Baba Inti's Dream; or how an old man is recreating the flotilla but mobile

[opal cairn]

For decades, Intihani Folae-Nyota was a familiar face to many on K-Leg. Supposedly a child of pirates and criminals, from Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, or Venus their origin change on each retelling.

Intihani was not much to look at, a pale scarred face, and a thin body ravaged by a long life of hard work and microG. His easy laugh and pale blue eyes being his only notable features.

Baba Inti on the other hand was a much storied individual with the devil's own luck, a shipbreaker toiling under Ayotimiwa for decades, a jailbird with offences ranging from rabblerousing to smuggling, a philanderer with many a jilted man and woman behind him, a man who was always the life of any party before it was quickly shut down by AyoSec, and a teller of very long tales, so everything I said could have been a lie.

Still, his most unique feature was much more simple, his age, what earned him his name, Baba Inti, as well as the fact that he spoke Yoruban and practiced some Bantu rituals. It was perhaps a shock to many that a K-Legger shipbreaker could even hit 40, let alone get all the way up to 50.

At hitting 50, Baba Inti would tell his junior colleagues that it was time for him to 'retire' from his loud life. As absurd as retirement sounded, it was going to be even more absurd once people saw his retirement plan...buying a ship and going solo at 51 years.

That was what happened, Baba Inti getting a mortgage on a Testudo Dream and heading off on his own, riddled with a number of chronic conditions and a large debt for a retirement.

Then, a couple of weeks later, Baba Inti would return with a Frankenstein's monster of a ship akin to the Flottila, but better maintained and well-stocked, and looking for crew to join him on his 'retirement.'

Comatose Optimist, A-12-E-Titanmax:
Originally, a Testudo Dream, now some kind of amalgam, still a Testudo Dream for any legal and tax purposes.

Baba Inti's luck still held true during his early two-week stint. His first find was 2 Argutes, allowing him to add two cabins on top of the Dream, giving the Testudo its captain's quarters, and an MSS corridor to add more ship sections to.

His fourth ship was a Ryokka CR-43 was a miraculously undamaged fusion reactor with all relevant components. In a similar vein, he would cut out the reactor room and graft in on his ship, with plenty of supports to weld, he was brazen not an idiot after all. The very next ship he landed on was another CR-43, this time a retrofit, that had the missing Helium tanks that he needed for an operational reactor. Baba Inti would tear off a few of the edges of that derelict and added it to the starboard of the Comatose Optimist, building out some engineering rooms and another airlock for outside repairs.

The sixth ship was a Van Hummel Puqeod also in surprisingly decent shape. Getting on his hand on such a find, Inti was all too happy to tear off a few of its cabins, weld them together, then add them onto the corridor he had built. From there, he would create a galley, and a storage room. With the ship becoming this large, Baba Inti would then empty out one of the Argute cabins, and turn them into Naut quarters, not crew - Nauts!

It is still a miracle to some that this ship can operate as it does, and one doubts it can survive any atmosphere, but at least it was in decent shape, perhaps his decades as a shipbreaker did let him learn a thing or two.

With the Comatose Optimist in a 'good enough' shape, Baba Inti would return to K-Leg to get some crew, also finally buy a licence since he 'accidentally' forgot his while doing all his legal salvor work.