With Marko Andreyevich and his lanthanum loaded, Das Boot lifted from
Barnard.

All seemed to go well, jumping outbound from Barnard to Prometheus -
until emergence.

Curly had buggered up the Jump entry, spitting Das Boot out somewhere in
Barnard's Oort cloud.  Old Joe picked up the rudiments of turrent
gunnery while in Jump.  (This was a mis-exit, not a mis-jump).

After Old Joe broke out some scanner-fu, it turned out to be a 36 hour
boost to dock with the nearest chunk of ice to refuel, much to
Digadich's amusement.

As Curly had flubbed the Jump entry, Old Joe volunteered him to help
refuel the ship.

Snark flew thick and fast as the pair EVA'd to refuel - they had to mine
the raw fuel and feed it in.

On the second mining shift, Old Joe suffered a life-threatening suit
rupture and barely made it back to the ship, having mined (with Curly) a
total of 6 dton of raw fuel.

After Bert did that doctor stuff, Joe told Bert that was enough and went
to bed.

El Capitane weighed in (not wanting to lose anyone, or be here for the
next N weeks), telling Bert : "We need a bomb".  His idea was to gently
fragment a large enough amount of ice that the ship could fly through it
and scoop up enough raw fuel to then be on its way.

Bert cooked up yon charge, having entirely too much fun about it.

Nikki bodged up the calcs to emplace said charge.

A recovered Joe and Curly head out to do the shaft drilling and
emplacing-of-good-banger, taking about an hour.

Old Joe psyched himself up with inspiration and managed to correct for
Nikki's bodge up.  The pair retreated to the ship, and presented a Big
Red Button to El Capitane for him to push.

To no one's great surprise, Drake gleefully commenced Operation
Galvanise - Push The Button, then took the ship through the cloud of
liberated ice himself, filling the fuel tanks.

20 hours later, the second attempt to depart to Prometheus went off
without a hitch.

After docking at Prometheus, Drake gave everyone 2 days' liberty.

"Was very nice to sleep in actual _bed_ " - Digadich, after lobbing back
on day 3.

After fuel + fees, Curly lifted Das Boot, en route to Terra.

"I _hope_." - Wombat

Curly mucked up the initial astroguessing attempt, but made his second
one, and lined up the ship for Jump.  Nikki did her stuff, and they
entered Jump.

Upon emergence at Terra's 100D and boosting in, they heard Phoenix
Orbital was congested, with a current 20 hour estimated wait.

Joe: "In other news, water is wet and this is a day ending in y."

At the end of the twenty hours, next wait was 30 hours.

While waiting, Digadich and Nikki talked Kaufman into accepting the
very-well-travelled 4 dton of jump-drive-grade lanthanum at 6.5
Msol/dton, meaning Nikki would earn Das Boot 780k for her efforts.

Niki also found and accepted buyers for the spec minerals and
radioactives they had aboard.

26 hours later, docking clearance finally came through.  Curly flubbed
the approach roll, and crit-failed his recovery - Old Joe just managed
to save a collision with a freighter.

The good news beat them to the berth - a 12 kilosolar fine.

Nikki palmed off banking duties to Badass Badass-Moustache, as she had
to don her "robe and wizard hat" (Easy Frag's actual words)  to talk to
station security, who had impounded the ship and "invited" Captain
Milford in for a chat.

2 days later, (and a crit success on Nikki's Advocate roll), things got
cleared up.

The spec cargo that Nikki had palmed off cleared 3492 kilosolars, of
which 210k went straight onto the mortgage after Old Joe pointed out
they were two months behind.

Curly undocked and boosted for Kaufman's L-5 facility (much to
Digadich's relief) - 40 odd hours later, they docked, offloaded the
lanthanum, with Digadich paying Nikki 780k for her assistance and 12,800
for the freight bill.

--