Intercepticon

We interrupt this program for a special report from the Fleet Admiral:

1930 hours: I arrived at SCUL prime HQ to find the fort with no life support, injured pilot Nova and a brand new cadet without a host. Due to excellent Starmada Command training, Nova had managed to train the cadet well enough to begin to prepare for space travel. She also took the role as Deck Officer and prepped for launch, even though there was no chance of her leaving the station due to a severely injured leg. Between the three of us we managed to restore life support and started to preflight ships.

1950 hours: Dogi arrived with a preflighted ship as well as some new experimental escape pods. Due to some overthrusting his back was suffering and had to recover on the crash couch.

2000 hours: Threespeed and Rocket arrive. Rocket was able to resume training for the cadet, who chose calls sign Crawdaddy. Threepseed and I began to try and repair our class 5 sonic disruption system as we prepared for the mission. Our plan was to rendezvous with the main fleet coming back from a 100 light year tour, although they were not expected to arrive before our zoobs ran out. A sense of doom lingered as we did what we could to keep morale up and not dwell on our inevitable failure. As we approached our intended launch time it was obvious we lacked the pilotpower to launch on time, we delayed for 30 minutes. Remembering that Fort Madison was less than a light year away we decided to set course and improvise from there.

2245 hours: Launch was disorganized and interrupted with local civilians on the launchpad, which we would have toasted to a crisp if we ignored them. Less than a quarter lightyear out, some superfluous part flew off the flagship, but was deemed non-critical and we decided to search for it on the return trip.

2300 hours: the ragtag fleet arrived at Fort Madison to find Leotard in need of some fort maintenance. With some effort and teamwork we managed to move the hangar to a lower level and secure her ships. Further testing of the Class 5 disruption array revealed that repairs were inadequate, and we stowed some backup equipment to be tested later. After a quick inspection of the rest of the fort we found it to be airtight, and Leotard boarded her civilian craft. We decided our best chance for survival was to travel to 'Art Farm', where the Honkonians were had set up an outpost.

0015 hours: We pass by the local space where we lost the equipment and did a class 2 scan of the area with no luck.

0030 hours: We docked at Art Farm to find the tail end of a massive distress call, replete with food molecules. Off-duty pilots Fart Noises and Kpafun were there, as well as some SCUL fans. After some data exchanging and some refueling we began to prepare for launch.

0100 hours: protocol droid reports that the Main Fleet was only a few light years from SCUL prime HQ and were requesting the specific fuel type known as 'french fries'. It looked like our ticket to survival! Local intel provided us coordinates to a nearby open refueling station called 'McDonalds'. We launched immediately with Kpafun and two excellent civilians added to our battalion. One civilian had equipped his ship with some crude and somewhat broken sonic disruption consisting of a bucket, a cowbell, and a small broken cymbal. He was an expert in making this work for him, greatly enhancing out sonic disruption array.

0130 hours: We arrive at the fueling station to find it was indeed still servicing. We formed a clot formation to impersonate a transport, and used the orbital refueling station to purchase a mass of french fries. With this loaded into Dogi's Cargobay, we blasted off.

0145 hours: upon entering homefort airspace, Threespeed miraculously located the part that was lost in space.

0200 hours: Splashdown with three extra ships and their captains. Just as we were finishing the post touchdown we received a communique from the main fleet - they had safely arrived at SCUL HQ and were preparing for splitting up for deep cryo in order to prep for the next mission. We needed to get those fries to them ASAP! We sent our fastest ship - Rocket 88 - to catch them before it was too late, and were successful.

0215: The rest of the battalion arrives at SCUL HQ to find a merry but very tired crew. Nova miraculously survived by entering deep cryo in her pod off-base. We kicked on the life support, exchanged stories, and ate the fries. We also managed to repair the broken cymbal, as it was made of space brass and therefore weldable.

0315: We witnessed the knighting of Gritty by Wombat - by the book, save for a knightsaber substitute with a very large Stillson pipe wrench.

0345: Fort goes into low power mode once again, only to have some very sturdy pilots come back for more after a brief cryo rest. But that's another story...

Fleet Admiral Skunk out.