All credits to the text on this page to Yahtzee and AddictingGames.
[]
In the aftermath of the Last War, the Sectards mount a relentless onslaught upon Planet Lambcrust, driven by their frenzied greed for the power of the Ark Gems. Only Admiral Starbone and the Lambcrust Defense Fleet remain to hold them at bay in a desperate battle of attrition.
His son, ace pilot Jake Starbone, has thoughts only of avenging the beautiful Princess Hamflute, unaware that she is still alive, a prisoner of his own side in Scrapeflaps Penal Colony. There, she has fallen prey to the manipulations of Sperglord Cumblast, who obsessively pursues his lifelong mission to reinstate the Order of Ark Assassins.
Meanwhile, local ponce Yahtzee Croshaw has lost his hat. Fortunately, random objects are falling from the sky, some of which may be hats.
Hill ride story 1[]
I first met Princess Hamflute when I came home from the Academy during the half-term holidays. Her father was in a meeting with my father, so when I crested the faeces-spattered hills of our family's farmland, I saw her playing in the garden.
We were just kids back then. She, the mischievous, apple-cheeked, tomboy daughter of royalty. Me, a spotty trainee pilot in coke-bottle glasses, with sticky-out teeth and a hunched back and a complexion like porridge dripping off a stucco ceiling and features arranged with such hideousness by the cruel brush of an insane creator that no-one could stand to be in my presence for even a second without their stomach lining violently turning inside-out.
She saw me approaching, and our eyes met. I waved, like the stupid little asshole that I was, back when I could actually have the gall to think I could go around in the open being so utterly contemptible and, as I established earlier, wretchedly ugly. But she smiled, and waved back.
Such a small gesture, but a deeply significant one, because it meant she let go of the handlebars of her motorbike, and consequently lost her balance and skidded face-down across fourteen yards of gravel driveway. How we laughed. I laughed first, and then, after six months of reconstructive surgery, she laughed as well. When the doctors told her they'd managed to save a solid 78% of her brain.
She was never far from my thoughts after that, and I met her again one last time just after the war started. I couldn't believe she specifically asked to see me, one on one, alone; just me, every other pilot, and all their wingmen and engineering staff, for a discreet private meeting in the Academy conference hall.
Then, as she stood behind the podium on the main stage and I met her gaze through a pair of powerful opera glasses, we talked of everything and nothing. She gave me encouragement for the battle ahead. I made a little joke about her lazy eye, and received a smattering of that special kind of applause where people clap their faces instead of their other hand.
It was the last time I ever saw her alive. The things she said to me - to me! - will be forever burned into my memory. 'Shush.' 'Excuse me, could you be quiet please.' 'Could someone get that man to stop loudly agreeing with me, I'm trying to give a speech.' Such simple, noble, graceful sentiments, and so typical of her lovely character.
Anyway, she's dead, now. And I vow not to rest until one Sectard has died for every ten thousand of her that fell.
Hill ride story 2[]
Under the heated lights of Planet Lambcrust's global media network, Admiral Starbone inhaled once, then launched into the speech that would buy his fleet another twenty-four hours in the air, and another twenty-four hours of defense against the encroaching Sectards.
'High above us,' he intoned, his gaze lowered and his hands clasped before him, 'the Sectards mean to lay our planet to waste, in jealous pursuit of the Ark Gems that rightfully belong to our people. And now, with my fighting men risking death to protect you even as we speak, I am asked to once again come here and justify our continued survival.'
'Admiral Starbone,' said Jerk Nasto, of the Lambcrust Government Treasury, in his usual oily tones. 'No-one is arguing against survival. We merely wonder, if the Ark Gems are all the Sectards desire, if it would not be more economical to simply hand them over?'
Admiral Starbone's eyelid twitched patriotically, but he kept his jaw straight and defiant. 'I cannot bear to even imagine the horrors the Sectards could commit with the power of the Ark Gems in their grasp.'
Nasto twirled the moustache he would have twirled had he had one. 'What power? All they've ever done is emit a small amount of heat. And it's not like we even use them for anything. I think the King uses one to keep his toilet seat warm and the rest are in storage.'
'The power of the Ark Gems may be beyond our understanding,' continued Admiral Starbone. 'But a force as powerful and nefarious as the Sectards-'
'Yes, that was the other thing,' interjected Nasto sneeringly, producing some reports. 'You keep saying the Sectards are a vastly superior force, but our own studies indicate that they are almost laughably inadequate. Their ships are mainly constructed from repurposed flat-pack furniture, which will almost certainly burn up in the atmosphere even if they did get past the Defense Fleet.
'Furthermore, we have confirmed reports of a Sectard battleship being successfully repelled by, quote, 'calling them up and telling them their mums want them to come home and are very cross'. The funding allocated for the battle was then used by our victorious ships to take everyone to Tijuana for the weekend and add another extension to Admiral Starbone's summer house-'
'FREEDOM,' barked Admiral Starbone, smashing his fist upon the podium. A great cheer rose up from the audience. Nasto immediately withered, apologised, and handed over all his money and clothing.