Quirky stares at the minus sign on his Starbits account. He reflects on the unwholesome prospect of having his tail tied in a granny knot by irritable creditors. His tail twitches and his tongue flicks, quite involuntarily. He sees the other kids getting nice toys from the Unizone Partner Parts Store.
He grips the Omni-Pay™ just a little too tightly, accidentally hitting:
Purchase (b5, on Credit): Mission 3 - About Face
Purchase:
b10 - Unizone Communications Enhancement Software Kit(+5 EN)
Mission 2 - In the Margins
So let’s head on down to see the Pardners and put a little more juice in this moose goose before making that cargo run.
A sssstereotype often lobbed at my matrilineal houssse is that we alwaysss begin a missssion “broke as a bankrupt’sss bassstard.” (Why are Ssspace Lizard family trees matrilineal? Well, we can usually tell who dropped the egg-clutch sssince it generally keepsss her busy for a week or two, but we Ssspace Lizardsss copulate ssso damn indissscriminately that it’sss a fool’s errand to keep track of who lassst visited whose cloaca, and anyway all breeding malesss are vat-grown clonesss sssince the Squamatic Wars, ssso it’sss a moot point.)
Be that as it may, ssstereotype or no, it’sss true that once again I represent my ssspecies by being the third-least-well-off captain among the nonindebted. Under normal circumssstancesss, I would look down my cybernossstrilsss at those gormlessss foolsss who begin a campaign in the red, but I fear I’m about to lose my own vessstigesss of gorm myssself.
Two point three SsstarBitsss. Two point three. I could almossst buy my own ichor-mug for that, if I ssspecify a tall rather than venti. I am reminded why the motto on the family cressst is 為什麼我喝這麼多，昨晚
Neverthelesss. The STealth sssyssstemsss are healthily ssstealthy, and I’ve got a LucKy feeling in my loreal pitsss. Once I’m finished adjusssting the B.I.G.S.B.Y., I’m going to hold my nasal-analogue, go into debt for the firssst time in my life, and take Missssion 3 - About Face.
::yawn::
So sorry. That was a heckuva bar, I must say. Such a variety of artisinal smoke available. Truly a connoisseur’s delight.
Now.
Let no 3-space denizen say that Savaric Tubertus Wynkn Basiliscos Leontios Palaeologus al Wathiq is a bee of inaction - me, and my long-chain beauty Those Who Deem Inappropriate the Singing of Disney Songs in the Office Bathroom Are Not Worthy of Acknowledgement are now available for courier duty!!!
I’ve got plenty of movies to watch (Buzz Luhrman’s 2001: A Space Opera has come highly recommended, and has just become available on SpaceNetflix-streaming;a pity I’ve watched all the episodes of Orange is the new Yellow-and-Black), and the Skrellix algorithmic-remix of Flight of the Bumblee queued up on the digital black-wax, so we are ready to wrack-n-roll! As my grand-mam used to say.
(Grams was quite the looker, and I’ll trust you to be respectful with the whistles, jeers and indecent proposals.)
So, with that in mind and…
uh, just a mo, I’m still a bit sleepy, I guess…
Lemme pop a wee li’l capsule of my own devising, a truly marvelous admixture* of local pollen (from my native soil, better than a coffin of dirt any day), royal jelly, and scutellatanax…
HA-CHA-CHORNY, guess who’s horny! WOO! THATS DAMN GOOD STUFF.
#MISSION 3 BABY ALL THE WAY
And their in a pack of that “Unizone Communications Enhancement Software Kit(+5 EN)” 'cause the Not Worthy wants to get her waggle on.
The Not Worthy has even rotated herself for your consideration (jes’ look at that wax shine!):
* The discriminating captain might enquire as to purchasing this elixir, and to such ends I have made some available in both boring-as-all-get-out softgels in a convenient blister-pack, and in delightfully-chewable-wax containers:
Mission 3. Cha-ching!
BTW, drinks half-off pre-mission at the PWAP.
(Pub Within A Pub)
That’s Horace. He’s the lazy one. & Don’t fuck with my bouncers. They are droids.
That’s a good question, Horace. Why does that lizard ship fly upside-down?
Jacques stumbles out of the captain’s quarters and onto the bridge, flopping down down in his seat, exhausted but triumphant. That most certainly was the last he would be seeing of the Duck’s Pond soup. An espresso in a small double-layer glass cup materializes in the small machine next to the captain’s chair. It is time to get down to business. After a few sips he puts the glass in a small depression in the arm rest and then spins the chair slightly. Reaching back behind he pulls up an awkward shaped box, with “Unizone Echo” etched in small letters near the bottom. This he balances on the other armrest.
“Unizone Partner Parts…on sale!”
Jacques ponders the holographic list projected in front of him. Certainly you can never have too many shields. He updates his cart with a few swipes of his fingers.
“Unizone Partner Program MissionZone”
Fortune has not been kind to Jacques of late, he thinks, forgetting that fortune has never been kind to Jacques. It’s time to take some easy work for certain pay. Better to ease oneself into a new position: all the better to get a handle on the environment, the competition, the market. Slow and steady wins the race!
Jacques presses a button in the armrest and grabs his espresso with the same fluid motion. The Entropy’s command console swivels up from the floor to meet his other hand: the fingers dance across it entering coordinates and instructions. The Entropy’s computer processes, slowly.
Jacques eyes widen. “Unizone Partner Parts…ah…reset cart! Ah…review armaments!” The Entropy’s engines begin to hum. “Yes, yes, fine! I mean submit! Submit order!” “Confirm! Confirm dammit!” Jacques downs the rest of his coffee, leaps up from the captain’s chair and races to the elevator. Hopefully the parts will materialize in the hold before The Entropy jumps. And then, how much time will he have to install them before…well we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Purchase b20 for Unizone Blasters.
Engage Mission 3 - About Face, on credit.
“Captain” Jacques Malchance
The Entropy
Time to squeegee the crusty space bug splatter off the _Say Monkey’_s visiports and fire up her engines.
Purchase:
1x jar “pine fresh” carapace wax (at least I think that’s what it is… found it down the back of the parts bin while I was rummaging for a bargain.)
Mission:
Mission 3. Let’s go!
> +---------- Ship ----------+-- HP ---+- FP -+- SH -+- EN -+- ST -+- LK -+- GRIT -+
> | SLS Say Monkey | 96/96 | 20 | 29 | 23 | 23 | 25 | 1 |
> +--------------------------+---------+------+------+------+------+------+--------+
> Hat: NONE
> StarBits: b6.9USSS Rustbucket changes out her windshield air freshener for "fear"scent and signs on for mission 3.
I’m going to have to stealth up this ship if I’m going to avoid those pirates between here and Charybdis. Odd. This Unizone Cloaking Device looks an AWFUL lot like a can of matte black paint and a wide brush. No more wasting time in Duck’s for me; I’ve got work to do getting this ‘cloaking device’ ‘installed’. Hope she’s fully dry before I have to ship out on Mission 3. That leaves me a teeny (space)bit in the hole, but I’ll either be dead, or flush after this run.
Natasha, Captain of Audacious Blip, not know which of many stats relate to speed.
Audacious Blip declared to be a “Fast” ship. Natasha not know how to maximize benefit of being “Fast”
(( metagame: Which stat applies to speed? ))
EN for engineering, or the sounds that comes after EM for MOOSE.
Well, if you want to get fast with me, I can think of a few benefits.
Meatrix.
easy there, it’s a bit early to go mass-extinction on us…
Ssspeaking as a space lizard myself, it’s more than a feeling, I can tell you that.
Mamma looked at the balance sheet and sighed heavily. In the hole already and this new venture wasn’t even off the ground. At least the Dabohaze had finally been cleaned from the trip to Alces with Browf. It turns out all of the boxes he’d carefully loaded with Browf’s help were filled with toner cartridges from ancient laser printers, staggeringly useless to just about everyone and easily obtainable to those who needed them. Who printed things anymore? And on paper? Ugh. He’d left the crates outside with a narcoleptic crewmember (his sister’s kid) on the landing pad marked “arc-gold” in the hopes that someone would make off with them in the night.
He sighed again. There was no getting around it, red numbers meant trouble, and if he was going to be in trouble he wanted it to be of his own making. Or at least Beard’s.
“Fellows, get the guns sighted in and get some sleep while you can. We’re going to be knee deep in pirates before the end of this. We’ll put out the colors and hope our Union cards from last year are good enough to see us through the thick of it, but they might confuse us with someone respectable and start shooting. Let’s hope by the end of this we’re knee deep in 'bits and making the doorways taller for our hats! We’re headed out to help the Militia on Mission 3, let’s hope some stuff falls out of the boxes and behind our hidden panels. Now who’s willing to chip in for the b5 mission cost?”
I know that a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State.
I think we’re setting up to have a very well armed one. Let’s hope that doesn’t turn out to be a bad idea, particularly for independently-minded businessbeings.
