Manhattan bar

[Malaclypse 666]

Pops waggled his fingers at Sophie and stuck his tongue out as he walked back from the comms cubicle.

"Gents and Ladies," he began as he sat back down at the table, pulling a fresh cheroot from his vest pocket. "I have an amazing tale to tell."

Cheroot lit, and unwaggling fingers wrapped around the sparkling Sapphire, Pop looked unsure where to start. He paused while he looked around at Maria, Patrick, Yahvo, the rather stiff young man Wolfpack, and Jay, bemused as ever. He began.

"It seems last night there was a complete and total recall of each and every C-Trans in Sirius. They've downgraded its capacity, due to structural stresses at high cruise speeds. And many of the turrets being used were adding to the vibration, posing a further hazard.

"Well, my newly reinstalled "Sophie", supposedly reprogrammed to behave like the pilot and not the captain, took the recall very seriously. She decided to take it upon herself once again, to captain. She attempted to boost for New Tokyo to have the modifications made immediately! What she had not noticed was that I had removed several of the ignition modules from the Daddy W, to preclude any more unsupervised shopping excursions.

"Now the manufacturer is telling everyone to just flog the offending turrets, and to proceed cautiously to New Tokyo for refit; but at the time, Sophie "reasoned" that the ship had already been either damaged or even comdemed. She SOLD the bloody thing!

"She mounted my precious DW's heavy armor and weps on a ..choke.. CSV. Every thing off my dear ship went crammed into the hold of that CSV. She didn't even offload to one of our warehouses! But that isn't the turd in life's punchbowl. Instead of proceeding to New Tokyo to at least purchase and refit the Daddy's replacement, she decides once again, ..to go shopping.

"I've seen the logs, boys and girls. She commenced to go through a tidy sum in a very short time. First, a bloody SVHF of some sort from over in Bretonia, but she decided it didn't suit her.. some blather about an asymmetrical wing that interfered with her turret practice.

"Next, Sophie took a fancy to some new pirate craft down in the Omegas. A pirate ship, for Goddess' sake! She said it looked like something from some far-away galaxy. At least the fnording thing has some financial acumen, realizing that with an 800 capacity cargo hold, her shopping might be seriously curtailed.

"Apparently not embarrassed to ask for directions, Sophie finally managed to find her way to Scarborough. Some tens of millions of dollars and three incarnations later, I now have to learn to pilot a new ship.

"That is, if Sophie will let me.."

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