A Return to (In)sanity

[Captain Hesperus]

2353 hours.
Soladies High Orbital station, Inbound Traffic Control.

Kabden slumped down in the chair next to his shift partner, Orvide. The birdman glanced at the human briefly, his amber eyes still and impassive. Kabden took a long slug from his can of Red Bill and shuddered as the concentrated caffeine thundered into his system. He really hated the late watch. The only traffic was local shuttles ferrying spacers back and forth from the pleasures 'dirt-side' and the rare heavy transport ship or Quirium transporter ponderously returning to the station to offload its cargo. Nothing ever happened on the late shift.

Except for tonight. As Kabden shuffled his backside into the purposely-uncomfortable seat, the long range scanners detected an incoming contact. At first glance at the scan diagnostic, Kabden thought it was just a rogue asteroid, destined to scud through space until it struck a planet, moon or sun. If it was very unlucky, it might even end up filling up a miner's cargo hold. But there was something about its course, an erratic, shaky trajectory more akin to a ship in distress than an unpowered celestial object. On a whim, Kabden fired up the active scanning array and pinged the unidentified object. The scan would take a while, since the array would have to send out a signal then wait for it to return. He waited, ten minutes, twenty. All the time, the object drew closer. Then the array returned a result. The object massed far less than its dimensions, indicating a hollow structure. The mass spectrometer suggested a high quantity of duralium alloy and the high precision EM scans showed minimal energy signatures. That confirmed it. It was a ship, possibly a derelict 'ghost ship', that had finally found a system to rest in. Kabden tapped in the code to dispatch a Hognose recovery ship when the comms system bleeped.

+++Incoming Transmission+++
Szzzzzzz—ead me, this is—it, Regis—ine. Requ—emergen—ing bay clear—peat, emergency do—in—bay clearance.
+++Transmission Lost+++

Kabden sighed and cancelled the recovery ship, no salvage today. Instead, he put the emergency docking bay crews on yellow alert and cleared the docking and launch queues, such as they were, to allow the incoming vessel an easy docking. With this done, he took another sip of Red Bill and watched the scanner with more interest.

The ship took nearly forty minutes to reach the station. A full hour of travel from the first time it appeared on long range. Kabden could tell from the silhouette it was a Python and a mighty old one with it. It moved with a deceptive grace, a sign that an experienced pilot was at the helm, but it showed its age most disgracefully. The external cameras showed a hull rusted and pitted by planetary atmospheres, scarred by laser fire and missile strikes. The nose, oddly enough, was free of any detritus, shining silver in the corona of the planet. An old faded decal defied the rust and filth on the ship's wings and Kabden was shocked to see that there were great gaping holes in the hull. Not just in the hull, through the whole ship. He stared at the screen as he watched the ship turn to match the station's orientation. He was positive there was a hole on the upper port quadrant, four meters down from the cockpit area that travelled through the ship to exit in the lower starboard quadrant. He could see the starfield beyond the Python through the hole. The ship stopped the fine adjustments and started to limp agonisingly slowly toward the docking port. At forty meters, the pilot started matching rotation and Kabden started to relax, they were home and dry. At this point, Orvide started to thumb the magnification of the camera up and focussed on the ship's hull. He was looking for the ship's identification plate, his beak fixed in a concerned expression. He found what he was looking for and gasped.
“DP-099! Oh, crap! Get them to peel off, now! Close the docking port!”, the birdman squawked, getting into a flap, “Don't let them into the docking port!”
Too late, the Python nosed into the broad port and suddenly veered wildly. It slammed into the bottom of the port, and the sound of the impact rang through the station's reinforced hull. Then it ground along the port floor, sending a shower of sparks cascading into space. All of a sudden, it veered again, this time striking the roof of the port. More grinding, more sparks and then, the ship cleared the dock and slammed into the emergency docking bay, where the crashbots doused it with fire-retardant foam and the medbots hurried over to search for survivors. As the droids reached the hull, the gangplank ground slowly open a few feet, before the hydraulics gave up and the entire stairway crashed down onto the deckplates. It was followed, moments later by a rope and a scrawny grey-furred felinoid clad in a grubby flight suit and rebreather mask clambered down it.

The felinoid was followed by a large blue lizard, a chubby ginger felinoid, an insectoid who flew down and a birdoid in a blue lamé evening gown and a hot pink feather boa. The final person to exit the ship was another lithe felinoid who didn't so much climb down the rope as she flowed down it, her claws gripping the course fibers as she descended. Six feet above the deck, she released the rope and landed neatly on all fours, before daintily skipping across the mounds of anti-flame foam to join the rest of the crew. A maintenance droid cruised over to the group, its hover-plate thrumming in the reduced gravity of the docking bay.
“Good morning, Commander. Welcome to Soladies High Orbital station. Will you be making use of the station's award-winning ship maintenance facilities?”, it spoke in a synthesised upper-crust voice, pointedly looking past the crew at the smoking, battered hull of the ship.
The grey cat tugged off his rebreather, tried to comb some semblance of order into his fur, failed, then said, “Well, we're kinda on a budget so could we get the super-ultra-mega-low rate service?”
He flashed a winning smile that stayed welded to his face, even as the burly reptile picked him up one-handed.
“We will be taking the standard service, at the very least. Unless you wish to continue flying while wearing a rebreather, sleeping in the cargo bay, docking by means of a controlled crash landing and eating reclaimed waste.”, the blue-skinned creature growled.
The grey feline turned to the maintenance droid, while still held in the lizard's fist and said, “I think, on consultation with my chief engineer, that the standard maintenance package would be most acceptable.”
“Very good, Commander. All I need is your name, the ship's name and the details of your credit account.”
The feline grimaced at the title, but replied valiantly, “It's Captain Hesperus and the ship's the Dubious Profit, registry DP-099.”
With a degree of cajoling, which included suspending Hesperus over the edge of the docking bay by his ankles, the chief engineer, Rus, was able to extract the details of his employer's credit account and the crew moved into the station proper to find somewhere to get a good drink, or at least one that had not been through a waste recycler....

He's baaack.......

Captain Hesperus

[Cody]

Welcome back, Cap... a fine entrance, as usual.

[Captain Hesperus]

Entrance?
I'm still picking up the pieces from that landing......

Captain Hesperus

[DaddyHoggy]

Oh Praise Be - my old clock tower pard'ner is back.

A grand and simultaneously calamitous entrance - bravo.

You have been much missed.

Welcome back Captain!

[pagroove]

Welcome BACK!!!

[another_commander]

The manic kitty is in da house!

Good to see you again, Captain. Welcome back.

[Gimi]

There goes the neighbourhood, the main Trumblepusher is back and they are going to be for sale everywhere now. Jellybaby market is going to collapse and the Trumbles are going to eat all the Jellybabies.

Welcome back

[drew]

Grey fluffy cat... Ho! (cue 80s cartoon music... 'Feel the magic, feel the roar, Hesperus is loose!)

Cheers,

Drew.

ps. Welcome back Mr. Cameo... oh yes, I'm looking at you kid.

[Disembodied]

The Cat Came Back!

Welcome back, you ol' GHCTP.

[Commander McLane]

Good to see you back, Captain!

I hope you're going to stay with us for a while.

[Captain Hesperus]

Trust me, the state the old crate's in at the moment, I don't think I'll be shipping out any time soon. I'll just have to keep my head down, just in case there's still any value in handing it over to the Gal-Fuzz. In other news, the cargo hold is surprisingly empty of everyone's favourite intergalactic stress-relieving companions (for the moment <proot?>), but who can say how long that will last?

And yes, I have a new <strikethrough>pain-in-the-ass</strikethrough> crewmember, but I gotta shake the asteroid dust out of my flight suit and fill my belly with something more substantial that Goat Soup en Croute or waste recyc pie. Then the introductions.

Captain Hesperus

[ClymAngus]

And where are my 2000 credits? You fly off with a hold full of computer parts, 6 weeks later I get a collect sub-space call saying you've hit technical difficulties then a YEAR AND A HALF later you not so much fly into the station as up it.

Hang on, whats that on the outside....... YOU USED THE COMPUTER PARTS TO PATCH UP THE HOLES IN YOUR COCKPIT???!!! Those were quad core quantum by lateral processing units! Not armour plating! Those machines could process 1 billion floating point calculations per nanosecond and your using them to catch rad, micro meteors and stray laser fire? Crocking brilliant! I'll be in the Choking Comet with a bottle of lethal brandy and a pocket laz-bore for the next 6 hours writing my will. If you or your crew don't want to be sold for their pelt value. Frequent another tavern!

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Good to see you still flying, in more or less one peice. Though trying to avoid Thargoids would help greatly towards that end; the Bugs have been on a rage since the bloody nose - or whatever a Bug calls a nose - they've been dealt at Tibecia. They're hellbent on being a menace more than ever...

So, someone else has taken leave of their senses decided to tag along on your quest, rrmm? We're curious as to whom that may be - and to the lass in question, good luck!

[Captain Hesperus]

@ClymAngus: I don't recall you paying the extra 20% Cargo Protection Insurance, cheapskate. Read the shipping reciept:

"All cargo not under protection of the optional Cargo Protection Insurance (CPI) cannot be made the responsibility of the ship crew or commander. All cargo unprotected by CPI may be subject to use by the ship crew or commander for ablative shielding, seating, consumption and/or ammunition as the situation dictates. While the ship crew and commander will attempt, wherever reasonably possible, to safeguard the cargo unprotected by CPI, no guarantees may be forwarded to the legal owner of said cargo. Cargo under protection of CPI is specifically protected from all ship crew and commander activity, but cannot be protected against hostile acts by external aggressors (pirates or Thargoids)."

You really should have paid that extra 60Cr....

Captain Hesperus

[OneoftheLost]

Missed ya 'cap. Looks like a good start.