One Man's Trash

[Wildkins]

"One man's trash is another man's treasure..."

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The system of Munich was a painter's canvas of color - the green-orange hues of the Walker and Edge Nebulas colliding with the white-blue Crow Nebula in a cavalcade of saturation. Among the fields of stellar anomalies laid a smattering of planets, connected by a loose set of accelerator rings of a vast trade lane network - Rheinland shipping companies passing through on their monotonous routes, keeping the industrial machine of the 8th century well oiled and well maintained. Yet, off in the corner of the system, there was a sudden shift...no greens, no oranges, no blues or whites - just a deep, swirling charcoal black.

The "Munich Disaster", as it is known, was a sweeping disaster that affected the entirety of the Munich system. After a series of Kishiro and Samura experiments regarding one of the Munich stars went awry, a catastrophic stellar ejection event tore through the system, enveloping the once prosperous Augsburg colony in a murk of radioactive stellar material. Abandoned entirely by all but ALG contractors, the once state-of-the-art facility had fallen into complete disarray and misuse, nothing more than a floating pile of scrap.

Luckily for Roberts, that was just what he needed.

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0319 UT, 14MAR822 - Munich System

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"Prepare for trade lane deceleration in 5. 4. 3. 2. 1."

The bulky mass of a starship that constituted the Freedom Liner sluggishly climbed its way out of the trade lane as the superluminal bubble collapsed, the ring of light signifying trade lane travel breaking into a heap of particles. The liner's engine groaned and huffed until, eventually, a stream of plasma flung itself out of the drive core, the ship lumbering its way up to a respectable pace. Before too long, the ship had made its way over to the amalgamation of toxic gases and radioactive stellar material that made up the bulk of the Munich incident.

As the ship ground itself to a halt, its captain, Sean Roberts, took a moment to view the anomaly in all its glory. An unshielded vessel would be cooked alive before you could say "Augsburg", but the Freedom Liner was no civilian vessel. Instead, it was a heavily modified OS&C luxury liner, fitted with heavy cannons stolen from Navy decommissioning yards and armor plating made up of a combination of scrap parts and other ships. It wasn't the prettiest sight, but it'd be perfect for Roberts' purposes.

While Roberts took a moment to contemplate the beauty of the pulsating cloud in front of him, his plans nevertheless started into motion. The frilled mid-section of his Liner shunted itself forward, almost violently, and revealed two launch bay doors - in this case, only the left had been opened. A small pod scrambled itself out of the chamber and sped off into the cloud, a bright white engine flare obscuring nearly all of the small pod's frame.

The gray-tan pod screamed its way through the gas clouds and scrap fields surrounding the Augsburg wreck, dodging and diving its way into an observation position. Roberts watched the process from afar - he found it quite amusing, and interesting, how effectively the little drone navigated itself - and before long, the Liner was given a direct camera feed of the wreck.

Roberts let out a small sigh as he moved over to the terminal and examined the image in detail. After a few moments, all that could be heard from the Captain's Quarters would be a string of swear words and incessant banging on the wall.

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