The March Conspiracy

[Craines]

The Dirigible sped softly through the vacuum of space. It was a sight that anyone would see again and again on any given day, for the Dirigible was a Large Train. Now, it had been heavily modified, but no onlooker, or even scanning system, could detect what those modifications were.

However, soon the Large Train was no longer on the trade lanes, instead heading for a large nebula. Setting the Dirigible on autopilot, the old man moved backwards to the cargo storage. There, he opened up the cryo-tube that Tannik Seldon was being held in. Pressing a complicated password in, which he revealed after turning a key, the pod's two halves slid apart. There was a loud hissing sound as some of the super-cooled air was released into the room temperature gases. This dissipated, however, and the old man reached into the container. Grasping the poor sap who was located in its depths, the old man pulled him out.

Tannik Seldon was cold. He had every right to be, seeing as how he had just been removed from a cryogenic freezing capsule. But still, he was cold. And that didn't make him think quite right.

After the two had been acquainted, in which Seldon had tried to bludgeon the old man in the base of the neck with some spare piping, attempted to strange the old man with the sash to his hospital gown, and had tried to bite the old man, Tannik had decided to leave. The ship, from the vibrations Tannik could feel rumbling across the floor, was moving fast. If he wanted to escape, sooner would be far better than later.

Luckily for Tannik, a ship was in the far corner of the cargo hold. The old man followed the gaze of the rescued hostage and looked at the ship.

"Oh no. Oh no, no, no. That is my private vessel, Seldon. No no no." But even as he turned his head back at Tannik, the old man saw him running. "Son of a...! Get back here, you fool! We're still in Liberty space!"

"Does this thing have stealth capabilities?!" Seldon cried out, reaching the sleek black craft. The old man was far behind, not being able to run the length of the cargo hold.

"Huhuhuhuh," the old man panted. "Yes, it does. Highly experimental. You can even bypass the planetary shields of Cambridge with it. Slips through shielding, and all sorts of stuff. Wait. Get out of that! No! THAT'S MINE!"

But Tannik wasn't thinking. This was his chance. Climbing into the ship, he activated one of the archaic looking buttons. A little blue light lit up. "I wonder what this does..." he wondered aloud. The old man, who had seen something move on the outside, ran backwards, managing to get to the airlock. Closing the door, he peered out. Tannik pressed a second button, and that blue light changed into a red one. A little dinging sound was made as the cockpit was closed, and once it did, a missile erupted from the bowels of the tiny ship into the side of the Large Train. Chunks of metal flew out with the ship. Decompression began, and the entire cargo hold was crushed.

The old man pressed a few more buttons, and the cargo hold detached from the Dirigible. Then, a series of explosives detonated, and there were no remains of the hold. Nothing could be seen, for the nebula had surrounded the ship before Seldon's little stunt, and there was nothing to fear. As the ship reached the unmarked jump hole, the old man sighed. Pressing the send button, a letter entered the inbox of an office, somewhere far away. No one had intercepted it, no one had read it. It was a normal letter, after all, and nothing could make it seem any more important. After all, it was just a request for a puppy.

Tannik now had his archaic stealth ship, but was unable to read any of the inscriptions. Fearing he might blow the ship up on accident, he began to interface the ship with his neuralnet. It seemed to work fine, and so, Tannik Seldon began to set simple waypoints for his ship to follow. The old man was in an unmarked system, reading the response to his wishes for a puppy, and the Bretonian Director, McTraland, was being fed into a device that removed atoms one by one in an immensely uncomfortable way. All in all, a very active day indeed.

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