...
continuation from here
Looking out the window of the passenger transport, Scotty sees the landing platform emerge from the clouds. The ship lands, and Scotty steps outside to breath in the clean air of Curacao. Carrying the Hazmat suit he bought from Ames, and his Sonic Welder, he makes his way over to Landing Pad 07 to meet someone he has never seen before. A handful of hours pass, during which Scotty realises he bought a suit a couple sizes too big. Remembering what Seabourne said, he'd rather look like a deflated balloon than attract any nasties during their little excursion. Fumbling to fit into the suit, he notices a cruise liner approaching the planet.
"Finally, the lad is here."
"Seven, why'd it have to be seven? Could have been five, or we could have double parked two and three, but seven?!"
Seabourne gave a shudder and a quick not-prayer to the goddess, hoping against hope she would, in her infinite indifference, turn her gaze far away from Curacao for a few hours. Fortune favors the bold, but the attention of the Goddess of Discord is always best if turned elsewhere. He turned to the tools of the heist in the back of the shuttle. He had to improvise to compensate for the lack of enthusiasm of his partner in crime. The small animal carrier shook out of sync with the rest of the ship, obscuring everything about its occupant save its general opinion on the state of affairs. Next to the carrier was a suitably soiled pillowcase, specially laundered to raise it back to a level of social presentability. Its assorted nuts and bolts (scavenged from nothing too essential in the shuttle) gently jingled. As his father never said, anything worth securing with four bolts will probably hold with three. Probably. He couldn't find a horseshoe magnet, but found a rare earth metal one that would work even better. And, of course the mayonnaise. In packets, slightly warm.
The Dorado class shuttle took a wide swing over pad seven, where Seabourne noted what looked like a marshmallow holding a powerwasher. Given that everything else looked like it belonged there, the slightly addled captain concluded that he found his huckleberry. The shuttle put in a surprisingly graceful landing. On the door, the slightly lighter images of letters were briefly visible, the reverse shadows of decals recently removed to prepare the ship for its next life in the luxury fleet. A quick eye would have made out "OS&C Puddle Jumper - Luxury Liner Breezewood" before the doors opened.
"You must be Scotty. Climb aboard quick-like. The goose is pissed, and if we don't leave right now, it'll also be cooked!"
Seeing the man that popped out from the doors of the liner, Scotty took a few moments to look down, shake his head slowly and sigh. He then puts down his Sonic Welder to remove his Hazmat Suit's face panel and looked up Seabourne.
"Aye, it's Scotty. Let's go, I've been waiting for some time now. Wanna see this beauty!"
Moving into the liner quickly, Scotty becomes increasingly unsure of who exactly he is with. He knows the Orbital Spa & Cruise are in good terms with Starfliers, but he knows almost nothing about Seabourne. As the doors close, he finds that he is missing something. A look out the window confirms he left behind his Sonic Welder on the landing pad. The doors remain shut as the ship is prepared for take-off. After a hard slam against the door, and a quick sigh and a sniff, Scotty moves on deeper into the Liner's rooms and corridors. Being on a ship of this class for his first time, Scotty takes a look around to notice that there's pleasures of every kind on board. Wandering around he finds a holodeck, where he asks the computer to pull up an image of the vessel he previously served on: the Lillian. Having his emotions run high for this moment, despite the interesting and unusual situation he is in, the computer denies his request with the response "Cannot process, data on the Lillian doesn't exist."
"It was worth a shot, to have one last look at her. Oh well... This Enterprise-Class better be pretty in the inside as much as it is on the outside."
"Oh you won't be disappointed there. Orbital only spares three and a half expenses with our flagship liners, and unlike a dead squirrel they're just as lovely once you start playing around in all the squishy bits. They're like the opposite of a geode..."
The captain stared off to the side for three seconds before a quick shudder brought him back to some semblance of reality.
"In any event, you're be able to judge for yourself soon enough. As magnificent as Puddle Jumper is, she's only a runabout for that."
Seabourne pointed to the liner in front of them. As long as a battleship, she sat decidingly on the opposite end of utilitarianism. Instead of armor plating and intimidating weapons, the vessel sported superfluous curves and delicate fins and arches. If everything on a dreadnaught was designed to send the message "Try me and see what happens," everything on an Enterprise was there to send the exact same words but with decidingly different inflection.
"Hold this" said the captain as he handed Scotty the pillowcase. "When I give the signal, start jingling that around, in waves getting louder and more consistent each time. We're going to tricksy our way in and step one is a convenient communications issue."
With a somewhat confused look, Scotty looks around to see a combination of unrelated items scattered across the Captain's cabin. A not-so-happy looking goose running about, a piece of metal wedged between Seabourne's backside and his seat and lastly, the mayonnaise... in a dog's bowl. Scotty looks to Seabourne,
"Lad, I'm starting to get a little scared. This looks to be a crazy man's heist!" Holding up the pillowcase, "But if this is what I have to do, so be it. Tell me when to start jingling this thing."
"Oh, trust me, we're well beyond the sealing wax, cabbages and kings stage of the relationship. We're all mad here.
After all, you must be mad, otherwise you wouldn't be here."
Seabourne opened a channel to the docked liner
"Orbital Liner Orlando, this is runabout PuddleJumper. We have a delivery of Gaian wildlife for the menagerie.
"Uhhh, negative PuddleJumper, we have no such delivery scheduled for the itinerary."
"Of course you don't, the Gaians have been hitting scheduled transfer shuttles, didn't you get the memo? It was bright yellow and lemon scented! We're disguising them now as other things. What else is on your itinerary?"
"We're supposed to get some xenobiotic filters in an hour."
"See? There you go. What is a goose but a very elaborate filter for turning air and grain into foie gras and a ridiculous amount of poop? Now that that's cleared up, we'll be heading to the portside docking bay."
Seabourne signalled Scotty to start moving the bag around. The cacophony of jingling metal was a reasonable proxy for radio static.
"Uhhh, hold tight, PuddleJumper, let me check with a supervisor."
"Roger, heading to the docking bay now."
"What? No, I said hold your position!"
"Say again, Orlando? There's some wicked static on my end. Once I'm docked, we'll have to have your boys look at the radio."
Seabourne waved his arms to indicate for Scotty to pick up the jingling.
"PuddleJumper do NOT, I repeat, do NOT attempt to dock the port side bay."
"Affirmative, Orlando, proceeding to dock in portside bay."
"What?! No, stop! PuddleJumper, you need to-"
Seabourne cut off the radio.
"Meh, it was a boring conversation anyway. Now to proceed to the portside dock and hope they open up out of sheer confusion if nothing else. Bring the pillowcase, we'll need it later. I'll grab the magnet and the goose."
You know... I think we're going to steal this ship. Nothing confirms it, I was called mad for joining in. Don't think Leon will be proud of me, this Seabourne lad is completely bonkers! Suppose this is where we are at now. Gotta press on...
"Do you think this is necessary?" Scotty motions to his two-sizes-too-big hazmat suit, the pillowcase jingling in his other hand, "You did say this ship had bad carpet stains. It's also a little hard to move around, or perhaps it will work in our favour to get on board? What do you think?"
The shuttle continued to move to the liner. Seabourne flipped the vessel, nose-to-tail, to expose the rear back door to the dock. Proximity alarms sounded as the vehicle continued to back up.
"I think at this point, the more chaos, the better. Plus, you never know when being in a hazmat suit comes in handy. You can pull a lot of Rheinlander Fire Drill shenanigans in one of those, you know."
The peeps continued to get louder and more frequent.
"Well, either they open up or we risk damaging two orbital ships. And if I know the current watch officer of the Orlando, they'd rather open up the door and see what's going on than incur the extra damages to keep her out of the luxury fleet. The refurbishing is behind schedule as is. Seems they can't even define what state of matter some of the stains are, let alone what solvents should be used to remove them. Always a party aboard an orbital vessel."
The alarms were suddenly replaced by a calming three tone sequence as familiar mechanical whirring and clunks confirmed that Orlando was infact bringing the shuttle in for a dock. Some more mechanical sounds confirmed that the two ships had an airtight connection as the vacuum indicators cycled to green.
Huh, that worked. If I ever meet the watch officer, I'll be sure to thank whoever he/she/it is. With those clamps in place, we're firmly in Eris's hands now, the only way out is up, and by up I mean that way... ish... to the big chair. Those clamps can only be undone from Orlando's bridge. Fortunately, that's where we're heading anyway. Now, you take the pillow case and the magnet, I'm going to make some foie gras, as it were.
Seabourne opened the cage and extracted an agitated goose-like creature. It's long, emerald green neck flopped furiously in the captain's hands as he wrangled the bird's body between his legs. With the animal sufficently pinned, he began to force feed the creature the mayonaise.
"Oh, don't look so concerned. They're migratory and fatten themelves up all the time, though admittedly mayonaise has a rather interesting interaction with their lower digestive tracks. If you'd be so kind as to put a timer for 10 minutes on whatever timepiece you carry..."
A whoosh on the other side of the bulkhead revealed that Orlando had opened her set of doors. A serries fo clangs and shouts revealed that they wanted the shuttle to do likewise."
...and if you could open the door and see to our guests. I'll need another, oh, 30 seconds here.
Pressing a couple buttons on his personal communications tablet, Scotty sets a timer for 10 minutes, then he moves towards the airlock. Once there, with one hand on the control panel and his head looking at Seabourne, Scotty is stunned to see what the poor Goose is going through.
"Oh my lord... that's... not right, lad." After a brief moment, Scotty quickly shakes his head and after a quick inhale and exhale, "Okay, hoo... let's say hello."
With one quick look at the control panel, Scotty notices it's similar to the NX-01's. Two buttons later and the Puddle Jumper's airlock doors open up was greeted with a small team from the Orlando. With his face plate down, looking like a wrinkled vegetable, Scotty positions himself between the boarding party and Seabourne. Let's hope those 30 seconds finish up soon.
"Greetings, lads. Welcome aboard to the Puddle Jumper. My name is Scotty..." extending out his hand carrying the pillowcase, quickly pulling it back and extending his other for a handshake, "...I'm sure you'd like to meet the big man himself."
The Orbital officer looked from Scotty's faceplate to his outstretched left hand, momentarily confused. He looked to the "security officer" to his right, clearly a press ganged maintenance worker who only had the vaguest ideas of which end of a sidearm you wanted to stand on. The one on his right simply replied with a shrug, but the one on the left chimed in.
"Wait, the big man? Puddle Jumper... oh my word, you don't mean-"
The exchange only took a few seconds, but a few seconds were all that was needed. Before the security guard could finish his sentence, a mighty roar bellowed from the other end of the shuttle sounding halfway between nails on a chalkboard and a freight train crashing through a window factory. A terrified Seabourne, speckled with feathers and mayonnaise, ran through the group, arms flailing.
"The goose is loose! Run for your lives!"
As Seabourne disappeared behind a corner inside the Orlando, the four men at the door turned in unison to see what he was running from. A large, long legged emerald green goose, frothing at the mouth, stared back. None of them were familiar enough with Gaian wildlife to know if the creature's red eyes were natural or a temporary byproduct of its current disposition, but none of them needed a degree in xenobiology to know that this thing was pissed.
It let out another ear splitting roar, raised its two sets of wings, and awkwardly charged for the airlock as fast as its gangly flamingo-like legs would allow it. What it lacked in grace it made up for with determination. The orbital officer gave the order to fall back. His two subordinates, apparently psychic, were already halfway down the corridor Seabourne hadn't taken by the time the words were out of his mouth. Their sidearms dropped to the deck with the safeties still on.
The goose stared at Scotty, hocked a nasty green-white chunk of phlegm at his feet. The goo sizzled and fumed ominously as it ate through Puddle Jumper's deck plating. The goose roared again.