Sunbucks Cafe

[Talbott]

Anyone passing through the Fort Bush hangar would notice a damn strange sight- a LPI Liberator up on blocks with a Houston flag draped over it, surrounded by crushed beer cans and a scattering of wrenches, hammers and welding tools. A pair of oil-spattered cowboy boots sticking out from under the port fin mark the location of its pilot, Frank Austin.

He had gotten hammered in the Sunbucks, gotten into an argument with a mechanic about routine maintenance and decided to do some custom work on his Liberator to "see how fast she'll go".

Paradoxically, the first modification was a custom gun rack welded up in the cockpit, which had gone well until the sparks from the grinder set the upholstery on fire. But Frank persevered in the grand Houstonian tradition, and now the Libby was up on a set of cinderblocks while the anti-grav unit was in a million pieces on the hangar deck.

24 Lone Stars later, he pulled himself out from under the Libby, tossed his current beer to a watching mechanic and uttered fateful words.

"Ya'll hold my beer and watch this!" he laughed, making it into the cockpit on his third stumbling try and pressing a shakily rigged button.

The Libby rumbled on its blocks as a pressurized stream of h-fuel shot out the rear thruster, met a skillfully welded pilot light and blasted across the hangar in a column of flame. Mercifully there was nobody in its path, but the scorch mark in the now cherry-red super alloy bulkhead would never come out.

"Yee-haw!" Frank yelled from the cockpit, pumping his fist in the air and standing up before losing his balance and falling to the hangar deck with a sullen thud. He lay there for a while, wondering where he was going to find a set of horns for the Libby's canopy.

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The Austin Clan: George Austin, GMG Paramilitary Ensign; Frank Austin, LPI Recruit Officer