Chapter Two: First Stop
Prime candidate for most interesting object in the system of the first star was a planet located in the habitable range, complete with plants, animals, water and so forth. Mapping from polar orbit showed a big magnetic anomaly which turned out to be 9 miles of very wrecked spaceship, so we went down to look at it, landing about 5 miles away in a forest clearing, due to the usual captainly paranoia.
Speaking of captainly paranoia, it soon became obvious that, since I was the only decent pilot on board, I was not going to be allowed to go over to the wreck with any of the exploratory teams. After being stuck inside this undersized flying object for over a week, too! The party that did go included Wailuro, as survival type, and Lirarl on one grav sled, plus Lawaro and Aryialo in another. At least they carried remote cameras so that the rest of us could see what was going on. The wrecked ship appeared to have been designed for beings considerably taller than the captain(!), about twenty feet tall to be precise, a judgment confirmed by the discovery of a humanoid skeleton in the remains of a rubberish outfit.
Not much else was around, except for one still functioning artifact – i.e. a twenty foot tall Security robot which took an immediate dislike to them. Deactivating it was an interesting experience, to say the least, but they did manage it, then asked if the captain would please send a couple more grav sleds out so they could bring the thing, and the skeleton, back to the ship.
"Captain?" I inquired, hopefully.
"No!"
And he proceeded to send Sawalaro and Srilurow (the latter in scout grade powered armor), instead. Grrrr.
While they were headed out, I took advantage of a couple of free minutes and left the bridge, this time for the captain's cabin. As I hadn't managed to pick the lock, I poured epoxy into it instead. We'd see if he liked being locked out as little as I did being locked in.
They had just loaded up the robot plus the skeleton, when another robot turned up, just as pugnacious as the last one... This time, the resulting fight wrecked one grav sled, Lirarl's left arm (sliced right off), and everyone's peace of mind. It also left the captain with a problem, namely who to send out with Ailurowlurr, who was the closest thing to a medical officer we had on board.
"Look", I said, "I'll wear powered armor. I'll wear MARAUDER armor, for crying out loud. If anything bothers me, I'll personally sling it into orbit!"
"Oh, all right."
So I finally got out to the ship after all. It was marginally more interesting seen close up. And the flight out and back was no trouble at all.
Several hours out from the planet, the captain decided to go to his cabin with results that were heard all over the ship. Marvelous stuff, epoxy. I think Ailurowlurr was about to go offer him a firmer to use as a cutting torch, when the captain solved the problem by ripping the door off its hinges. Bjoran muscles are pretty good, too.
The next few hours were spent replacing the door at the captain's orders while he sat in his room so we wouldn't do anything to the contents.
Another conference.
Me – "Well, he's learning."
Aryialo – "Maybe. But while he's in there, he can't watch us out here. As long as he's going to go ripping doors up, let's make this one as flimsy as possible."
Me – "You do that, while I make up about a dozen duplicate keys."
After all, he hadn't said NOT to...
