Upon Celestial Tiger: Chapter One

First topic message reminder :

A small, fast space yacht. The last owner named it Celestial Tiger.

Three small bedrooms (with bunks), one bathroom. Very small storage hold. combined dining/living area. Everyone's going to hate each other by the end of this road trip.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f11/19/46/08/46/small_10.jpg

"Starr got scratched, I think everyone else was quick enough to not get hurt" Shane said, looking to the group again then back to the rangers.

"Good, good," The Terran said, relieved. "Shrub-rat bites hurt like the devil, let me tell you. Thankfully they're a picky species, they usually stop trying to eat non-indigenous species after a few bites."

The other ranger nodded. "Yeah, when the rats are in season, all us native rangers get to take a few months off duty so less edible rangers can work."

"That was a very large group, are they all that large?" Shane asked curiously

"They run in packs of ten to twenty members, usually. That's why they migrate so much, if they didn't, they'd kill off all the wildlife in the area," the Terran explained.

"Why don't you just exterminate them if they devour your own people?" Luka asked, their nonchalant attitude annoyed her.

"They're the indigenous wildlife of the planet, we don't want to kill them all," the Terran said.

"We do shoot them when we find them in the park, but they're not the easiest animals to track," the four-armed guy added.

Tala snorted. These rangers were silly. Indigenous life, bah.

"if they're a danger to your people and your guests they are a pest." Luka shook her head. She rather wanted to go back to the ship.

"Yeah." The four armed guy shook his head. "It's been a while since we've had an attack, looks like we need to up our security and awareness programs again."

Tala snorted. "Be of greater care, watchers of the park. We shall give no patronage to your giftshop."

The rangers didn't seem overly broken up about that. "We're sorry you had a bad experience today. The staff of this park will make sure the park is safer in the future," the Terran said.

"I hope so, I would hate for someone's kid to be hurt by them" Shane said, turning away to go to the ship.

Tala headed after Shane.

Ethan followed, although he resolved to read about the life forms on this planet at some point. So dang weird.

Luka brought up the rear of the group, glancing warily back at the rangers and the forest with a frown.

Shane got back on the ship with Helen followeing and went to check on Starr and Sawna, who was healing her.

Tala climbed aboard the ship. "We should top up our tanks before we leave this planet. I will purchase you excellent foods to celebrate our survival as well."

"Sounds good" Shane said, turning back to smile at her then going to the main room to find a seat after checking in on Starr.

"Luka, take us to the nearest city with a spaceport," Tala said, checking that everyone was in before closing the airlock.

Ethan went to sit down for takeoff.

Helen joined Starr and Sawna to help if she could and be ready to takeoff.

Once everyone was ready to go, they'd leave the little national park and go to the spaceport to refuel and stuff.

(And probably from here we can just go to the beach planet whenever we're ready to, I don't think there's anything else that needs to happen on this thread before then)

(Lol, ok almost to 40 pages anyway )

Luka saluted. "Aye Captain!" She went to prepare the ship for departure.

(only thing they need is contact from Hytar at... some point. What's the timeline on that?)

(Oh that's right, that needs to happen. Esk already sent out the message, so that would most likely take a couple days to reach Hytar, depending on where he is? Also Hytar's gonna meet everyone somewhere, right? Maybe not on the beach planet because security, but somewhere near there?)

(yeah maybe a nearby space station? Could meet em at Defiant lol. A wretched hive of scum and villainy. Assume it'd take a few days, what day was that sent out? and what day are we on now?)

(Let's see... Messages reached Vestia April 21, so that would be the day Esk emailed Hytar. Today on the Tiger is April 25. I'm guessing it's going to take a couple more weeks for Vestia or Hytar to reach this region of space.

Also yay Defiant! Hahaha.)

(yeah probably, he could contact them to find out wth they want though. )

(Oh yeah, true. That'd probably be the more time efficient option. Whichever plan you like best sounds good to me. )

(timeskip and then have message come through?)

(Okay, I think a day or two would be long enough for the message to arrive, so here's a timeskip)

TIMESKIP - APRIL 27
The Tiger forged its way on through space, heading toward the next stop on its tourist voyage. That was still a few days away though, and right now all the crew had was each other's dubiously enjoyable company. And, around mid morning, a message.

Luka brought the message up for the Captain to see. It was from Hytar who wanted to know what they wanted. He was awfully polite about it though.