Aldrin Parking Lots - The Undocking Tale From Spaceweed Hell

[thedesertwolf]

Once upon a time I started as a bankrupt assassin and while loathed by the Boron, used as target practice by the Piranid and just generally disliked by both the Pirates and the Split life moved on. I corrected these little misunderstandings in due time, hunting down fugitives for at least the Boron and the Split and so forth. By this time my account wasn't doing that nasty little flashy "you are broke thing" so I decided to do a teeny bit of exploring.

By teeny I meant something along the lines of over a hundred plus systems later, ranging from the Goners and their temple in Elysium of Light to the failed business venture of the Teladi that is Bad Debt. Toss in a sprinkling of Xenon sectors where the turbo that was recently installed saved my sorry hide and we eventually end up with me parked in Terran space.

Interesting thing Terran space, and for some po-dunks I'm supposed to be shooting at because some Argon military nutter tells me to, they aren't all that bad. Do a bunch of ferrying for those willing to hop into my slightly delapadated Mamba and they're more than willing to accept one of their "Long lost brothers" back into Terran culture. Nice folks, bit too heavy on the white paint and the moon-sized stations. Not certain what their story is, two governments or something wonky like that. Ain't the point of this either.

Futzing about in Terran space going too and fro having them pay me absurd amounts to haul their mercs from station to station I start fiddling with a pair of "discounted" video enhancement goggles. Fun thing, though I wasn't expecting an acceleration gate in the middle of a gaping hole of unoccupied space. Thought to myself, well, why the hell not! Not the first human to lob myself through something that looks worse for the ware than my mamba.

I dump that cargo of marines off and decide to go poke about at the thing. Seems perfectly active so in I go! Give me a damn jump gate any day, that weird "woosh" feeling you get from the acceleration gates is just a teensy bit nauseating. Pop clear on the other side and find another of those moon-sized stations the Terrans are so fond of... and a string of asteroids with a docking claw. I'm thinking to myself "Okay... I've seen po-dunk and pirate. This looks cheap even for them." Pop on down and dock with it to see what the deal was.

Weird weapons, strangest staging area I've ever seen and Terran's who seem absolutely paranoid inside the place. I mean way more than usual. Went and bothered one of the locals, said he was from "Aldrin" what was on good terms, and I mean willing to die for each other sort of terms, with the Terran's. Digging for a bit more information, find out that not all old terraformer CPU ships went nutters and that an entire system had been perfectly happy minding its own business for centuries! I figure I may as well see this place. End up thanking the guy for his story before booking it with the sector maps he sold me. One acceleration jump later and hoo-boy was I in for a shock.

Think the Kuiper belt is a droll sea of endless nothing? Get an AU or two outside the gravitational pull of the big ol' microplanet and enough free hanging asteroids to replace every ship I'd ever shot, stolen or otherwise coveted in pure ore and silicone. Flip on the triplex scanner and about half a second later three "Stations" show up on the sector map.

The natives to Aldrin must have some bizarre love of giant space rock instillation because almost every last one of their stations is made out of a good chunk of them. They still have old terraforming drones wandering around cleaning the place up and making more of the damn structures, then there's the monolithic tube that is their CPU ship. I thought the Argon One was huge, thing clogs up the entire view off my starboard for a good few minutes. Not my problem, I was more interested in seeing what ships they were making and if my Terran cred would serve here as an acceptable means of "I'm your friend and I won't shoot you."

Happy to report it does.... now I'm fairly new to the M6 series of ships but they showed me their Springblossom, bit fruity for a name I know, it was an absolute beauty. Went over the specs and just gawked for a few minutes. I wanted it, and when I asked the price I just stood there like a rube gawking at the poor lady giving me a technical rundown on it. Lets just say I bought it, then made myself broke stupid fast, well not totally broke, still kept a million tucked away for rainy days. The inside, well, shows a lot of its origins, spartan to the core but roomy enough to be made into a luxury palace if you so wanted, and I did, especially after the mamba. Now with a new and mostly outfitted ship I meander my way out of system to go see if I can get a few warm and fuzzy hit-missions in something designed to give much larger ships a very nasty time. Get out of Aldrin, gate into Aldrin 2, notice that I've still got spare weapon slots to fill and veer towards one of their weapon production complexes. Less than a minute later two more twits in the same ship park on either side of me.

First I'm thinking "Fine fine, no big loss." Then I see why neither of the little shits are leaving. The spindles on the docking claw are too close together and all of our ships are playing the shield-mash-tango with the stations power-grid making it an endless battle. Starboard and Stern wings are mushed up into the corresponding wings of the other Springblossoms. I sigh at this lovely lesson in poor station design and call up my old workhorse and see about having it smack on the jump drive to save me from this mess while the station workers try to figure out how not to blow all three our ships to hell and back again. Mamba docked, I popped out of the station to get a better view.... had to take an image to prove that I ain't the one who parked like an idiot first.

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This'll end two ways, one I get money for a new ship an' all my equipment back or two, those two scrubs to my side get to go flying with a wing missing.