Goths in Space

When she had been an undergraduate at Earth University her fellow students had mocked her choice of extra-solar-geography degree as "colouring in stars and planets". Now a distinguished astro-geology professor she was one of the first to breathe the air on freshly-terraformed planets. In their faces.

Repairing the water reprocessing system at the settler colony had taken its toll on her protective clothing, and she was conscious of the stares her dishevelled clothing was attracting. "Any of you dare wolf-whistle at me," she whispered to herself, "and I'll smack you silly with my sonic-monkey-wrench."

He inched up the stairwell, tensed for combat, feeling something... new. For the first time in his life he felt... apprehension? Or was it more? Was it... fear? The Spider waited at the top of the stair. She may be cloned from him, but she was so much more. She was a product of a new era, of new technologies. She was faster, more graceful, the perfection of his genes realised. As she readied herself, knowing her prey was walking into her web, she ensured everything from her posture to her appearance was calculated to give her the edge. She was more than the sum of her parts: she was perfect.

For decades now he had slept, but to him mere hours had passed. Emerging from cryo-storage the neural link downloaded the lost years directly into his mind, and he knew at once what they had done. They had sampled his genes, and over those years, made a weapon to match his own ability. With a mental trigger, the combat techniques were accessed and loaded from the mainframe, and he made his way to the armoury. He would show them he was far from obsolete.

Finally her zero-point energy generation experiments had yielded results, achieving the delicate balance of particle/anti-particle annihilation reactions at cryogenic temperatures to stop the Tribbles multiplying too quickly.

As the xeno-botanist interpreted the readings on her tricorder she couldn't help but smirk to herself, "it's life, Kim, but not as we know it!"

Repairing the malfunctioning ship's gravity generators was becoming something of a priority.

I told you not to look down. Pull yourself together, stop procrastinating and pass me the grappling hook launcher. We've got a long way to climb before we reach the entrance to the fortress' ventilation ducts.