Flyn chuckled, his mind still giddy from the key. “Explosives? Qula now is not the time for silly jokes.”

“You think I’d joke about this?” Qula said, turning to him indignantly. “Who would joke about this?”

Flyn shook his head. “Sorry, I was kind of hoping you were.” He stood up from the couch, trying to ignore the feeling of euphoria of his recent key usage. He walked over to Qula. “So what’s the situation?”

“The drones Qula deep bribed so expertly are not at fault here. It seems there were unaffected drones mixed in with the bribed one’s, specifically to counter such an assault. ” His ship’s ai answered.

“Tricky little buggers they are.” Qula muttered to herself. She clenched her teeth, frustrated. Her hands disappeared in a blur as Qula began tapping, typing, scrolling and otherwise interacting with the devices in front of her. After a while she smiled. “This should break them though.” She said as she finished the last of her inputs. A series of loud crashes resounded from the cargo space. “Qula! Your drones are under attack!” The ship announced.

She grinned. “I know.”

The racket quickly quieted down. “Now only my drones are left!” She said triumphantly. “I’m having them unload the explosives right now.”

“Wait.” Flyn said, an idea forming in his head. “Don’t remove them just yet.”

“What? Are you kidding me?! We need to get these off the ship as soon as possible.”

“Can you tell me what kind of explosives they are?” He asked, ignoring Qula completely.

“The explosives consist of dozens of boxes of pure Skultrite each is armed with a detonator.”

Flyn’s eyes lit up. Skultrite fetched an incredibly handsome price if you knew who to sell it to. “Can we disarm the detonator?”

“The detonator is set to release a chemical called Baku, which interacts with the Ritsu shell of the Skulltrite, releasing the energy stored within the Skulltrite crystals all at once. To disarm them you need to remove the Baku in each of the detonators.”

“Thanks, Qula can yo-”

“Wait,” his ship’s ai interrupted. “If you don’t disarm all of the detonators” The ship stopped.

“Then what?” Flyn asked impatiently.

“Then we’ll all have a blast!” The ship said, sounding awfully smug for an emotionless ai.

“Really now?”

“Oh? Are you triggered? Let’s hope the detonators won’t be!” His ai continued. “Hey what’s the past tense of bing? Bang!”

“Are you done?” Flyn asked, annoyed.

“Let’s turn that combustion combustoff!”

Flyn sighed as he turned back towards Qula. “Qula can you set the drones to detonate the bombs, I’ll just be over here, hoping I can overdose on keys.”

“Don’t overdo it though, you might keyll yourself!” The ai said.

Qula sighed as well, then began to work. This action required far less inputs than before and within a few minutes she was done typing.

“Qula just made a dedetonator program!” The ai announced gleefully.

Qula cocked her head at Flyn. “What in the name of Quireneas is wrong with it?”

Flyn sighed. “Well I once subscribed to one of those shady joke book maillists. My ship has access to my emails. And well, one thing led to another and here we are.”

“So your ai randomly spouts awful jokes?”

Flyn nodded.

“That sounds like an awful bother, but at least it,” she paused, waiting for Flyn to look at her. “defused the situation prettty well!”

And as the ship made its way off the planet, Flyn wished the explosives had just gone off. At least a fiery death seemed less torment than these ill-timed jokes.