Marvin sighed heavily and looked outside of the double sided observatory... One side, the dark, quiet, flight deck of Freeport 11... and out of the other, the silent, black guardian of Freeport 11... the Glorious Advance. He sat with another sigh, beleagueredly saying to himself
Life is too hard...
He lit up the pipe that was waiting on the side table for him, sighing again as he took in a deep breath... he relaxed as the room filled with the pungent haze. Marvin leaned back and stared at the ceiling... dozing in and out...
A faint beep but with a pronounced pitch resounded through the room and Marvin groggedly arose, it was Freeport 11's sleep cycle and no other crew were awake... Marvin thought it odd that anything would ping his Freeport, as the automatic communication response was switched on, as well as the automatic docking. This must be something important...
He flipped up the console to see a readout of the ship, and he glanced at it out of the observatory, barely making its dark spectre out of the black ambient bands, with the occasional twinkle of stars in Omicron Delta's starground.
:::AUTOMATIC RESPONSE::: HANDSHAKE PRTCL [Welcome to Freeport 11, please dock and visit our bars, recharge your ship, and your spirits!]
SHIP ID: O#143653
CLASS: Hathor-Type Order Heavy Gunboat :::CMD ENBLED - AUTORESPONSE OVERRIDE - URGENT COMLINK SECURED:::
The audio transmission automatically opened after the screen detected Marvin's eyes stopped following at the end of the above line.
A female's voice boomed through the speakers -
"This is OCV-Sohag, requesting urgent special permission to dock on Freeport 11"
"Reports follow..."
Just why special permission was requested (and more important to Marvin, why he was awoken from his somber slumber) was due to particularly active Nomad specimens being aboard the Gunboat.
Marvin silently sent an "Ay Oh Kay" handshake to the ship, and the black outline of the Hathor moved closer and moored with Freeport 11.
Not long after, the dimmed sleep-cycle lights on the flight deck hummed on as a woman in a black suit stepped in followed by several crewmembers...
She was a tall, slender woman with jet black hair, a shock of which fell from her bangs and seemed to seamlessly follow the rest of her hair down to the nape of her neck.
She had a wound on her forehead, still red and swollen. Several of the accompanying crew members had obviously been shaken from whatever they've been through, many nervously looking around, some seemed to not know where to go or what to do. Dumbfoundedness.
Marvin was feeling charitable.
He would show these poor, shaken, tired Order pilots a good time...
And then he remembered his pipe... which had, by now, had turned the metallic side table a funny shade of brown, still smoldering.