Dandy

Dandy is a carefree space traveller and the owner and captain of the Aloha Oe.

Description
Dandy is a human man who is described as being true to his name (unduly concerned with looking stylish and fashionable), wearing leisurely clothes that still have a sporty feel to them. He has glossy black hair preened into a perfect pompadour with sideburns that 'look as though they could cut diamond', with a small cut on his granite-esque chin.

History
In 150,084 CMT, Dandy sent out poster advertisements in the hope that they would help recruit much-needed new crewmembers to his ship, the Aloha Oe. When one of these posters flew into Lalli Cain's face on an unidentified world, Cain contacted Dandy to apply for a temporary position aboard the Aloha Oe and the two arranged to meet in Dock 4-JG of the Blue Heaven space station. Dandy waited for Cain at a recruitment desk in front of the Aloha Oe and was delighted to see Cain arrive, because he had begun to think that his luck had run out around "two stations ago". As soon as Cain had introduced himself, Dandy led him up into the Aloha Oe to meet its crew.

Aboard the Aloha Oe, Dandy introduced Cain to Pup, Askeladden, a Sram woman, and a small robot, who all reacted to Cain with nonchalance. Despite the fact that almost half the crew (Effort, Scales, and Fogger) were asleep, Dandy decided that the Aloha Oe was ready to disembark, and with Cain's approval, Dandy took his place at the ship's controls and moved it out of the dock and into space. The robot crewmember informed them that their current objectives were to travel to the Lilac system, "reactivate a signal drone there, kill off some pesky Elgians, and destroy a machine which had gone rogue and taken control of said Elgians". While Dandy set a course for the Lilac system, he noticed that Fogger had awoken and was watching Cain from a distance, so he took a moment to reassure Cain that Fogger was no threat to him despite his intimidating appearance.

En route to the Lilac system, Dandy noticed the appearance of a plasma stream and could not resist the temptation to surf on it. He put on a spacesuit, grabbed a hi-tech surfboard and jumped out of the ship's airlock into space, where he began to surf the several miles-wide stream. At the same time, Dr. Gel's ship arrived and its owner gloated to himself that he had finally located Dandy and would capture him for the glory of Admiral Perry. However, before Gel and his assistant Bea could fire their "Liberty Beam" at Dandy, Dandy used his surfboard to manipulate the waves of the plasma stream and cause them to strike Gel's ship, apparently destroying it.

When Dandy returned to the Aloha Oe, he was congratulated by Haruko Haruhara, who he thought he had gotten rid of on "Planet Catchy Theme Song". Dandy ignored the freeloader's compliments and chased after her instead, but she used some sort of slime-shooting gun to trap him while she made her escape. While Dandy wriggled out of the slime, the robot crewmember informed him and his crew that they had arrived at the Lilac system, which caused Dandy to forget about Haruko and focus on preparing for the mission instead.

Dandy then took Cain to the ship's weapons unit and introduced him to the various weapons that the Aloha Oe had on board, which included plasma carbines and weapons manufactured by Maliwan. Once the two of them had had a look, Dandy handed Cain a rifle of unknown type and took him to a corner of the hangar, where the crew had set up a foot-thick disc of lead as a target, under which an unidentified figure could be seen sleeping. Dandy offered to give Cain 50 credits if he woke the target up. Cain fired the rifle without hesitation, narrowly missing the crewmember and causing him to awake with a start. Dandy and Cain's fun was interrupted by the robot crewmember, who informed them that the Aloha Oe was approaching its destination planet. Dandy and his crew prepared for departure, but Cain received an urgent summons from somewhere else and left them.