For Tinman

The gang set out this gorgeously temperate Saturday night with the
objective of decommissioning one of the oldest active forts in SCUL:
Fort Inman. Home to one or more pilots for nearly ten earth years,
Fort Inman will be going offline when last-pilot-standing Moose moves
on to starrier pastures at the end of the month.

On the launchpad, Piranha unveiled the first ship of her wing, GOW
Lemon Wedge — a HARV built with assistance from Nosepicker
— and christened it with a can of PBR molecules. After launch
we took a quick loop past the exuberant masses of the Union
Constellation and then made a b-line toward Fort Inman.

As we approached Fort Inman, we entered silent running mode to avoid
ST detection, and comsat Treekiller took over temporary tailgunner
duties as Vomit raced ahead to provide assistance in identifying the
precise location of the fort's docking facilities.

Once inside, we discovered the party had already mostly wound down,
but were greeted by the iron cog contingent of Moose, Threespeed,
Hackworth, and y.t. Newer pilots explored the fort's interior, while
Moose lavished us with delicious hot bread pudding with homemade
caramel sauce and whipped cream. After some leisurely chilling, we
took off again with the rest of the party guests (and host) in tow!

Passing through Cambridgeport and over the Charles, we entered the
Allston System in search of a suitable derby arena. Taking a
circuitous path through several parking lots and back roads, we ended
up at the Harvard football stadium, where it was discovered USB
Famine had developed a slow leak in its primary thruster and gone
flat. Pilots took a brief shore leave while Vomit got everything
patched up, and we were off again.

After buzzing more Allston back roads (including a fly-by of Fort
Long — birthplace of SCUL!), we finally reached a dimly-lit
playground, which would play host to four heated rounds of derby!
Shortly after our arrival, Stogie and Zygoat materialized in a
transport and hung out while the rest of us derbied. In her first
ever round of derby (the chopper variety...), babymaggot Dottie
Danger took out Danimal in a photo-finish showdown. Danimal had his
revenge the next round when he locked arms with Dr. Claw and ran
headlong into a fence, managing to keep his feet on the pedals just
long enough to be the last one to dab. But of course, it wouldn't be
derby without Nosepicker dominating at least one round (he won two).

Heading back toward the Central Constellation, we experienced our
first of two uncharacteristically negi ST encounters of the night.
While waiting at a planetary semaphore to turn back across the
Charles, ST-653 scolded us via vocoded sonic disruption to get
our "thing" out of the road. Despite our confidence of our right to
be on that road at that time, we decided not to push the issue in the
spirit of nonconfrontation and walked our ships through the crosswalk
like trained monkeys.

We zigzagged our way back toward base, and decided to take one last
pass through the Davis Constellation, where yet another ST got out of
his cruiser and commanded
us to
turn it down while we were
stopped at a light. We shaved a few decibels off the funk and
continued on our way.

After successfully completing our fly-through with no further ST
interference, we thought we were home free, but shortly after passing
the Porter Constellation, USB Skylab experienced a blowout on its
primary thruster. Rather than taking the time to fix it, we hatched a
clever plan get us home: Nosepicker would ghost ride Skylab the rest
of the way, Bane Thunderwolf would switch onto Lemon Wedge, and
Piranha would hitch a ride on GAK Megas-tu's spare seat with Danimal.
And to everyone's delight, the plan went off without a hitch!

Back at the landing pad, in what will surely become a hazing
tradition for generations of maggots to come, babymaggot Dottie
Danger successfully busted a move for 30 whole seconds! We let her in
anyway, and welcome our newest little space sister!