Interloper-360°: Expanded Version

Angel Stardust 3: Being a Good Host

The Motley zooms for Central close to the planet Paxes. I walk to the control room and see that Central drifts in front of us already. Titan is piloting from his seat while Knight is on a monitor waiting for Central to ask us to identify ourselves.

The call comes in.

Central Gate Guard (Personal): "Heavyweight space ship, designation Motley, identify yourselves."

Knight (Personal): "HWSS-Motley. Mothership and headquarters of Lux-Roulette. Mercenaries by trade."

There's a pause before the voice responds again.

Central Gate Guard (Personal): "Cleared for hangar bay entrance. Stand by for Oxy-Gate authorization."

Titan stops in front of their gate and waits for it to turn a bright blue before fading into a transparent version. He docks us nearby and begins to head for the Ucellos parked in our bay. We all follow and hop in our own ships, pulling out and parking inside Central's hangar.

We climb out and find each other amongst the numerous parked ships. Titan leads us to the barred window of an officer acting as a guard.

"Hey, Titan here with Lux-Roulette," he tells the guard.

The guard types it in. "Mercenaries? Turning someone in?"

"Getting them out. We wish to invoke the Rat Pack Treaty on a member of Sky Chasers, Semper."

He types more. "You remember the rules? Either way, I have to state them before you can remove him. You have twenty-four hours, and only twenty-four hours to remove another mercenary from incarceration. If you have an intent to never return them, or return them with irreversible trauma, you will be given the same sentence with an extension depending on the percentage of trauma judged by the P.V.D."

"Got it all down in my head. We're just after a few questions, right guys?" Titan looks back at all of us. We smile and nod, I give a thumbs up. The guard doesn't even look at us; just finishes his logistics and presses a button to slide a metal door open.

We walk through and are escorted by another officer.

"Business?" he asks.

"We're here to remove Semper of Sky Chasers."

The officer begins walking down the hallway filled with cells with plenty of perps locked up inside. He stops in front of one that holds a single prisoner; a young man that looks around my age. He hovers his credentials in front of the scanner and the door swings open.

"Semper, you are hereby temporarily removed from Central for twenty-four hours. Get going."

The young man asks, "Wait, who's taking me?" He looks behind the officer's shoulder and sees Titan's face. "You're making me go with Lux-Roulette? I refuse."

"You mercs wanted this treaty, now you've got it. Move!"

The officer steps aside and allows Semper to remove himself from his prison. Titan smiles widely and opens his arms invitingly. "A real Sky Chasers member! Can I get an autograph and maybe a hug?"

Semper looks at the rest of us, rubs his arm, keeps his gaze down, then steps out of his cell and up to Titan who wraps his arms around the jittery young merc.

"You can ride with me, I wanna make sure you're comfortable on the way to Motley."

We all walk back with our new tag-along and pile into our ships, Titan taking Semper with him, and fly back to Motley. Once we land in our hangar, we jump out and surround Titan's Ucello to make sure Semper doesn't try anything.