It's Made of Metal

PART 1

0127 hours (Ship's Clock), September 19, 2552 (Hooters Calendar) / URSCUM cruiser Pinwheel of Oktoberfest, location unknown.

The Pinwheel of Oktoberfest shuddered as her armor took another direct hit. Luckily, it was made of the strongest RecycledAluminum-A, or they would all have been dead by now, thought Captain Frontdor Keys.

The purple warship had barely escaped the fallen planet of Reach and had taken a beating from Covenant forces, then been shaken upside down for lunch money. It was a miracle that they had been able to make the jump into Slurmspace and even more remarkable that they'd not been attacked by Slurms McKenzie, the original party worm.

"Status!" Keys barked. "And who didn't empty the space-john?"

"It's a Covenant fighter, sir. One of those ones with the kickass wings, you know," Replied the tactical officer, Lieutenant Hikkykikowa. Her slanty-slant eyes darkened.

"Tricky bastard must have powered down and slipped past the guard dog, Old Blue."

A humorless grin tugged at Keys' mouth. Hikky-whatever was a skilled tactical officer, utterly ruthless in a fight. She seemed to take the Covie pilot's actions as a personal insult.

"Teach him a lesson, Lieutenant. Maybe about prepositions. Or you could just blow him up. I mean, it's your call, babe," he said. She nodded and tapped a series of orders into her panel--she hit the button with the picture of a Whopper, and then hit the onions button a few times, and finally the fighter squadron one.

A moment later there was radio chatter and what sounded suspiciously like Donkey Kong sound effects as one of the Oktoberfest's C709 Longmember fighters went after the cool-looking Covenant fighter, followed by a cheer as the tiny alien ship exploded into a miniature sun full of broken Voyager memorabilia. Keys almost vomited as a picture of Captain Janeway floated past the viewport. These aliens really were evil.

He wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. They had reverted back to normal, boring space twenty minutes ago. Twenty minutes, and the Covenant patrols had already found them and started shooting.

Keys turned again to the bridge's main viewport, a large transparent bubble slung beneath the Oktoberfest's bow superstructure. He had tried to get the Navy to just call it the front, but they had insisted on bow superstructure; he knew it was part of their plan to make him look like the dumberest captain ever. Right now, a massive pink gas giant called Thresher dominated the fantastic view. One of the Longmember fighters glided past it as it searched for a Greek restaurant.

He absently toyed with the smelly opium pipe he habitually carried, lost in his thoughts about how colorful the stars were. He didn't like slinking around in the shadows of gas giants, for obvious reasons, but had to respect the Covenant for the deadly adversaries that they were. However, he had never feared them. Just kind of decided that there were errands to do when the Covenant showed up.

"Captain," the Asian chick piped up. "Sensors paint a squadron of enemy fighters inbound. Wait, now they're painting something long… hairy… is that mayonnaise? Hey! DAMMIT!"

Keys smiled. That sensor program had taken three million lines of code to write, but it was worth it. Turning that smile upside down, he addressed Hikkykikowa.

"It was just a matter of time, Lieutenant, we can't hide here forever." He said.

The Pinwheel suddenly cleared the gas giant's orbit. Keys had expected to see lots of enemy ships, or a cruiser or something, but was unprepared for the massive object floating between Thresher and its moon, Qbasic. The construct was enormous, a ring-shaped object that shimmered and shined and shoned like an enormous ring-shaped object. The outer surface was metallic. It seemed to be engraved with deep linear equations. Once again, Keys almost vomited. "Cortana," he said. "What is that?"

A twelve-inch tall hologram appeared above a holopad near the Captain's sticky, open issue of "National Geographic: Mating Habits". Cortana--the ship's annoyingly nasal A.I.--yawned as she powered on the ship's long-range nude-beach-looker gear. Lengthy lines of digits scrolled down her holographic body as well as a few attachments advertising fast penis enlargement.

"The ring is about a bazillion kilometers in diameter and, like, five katrillion kilometers thick. Spectroscotosticalous reading is inconcisulous, but it's not made out of any…" she droned on and on. The captain was often aggravated because the URSCUM Navy had programmed Cortana's speech using Fran Drescher's voice.

"Alright, that's great, really, congratulations Cortana. Just condense that long-ass answer into about two sentences for me." There was a ten-minute delay, and then a blue screen of death popped up.

Several hours later, Cortana was back online.

"Okay, Captain. That was a Windows thing. Anyway, here's your answer: this thing's big. We don't know what it's made out of. And it definitely has an atmosphere."

"That was three sentences, you computerized harlot." The captain glared at Cortana, then fired his plastic dart gun at her head. The dart naturally passed right through and butchered a few Grunts who were lounging in the corner for some reason.

After thinking about it over some National Geographic, Captain Keys made his decision: to wake the Master CPO, SPARKPLUG-117.