Stamper Alone

It is generally acknowledged that when one is on an exploding spaceship, the thing to do is to get off it as quickly as possible. Sarah May Raxenpaxerflirk had lost sight of this fact, having rapturously fallen into the tentacles of her one true love Domingo. Mr. Stamper, by contrast, was not distracted. He very calmly keyed in the coordinates for his shuttlecraft, grabbed the entwined squidlings by the first tentacle that came to paw, and shoved them onto the teleport pad. As the pad fired up, Sarah May detached herself from Domingo long enough to realize that the space otter hadn’t joined her. “Hey!” she squeaked. “What-” Then she and Domingo vanished in a spray of teleporter energies.

Mr. Stamper was alone again. He liked it that way. Now he could set about the real job. Mr. Stamper had promised to retrieve the Orb That Should Not Be Named. He was not an otter who failed in his word.

He ran swiftly back to the Shadow Vault. Panicky aliens ran past him, and several times he had to switch to different corridors because the one he wanted had exploded in fire. Just as he reached the Vault, the lights around him flickered and died. Mr. Stamper almost smiled as he produced a flashlight from a pocket on his belt. This was perfect.

Ordinarily it would’ve taken months to assemble the technology necessary to hack the Vault’s extra-dimensional pocket security system. But that pocket was maintained by Mark V Tardisian Flux Generators, the same ones that powered the lights. When those generators failed, the pocket collapsed right back into realspace. And so,��when Mr. Stamper shoved the Vault door open, he saw the Orb lying conveniently��on the floor in front of him.

It was round and shiny, as Orbs are wont to be, and had a faint outline of a stylized purple Whangdoodle in its center. Mr. Stamper did not pause to contemplate its��ethereal beauty. He snatched it up from the floor and bolted. Now, he just needed to get��back to the sickbay teleporters-

Then he saw it. He had just rounded on a corridor with a long viewscreen that looked out on open space. A stark warship floated by, bristling with all sorts of deadly weapons systems with which it was tearing the��Charlotte’s Moon��apart. One of those weapons systems had caught Mr. Stamper’s attention. He recognized it instantly. It was a mass driver, a device used to hurl asteroids from orbit��at a defenseless planet, usually with devastating results. Mr. Stamper had never seen it in action himself, but he had reviewed videos, reviewed them over and over again. He knew that weapon. He knew that��ship.��That ship had taken his only love.

He forgot all about the Orb��he was carrying, all about Sarah May and Constance the angel, all about his mission.

It was payback time.