This ain't no self-insert fic.

This ain't no slash fic neither.

This is Top Dog.

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A dream cannot tell what truth it holds until the sleeper…

…wakes.

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Consciousness returned slowly. A weird, nebulous dream of places she'd never been and things she'd never done, that twisted and faded into the dull background noise of her mind. For a moment, the light slanting across the high, white ceiling and the gentle breathing seemed like part of the dream, then she started wondering where she was; she rolled her head to the left, and found herself looking across an expanse of grubbily-carpeted floor to a black-furred feline and unmistakably female form, laying quite naked upon the other bed with the covers half thrown off; the cat-like face joined a slender neck that curved down to slim but powerful-looking shoulders; a jagged bone wing-like thing jabbed up from behind the shoulder, and a long-fingered hand rested on the pillow, half-obscuring the inky-furred breast. Below that was a slab of perfectly flat belly, then a knot of covers with one extremely long cat-like leg protruding.

She stared for a long moment as the memories surfaced and she finally knew where she was, what was going on, and who (not to mention what) the black-furred Kenti girl was.

She pushed herself upright. Her clothes were strewn on the floor; she'd been so exhausted when she got to bed that she'd just flung them off and been asleep before her head hit the pillow.

She cautiously approached the Luggage. It opened, and there was her clean laundry; she collected a set and went looking for the showers.

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Twenty minutes later, when Hermione got back from the shower, Tara was awake and carefully combing her fur. She glanced up, nodded, and went back to her combing.

"Morning." She said, her pleasant tenor voice once again giving Hermione a shock coming from such a very obviously female creature. "Sleep well?"

"Yeah, like a log." Hermione said. Tara looked back up, blinked several times, then emitted a truly startling noise; it sounded like how you'd imagine a tiger coughing would sound.

"You humans and your turns of phrase." She said, then that coughing noise again. "Like a log? Where do you get all those wonderfully absurd sayings?"

"I think that one's because a cut-down tree isn't likely to get up." Hermione said, eliciting more blinking from the catwoman.

"A… oh. Thought you meant the other sort of log. Well… I guess that makes more sense, then." Tara mused, turning her combing attention to her other leg.

"Other sort of log?" Hermione checked.

"Yeah, you know, a log. Like a turd." Tara replied.

Hermione looked startled for a moment, then said, "Yeah, that wouldn't make much sense would it?"

"Can you get my back?" Tara asked.

Hermione looked puzzled. Tara held up the comb.

"My back; I'm limber, but not that much. Alice normally does it for me."

"Oh! Oh right, sure." Hermione said, accepting the comb and settling herself on the bed behind Tara.

"Follow the grain of my fur, see the pattern? From my spine outwards and back. What'd you think I meant?"

"I had absolutely no idea." Hermione admitted. "Look, I'm kinda new to there being like magic and starships and people from other planets, and it's taking a lot of getting used to."

Tara let out that coughing sound again.

"I often forget how alien I must be to you Atlantaics." She said. "It's a fucked-up thought. I often wonder what it must be like, being wingless, not having a tail, having such weird flat feet."

"We're pretty used to it, actually." Hermione admitted, privately marvelling at how soft and smooth Tara's fur was. "It's like we're wondering the complete opposite about each other."

That coughing noise once more.

"True, true. It'd be a lot weirder being room-mates with a Horta or something, at least we're both actually humanic so we've got some sort of common frame of reference… You know, I've lived with the Walkers for nearly fifteen standard years and I hadn't realised you humans have crotch fur until I saw you strip off to go to bed."

Hermione went thoroughly pink just as Tara glanced back; the catgirl emitted that coughing sound yet again.

"What's with the cough?" Hermione asked, noticing that Tara's fur was a blue-grey shade close to her skin, becoming black very shortly thereafter.

"Oh come on, it's not my fault you sound like a misfiring piston engine when you laugh." Tara said with a shrug.

"… that's laughter?"

Tara started coughing a lot, and Hermione realised all the visual cues were right, it was just the sound that was different. She was indeed being laughed at.

"That's not nice. I told you I'm new to all this." She complained.

"Sorry, sorry. It's just your face when you said that… you looked like a dirtsider seeing mynocks for the first time." Tara let out a foreshortened version of the cough. "I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't needle you like this, but your expressions are just so funny."

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Disclaimer: Rusty pressure hulls A Really Bad Idea.

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Top Dog: Enter the Fnords

Book 1: Harry Johnson and the Headmaster's Socks.

A Doghead13 / United Galaxies fanfic

Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace

Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH

This is not a drill.

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Chapter 7: Day of the Dog.

(In which we are properly introduced to a certain ramshackle old hot-rod starship)

That first day was course registration. For Hermione (and presumably the rest of the first-years) this meant spending most of an hour in a queue, only to discover on getting to the head of the queue that you've got a fixed set of courses anyway, much to Hermione's brief but intense annoyance.

With that out the way, she was a free agent until Monday; she was done with it just in time for lunch.

The arrangement was substantially different to that at what people were referring to as the 'arrival feast'. The four long tables had been pulled apart into their constituent parts, and you got your food on a tray from big serving dishes, then tried to find a table with people you knew. Hermione ended up at a table with Harry, the Walker twins, Tara, and Fleggitt, because it was the first one with a free seat from which she wasn't receiving severe fuck-off-and-die vibes.

"Gudday." Bruce said as she sat down.

"Hi." She said, and took a mouthful of sausage.

"Wanna join the tour party?" Bruce asked, leaning forwards and grinning at her. She looked puzzled. "Some of the blokes asked for a show round me ship last night." Bruce clarified. "I said no worries, so we're having the twenty cent tour at two."

Hermione nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, okay." She said. "It sounds interesting. I've never seen the insides of a starship before."

Tara let out that cough-laughter.

"Be prepared to be surprised." She said, a wry smile on her face.

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The League of Affiliated Miners and Free Traders cargo vessel LSS-17332 Blink Dog is a Mentler SVDH DX-32 Hellhound dropship. As such, she's a touch under four hundred feet long from tip of keelgun barrel to hindmost point (the tips of her twin tailfins) and she stands just under sixty-five feet tall at the hull, with her tailfins standing another twenty-five feet above that. Her wingspan is two hundred and twenty-three feet, and she weighs just under three hundred and seventy-five tons. She would be ten feet taller if she had a standard undercarriage, but she's fitted with a low profile set; it lowers her centre of gravity and thus improves her ground stability.

She's also a beat-up old ramshackle rust-bucket. Not surprising, really; after all, she's twelve thousand two hundred and sixty-two years old, and her duranium hide shows every minute of those twelve long hard millennia of service. Her hull is streaked with filth, rust, and blaster scars. There's a pattern of holes punched through her port wing, a memento of a close shave with Cardassian pirates a couple of centuries ago. Her whole frame is ever so slightly bent, the main outward sign of this being the silver line across her windshield where it was welded back together with nanites; that line extends clear from the tip of her port tailfin along her hull, across the windshield and down to the starboard side of her for'ards cargo ramp, but it's only really visible where it crosses the window. Layers of char are built up around her engines dump valves, which look somewhat out of place by being clean and brightly polished, and her name is written on her armoured flanks by the simple expedient of cleaning the letters into the grime on her ancient hide.

She's an old, travel-stained workhorse. And she packs a Hell of a punch.

Most people, when looking at a world-weary old beater like the Blink Dog, forget that the DX-32 was in it's time the highest-performance tank transport in the galaxy, able to get a platoon of three super-heavy tanks from orbit to combat in a little under a minute. And the Blink Dog has been heavily upgraded over the years; she was once an asteroid racer, and not a low-placed racer either. She was a genuine Top Five competitor for three years running, something very few vessels from any make or nation can claim. Millennia of Kenti engineering and decades of Leaguer ingenuity have gone into the Blink Dog's dirt-encrusted form, producing a fast, agile, well-armoured and heavily armed little starship capable of outrunning most opponents and making anything that can keep up seriously regret it.

She needs to.

After all, she's a blockade runner.

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"What a monster." Hermione said, looking up at the filth-streaked beast that towered over her. She looked a bit like the bastard child of a vastly overgrown jet fighter and a huge, fat-bellied military transport aircraft to Hermione's eyes, between her hulking D-profiled fuselage and the slightly incongruous aggressively swept-back delta wings, which had these even odder pods at the tips from which the ship's rear undercarriage protruded. There were four double-barrelled gun turrets the size of small houses spaced around the ship's midriff, just ahead of the leading edge of her wings; a fifth identical turret hung under her nose, above and ahead of the cargo ramp, which was big enough to swallow three tractor-trucks at the same go, and another massive gun projected from the ship's nose just above and to the left of the cockpit window.

Tara grinned at her.

"She's an old banger, but she's home to me." She said.

"Bruce my dear fellow," Fleggitt said, "This vessel is a wreck. I have seen vessels in better condition abandoned in the debris ring."

Bruce shrugged, affectionately slapping one of the thirty foot long hydraulic pistons that operated the bow ramp. "Chrissakes, Fleggitt. She's a genuine DX-32, don't you know a classic when you see one mate?"

"A DX-32? Great Scott! I say, aren't there less than a thousand of them left?"

"Yeah." Tara replied, gloomily nodding. "The greatest hot-rod frame Mentler ever built, and ninety percent of them have been wrecked or scrapped – what a fucking shame, huh? But what the hell, the Dog's as solid as the day she left the yards. If we ever sold her she'd probably end up sitting around gathering dust in some rich punk's collection, which would be a waste of a shit-hot ship."

"Too true." George agreed, admiring the battered, rusty old ship. "She's bloody awesome, man."

"That's one hell of a big gun." Hermione remarked, peering up at the yawning barrel that protruded from the left side of the ship's nose a bit above and behind the cockpit; it stuck a good eighty feet out of the front, and was wide enough that she would have been able to crawl down it's bore.

"That's an ultra-high velocity destroyer keel gun." Bruce stated, sounding extremely smug. "Azerothian built, it's from one of their AVF heavy destroyers. We found it drifting around in an asteroid belt off Sklet. Took us an age to plumb it into the old spine particle cannon housing and it's a cock getting ammo, but that little toy scares the crap outta pirates; hell, it'll even give a frigate pause for thought. It kicks the whole ship back about ten metres when you hit the trigger, even taking the kick comps into account."

"Bitchin'." Said Fred.

"An Azerothian keel gun?" Neville asked. "You're saying that's an explosive-charge-and-bullet type gun?"

"Yup, even uses brass cartridge cases mate. Looks something like a shotgun cartridge the size of a car."

"Bitchin'." George said.

"You have to admit she's a bit of a rust-bucket." Parvati remarked.

Bruce snorted.

"Look, sheila. My dad picked this ship up from the Skid Row boneyards as a non-runner for two thousand dollars, then basically hit her until she fired up. Well, admittedly he'd managed to find a semi-functioning warp drive in a tangled knot of wreckage that usta be a Clanguard destroyer, that's how he got the Dog back in space. Hell, her windscreen's still got cracks sealed over with Liquid Steel. Dad had her thirty years before he died, and me and Alice have had her for ten years now. There's hardly a week goes by that we don't manage to scrounge up a better part for something. She's cobbled together from salvage and boneyards scroungings, but for all that she works good. She's got a bunch of glitches, and it takes both hands and feet to fly her, but when you get everything running smoothly she goes like shit off a stick."

"What a wreck." A strident voice proclaimed; turning round, the gang found themselves looking at who they'd expected, i.e. Draco Malfoy.

Bruce smirked. "Oh, and you've got a less beat-up ship? Didn't think so mate."

"I say, Malfoy. Do us all a favour and toddle along before we have to get rather shamefully violent, what?" Fleggitt requested, sticking his nose in the air.

"Dry up, Nelkroddly." Draco snapped, sauntering forwards.

A particle blaster got in his path.

"Hold it right the fuck there mate." Bruce snarled. "The LSS-17332 is a League ship. MY League ship. Step on that ramp and you're breaking into MY League ship, which is an act of piracy, which means I'll be completely entitled to blast you mate. So fuck off."

"Under the Galactic Shipping Safety and Warfare Treaty of Standard Year 148021, as amended in 150931," S'tarak'hai remarked, "Onboard a starship is sovereign territory of the nation in which the vessel is registered, therefore onboard that starship the laws of the nation in which the vessel is registered apply. And under League of Affiliated Miners and Free Traders and in fact Galactic Council law, boarding a privately-owned vessel without invitation or search warrant is an act of piracy, under which circumstances the vessel's crew are legally entitled to defend their vessel by any means available, up to and including lethal force. Onboard the vessel is defined as standing on any part that is permanently attached to the vessel or enclosed by the vessel's superstructure, cargo ramps and boarding ladders included. Got it?"

Draco hurriedly backed off; Bruce nodded and put the particle blaster away.

"Sensible bloke." He remarked. "C'mon, peeps. Not you, Malfoy."

"You'll get yours when my father's headmaster." Draco snarled, and stormed off. Bruce rolled his eyes and waved his mates after him; on arriving at the top, Bruce thumbed a button on the hatch control console and, with a yowl of aged hydraulics, the outermost flap retracted, then the whole ramp began to grind upwards, finally reaching top with a ringing clang and creak.

"Alright folks, this is C-deck, also known as the cargo bay. Down the port side, that's the left side when looking for'ards for you dirtsiders, from bow to stern we've got the keelgun supply lift, the port turret bay, the port for'ards stairs, a couple of port sideworks access doors which let you get inside the port wing, then access to the engine room. Down the starboard side, we've got the starboard turret bay, the B-deck cargo airlock which is how you load and unload in space without evacuating the cargo bay, the starboard for'ards stairs, a starboard sideworks access door, the general supplies lift, the other starboard sideworks access door, then starboard access to the engine room." Bruce said. "The line of hatches in the floor just starboard of centre up the front here lead to the underworks escape bay, the central hatch up front leads to the underworks just between the nosegear bay and the belly turret bay, that hatch further back leads to the dump pit, the hatch behind that leads into the underworks, and then behind that is the powerpack, then the engine room firewall."

Hermione looked around. This wasn't really what she'd expected the insides of a starship to look like; it was downright squalid, and reminded her of the old barns and sheds on her uncle's farm. There was junk scattered everywhere; machine components were piled against the wall, coils of heavy cable littered the floor along with several pallets of random gubbins, an area up near the back was obviously used as a workshop from the assorted tools stacked on and around two old solid lumber kitchen tables, and a half dozen very dead cars were dumped in out-the-way corners, along with a small and possibly functional if extremely rusty forklift truck. The walls were lined with metal shelves spot-welded into place, and these were heaped with more junk, some of it possibly spares but most just rusty chunks of metal or pieces of dirty plastic. Lastly, there was a picturesque mound of presumably empty drinks cans in a pallet-sized bin right beside the airlock, leaking the smell of stale beer. The whole thing was run-down and covered in dirt and rust; even the floor was pretty much made out of patches.

Tara caught Hermione's shocked look, and grinned at her.

"Quite a sight, isn't she?" she said.

"I never thought inside a starship would be so… so… so…"

"Ambient Industrial Decay?" Harry suggested. "I think she's great. Hey Bruce, is that really a last-century Fliggitprob coupe?" This was said as he pointed at one of the old cars.

"Sure is, mate." Bruce said.

"Cool… you don't see many of them around."

Bruce grinned. "They're all over the place on Gilbert. Most of Fliggitprob's final ten years of production went to the New Australia system, and most of that was for Gilbert, and you know how often Frognorfian cars wear out."

"Strictly once per never, eh what?" Fleggitt smugly remarked.

"It was sat in that corner when Dad got the Dog." Bruce said, nodding at the old car. "It's needing a lot of work. The powerplant runs, but the axles have seized rock solid. I keep promising myself I'll do it up some day, but I've never had the time."

"How come you've got an old London taxi?" George asked, peering at another rusty old car. Hermione blinked and had a closer look; right enough, it was an old-school black London taxi, complete with 'Taxi' sign on the roof. It was pretty beat-up, but in far better shape than the other wrecks.

"Got left here by a passenger." Alice said.

"Wow, they just abandoned it?" Fred asked, peering through the taxi's dusty windscreen.

"No mate." Bruce said. "Y'see, he had his fave concubine with him, and halfway through the flight she slit his throat, hijacked us, and took us back to a rat nest. They killed Mum and Dad before Tara managed to bust us out. That was when me an' Alice were seven."

"… oh. Sorry I asked." Fred said, sounding shocked and a bit ashamed.

"Not your fault mate, you didn't know." Bruce said with a shrug. "Anyway, it's been most of ten years, we're about as over it as we're ever gonna get."

"Do you want rid of that car?" George asked, indicating the taxi.

"Take it." Bruce said. "It's yours, mate."

"Aw crumbs, we can't do that!" Fred complained.

Bruce shook his head. "Look mate, I'm not taking a cent for that car. If you've got a use for it, it's yours. Selling it would feel too much like earning money off what killed our folks."

"Well, if you're sure…" George said.

"Sure I'm sure mate, I wouldn't be saying I was sure if I wasn't sure." Bruce stated the obvious.

"I've got no problem with it." Alice said. "Hell, I'd be glad to see the back of that thing. My life'd be a whole lot better without one old taxi."

"I couldn't care less. There's six dead old cars cluttering up this cargo bay, and one less is that much less junk in here." Tara said.

"Right, that's that decided." Bruce said, and kicked the taxi's bumper. "This bloody car belongs to Fred and George Weasely. Pick it up any time you like, there's no mad rush."

"Holy shit, is this what it looks like?" Harry asked, peering at a shapeless piece of rusted machinery leant against the wall behind a couple of old car doors, a coil of heavy wire and a sheet of corrugated iron.

Bruce shrugged.

"No idea what it is, mate. It was sat there when Dad got the ship."

Harry shoved the junk out the way and hauled the object of his interest away from the wall, loosing a shower of dust and rust flakes. "It is! It's an Imperial Atlantean Marines speederbike!" he crowed, fiddling with it; there was a click, then a spluttering roar, a flash of fire and a huge shower of dust from the back of the machine, then the roar choked into silence as Harry flicked the switch back up. "Holy shit, and it runs? Bruce, this thing is a fucking find"

"Er, what is it anyway mate?" Bruce asked, peering at it.

"It's a one-man fast scouting vehicle originally built for the Imperial Atlantean Marine scouts. The engine's dual straight-line electron torches, and it's lifted by, get this, a fist-sized chunk of Levitation Stone. It's pretty much got nothing to go wrong. The steering mechanically rotates one torch or the other. All it needs is a bunch of electricity and it goes."

"Levitation Stone?" Tara gasped, going a bit pop-eyed. "Are you serious?"

"Yup. Chunk the size of my fist, I couldn't believe my fucking eyes the first time I saw the inside of one of these things." Harry gave the machine a gentle nudge; it drifted silently away from the wall, seeming almost like it was surrounded by a private area of zero-G. "It's in there, just under the powerpack, glowing away."

"Are you sure that's a straight-line electron torch?" Bruce asked, sounding distinctly freaked out.

"Yeah, blip the throttles and you can blow a light truck in half with the exhaust." Harry said with a shrug, halting the speederbike's drift with a hand on it's seat. "Advantage is, you can blow a light truck in half with the exhaust, and no matter how filthy it gets it won't explode."

"Ye Gods." Bruce muttered, shaking his head. "Bad enough using a straight-line electron torch for welding, but as an engine? Gotta hand it to those Greenscuts, they were cracked."

"It worked, and worked well. You can take a dump up the exhausts, bury it in sand for six months, dig it up, tap out the crud, and soon as you put a charge on the powerpack it'll fire up first try." Harry said, patting the speederbike's seat. "That way, not only did they have a highly reliable fast scouting vehicle, they also had a weapon capable of burning straight through an inch of armour plate. Point the exhausts at anything you want to really screw up, hold on real tight, and endstop the throttle. Instant sabotage, and you're heading away from the scene of the crime at a goodly clip."

"Crikey, the stuff you find in old cargo bays." Bruce said, shaking his head. "Anyway, shall we carry on with the tour?"

"Something like. Bruce, if you're looking to sell that speederbike, I'm interested, OK?" Harry said.

Bruce nodded. "We'll talk about that later, mate. Right, here we go, up the starboard for'ards stairs." He hauled open the door (complete with nautical-style turn-handle-at-centre) open, and ushered them into the stairs.

The stairs led to a half-landing where they turned a right-angle, then up via another door to a hallway heading fore and aft. Doors led off the outboard side of the hallway all along, and it doglegged towards the stern; four roughly-spaced doors led off the inboard side.

"This is the starboard B-deck corridor. The next door towards the bow is medbay, then B-deck cabins 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8. Aft on this side is stores, where the general stores lift leads to, then behind that the port aft stairs leading up to A-deck, then the engine room. That door in front of us leads to the spine conduit, same goes for the inboard door up at the bow; you get to the nose turret bay through the spine conduit. The door just up ahead leads to the for'ards cross-spine corridor, and the one right by the engine room firewall leads to the aft cross-spine corridor. We're level with the ship's main structural member right now; just the other side of that wall there's a two hundred ton triple-beam ladder frame. That's what stops her concertinaing herself when you punch superluminal. B-deck cabin 8 is Tara's room. C'mon, we're gonna head across the for'ards cross-spine corridor now." The door led into a short passage with a floor that humped up abruptly in two places and a ceiling that came down in the middle; with a rather unnecessary "Mind yer heads." Bruce led them across and into another fore-aft corridor.

"Right, that door right in front of us leads to the port for'ards staircase. That leads down to C-deck and up to A-deck. Next door for'ards is the loos, then the shower block, then access to the keelgun supply lift, then cabins B6, B4 and B2. Aft of here there's the mess hall which we use as the ship's living room, then the galley, then the starboards aft stairs up to A-deck, then more of the engine room. C'mon upstairs."

Bruce led them into the port for'ards stairs, and up, leading via yet another pressure door to a fore-and-aft hallway at the top. The hallway doglegged abruptly right in front of the stairs, and again further forwards, once again with plenty doors.

"This is A-deck corridor. The door opposite leads to the A-deck escape bay, that's the other way out if the shit really hits the fan. The big oblong central room the corridor doglegs around here is the upper turret bay, that's where the turret on the roof retracts to. Up for'ards we've got the keelgun breech conduit on the port side, and the A-deck airlock to starboard along with A-deck cabins 1 to 4. Aft we've got A-deck cabins 5 to 18, the brig, the aft stairs off both sides at the end, and the A-deck part of the engine room." Bruce turned for'ards. "And of course, right up at the bows, we've got Alice's personal empire."

"Aw crikey bro, quit ribbing me." Alice grumbled. Bruce smirked at her as they arrived at yet another pressure door. This one bore a sign reading:

CAUTION!

BRIDGE UNSTABLE

IN HIGH WINDS!

"And this," he said, flinging the door open, "Is the wheelhouse."

It looked like the cockpit of a large and unimaginably dilapidated aircraft. There were a total of twelve seats arrayed around at varied control stations, each clad in battered leather with foam lining poking from the rents. The controls were obviously cobbled together from junk; the floor bore a thick layer of detritus, mainly flattened beercans and trod-in crisp packets, but including drifts of dog ends. A cannabis plant grew from a pile of filth in one back corner; the walls sported patches of moss. Many dials and readout panels were yawning holes in the dashboards; several probably-important screens were blown out, and even the control yokes had several extra switches duct-taped into place.

Alice cleared the left-hand front seat with an easy swing over the centrally-mounted bank of throttles, and sprawled in the seat with a sigh, her left hand automatically landing on the yokes. From the clear section around the rudder pedals, this was the pilot's seat.

"I thought the pilot used the right seat and the co-pilot used the left?" Ron asked, obviously puzzled.

"I'm left-handed." Alice remarked. "The controls are duplicated in the two positions, it's just easier for me to use left seat."

"I think," Hermione said, "The most amazing thing about this old ship is that it works at all."

End, Chapter 7.

AN – Once again, technobabble tried to take over the world. The Blink Dog is going to be a rather prominent feature of the story, especially when it comes to the summertime plots, which is why I've paid this much attention to her at this stage in the game. I've drawn up deck plans; I'll post them once I get around to getting somewhere to post them. I wrote the descriptions above based off said deck plans, but I'm not sure how clear they are. The DX-32 as I've imagined and drawn it is a substantial piece of equipment. 400 feet doesn't sound like much when you say it in a hurry, but that's far bigger than a Boeing 747 or even an Antinov An-225; it's big enough to make the biggest aircraft mankind has ever constructed look like a Cessna.

The Imperial Atlantean Marines are supposed to be something halfway between the Space Marines (Warhammer 40,000) and Imperial stormtroopers (Star Wars) just in case you need styling prompts.

The reason for my updating delay was an eventful week. Firstly there was my 29th birthday (27th April, incidentally the day I finished writing this chapter) which did of course lead to a gift in the form of a copy of Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. It's a fucking good game, which has led to certain levels of distraction as I work my way further into the Zone.

Also in the past week I've been a bit bummed as my beloved (but thoroughly dead) Honda ratbike has finally gone to a better place, or rather the scrapyard. I salvaged the sheep skull off the rear mudguard and the wolf-head magnet off the fuel tank, both of which will find their way onto my next vehicle.

See you all next time,

Doghead Out.