"Seven, why'd it have to be seven? Could have been five, or we could have double parked two and three, but seven?!"
Seabourne gave a shudder and a quick not-prayer to the goddess, hoping against hope she would, in her infinite indifference, turn her gaze far away from Curacao for a few hours. Fortune favors the bold, but the attention of the Goddess of Discord is always best if turned elsewhere. He turned to the tools of the heist in the back of the shuttle. He had to improvise to compensate for the lack of enthusiasm of his partner in crime. The small animal carrier shook out of sync with the rest of the ship, obscuring everything about its occupant save its general opinion on the state of affairs. Next to the carrier was a suitably soiled pillowcase, specially laundered to raise it back to a level of social presentability. Its assorted nuts and bolts (scavenged from nothing too essential in the shuttle) gently jingled. As his father never said, anything worth securing with four bolts will probably hold with three. Probably. He couldn't find a horseshoe magnet, but found a rare earth metal one that would work even better. And, of course the mayonnaise. In packets, slightly warm.
The Dorado class shuttle took a wide swing over pad seven, where Seabourne noted what looked like a marshmallow holding a powerwasher. Given that everything else looked like it belonged there, the slightly addled captain concluded that he found his huckleberry. The shuttle put in a surprisingly graceful landing. On the door, the slightly lighter images of letters were briefly visible, the reverse shadows of decals recently removed to prepare the ship for its next life in the luxury fleet. A quick eye would have made out "OS&C Puddle Jumper - Luxury Liner Breezewood" before the doors opened.
"You must be Scotty. Climb aboard quick-like. The goose is pissed, and if we don't leave right now, it'll also be cooked!"
