[LMB] The Script From Hell Part III

[Crystal Carroll]

Part III once again from Diane's post in 2000

OK, everybody ready for part III?

<waits until screams for mercy and groans of pain have died down>

When we last left Our Heroes, Miles had just piloted a broken-down
lightflyer through a stargate to an Unknown Destination.....

Did I mention that it was made *very* clear-- via more frantic
Elena-yammering-- that Miles didn't know what destination this "gate"
was set for?  And-- this time via Miles-- that the pursuit ships weren't
jump-capable?

So, they pop out of the Stargate  and into space.   And find that there
are *no* stars on the visi-screen (or whatever they called it; I seem to
keep wanting to make this a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy story).

But there is a ship.

A Dendarii light cruiser, to be exact.  Miles & Co have jumped,
completely by accident, into the Void!!!

The Cruiser (I *think* they kept the name _Ariel_) hails them, says
they're not welcome and to prepare to be boarded.

The next bit, where Miles and Co take over the ship, is the most
accurate steal from the *real* story in the whole damn script.  The
boarding party arrives, they get jumped, Miles & Co move through the
hatch, and somehow make their way through the ship (memory blurs... but
I think they yelled as they charged through the doorways; this lot
would)  to the control cabin. (No, I don't know how they knew where the
control cabin was.)

Where they catch the drop on the captain.

Who is Baz Jesek.   And his navigator is Auson.    Bel Thorne is nowhere
to be found, even by inference.

Oh, I should mention that the ship has Ancient Runes on the walls in the
corridors that we are told are *identical* to those on the Worldship.
And Baz & Auson are tatooed. And wearing hooded robes. And all that
malarky.

Miles then attempts to convince Jesek that the threesom are on the
Dendarii's side and asks to be Taken To Your Leader. (Yes, he actually
does say that, or something close enough to make no difference.) Baz's
major objection to this is that the Dendarii People's leaders (and a
large chunk of their population) live in a Secret Location that no one
but the Dendarii has ever succeded in finding, and he's afraid Miles is
just trying to trick him into revealing its location.  (Now, why would a
Dendarii, faced with 3 people from the planet that tried to steal the
Artifact and wipe them out 20 years ago, and has been at war with them
ever since, think that?  What an *unreasonable* person Baz is!)

But Miles convinces him anyway; the details of how he does it have
escaped me.

So they fly off, into the Void, and eventually arrive at the Dendarii
Base.

Which is a giant space station, composed entirely of welded-together
spaceships. (IMHO, this bit is stolen from _The Zero Stone_, by Andre
Norton; the Mafia-equivalent villains had a hideout like that.)  They
dock, and Baz escorts the threesome through the space station, which is
full of robed-and-tatooed F/r/e/m/e/n/ Dendarii men, women and children.

Their journey leads through a market we promptly renamed the Souk, as it
sounds like it was stolen straight out of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ and
then given a thin SF coating (as in, across from the communal kitchen
sending out tantalizing meat odors is a spacesuit repair booth; the
booth selling hand-embroidered patchwork robes is next to one selling
rat bars, etc.).  As with the non-library, the scriptwriter points out
that the Souk, etc., are to make it clear that the Dendarii are a
"primitive, backwards" people, unlike the technologically advanced
Bayaarns.

Anyway, Baz leads them into yet another cathedral-like structure which
is the center of Dendarii political/religious life.  There they meet
*ta-dah!* the blind-and-now-mystic Ty Kung, who decides he can trust
them and takes them through a secret door--

--into the dome from _Silent Running_.  Complete with clear glass top
(which nobody noticed when they were approaching the space station),
running stream, trees, plants, small animals, birds...

This, it turns out, is the Holy of Holies of the Dendarii.  Only the
most trusted, most high-ranking leaders are allowed in.  Ky leads them
to a Stela in the middle of the garden, and Miles, in yet another of his
*amazing* bouts if Inspiration, realizes that the shallow depression in
the top is the *exact* size and shape of the book his Da gave him back
on Bayaar!!!!

So, of course, he plops it in.

And a holoprojection appears above the book.

The story it tells can be summarized thus: Many millenia ago, the people
of Earth realized their world was about to blow up.  So they built a
bunch of massive Worldships and escaped on them for other planets.
(Picture of last Worldship leaving Earth, and Earth exploding into
little bits -a la- Alderaan.)  The Dendari were the last ship to leave
Earth, for unspecified reasons linked to the fact that they possessed
the Artifact.

This bit of infodump is barely over when Miles, glancing up at the dome
(which, BTW, is located on the "top" of the space station) sees SERG
VORBARRA'S BATTLE CRUISERS CLOSING WITH THE SPACE STATION!!!!!

I may be misremembering, but I *think* Serg broadcasts one of those
"Give me Dorothy or I'll destroy the Emerald City" sort of threats--
only about Miles, of course.  The Dendarii refuse and tell Miles & Co to
get the hell off the space station and retreive the Artifact; they'll
hold off the .

Of course, before they can do that, Serg and his hundreds (or was that
thousands) of Armsmen arrive and begin battling their way through the
space station, looking for Miles.

So their trip to the loading dock (presumably a different one than Serg
used) involves firefights through the corridors and a prolongue chase
scene in the Souk, during which Miles sets loose "a herd of alien cows,
goats, sheep and pigs" from their corral (wouldn't BioControl Warden
Helva have *fits* in this place?) and sends them stampeding down the
Souk's aisles towards the Armsmen and, a little later, is thrown across
the corridor (without any apparent injury) from a place selling
second-hand O2 cannisters into a booth selling (as nearly as I can
remember) pocket mines, and lobs one of the latter at the Armsmen,
blowing them (and, presumably, all the full O2 cannisters) to
smithereens.

I think Elena gets to bean an Armsman with the equivalent of a
flowerpot, (a clay waterjug?) but I could be wrong.

So, they finally reach the loading dock, and head for the Phoenix. (No,
they never tell us how the Phoenix got there.  Maybe Baz hauled it
piggyback on the Ariel the whole way, like a remora hitching a ride on a
shark.)

As they get half-way across the space, Vorbarra Armsmen appear. Bothari
tells Miles & Elena to get to the ship; he'll hold off the dozen or so
bad guys while they escape.  Elena protests, and Bothari (in a scene
that I'm sure is *supposed* to be very touching) tells her he's trusting
her to Take Care Of Miles; it's her turn to play bodyguard.

Yes, Bothari has finally realized that Women Are People Too and Elena is
good soldier-material.  He passes the torch with some sickening line
about "Take my honor..." <gag>, then charges into battle against the
mass of heavily armed bad guys.

Miles and Elena, instead of using the time he's buying them to get the
hell away, stand in the doorway of the Phoenix, watching, until he
actually falls down, dead.  *Then* they rush to the control cabin and
take off.

For some reason, Serg's multiple battleships don't blow the small,
unarmed, unarmoured lightflyer to molecules.  It gets away.

Following the directions given them by  Ky Tung, they fly through the
Void until, at its very center, they come to a giant gas cloud, which
orbits around a burned-out cinder of a star.

The Worldship is somewhere in the cloud.  Girding their loins, they
plunge into the opaque, swirling, multicolored mass.....

Next: The Final Showdown with Serg on the Worldship!!!!

Diane E

Everyone still conscious?  This is the last lap.

But first, I forgot to mention that, back in the Dome,Baz told Miles the
Artifact is one of those Mystic Items that can read a man's soul, judge
his motives, etc, etc, and respond accordingly.

I find that my memory of this bit is extremely blurry (probably because
it was about 2am when we finished and I'm a morning person) so this part
will be a lot sketchier than the previous three.

See previous comments about unintentional artistic license.   Probably I
didn't get any of the dialog exact (except that one line of Bothari's
which is branded in my brain) but it's the general content.

So let's get this over with:

The Phoenix plunges into the swirling space-dust cloud. Down, down,
down... to where the Worldship has apparently been in stable orbit
around the burned-out star for 20 years.

They board the ship, which has (of course) a tomb-like atmosphere.
There's no one on board except themselves, and their footsteps echo
through the dusty corridors (strewn with the occasional charred
skeleton) as they make their way to the central temple-chamber.

They reach the giant doors seen in the opening battle scene, and push
them open.

Inside we see (apart, one assumes, from a *lot* of charred, skeletal
corpses) a big room with an altar on one end.  And in the center of the
altar, in a cone of light (possibly hovering slightly *above* the altar,
you know the way these Mystic Artifacts are) is a stone disc about a
foot across and an inch or so thick, heavily engraved with yet more
Mystic Runes.

Miles & Elena start down the center aisle, and Miles starts to reach for
the Artifact--

--and (big surprise!) Serg and his Armsmen suddenly appears in the
doorway.  Serg says something like "Hands off! Those fools stopped me
from getting the Artifact 20 years ago, but you, you wimpy mutant scum,
will not stop me from getting it *now*!"

Miles, of course, grabs the Artifact from the altar, and is promptly
enveloped in a Mystic Glow.

Serg's Armsmen grab Elena.  Serg grabs the Artifact and is also
enveloped in the Glow.

Serg says, "Give up, mutant!  You can't win!"

Miles says, "Never!"

They struggle for mental control of the Artifact.  Miles realizes
somehow (there was some lame explanation of how, but I don't remember
what it was) that 1) if he lets Serg have the Artifact, Serg will end up
Ruling The Universe and 2) if he keeps fighting Serg for control, the
building power of the Artifact will destroy both of them, the Worldship,
and everybody on board.

Miles considers this, and decided that, if his and Elena's deaths will
Save the Galaxy from Serg, that's a fair price to pay!

As he makes the Decision, Miles senses a shift in the Force-- I mean the
Artifact!  He has made the Right Choice and the Artifact is responding
to his Courage and Determination.

The Mystic Glow flares, Serg and Miles are surrounded in blinding white
light...

...and when it fades, Serg is nowhere to be seen and Miles is clutching
the Artifact.

Either the Armsmen flee in terror, or the Mystic Light wiped them out, I
don't recall which.  But they don't bother Our Heroes any more, that's
for sure.

Elena says, "Oh, Miles, you did it!", or something like that.

They head back to the Dendarii Home Base.  I don't remember them
bringing the Artifact with them, but they might have.

Epilogue--

An observation deck on Dendarii Home Base. (The description is
*remarkably* close to the observation lounge on the mine processing
station in the real book.)

Miles and Elena are standing at a giant viewing window, staring out at
the ragtag fugitive-- I mean, the glittering *Dendarii* fleet, filling
the space around the station.

There's a bit of "We did it! We really stopped Serg! The Dendarii are
safe!" dialog.  Then Elena asks Miles if he's going back to Bayaar or
staying with the Dendarii.

Miles says he has to go back; someone has to get the Bayaarn Empire back
on the Right Track, now that Serg is gone.  "I'm sure we can do it if we
try, Elena."

"We, Miles?  You mean....?"

"I love you, Elena.  I have from the moment I met you! Marry Me!"

"Oh, *Miles*!"

Clinch. They kiss.

Fade to black.

Roll credits.

Diane E Bujold Junkie & Part-Time Pusher "Just read one."
gryphon at execpc.com