EAGLE 5 LOG #0003: The Bride, The Droid, and the Winnebago: A Royal Rescue in Progress

To my faithful audience, the citizens of the cosmos with eyes to see and stomachs to churn,

The doors are open. Literally.

In the time it takes to mutter “What in the wide world of merchandising is that?!” I find myself eye-to-eye with a princess. And not just any princess — the Princess Vespa, she has hair like a tidal wave of Aqua Net and the attitude of someone who just realized her day went from “wedding bells” to “space-fleeing fugitive.”

Barf, ever the gentleman (or perhaps just eager to show off his upholstery), swung open the rusty hatch of Eagle 5 with a flourish that suggested he’d practiced the move in a mirror. What followed was a moment best described as part royal boarding, part cosmic sitcom. Vespa, clutching what I’m told is a matched luggage set worth more than my last three editor contracts combined, climbed in with the grace of a debutante and the fury of a woman who’d been wronged by both love and oppressive planetary regimes.

Her droid companion, Dot Matrix, trailed close behind, clanking up the ramp with the determined stride of a machine built to manage both security and sass in equal measure. She scanned the interior, clearly unimpressed by the decor and faint smell of burnt popcorn that seems permanently baked into the fabric of this ship.

I sat frozen, fingers poised over my datapad, unsure whether to ask a question, dodge out of the way, or offer her a cup of recycled coffee.

Lone Starr, to his credit, kept his cool—just barely. He leaned on the console with that trademark “I meant to do that” smirk, while Barf offered Vespa a seat and a pack of Space Jerky. She declined with a look that could freeze a plasma core.

At that moment, I realized: This wasn’t just a pickup. This was a collision of worlds—royalty meets rogue, privilege meets practicality, tiara meets tail wag.

I managed to scribble a few key observations:

• Princess Vespa travels light…if she had her usual entourage to carry the 27 trunks, a vanity case, and a portable hair dryer the size of a small reactor.

• Barf has a sixth sense for knowing when a lady’s luggage is about to topple—and an uncanny ability to catch it with his face.

• Lone Starr pretends not to care, but you can practically see the moment he starts calculating how many cubic parsecs of fuel this detour is going to cost him.

It was then that I overheard Vespa mutter, “I had to leave my wedding…did you see him.” A scandalous revelation I will absolutely be following up on for a future piece.

So here we are: a princess, a droid, a pilot, a dog-man, and a journalist crammed into a flying Winnebago, hurtling through space with a trail of jam and unresolved tension in our wake.

I’ve updated the working title of my memoir: “Press Pass to Plasma Blasts: Dispatches from the Distant — Now with Royal Luggage.”

Stay tuned. This saga is only getting weirder.