#129: Melvin's Marauders -Hunting for the Feral RiverBarge

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Melvin and TigerMom had explained to the Marauders the new plan. They would STILL be a team, they were family and would remain so. They were just re-basing their operation. Instead of roaming the waters looking for carbon to salvage they’d ‘home-base’ and play video games.

What’s not to like? It didn’t matter to the Marauders. Tele-operation was the same.

But FIRST, they needed some barges. So Melvin and a few of the older marauders were taking Fluffy out on a run. They were hunting barges.

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After everyone was settled in Fluffy released her lip-lock on the Skirmish barge and slowly backed away, observed the ‘no wake zone’ until far enough out, then accelerated smoothly to foil speed.

Her first, and hopefully only, stop was the BargeString that Carlos had mentioned. It had hung itself up in high voltage wires. Weldon, Carlos and the other Farmers had used some of the barges to hold their homesteads.

At a conservative rate of cruise it didn't’ take long to reach the scene of the BargeSnag. Were there enough barges remaining? Were any still there? If not it might be a long hunt.

It turned out that there were plenty of barges left for what the Skirmishes had in mind for their TigerFarm. Tiger-mom had been against that name but none of the others would have it.They all thought that the name was Perfect.
TigerFarms and TigerDiner. What’s not to like?

The marauders had even begun to call the Fluffy Tiger much to the TigerMom’s embarrassment.

K/C even had a logo.

Once again Fluffy...that is Tiger.... ‘lip-locked’ a barge. This time, however, the procedure was different. The smaller tentacles held tight as usual but Melvin had made some internal alterations. One of the long tentacles sucked all the coal out of the furtherest coal bin into Tiger. The coal was processed by the Molecular Furnace, then the SmokeForge did it’s thing. This time, however, the SSmoke was routed out of Fluffy and back into an empty barge bin thru the other long tentacle. It ‘sprayed’ or ‘painted’ the bin with SSmoke. The SSmoke coalesced into SCrystal.

It didn’t take long before the entire contents of the three thousand ton CoalBarge was converted to SCrystal. Then Melvin had the fabricator build a remote control/ propulsion system which was attached it to the CrystalBarge. Marauders back at the barn, would tele-operate it back. The Crystal laden barges were SLOW. It would take a while to get there. Tiger might beat them back.

It did.

When the CrystalBarge finally made it back the remaining marauders and TigerMom and Carl began to build a farm. The Skirmish’s said they were well enough to help but TigerMom knew better. They were assigned to purely advisory roles.

Hell of a way to threat the owner Carlos definitely did NOT say out loud. He knew a good deal when he saw one and he had one. No need risking it with a smart mouth.

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Even with SSmoke it took a while to build the infra-structure for a commercial sized Aquaponics farm, in a barge, in hundreds of feet of water, hundred of miles from shore. It took longer to plant it, stock it and coax it into operation. Weldon, the first farmer had done it once so it was possible. He graciously offered advice.

Eventually they got it done.

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The Next Episode Is
#130: Old Times…
The Previous Episode was
#128: Henry Drake - Full Throttle…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
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Book One: SoulStone
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