The March Conspiracy

[sushi]

The guard sighed. Night shifts at Houston Spaceport were always boring, and this one was worse than most. Why couldn't some of those criminals at least try to plunder ships from their launchpads? Surely some of them could have the decency to give him some excitement. He'd thought there might be some excitement a couple of weeks ago, when he received some strange orders to watch a particular docking bay and make sure that nobody got to the ship...what was it called? Aedos. He think that was it. But so far, nobody had. The Spatial had simply sat on in it's roofless type-3 bay, quiet as ever.

Suddenly, there was a tremendous crash. The guard lept to his feet, and headed to the nearest video terminal. He was slightly giddy. Something had finally happened! Long-neglected training kicked smoothly into gear, though. The guard quickly scanned the video feeds and saw that the docking bay occupied by the Aedos was no longer empty. Instead, smoke was pouring from what looked like a wreck on the far side of the bay. The guard sounded the alarm, and sped towards the docking bay...

He got there at the same time as several other guards. He keyed in the override code, and the door slid open. A huge backdraft of dust and smoke poured through, blinding the guards and throwing them back a bit. They charged in anyway, just in time to see the Aedos lifting off, soaring upwards into the night sky. Some of the guards chased it with a few futile blaster bolts, but it was too late... the Aedos was gone.

When the smoke and dust cleared, several of the guards headed to a comm station to report that the Aedos had gone, while others investigated the wreck. It was a strange ship: small, sleek, and completely black. The landing gear had completely buckled... it had been landed pretty rough. One guard noticed gas escaping from the engine block...

GET DOWN! The guards scattered and ran as fast as they could for the exit as the escaping gas intensified. The hull around the engine suddenly buckled, generating a shower of sparks...that was enough. The erupting gas burst into flame, an inferno billowing out of the twisted side of the black ship. The ship rolled, then skittered and danced across the floor propelled by this impromptu rocket. It gained a pretty respectable velocity before slamming into the wall of the docking bay and exploding.

"Get the DoD on the line. NOW!"

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Tannik_Seldon[Aedos] - Tannik Seldon's ongoing story
--Other Characters--
Leroy_Fenning - Bio