Captain Morgan walked out of his private chambers in the back of the bay, and saw the scene at the bar. He shook his head and chuckled softly to himself. He walked over to the bar, stood next to Crown, and watched the Prospect work.
"Ahoy there! I see another lightweight Prospect couldn't handle his drink!"
The Captain reached over and took the bottle of Gundey VIII from Charles. He enjoyed the look of disgust that everyone around him had while he drank his drink. He didn't think the stuff was too bad, really, which is why the Bay stocked it in the first place.
"King, I want you to get the rest of the Lieutenants together. I've got a plan in mind, and we need to organize the details. I'm going to take the Bloodwing out for a cruise. We'll discuss it when I return."
As if perfectly timed, there's a series of beeps as Ambrose punched in the door code and swaggers in, hair disheveled and a half-empty bottle of some nameless rotgut dangling from his hand. Probably something a Junker distilled in an old boiler somewhere on the station. His ever-present companion Jingles rode in his(?) usual place on Ambrose's shoulder, keeping a tight grip on hos master's ear.
"Oi, hello Cap'n, good 't see ya. Hear about our last score, wit' the tanks an' wotnot? No bloody idea wha' we'll do with fifteen tanks, but we've got 'em if we need 'em, eh?"
Stumbling only slightly as he makes his way to the bar, he plops down heavily on one of the stools and thumps his bottle on the bar. "'Ey, Johnny, 'ow about some coffee, eh? I'mma need somethin' to keep me alert while I'm out flyin' t'day."
Thomas forced his way through the Buccaneer bay door, ignoring John's normal greetings.
He made his way down the hall to the bar. "Charles! The strongest rum you got." He shouted upon entering the bar.
"Oi, what's wrong lad? You seem upset." Charles said, getting a mug and filling it with Vodka, then sliding it over.
"A Big bloody Luxury Liner got past the Cap'n and I. Didn't fall int' our bloody trap as planned." He groaned, picking up the mug and downing about half the Vodka. "Stupid bloody Pamphlets." He groaned once more this time laying a Luxury Liner pamphlet on the bar and pushing it to Charles.
Charles grinned and picked the pamphlet up. "Luxury Liner Rhodes eh?" Thomas nodded, "The bloody sad part is, some trader must have bloated about bloody pirates in the Manchester system. We were so bloody close to hittin' somethin' big." Thomas let out a sigh. "Hopefully the Cap'n will push his plans forwards after today."
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John had been conspicuously missing from the Bay over the last few days. Rumours were circulating he was off on a pub crawl around the entirety of Trafalgar with Tony Bush and getting absolutely smashed. General opinion was they'd finish their tour at the Bay.
Sure enough the was a bang from the door (which always seemed to stick for John) and the pair staggered in, singing some obscure song about being the wolves of the sea. John wobbled to the middle of the room, before blinking a few time and raising the bottle of what looked like sludge above his head.
"S'time for, shelebrashun's!" He hickupped a few times before continuing, the smell of booze rolling off him like some kind of evil fog. "We's got the biggun! Killed the d'stroyer!" He tried to undo the popper on his pocket but missed and ended up groping at empty space. On the second attempt he got the pocket open and dragged out a roll of paper.
Unrolling the poster, it showed a guncam shot of a Rogue 'Scylla' Destroyer, the RD-Stonehenge going up, escape pods bursting out to space from all over the stricken hulk. "Shcore one d'stroyer for the King!" He roared. Some of the Prospects clapped to humour him. He followed up his little speech with a triumphant slur of, "drinmks on me!" This time there was a wall of applause and whistling.
Captain Morgan waited for the celebration to die down a bit, and motioned for his Lieutenants to join him at his table. When they all sat down, and got their drinks, he spoke.
"Lads, we've got the basic plan down for the raid on that Liner. At least, for our part up here. We'll need to coordinate with our boys back on Leeds to pull this off right. For that, and to check in on our operations there, I need to head down to Leeds for a week or so.
I've got travel arrangements with a small passenger transport from here. We should be able to get in unnoticed, since he's going to pick up some refugees after dropping me off.
While I'm there, I need you lads to keep things going up here. We're on a roll, and I don't want us to lose so much as an inch, got it?"
After hearing each Lieutenant acknowledge the order, he called for another round of drinks. He didn't need to go back to Leeds until tomorrow morning, so he intended to make the most of tonight.
Captain Morgan strode into the Bay, in quite possibly one of the happiest moods of his life. Not only did he escape imprisonment by the BPA, he came back in command of the very Prison Liner they locked him up on. Scoring a ship that big was quite a coup on his part, and it freed up a lot of options for him. First one being paying the Junkers rent for the Bay and the right to base all their operations there. Leviathan was easily big enough to act as a mobile base, provided they kept it resupplied. Even without being paid rent for the Bay, the Junkers would still be plenty pleased to take the Buccaneer's credits for supplies. They didn't mind taking everyone elses, after all.
He walked up to the bar, and got everyone's attention.
"Lads, I think you all saw the prize I brought home. Well, it's plenty big enough to act as our own base, so there's no need to pay the Junkers for use of one of their maintainance closets on the lower decks. We'll still need to resupply here, of course, but we'll no longer be as dependant on it as we were. Start getting all this stuff packed up and moved over to the Leviathan, on the double!"
Captain Morgan smiled as he saw everyone getting to work immediately. Next, he picked up his comm unit, and put in a call to Trafalgar's Administrator. The man would probably be relieved.
Yes, the Buccaneer's fortunes were definately looking up...
A few weeks later, Jack Malcolm walked into the new Buccaneer's Bay. Instead of a half hour walk, it was a turbolift and a few steps away from the hangar. The new one was two decks tall, and took up a large amount of space, formerly the ships crew lounge/observation deck. The two large windows on both sides showed the system the Leviathan was currently in. The door too bunks was gone, since the cells had been torn out and turned into quarters.
But by far, the greatest improvement, was the very well stocked bar. The previous BPA crew had a large stock in the cargo bay it turned out, including everything from Sidewinder Fang to Gallic wine.
John Morris was still inside an alcove right next to the door, and even he had a new pulse blaster from the armory, more fitting to his size.
Jack got a bottle of Rhienland Ale from Charles, sat at a table, and knocked it back.
Life was good.
' Wrote:This thread is so stupid that a bird sitting on a nearby tree just EXPLODED.
"Rightyo, Lads add another Corsair Gunboat, two Outcast gunboats, an Eagle, and a few transport to that board we have." Thomas said walking proudly into the bar after pushing the doors open on the Leviathan.
"Twas a fun day and successful in piratin' if you ask me." He continued heading over to his new favorite spot, right next to a view port. "Oi! Charles! Give me some rum eh? I'm in a bloody good mood!"
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Despite Anderson's high spirits, Charles didn't look so happy. Slightly downcast in fact. He'd had to abandon his old bar surface when it was found it couldn't be moved from the old Bay on Trafalgar. He'd loved that bar surface - it's stained and pitted surface knitted together from the battered (and most importantly stolen) remains of cargo canisters. The brushed steel surface of the Leviathan's bartop was probably more hygienic by several orders of magnitude, but... It wasn't the same to Charles.
He sighed and morosely pulled the drink, setting it down on the surface, before trundling back to a stool in the corner behind the bartop to gloomily survey the room's occupants. It was slightly busier than normal due to the Buccaneers from Leeds sitting around, wasting space. It'd be a fair while before the last of them were back planetside, so they were earning their keep as an anti-boarding force that spent the day cycles patrolling the ship's corridors that were nearest to the external walls.
Just then King materialised from the room's shadows with a foul expression on his face, like some sort of fell wraith. He'd been with Anderson to help move the Outcasts and Corsair gunboats across the veil to the immortal plane, but he was in a foul mood for another reason.
That day trade hadn't been good. Paying trade anyway. A good few transports had gone the same way as the trio of gunboats. The second reason was that he'd been on Planet Leeds for the last week as well. He'd received some bad news from his family; the war was taking it's toll on them. They were considering joining the stream of refugees fleeing the system. The reason this was so bad was that this waste of time had meant that he hadn't been up in space earning more money, and the week out of the cockpit had made him rusty - his aim had suffered. And his performance today had clearly showed that.
Still in a foul mood he stole a drink from one of the displaced Leeds Buccaneers before slinking back into the shadowy alcove.
Thomas wandered into the bar on the Leviathan yawning a bit. "Oi, you lads seen the problem those Privateer's been causin'? I bloody swear I keep seein' bounties on us!" He chucked lightly walked over to the bar. "Charles, bottle of scotch please."
"This early?"
"Aye! I just bloody woke up! I need me rum..or..scotch or...somethin'! Ha! Maybe some bloody cereal with...Rum! There we go! Cereal with rum!" Anderson said grinning wildly as he wandered over to his usual spot next to the viewport, before passing out on the table.
"That lad must have been up all night." Charles said shaking his head, then giving a little chuckle, before going back to his depressed mood about the new bar.