Anyone passing through the Fort Bush hangar would notice a damn strange sight- a LPI Liberator up on blocks with a Houston flag draped over it, surrounded by crushed beer cans and a scattering of wrenches, hammers and welding tools. A pair of oil-spattered cowboy boots sticking out from under the port fin mark the location of its pilot, Frank Austin.
He had gotten hammered in the Sunbucks, gotten into an argument with a mechanic about routine maintenance and decided to do some custom work on his Liberator to "see how fast she'll go".
Paradoxically, the first modification was a custom gun rack welded up in the cockpit, which had gone well until the sparks from the grinder set the upholstery on fire. But Frank persevered in the grand Houstonian tradition, and now the Libby was up on a set of cinderblocks while the anti-grav unit was in a million pieces on the hangar deck.
24 Lone Stars later, he pulled himself out from under the Libby, tossed his current beer to a watching mechanic and uttered fateful words.
"Ya'll hold my beer and watch this!" he laughed, making it into the cockpit on his third stumbling try and pressing a shakily rigged button.
The Libby rumbled on its blocks as a pressurized stream of h-fuel shot out the rear thruster, met a skillfully welded pilot light and blasted across the hangar in a column of flame. Mercifully there was nobody in its path, but the scorch mark in the now cherry-red super alloy bulkhead would never come out.
"Yee-haw!" Frank yelled from the cockpit, pumping his fist in the air and standing up before losing his balance and falling to the hangar deck with a sullen thud. He lay there for a while, wondering where he was going to find a set of horns for the Libby's canopy.
The Austin Clan: George Austin, GMG Paramilitary Ensign; Frank Austin, LPI Recruit Officer
With a big grin on his face, Aiden walks into the bar holding something under his arm. He calls over a couple of his buddies.
"Looky what I got boys. The Rogues decided to make a little swimsuit calendar and I got me one. I have to say I'm a bit surprised, she don't look to bad. This is going up in the locker room for sure. Just don't tell the Cheif where it came from."
Seymore Justice sat at the table, several recruits all around him, as he recounted the great battle that took place near West Point. In between drinks of his Shirley Temple, he regaled them with tales of danger as he spoke of Hellfire Legion, Vagrant Raiders and Pirate Freelancers all pitched in heavy battle against the forces of LPI and others.
"We did good today boys." Seymore got up and took one last drink. "Yep. We did ourselves proud."
With that, he walked out the door and headed straight for bed.
Frank put his Libby down on the cinderblocks laid out next to the scorched bulkhead that had become his unofficial/official landing spot. The blocks were necessary because the Libby's landing gear had gotten spot-welded shut accidentally during one of Frank's whiskey-fueled tinkering sessions.
He had found enough "Justice White" paint somewhere to paint a bitchin' racing stripe down the centerline of the Liberator, with enough left over to trade for some "Orange Dream" to paint flames around the muzzles of his laser cannons. The cargo-hold was now mostly empty gun racks, much to the discomfort of prisoners temporarily sequestered there as Frank had somehow managed to weld and grind structures with zero utility but an impossible number of sharp metal corners.
Frank swung himself out of the cockpit, happy to put his boots on solid deck for the first time in 24 hours. It had been a long patrol, the "Manhatten 500", doing loops in the Jersey fields watching for smugglers and criminals. They had had a few fights, thankfully lost nobody from the patrol and made it home safe and sound.
Now his boots beat the well-worn path to the Sunbucks bar, and he slapped down a Sirian credit card he had pulled from a burning Mule wreck. "Drinks are on the Rogues tonight, ya'll!" he shouted, "Come get you some!"
"Bartender, keep the whiskeys comin' till I black out!"
The Austin Clan: George Austin, GMG Paramilitary Ensign; Frank Austin, LPI Recruit Officer
A young, black haired man with a crew-cut walked in, wearing a standard LPI uniform, minus the chevrons, a pistol holster on his belt, but no pistol. He very quietly walked up behind Frank who was getting drunk at the bar, putting his hands on his shoulder.
"BOO!"
Freddie quickly sat down next to him, turning to a woman behind the counter. "Gimme' a Liberty Ale, won't you?"
Frank spun around, pulling a knife out of his boot, but he over-rotated and fell off his stool. The knife skittered wildly across the floor.
"What! Who's the dang-fool who done gone and startled me like that!" Frank yelled, trying to get up but failing as his whiskey-sodden brain attempted to understand the fine nuances of gravity. "And where in the sphincter of hell is my knife!? Some dang rattlesnake has gone and stole my knife!"
The Austin Clan: George Austin, GMG Paramilitary Ensign; Frank Austin, LPI Recruit Officer
"Thanks for the lift, buddy." Frank said, planting himself into the barstool with infinitely more care than he had ever shown in landing his Libby.
"Hell, ya'll can owe me. I'm buyin' tonight, got me a Rogue credit card in that last patrol. See how long it takes for them to zero it!" Frank laughed heartily, nearly fell over again and got back to his whiskey.
The Austin Clan: George Austin, GMG Paramilitary Ensign; Frank Austin, LPI Recruit Officer
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