Hello readers, This is SabaraOne. I'm excited to get this arc running. It will probably only be five chapters at most, probably more like three, but I can work with it.
Thanks to FourthWallBreaker for the review. I hope this will be interesting!
I'm not yet going to reveal the identity of the game quite yet. That will happen at the end of the chapter.
So, to quote Composite, "Let's make it happen… MAKE IT HAPPEN!"
EDIT: Me and my sleep-deprived self forgot to actually add the separators
EDIT2: Got the year and the spelling of a character's handle wrong.
Chapter 11. Awakening Age.
How cliché. We Linked straight into a broom closet. We looked around, switching to Light Amplification on our visuals, dialing down our visor brightness. Not that we felt we needed to, but it seemed like a good idea. The broom closet was simply a broom closet. No indication that it was used for anything else. We immediately flipped our Nexus to a new page and grabbed a quill and ink from Hammerspace. About a month into our time with Yeesha she'd had us doing a bit of "gopher work," in this case making a collection of Linking Books for various Ages to add to the Nexus Age so that they could be accessed by D'ni and humans alike.
The Nexus Age appeared to the user as a single sealed-off room, though it had large storage areas branching off like a spiderweb. It had a beautiful mosaic on the floor, though we couldn't quite remember what. The Nexus consisted of two main parts. The larger were gears with a Book in holders embedded in each tooth in such a way that they could hop from gear to gear. This system was set up to allow for expansion in the future. In theory, an infinite number of gears and Books could be added without needing to make a new machine. The second, much smaller was a bronze console. It was beautifully designed, and had several controls. The main ones included a slot for insertion of a Ki. This authorized the user. The second was a holographic touchscreen used to select the Age the user wanted to travel to, with a large hardware button to confirm the choice. At this point the gears would switch from mindlessly spinning, occasionally swapping Books to ensure the mechanisms continued working and began to purposefully move the requested Book to the console. The holder would flop out and the Book would fall open to the Linking Panel. After the user Linked out, the book would close and be pulled back into the next empty holder, when the Nexus would resume standby operations.
The Nexus was free for both human and D'ni use, and on occasion members of the two species would encounter each other. These meetings were usually cordial or even downright friendly, though the two peoples rarely deliberately sought each other out. The D'ni were happy to let the humans have the old caverns, and the humans were usually happy to let the strange recluses keep their solitude.
Our Nexus had a new Link established to Awakening within two minutes. We had made so many Linking Books that we could make them in a matter of moments, even when running in low-speed operations. We honestly didn't know how wetware programs could stand moving so slowly, usually taking full seconds to complete even basic thoughts!
The first thing we noticed about our environment was that the gravity was a little different. Must be on a station. The space stations in our Age either had no gravity or rotated to create a standard Earth-like gravitational field through centrifugal force at the rim. We were in roughly 0.5G so we assumed we were roughly halfway from the rim to the 0G docking bays. We decided to morph into Ada so as to not alarm the wetware inhabitants.
We stepped out of the closet and were quickly absorbed into the bustle of a busy starport. We noticed a clock reading
00:01 June 20, 3302 CE
This told us when we were. The same board read
Bugov Dock, Laksak System
-21.53125/-6.3125/116.03125
And that's where. Below this was a long list of trade items, their buy and sell prices, the supply and demand, and the galactic average for the given items. They were in many categories ranging from chemicals to machines to foods and legal drugs. We looked at a large view port simulating a window, showing a large vista of a brown, lifeless rock of a planet with white polar icecaps. A display next to the "view port" proclaimed it to be Laksak A 4, a solid rocky planet with a nitrogen based atmosphere.
A sign under the trade data pointed to a hallway reading "New Pilots Here." We made our way along the crowded atrium-like area. Down the hall led to a room with more people, all human except somebody's pet dog, in which was a single kiosk labeled "Pilots Federation Sign-Up."
The kiosk had a form on which was a cover letter reading
Welcome Future Pilots,
Welcome to the Pilots Federation. The Pilots Federation is a group of pilots across the galaxy. We are a loose-knit organization, passively observing and rewarding the achievements of pilots. We do not award pilots based on morals, only on skills. The purpose of the Pilots Federation is to give budding pilots the tools they need to attain money, power, and prestige in the galaxy. New pilots are given a free stock Sidewinder, transportation to the nearest station with these ships available, and a small credit balance to use as they see fit. There are no strings attached to this free ship, no commitments, no penalties.
Welcome:
The Pilots Federation
Below this letter was a box titled simply NAME. We entered "Ada Hopper" and tapped Submit.
Thank You!
There are three free Sidewinders at your current location. Press your right hand on the screen to recognize your hand print.
In a case of forethought, we had given Ada unique handprints. We placed our right hand on the large on-screen rectangle.
Locked. Your ship is in docking bay 37.
A map appeared below this, and a slot on the kiosk ejected a device resembling a data pad of some sort. It projected a map of the station identical to the one on the kiosk. The map moved as we moved, and allowed us to select destinations and automatically plot the fastest route. We followed it, eventually ending up in front of an airtight hanger bay door. We palmed it open and entered, seeing our ship. It was a delta-shaped vessel, cut off in front, with three landing clamps extended to the hanger bay deck. We entered through a hatch in the back. We briefly walked through a hallway into an airtight door separating the cockpit from the rest of the ship. The cockpit had a variety of buttons and displays in front of a canopy with a nice synthetic leather chair. We reverted to base form and attempted to sit down. We had, of course, reprogrammed our Base Form hands to have the same handprints as Ada.
This just won't do! We thought, looking at the chair, which definitely had no tail hole. Well, how should we fix this… Forget it, let's just do this the easy way. It's been far too long since we had a chance to give a good TK blast. We turned to sit down. Using a technique we had learned of in one of Irras's entertainment films, we telekinetically started to vibrate our tail at a frequency that would cut most materials. Once our tail was vibrating at the right frequency and speed, we plunged the tip into the seat back. It slipped through like a knife through butter, and we waved our tail around a bit to enlarge the hole. There, that's better, we thought, allowing our tail to return to its usual motion pattern, identical to Camanion's as it happened.
Once we were settled, we placed our hands on the controls. The ship started to purr softly as it powered up. "Main systems… Online" announced a standard feminine AI voice, decidedly not Risa's. "Welcome Commander. Please enter the name you wish to use in the spaceways," A box appeared over the canopy HUD along with a virtual keyboard. We typed in the name Composite. "Welcome Commander Composite. Would you like to run a series of training simulations to teach you the basics of controlling your vessel?" We tapped yes on the resulting box. The simulations taught us many useful things, including targeting, weapons fire, fire groups, sensors, docking, intersystem and intrasystem navigation, and docking/launching procedures for large orbital stations, small orbital outposts, surface outposts, and planetary surfaces. After these were completed the ship returned to its standard configuration.
At this point the main menu for station controls appeared on our HUD. It had the name of the station, Bugoy Dock, the current time and date, and three options; Starport Services, Return to Surface, and Launch. We opened up Starport Services. The Starport HUD appeared on our display, containing many options and statistics including repair, refuel, and rearm, ship outfitting, the shipyard, the mission board, and the commodities market. We opened up the mission board. There was one mission we could complete, delivering one ton of scrap metal to a station two systems over. It paid roughly 10,000 credits, to deliver 250 credits worth of scrap for about another 200 credits worth of fuel. Who are we to say no? It had a time limit of six hours. We accepted the mission and used the loading time productively setting our course. At best speed it would take us two hyperspace jumps. So, left hand on throttle, right hand on flight stick, we selected the Launch option. The ship AI announced "Warning: Bay depressurizing. All internal hatches sealed automatically." The cockpit door slid shut automatically Not very useful for us, but it is safer for the wetwares. We wondered at the lack of any non-humans on the station. It was a puzzle we didn't have time to explain yet. We had no clue how long the jumps would take. A list of controls appeared on our HUD for the preflight checklist all new pilots were required to complete before launching. This covered such controls as throttle, pitch, roll, and yaw, being the X, Y and Z axis respectively, primary and secondary fire, retracting/extending weapon hardpoints, and lateral thrusters. The top of the hanger pad, which was in front and above our ship, dropped down about a meter before sliding back, revealing the top of the station hanger. We diverted our ships power to engines, a system we noted had a definite similarity to our power system, which we had set to full cognition, and thrusted upward and rolling our ship in-line with the blue exit to the station hanger. It was a narrow slit, just tall enough for the largest ships to enter. Our Sidewinder glided out of the hanger in textbook fashion. Surprised at our near-instantaneous skill, we quickly scanned our code. Apparently Fcon had programmed us to be able to control any vehicle nearly instinctively. Useful.
We retracted our landing gear and checked our compass. The target vector for our first jump was behind us, slightly low and to the right. We spun our ship around, throttling down to the halfway mark for best turning efficiency before opening wide, using the afterburners for better acceleration, and to get us away from the station faster. Its mass was keeping us from activating our Frame Shift Drive. We glanced at our fuel gauge, telling us that this jump would take approximately a quarter of our available fuel. No big loss. The ship chirped at us, telling us that we were out of mass lock. We activated the FSD. "Frame Shift Drive Charging..." After about five seconds the charging bar at the top of our HUD changed to a countdown while the starfield in front of us started to crackle as our drive started to compress local space for the inter-system jump. "Five… Four… Three… Two… One… Engage." We were pressed back into our seat as the inertial compensator failed to keep up with the demand. The hole in the starfield at the center of our canopy expanded, engulfing our ship. Streaks and clouds of light shot past us as we blazed down a dark tunnel.
After about ten seconds, the starfield exploded back into being around us. "You are now in supercruise" announced the AI. Someday we'll make you sentient we thought. The supercruise field was similar to the normal starfield, though it had a slight blue tint. We pulled back on our stick, avoiding crashing into the local star, a yellow main sequence. Our FSD went into a ten second cooldown before we could make another hyperspace jump. No problem, while a supercruise jump could be made in nearly any direction, hyperspace required the ship to aim at the target. We suspected that hyperspace navigation consisted of 1. Aim at star, 2. Engage FSD in hyperspace mode, 3. Wait until pulled out by stellar gravity. Not that it really mattered. We were pressed back into our seat again as the drive kicked into high gear. Ludicrous speed! We thought, remembering another of Irras's vids. We emerged, pulling away from the star with half our fuel tank empty. One full ton of hydrogen… two hundred credits Our comms system chirped. We glanced up and slightly left, activating the comms panel. We had a message from the woman who had given us the mission. We could get an extra 5000 for getting it in within the next thirty minutes. We pointed at the target outpost and opened the throttle. Four minutes later, we were approaching the planet the outpost orbited. We decelerated smoothly, reaching the required 1 megameter per second just before getting within the required one megameter of the station. A blue box at the bottom of our display read "Safe disengage ready." We deactivated our FSD, dropping our ship from supercruise within ten kilometers of the outpost. After closing to the regulation 7.5 km, we looked at the left hand panel and selected the Contacts pane from the choices, displaying three sensor contacts, two other ships and the station. We selected the station and selected "Request Docking" from the menu that appeared. "Docking Request Granted" announced the AI. At three kilometers we oriented to the docking bay we were allocated. At 1500 meters, we dropped our gear. At two hundred we flipped belly down and made our final decent. Textbook.
We immediately opened up the mission board and signed the order as completed, with twenty-three minutes and thirty-five seconds until the bonus offer expired. Our account balance rose by 15000 credits. We refueled and went about our business.
"I'm telling you, there are ghost ships out there! I was cruising through Wolf 359 when one of them interdicted me from SC and told me to drop my cargo! It was an Anaconda, so of course I obeyed. My Type-7 couldn't have taken ten seconds of fire from that monster!" A drunk bar patron slurred emphatically at us. We were in our Ada form, nursing an ale. Alcohol gave us no benefit, not even the self-destructive "benefits" it seemed to give wetwares, but buying something expensive kept the staff from complaining. We had quickly learned that there were better jobs to be found in bars than on the boards.
"Aw shut up," yelled over a female pilot, "He's been going on about this all night!"
"But I swear on my name! I saw a ghost ship! It stole my cargo and Shifted out!" He made a next-round gesture at the barkeep. "I checked later. It was definitely real, it was on my logs! It had a strange name… CMDR somethn'."
"I believe you," we said, using the singular pronouns because plural drew too much attention, "Did you notice anything else?"
"Yeah," he started flailing his arms around, probably trying to illustrate some point, but only managing to spill his drink, "Blast Refill. So as I was sayn,' yeah, you better believe I noticed the five beam lasers, five microcannons, two missile launchers, and a torpedo pylon pointed at me!"
"Of course it was just a ship with a weird name! We all get to pick the names we go by when we start in the PF!" the skeptical woman shot back, rather coherently considering the six drinks she had consumed.
"Did you notice anything else, maybe something about the pilot or comms patterns?" we asked the drunk.
"Yeah, he didn't associate with any pirate group. Said somthn' like 'Drop your cargo right criffn' now or I'll blow your shebs back Fousang!' No idea what that one word meant, but it probably wasn't friendly! I dumped my cargo and watched him pick it up. Didn't even have the decency to pick it up himself, got a blasted Limpet to do it for him! Lost me six hundred grand that did! And the strangest thing was, I flew near his ship, looked right in his cockpit… It was empty. One of the seats was active, but the chair was empty! I saw the controls moving on their own! Refill." He promptly slumped over and landed on the floor with a thump.
"You don't actually believe him do you?" asked the skeptic.
"Yes, yes I do. And I've got some theories what these 'Ghost Ships' might be."
"And what'sat?" she asked, now on her eighth drink.
"Users."
"Uzhers? What's a uzer?"
"something related to my… upbringing, you could say." we responded. We pulled a credit chip from our belt and programmed it for a good fifty before slipping it into the drunk man's shirt pocket. One of the bouncers dragged him to one of the rooms they kept for guests who didn't pay for a room but needed one anyway. 'Course it was basically a room with a cot, sink, and toilet. We paid for our drink and left. We'd have to find one of these so-called "Ghost ships." A wetware program from another dimension would be able to tell us plenty of useful information. It hadn't gone unnoticed by us that our name also started with a CMDR. We wondered why ours did when none of the other programs from this dimension did.
"Welcome Composite, You have mail" announced the AI as we entered the cockpit of our Adder multipurpose vessel, which turned out to be a notification of our promotion to Peddler trade rank. We had modified our new ship with a better FSD, top of the line shields and a high-end shield booster, military-grade armor, more cargo space, high end weapons, two small gimbled beam lasers and a medium gimbled multicannon, top of the line power plant, thrusters, and power distributor. It also had a planetary vehicle bay with a single Scarab-class Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle, which was very fun to drive on low gravity planets. We'd heard there were new SRV models coming out soon, but we sure didn't have one. We almost had enough credits to buy a Cobra Mk. III and still keep a good safety cushion. We had heard that there was good money to be had selling medical diagnostic equipment in the Sol area. We didn't have clearance to enter Sol itself, but Alpha Centaur i had good money for anyone with diagnostic equipment in the hold, at which point authorized traders would finish the job for an even higher profit, but that wasn't our problem. We made three jumps past two red giants and a neutron star before encountering a main sequence. Our fuel scoop came online with a swoosh and we skimmed the corona of the star, collecting hydrogen to refill our tanks. After dropping off our cargo we flew to the Eravate system, specifically Cleve Hub, where we knew Cobras were on a good price. We came in to dock, and as was our custom, checked out the programs in the area. Two names caught our attention. CMDR OneTail and CMDR Turing. These must be Ghost Ships! We had previously encountered a ghost pirate, but he hadn't been willing to have a conversation. He had just replied with "I don't talk to NPCs, give me your cargo." He was an overconfident squirt with a souped up Sidewinder. Had he been paying attention he would have found out he was over matched before making his final mistake. Once his ship was destroyed we were awarded with a 10,000 credit bounty voucher. This was how we normally got these vouchers. We had noticed the ejector seat making an emergency jump to what was presumably the last station he had docked at. Though this was pointless if the "Ghost ships" really were users, as they'd only get angry.
But these two names rang a bell… OneTail… Turing…
[DIRECT][to:OneTail]: Hey OneTail, are you who we think you are?
[OneTail invited to group comms]
[GROUP][from:Turing]: By Sajuuk, Composite, is that really you? It's us…
And that's the first chapter of the Elite arc. Yes, Composite is in Elite: Dangerous. I'll admit I got the initial writing done on Monday night… (and a bit Tuesday morning.) Unfortunately for me, I'm currently in a place where the Wi-Fi is practically non-existent. Plus I make a practice of not making midnight uploads. I wonder who those two Users are…? Spoiler alert, it's Camanion and Risa. Camanion's handle of OneTail is obvious enough, but Risa's is a bit harder. I'll let her explain it next chapter. Sajuuk, who Risa references at the end of the chapter is a deity from the Homeworld series of 3D Real Time Strategy games, one of, if not the only, to allow for virtually unrestricted movement in all three dimensions. 2D RTS seems a lot less rewarding to me than it probably could… Probably because I really started playing RTS with Homeworld.
I mentioned last chapter that Composite's morph animation is based on the heal move from a Sonic JRPG fan game. I'll probably have to retcon some parts of it as I haven't played in at least two years, so I probably got the sequence wrong.
Composite mentions they can't quite remember the Nexus's mosaic floor. That's because I can't and Myst Online: Uru Live is a royal pain to get working on modern systems. Hopefully Composite doesn't suddenly get a fuzzy memory in whatever dimension they inhabit. In all honesty, I don't know weather or not I want Composite to exist in a parallel universe.
Shebs is a Mandolorian curse in the Star Wars: Legends time line. I'll let you figure out what it means.EDIT: I checked, and apparently I spelled it right on the first try. I'm good with curses and battlecries.
Shoutout this chapter goes to… uh… wow, I'm really unprepared. Uh… Tom Clancy. Yeah, he'll do. The late Tom Clancy was a very famous author of military thrillers, in fact nearly single-handedly inventing the military thriller genre, notably the novel Hunt for Red October. Yeah, I've been playing way too much Splinter Cell recently…
Anyhow, until next chapter, this is SabaraOne, Logging Out.
The grammar mistake in the user quote is intentional. It's not that unlike things I've said over text chat, though I'm a merchant, not a pirate.
