Welcome to the 99th Drabble Poll. Here are 20 Drabbles designed to catch your eye.
This week's topic of "Interdiction" was brought to you by the winners of last week's Drabble contest, Clef_Hanger and CdrTwisted.
Above me is a bunch of options in a poll. Those options are directly related to the bunch of short stories below me. It's a multiple choice poll but please limit yourself to only the three votes. The results of the poll will be announced on Monday morning. Not only will the winner receive an imaginary toilet paper crown, they will win the special honour of deciding the topic for the 100th Drabble Contest. A special good luck wish to this week's newcomers. It's good to see the contest is still attracting new players.
For any casual passers-by reading this thread, please take the trouble to vote. The Drabbles aren't long. It will take you no time to read, and your vote could make someone's day.
For contestants, DON'T VOTE FOR YOURSELVES! Anyone caught voting for themselves will be spun around and receive an interdiction.
01 - Not T.j (AKA Simoof) - One Pun Too Far.
The South African pilot asked: "Why does nobody know what to call a tree with a ? Because its a Mister-Tree."
Nobody laughed. Anywhere. Ever.
The Bolivian passenger waited a while before speaking.
"That's why you've been requested." interrupted the pilot.
The Bolivian was still waiting to speak.
"The intergalactic archivers of dialects are really upset with you. George Lucas too."
"I'm not Bolivian!"
"What??" asked the suprised pilot.
"I'm bovine"
"Sorry mam"
"It's sir"
The Israeli judge entered "Now you know this comes from a place of love, don't you?"
The bovine replied "What place of love? Your vajayjay?"
02 - Listeri69 - Sooner or later the long arm of the law is going to go right up your backside......
'O. Wattana? You say your from Siam?' The imperial spoke softly
The passenger was safe for now. Yes 'O. Wattana, Siam, That's Bigger Siam'
Wattana hit his voice changer 'Demo mode engaged' '
Great, Wattana thought, just what i need.
The Imperial inspector looked at his notes
'you don't sound like your from Bigger Siam, you sound Scandanavian, Swedish.'
'I swear I was born in chukeinglagoe' every word becoming a different accent
'My...Ship...Was...Interdicted...and...shot...at'
'our ships only interdict when illegal goods are found' another voice announced in Swahili
'Sir we've found Mr Tree the games up'
03 - Frank - A Pun Further Than a Pun Too Far
The security guard was taking some credit bonds to the station commander's safe. He didn't realise he was being followed until it was too late. He didn't turn around. He just picked up more and more speed, until he was running down the corridor.
He was grabbed by the shoulders and spun around. The kick he got in his crotch was badly executed. It was the pirate's shin that caused all the damage.
Doubled in agony, he squealed "Why did you do that?"
The pirate pointed a blaster in his face and replied with a smile "That was an interdiction."
04 - KalRyper - D is for ...
Two adjudicators, shrouded in shadow, observerd the woman with dreadlocks.
"Yo! Furry Lance, park on bay seventeen."
"Erm, roger that control."
"Hey! Big Anna, plant your belly on number five. Cargo lifters are waiting for ya, sweet cheeks."
"Confirmed, pad five."
"Uh oh," one of the monitors said, spotting the next ship coming in.
The sidewinder slowed just inside the entrance.
The woman's voice was uncertain, "Hiya Si... wine..." she coughed, "Swine! Shift yer butt to bay thirty, you blocking everyone."
"Yes ma'am. Sorry ma'am."
From the shadows came, "She can't say the letter 'd', it's not in her diction."
05 - Galactic Midden - Free Willy... well he was until incarceration
The cameraman nodded once and the green live broadcast light flashed on.
Willy winked out his winning smile and boasted, "I'm a truly nefarious scoundrel with fifty evasions from fifty warrants. I'm famous!"
"Well, yes everyone knows that" said Dim Brightly, Galcast-1's top field investigator cracking a sly grin, "but it's not why we're aboard, broadcasting live, orbiting Halcho-4! Now tell us about the Golden Shower incident?"
Caught in a trap Willy stammered, staring worriedly at Brightly.
"I eh, I altered no asteroid trajectories!" came the high pitched response.
An escape reticule appeared then, momentarily before Willy's evasion record disappeared.
06 - {SAS}Stalker - What a marmalade!
Doc's brain, puddled by a two hour session of onionhead nearly missed the big blue wobbly thing as it danced randomly across his holographic HUD.
"Left a bit, right a bit, leffffftt a bit………..ahh ball......erinas" ... throttle to zero.
“Await cargo scan Commander…..” came cracking over the radio
“What on earth are you carrying Commander?” came next
“Marmalade and Jam” replied a sheepish Docstone.
“Hmm…. drop 15 tonnes of jam and 15 tonnes of marmalade”
Doc clicked eject whilst initiating frameshift. The pirate, collecting his spoils was left to wonder what the difference between marmalade and jam actually was…..
07 - DocStone - The blood of the Di Stéfanos
He claimed he could trace his gene-line back to the greats, that he had the blood of legends flowing through his veins. No matter the truth, he played like he did. He was the greatest footballer the galaxy had ever seen and was worth every credit of the record breaking fee paid by Achenar’s top team.
16,000,000,000 credits. Makes a man a tasty target. Which was why he found himself looking at the wrong end of a pirate’s blaster after his ship was boarded.
“Signing for AC Capitol are we?” the Pirate sneered. “I’m more an Inter Diction fan myself……”
08 - dobbo - Cockpit Time
"To the left a tad! No, not that much!"
The soft, velvety tones of Sandra had an edge that Thomas, her
husband, hadn't heard before.
"Swivel clockwise. Now down," Sandra added, her voice getting
shriller. "Now anti-clockwise. Yes! Yes! That's the
spot. Keep it there. Thrust. Thrust harder!"
"Do you two have to be so loud while having zero-g sex?" Kevin, their
passenger, asked, pointing his head into the cockpit of the Cobra.
"We're not having sex!" Thomas exclaimed.
"We're being interdicted by the Fed," Sandra added crossly. "And he
can't get this bird lined up with the escape reticule."
09 - MrMogadon - A Family Business: Interdiction Aftermath
He was 14 hours into an 8 hour sortie.
The normally compliant flight-suit chaffed, raising uncomfortable welts in intimate nooks and crannies.
Movement was painful. The cockpit smelled fungal; despite the air-scrubbers.
His face burned red at the memory of the pirate’s voice demanding he handover his cargo after unceremoniously dumping him out of super-cruise.
Worse, he meekly acquiesced.
But, worst of all, was that he cried and pleaded for his life, like a child.
The pirate called him Pathetic.
How could he go home to his father after that?
So, on he flew. Away from shame. Away from home.
10 - Missileman - My First Interdiction
'Interdiction detected'
'oh what's this then I'll just slow down'
'Zero Throttle, Submitting'
'I want it all, I want it now...'
'Hang on I have no idea what I'm doing here'
'Under Attack'
'oh #$#($# erm how do I put power in the shields again....wow that's a big ship'
'Shields offline'
'ok ok right shield boosters I have them... No effect...What I need shields in order to use them?...'
'Hull at 50%'
'ok ok ok don't panic...er....boost....
'insufficient energy in capacitor'
'Oh I moved all the power out of the engines'
'Canopy Breached'
'Please stop shooting..... BOOM'
11 - Ian Phillips - Final Interdiction
They heard the screams first.
A high pitched whistle that rode on a rumbling growl of hot wind.
Then a streak crossed the sky trailing superheated air behind, and everything stopped as the sound of an enormous crash rolled over them.
Sirens filled the shocked silence as flashing beacons converged on the crash site.
Finding it the following morning was easy, they just followed the path of scorched earth across the fields.
Tramping along the burnt trail they eventually began to see signs that they were getting close when the police stopped them.
"Sorry kids, the area is under interdiction"
12 - Edith_The_Hutt - President Hasley
"Welcome to the bridge Madam President. As you can see we're currently in Supercruise from the system primary and will arrive at Clarke's World in approximately-"
The FNS Bowman shuddered and lurched clockwise. Claxons whined, President Hasley's magboots kept her feet in place and she recovered her posture while Captain Singh looked at his screens in disbelief.
"How in Sol? The scanners showed nothing with the power to interdict a capital ship-"
A grey, angular vessel drifted across the main view screen.
"Captain Singh," announced the President, "I'd like to introduce the individuals I *really* came out here to meet"
13 - Erik Marcaigh - Mum Always Said to Wear Clean Undies
DocStone and Simoof leapt into existence orbiting Tyn, a brown dwarf in a dark system. Vying for position, their target was entering the asteroid belt.
...
"Seamus! We have two contacts. Resolving... Asp and Fer-de-Lance, two bounty hunters!"
"I'll tear them out of my sky. They're pulling us out of supercruise, and I'm going to let them have it."
...
The three ships dropped into normal space, DocStone opening a channel to Simoof.
"Back off! This one's mine!"
"Not happening, Doc," responded Simoof as he strafed the Orca.
The Orca released hell from her undercarraige, engulfing the Fer-de-Lance with missiles.
Simoof sharted.
14 - Splendour - End of his Tether
The cobra twisted and writhed on the end of the interdiction tether like a swordfish, pulling the aging viper left and right, up and down.
The viper’s cockpit flooded with orange light as the ships pulled up hard. “He's not that mad, surely...”
A great juddering, metal wrenching jolt threw the ships out of supercruise as they ran straight into the gravity well of the star. The Viper, long past its retirement date, groaned and screamed like a metal banshee. The canopy disintegrated into a thousand glittering shards that rushed out towards the Cobra, taking with them the ship's atmosphere.
15 - Cmdr Ig - Artifact Unkown
Noises fluttered like bats in the darkness, sounds of sumptuous susserations sparkling like stars to my ears. It should have been quiet, it should have been dead and empty. At most it should have been pure noise.
It wasn't.
No radar blips, silent engines, cranked up volume. Structure in the soundscape. Not whispers, not voices. Ghosts of regularity. One of Jupiter's cousins hung distant above my canopy, blotting out the stars. The signal, such that it was, was closer.
The faintest flash of light, seen or unseen? I must approach, hunting. More structure, less noise. There, a contact.
Artifact, unknown.
16 - CdrTwisted - The Science of Interdiction
Shammy frowned.
"So we're going faster than light. But somehow my interdictor sends out an energy stream that goes faster? Why can't I just go faster?"
The lecturer glared. "No more questions."
Franklin whispered: "The energy stream is a myth. It's all sub-ether computer code."
"Like my scanner?"
Frank nodded. "All FSDs are hackable. The engineers just cover it up because they hate the idea coders got one over on them. The tether is just window-dressing. The interdictor makes a sub-ether link, then the code follows through."
Shammy still looked baffled, then understanding dawned.
"Oohhh! It's like a sub-ether shart."
17 - Acaelus Thorn - Rinse and repeat...
Interdict…scan…shields…limpet…drones…
Interdict…scan…super-cruise…
A simple “rinse and repeat” process. His new Asp afforded him large cargo-hold and fire-superiority. He locked-onto his next target, Lakon Type-9; seldom profitable--relying on bulk.
Interdict-far more maneuverable than the target, it was easy to drop.
Scan-impossible! He couldn’t believe his eyes…400T of Painite! He finally struck-it rich!
Shields-he took too long in his excitement. The shields dropped, but only just as the Type-9 cruised away.
Interdict-not getting away! Almost dropped him again when the alarms blared—getting interdicted himself! Failed avoidance—facing down an Anaconda.
Comms-“Interdicted your interdiction...thank you for taking the bait, Pirate.”
Remlock-...
18 - Telakin - Going for the big fish
Nearly two days now. The route had looked promising but there were not nearly as many ships passing by as he had expected. Rumors about skipping supercruise in a wing.
There - a T9 - finally he struck gold. He fired up the interdictor on his well-worn Cobra and targeted its big behind.
A short struggle and they both dropped to normal space. His view was filled with the T-9, no time to reverse. "EJECT!"
-----
"Hey Francis, why did we drop supercruise? "
"Don't know, there's nothing on the radar. Fire her up again, these performance enhancers are in dire need in Lave."
19 - Clef_Hanger - Life's little interdiction
Things changed.
Completely, immediately and forever.
Before, she had been a bounty-hunter. Plying her trade throughout the slowly expanding sphere
of humanity spreading throughout the galaxy.
Sometimes in distant systems, obscure outposts, or mining colonies.
Sometimes in more rural areas and sometimes even in the densest metropolis.
And she was good, dispatching all before her with a price on their heads, taking their lives for the
good of her bank balance without a second thought.
But all that changed.
Discomfort. Pain. Disorientation. Agony. Sweaty relief.
Now she would gladly lay down her own life without hesitation.
Her daughter had arrived.
20 - insanephoton - Ball Games
Do you ever wonder why some ship types get stopped more than others. Perhaps you think the authorities use sophisticated algorithms to choose who to stop. Maybe they do, but how do the cops apply it in practice?
They play 'Interdiction Snooker'. It's based on the ancient bar game. Ship types are assigned a colour and following the rules of snooker, officers compete to see who can make the highest break. Stopping a ship that isn't on the list will end the break. Anything that gets away counts as a foul shot. Just hope your ship isn't red or black.
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