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The Final Frontiermen

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 10:31 am
by PeZook
I came up with the idea thanks to stuff, and it just couldn't stay inside. Behold...a scene!

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The furnace blew heat and flame into the locomotive's cab, as John and his partner shovelled coal into the raging inferno. The train was blazing forward, spewing steam and smoke, across the desolate silved and gray lunar landscape.

"Meteorite!", they heard a message beamed over the radio from the observatory car, "Five point two klicks and closing!"

John tapped Pete's shoulder and they pressed their helmets together to talk, "Quickly! We need more steam if we are to outrun it!"

Pete nodded and got to work. The furnace eagerly accepted the coal, and the boiler got even hotter. They both felt the locomotive shake and shiver with power. John opened the main valve further, and the iron space grizzly leapt forward, picking up speed.

"Three clicks! Incoming!", yelled the astronomical staff. The meteorite could be seen now, a silver dot in the pitch-black lunar sky, rapidly closing.

"It will miss! It has to! More power, Pete! Get her hot as Hell itself!"

John forgot Pete's radio was damaged, but it didn't matter - Pete could see the meteorite and worked as fast as the Devil himself.

They just barely outran the deadly piece of rock - it smashed into the track right behind the observatory car with a bang they could hear despite the lack of an atmosphere. The slimecube cubs felt it, too, and began slamming into the sides of their livestock cars.

"Good job! We're clear!", John showed a thumbs-up to his partner, who grinned like a maniac in return. He then pointed forwards.

Rows of gleaming solar panels were sticking out over the horizon. They were almost there, and they made good time despite all the hazards - the panels were powering Doorway Farm, a huge slimecube grazing ground that provided food and leather to many of the human colonies in the area.

The train pulled into the farm's only station, greeted by cheers of the gathered workers. John leaped to the platform and was immediately accosted by spacesuit clad residents, thanking him for delivering the cubs.

The celebration only lasted for a short time, before the owner arrived. She almost rode over the crowd on her robot horse, only stopping it at the final moment. John raised his head and looked straight into the visor of her space helmet.

Jenna Watkins, the farm's proprietor, removed her cowboy hat and raised the gold-plated filter, "Well well", she said, "I see you are useful for something after all, John!"

"Hello, Jenna", John grinned in response, "Long time no see."

Re: The Final Frontiermen

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 12:01 pm
by Booted Vulture
Ah. The wild west in sppaaaaace. I See what you did there.

The robotic horses thing reminds me of Terry Pratchett's The Dark Side of the Sun, which also has robot horses, ones with brains that are legally sapient and 'human'.

Re: The Final Frontiermen

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 1:24 pm
by PeZook
These ones eat plutonium feed, or graze on vast radioactive fields bombarded by solar radiation!

Re: The Final Frontiermen

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 4:54 pm
by Siege
I still wonder where the meteor came from. Surely someone hurled it at them?