Cloudbuster Century

Launch was delayed an hour, due to threat of radiation; besides,
Waltor forgot his Bob Nuts! After a quick trip to the local ship
merchant, we were off. The Minuteman wormhole was swarming with heavy
civilian foot traffic, making maneuvering Cloudbuster particularly
challenging. At light year marker 8, a tree obliterated the top half
of the disko-deth-stah, snapping its axis in half. Skunk performed
emergency field repair with materials at hand, and we were off again,
albeit with a semi-limp disco ball. Fortune fell on us when we
finally located a hardware store in Concord, where a small crowd
assembled to observe in wonder. A length of threaded rod and some
disko-deth-stah tape had the mirrorballical fully repaired, and we
were back on the road. This was to be the only serious mechanical of
the trip.



Thanks to Waltor's impressive navigation, the g-well forces were
minimal, making the trip not only possible, but enjoyable. After
traveling through a stretch of beautiful back-country roads in
Carlisle, we entered the second of three wormholes: the Bruce Freeman
Rail Trail. Wombat marked our territory by stickering the entrance,
while Skunk and Waltor continued along at a remarkable clip. Along
the way we encountered the tiniest of tots, who managed to keep pace
with Cloudbuster for a brief period despite having just learned how
to ride a bike the week before. We stickered the Lowell end of the
trail and then reversed course for the next leg of the journey.



Throughout the day, the civilian population was exceedingly
supportive and friendly. In Littleton we stopped briefly at a gas
station to refuel, where the girls working the counter were relieved
to learn they were not hallucinating a giant bike with a disco ball.
Waltor astutely noted that just because Cloudbuster is in fact real,
doesn't necessarily mean they weren't hallucinating.



We continued up to Ayer, where we picked up the Nashua River Rail
Trail, the final and arguably most challenging wormhole of our
journey. With darkness setting in and a seemingly unending barrage of
low-hanging branches, Skunk was forced to play a high stakes game of
frogger with the disko-deth-stah through the trees, skillfully
dodging left and right with only the aid of a spotlight and his
instincts. Eight light years and two low-clearance overpasses later
we emerged unscathed in Pepperell, where we devoured a feast of
Chinese food and impressed the local STs with our extraordinary ships.



Fully sated, we retraced our steps back through the wormhole,
maintaining an accelerated pace and consuming festive molecules along
the way. Wombat again tagged each end of the trail with stickers as a
memento of our insanity for future generations. Waltor got giggly,
and Skunk was kissed by a space bat who mistook him for a tasty snack
amidst the foggy haze. With spirits still flying high, we invented a
new maneuver when we got back to the main road: the Reverse Nav-Tail,
in which Waltor gave navigational commands from the rear while Wombat
called out incomings from the front.



Admiral Retard set course to rendez-vous, but somehow missed the
convoy and overshot it by several light years. At Fort Great in the
Maynard system, Commodore Diva provided a greatly appreciated
refueling pitstop and offered a warp-core swap, which was strangely
not needed. While here, a large and fast-moving Saturnight battalion
intercepted at high warp, while Retard backtracked with increased
engine output and managed to also intercept. With our unusually large
long-range battalion fully assembled and energy higher than ever, we
embarked on the final leg of our adventure, at times completely
owning both sides of the road.



The last twenty light years were fast and furious, with quiet time
through the Concord and Lexington systems due to heavy sonic
disruption regulation. ST activity was notably elevated in Concord,
with one cruiser slowly tailing us the entire span of the system.
Cloudbuster's warp core miraculously endured the entire fifteen hour
journey, guns-a-blazin', for a glorious return to the homeworld.



Much celebration was had at Fort Tyler, whereupon billions of
Metoikos' fine tequila molecules were completely destroyed. Not to
mention the sweaty strawberries found adrift in Trader Joe's garbage
compactor.