The Great Assembly part 2

Captain’s log supplemental.

My engineers nearly started a riot when Admiral Abu conveyed the message that we are not going to continue the build the star ship. I was pretty pissed off too after so much hard work to a space ship together…

Admiral Abu brought us the "good" news that at half of our intended budget, the Chinese are going to sell us the PLAAF Xinjiang, one of their ‘geriatric’ Dongfan class starships. At least it comes with the the latest halal-food synthesizer. Chef will be pleased. The word at HQ is that a free space tour for Admiral Abu, our dear Prime Minister and their families on board the PLAAF's latest warp 5 starship clinched the deal.

Well they could have fooled the others by using the word ‘geriatric’, but my English is not that bad. It just means ‘old’. The Dongfan class ships were the first attempt by Cherry Aeronautics when they tried to copy the NX class starships. As with all Cherry knock-offs the vessel looks authentic, but only on the outside. When it goes to warp 2, the captain’s seat fells like its attached to a blender.

What could we do? We all signed the Aku Janji agreement when we were asked to join this project. So our creaking excuse of a starship now sits in Jiuquan spacedock waiting to be brought back to Kuah Space Port in Langkawi for commissioning by the Prime Minister's wife. Fingers crossed, her bottle of grape juice won't make a dent in the hull.

My latest order from Admiral Abu is to assemble a crew to fly the geriatric Xinjiang, now renamed KDA Mahathir. He specifically asked me to make sure that the team will reflect “the harmony of our society” and the priority should be given to those who are on the Unemployed Graduate Database.

I have asked the registration department to prepare a list of possible candidates and as usual, they are not as efficient as I would expect.

Ali out.