine that he was able to hear his inner voice. It was a well known fact that Hitchmouth had been kicked out of more towns than schools, and perhaps that was the reason for his inability to find his lot in life. Who would have ever thought it would have been engineering, Sanjit thought as he stood helplessly staring into the night sky. Little did he know that he would grow to forever miss the day that Hitchmouth was a pleasant person to be around. The spice would soon wear off, and Sanjit would come to discover that the hard to love Doctor Smutts had appropriated the bag of Homaltine in the name of justice and a good nights sleep. Hitchmouth would not return to his old self, but a new being with the oddly powerful ability to solve mathematical equations during bizarre times of Hitchmouth need. Sanjit road the lift down to the base level railing, and stepped down to the walkway that led to the air lock chamber. His mind was in a dreamlike state of almost total confusion. Yesterday morning he was preparing a special dish of Chicken Korma awaiting the arrival of one Commander Hunt, and today his associate and long time annoying companion Hitchmouth had grown a library of never before realized brain cells. What was this world coming to, he thought as he reached up to press the bright red air lock release button. SSSSSSSSSOOOOOOORRRRRRBAAAAAMMMMMM! Was the sound the red button appeared to make. The ground shook. The ships shook, and Sanjit secretly wet himself.