Journal 5
Day 'Have to say this to start a journal'
I hate computers. I hate quests. I hate people. And I really, REALLY hate cats.
I assume you want an explanation journal? Of course you do. Otherwise I would have to realize I am talking to my computer like a person, and that maybe the isolation is starting to drive me a little bananas.
Six weeks. That is why I am a little loopy. Six weeks since I went to the Erchius or Erebus or who the heck cares what it was called?
Sorry. Gonna take a minute and try to remember how to deal with things that aren't trying to murder me or get me murdered or conspiring to have me murdered. I am talking about YOU COMPOOTER!
… … … … …
Alright, feeling a bit better, kicked the main computer console for a few minutes, until I accidentally broke something and brought up the diagnostic and preferences screen. Played with the controls a bit, now have a nice, perky, friendly female computer avatar instead of a cold, distant, homicidal Skynet crystal infused computer avatar.
So, first things first. I successfully cleared the distress signal at the mining facility. A Marine ship arrived a few minutes after the computer teleported me out, and they contacted me to figure out what had happened as the miners' stories were a bit… all over the place. Actually had to meet with the ship to hand over a copy of the recording the ship made, and found out that it had already been uploaded to ExtraNet Videos AND the 'Funniest Human Death' site. The FHD site had taken the video down in a few hours due to me not dying in it, but on ENV it had made the top five videos of the week in four hours. Apparently people (by which I mean humans) like to see people (by which I mean other humans) kicking ass and being awesome.
Except for the parts where I squeed on finding the assault rifle. And screamed a little when the Shambler dropped down behind me. And screamed like a girl at the first infected (commenter's words, I replied with an offer to help him find out how he screamed as a maul narrowly missed his head, no reply back). And got shot by the people I was trying to help. And how setting the last ten minutes of the video to Yakety Sax actually made it better.
But other than that, I was awesome. So, after coming back, the quest giver thanked me and sent me on my way. I was mildly miffed. While my hyperdrive was working for a change, the computer was still its old self, and apparently thought I needed to die. Another helpless townsperson wanted my help, but again they felt I needed better armor, this time titanium based. While never one to turn down the chance to upgrade my ability to survive and murderlate things, having it be mandatory to bypass some stupid gate was annoying.
However, I needed to do it or else I wasn't going to get the quest to steal the nipple pasties of the great cat goddess Sex-E-Muma, or whatever the quest was, so I headed back to the ship to do that. Installed the crystals, fixed the hyperdrive, and I was finally ready to ditch this system in favor of murdering things more likely to murder me back. Whatever, the local murderable things weren't a challenge anymore, so upping my game was always an option.
Anyhoo, had to first hit up an airless rocky moon for fuel and such, which sucked. Must have spent two days trying to find fuel, and even with the computer's help on possible fuel locations, still had to practically dig to the core to find any worth actually scooping up. And when I did, I usually fell into the small lake of liquid fuel I found. My old armor still stinks of the fuel.
Anyhoo, once the fuel tanks and fuel rod storage were full (yes, actually found some plutonium ore down there, enough to make a hundred rods or so; probably gonna have my hands drop off or eyes melt or whatever radiation does to you), I picked a nearby system. Eccentric stars were, according to the computer, where I wanted to go next, and it could actually link with scans done of the area by other vessels. No one appeared to have landed, so I was exploring virgin, uncharted territory. So I picked a random planet in the system, and landed.
And found myself right outside an avian tomb and a florian village. So much for 'virgin' territory.
Needless to say, pissed sort of described me dropping down into what was essentially a pitched battle between about twenty birds and maybe thirty plants, without warning no less. Have I mentioned that I hate restless native and my computer? Well, my old one, haven't actually done anything with the new avatar, so no opinion on her yet. Other than being cute.
Anyhoo, back on topic, and quickly, I died.
Yeah, it was painful, caught a round right in the back while trying to deal with a florian berserker, and one of the avians thought they could get a double kill. I had no idea, but we have a cloning facility on board, and the computer managed to teleport up my brains. So either it is a cloning tank, or I am a new type of zombie. Branez.
*cough* Sorry, no idea where that came from. Once back down on the planet, 'cause by the pubic hairs of Sex-E-Muma, I was not getting beaten off a planet by a bunch of back-asswards natives and their trigger happy guards, no sir, I finished off the rest of the avians guarding the tombs, and then the florian guards settled down.
The florians were actually pretty nice, inviting me to dinner, but I know carnivorous plants without having to have one bite me, so I said no thanks, and headed into the tomb. Me and the florians had to have killed at least twenty guards around the exterior of the tomb, and I thought that that was the majority, if not all, of them.
WRONG!
This tomb had another thirty guards inside, dug in and waiting for the florians. And apparently, humans and florians looked a lot alike to the danged chirpies. So I ended up cleaning out the tomb because I will be forsaken before I let some trigger happy bird use me for target practice without the good grace of at least being a decent shot, and had to kill them all. Got a lot of pixels and some good equipment, including a new grenade launcher. Still missing my shotgun, but whatever, the assault rifle was better.
Finished exploring as much of the planet as I cared to (still avoiding the florian village, already died once on that dirt ball, no need to do it again so quickly), and decided to start digging down.
Two muther fragging weeks LATER, I finally managed to dig my way up out of that hole enough to get the smart-arsed computer to consent to letting me off that planet. Considering I got pretty darned tooting close to the molten core of the planet inside three days of descending, that is fragging annoying. To put it mildly.
But anyway, I had enough titanium to make a small moon or space station out of the stuff, a new, more powerful version of the assault rifle, and a new shotgun. Once back on the ship, I set to work crafting some new armor. And I looked swanky! Hip! Awesome! And down right sexy.
Except for the shirt, that looked like a bag of butts threw up on a dead rat's corpse, ate the corpse, and then pooped it out. And then the poop ate the bag of butts and pooped THAT out, and then wore it as a hat. The bag of butts as a poop hat, not the rat's corpse. That would just look silly.
But anyway, I teleported back to the Outpost, having discovered that I could drink in my helmet through something the schematics labeled an 'emergency induction port,' and then went to figure out what the next mission to try and splatter my corpse every which way.
What I discovered was that I was going after the dread space pirate Dreadwing. At his makeshift camp. On a wartorn underworld torn excuse of a planet. With his entire murderous crew either nearby on the planet, or in low orbit in smaller spacecraft. And that he and his entire crew were PENGUINS.
I wish I could claim I was making that last paragraph up just to screw with you journal, but sadly, every. Last. Word. Equal. Fact.
And worse, the computer thought it was a good idea to run out immediately, wearing blue body paint (and nothing else, direct quote), screaming at the tops of my lungs about freedom, and use the axe, as penguins were utterly terrified of screaming, axes, freedom and the color blue. The crew would scatter to leave Dreadwing to crash into the nearest object so he (or she) could waddle away in abject terror.
Naturally, I had stopped listening to the computer after about the mention of blue body paint and nothing else. What I was unaware of was that the teleport function could be manipulated, if one knew what they were doing, to leave or add things to an outbound or (with far greater difficulty) incoming teleportee. So I arrived in what looked like a world in the middle of the first world war, trenches, barbed wire, tanks, and heavier weapon emplacements everywhere. On my side, I had… blue paint, and my axe. … I hate computers.
Needless to say, I died for the second time, though I did get about five of the penguin basturds as the computer refused to answer my hails. It got no video, as the first thing I did was destroy its recording drone.
Once I woke back up on the ship, I spent a week cutting the computer off from every system on the ship I could, leaving it only in control of the power plant and the hyperdrive, as I had no idea what to do with those two systems without it. And the computer, while enjoying its attempts to kill me, clearly didn't want to kill itself to kill me.
As for my second attempt (which was successful, and far more video worthy, I even printed out a recording drone to follow as a taunt to the computer), please refer to the attached video journal.
Anyhoo, I came back, and found the computer had somehow regained control of the atmospheric controls, and had pumped radiation into the ship. Which esd apparently absorbed through the skin or something. This was when I and the computer decided we were at war with each other, and it wouldn't end until one or the other was obliterated. Sadly for it, I had a cloning tank.
I managed to rip its wiring to the control of the atmospheric systems out, and then healed up before heading to the outpost. Turned in the quest to deal with Dreadwing and his buddies, got a processor. My next quest was stupidly simple, get an absurd amount kelp for someone that thought that it was the next big commodity boom or some such star dung.
That quest didn't even require me leaving the system, just a short hop to a gas giant with three oceanic planets, and then my choice of which to go diving in. Took about ten minutes to sink low enough, thankfully my rebreather also prevented the bends, else it would have been... unpleasant to get out. If not outright lethal.
Nearly two hours later, I made a note to upgrade that lantern on my back to something that would actually work underwater, but I still had the flashlight from the equipment locker. Sadly, the matter manipulator required two hands to properly use it, and I sadly lacked the prehensile penis or third arm needed to use both at the same time. However, I finally had the small mountain of kelp stored in the matter manipulator.
An hour LATER, I got to dry land, having taken half an hour to surface of the ocean, and then half an hour to get out of the water for the teleporter system to finally lock onto me. Disabling the computer from the teleporter apparently meant that certain functions didn't work so well now. Once back on the ship, I finally had enough of the cramped space, the only room other than the tiny cockpit stuffed full of equipment and a sleeping bag for when I needed to rest. I remembered a space chop shop on the Outpost, and headed there to bury the idiot in his kelp pile, before visiting the shop.
…
Sorry, had to get a drink, talking this much is making me thirsty. Also slightly dizzy. … Or maybe that is a side effect of me unhooking the computer from the atmospheric controls. I took off my rebreather, one moment please.
…
Alright, back, no longer dizzy, have my rebreather on, and the computer is hooked back up to everything. Air is good again, now, where was I?
Indistinct muttering as the journal is reread.
Ah, right. Gave the idiot his kelp, sadly didn't get to bury him it, he had a manipulator as well, but he did give me a radiation filtering rebreather, and then hit up the chop shop. They wanted me to do some helping out around the place, so I spent another week hopping around, doing the quests I had found way back, but never bothered doing. I came back, dropping off bugs, baked a cake, bought someone some chocolate, handed my old spiffy black jacket off to a florian who thought it was cool, and then hunted down a script that had been junked. Done with that, I got to return to the ship for diamonds to trade for the ship upgrade license, grabbing the fair sized stockpile, and returned for my license. I returned to the ship, and gleefully upgraded it, as well as my lantern on a stick to a halon pack and then a xenon pack. Great for seeing in dark places.
Anyhoo, finished with the first upgrade, I spent an hour rearranging the ship, and managed to drop the new robotic crafting table I made with the processor on my foot. Again, I was manly and stoic about the injury, and most definitely and assuredly did not scream like a hylotl woman being attacked by a feisty octopus, and with my foot trap couldn't, I mean didn't, roll around on the floor. So definitely increasing my stoic and manly ratings. Like a champ.
After playing interior decorator and moving all the crafting stuff to the new room, I returned to the Outpost for a drink. And discovered, to my horror, more quests. I nearly went on a delivery service rampage. Instead of drawing my assault rifle and painting the Outpost red, though, I simply sighed, and went on like a delivery service. Name, desire, reward, etc, all seven quests were quickly picked up, including, surprise surprise, another one to upgrade my armor. I nearly screamed. Though the idea of a florian party was amusing, and I was heavily armed enough that I could hold my own long enough to flee if needed.
Gods, this entry is LONG. Need another drink, BRB.
…
Back. Anyway, ran around for ANOTHER week doing quests, and then bought the next license, and upgraded my ship again. Sadly, I didn't have anything to shove in the massive room that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Mostly because this was the engine room, the five massive engines on the ship taking up at least half of the new room. Though considering that a bit more than two weeks ago, I had been in charge of a single room, Flitter class starfighter, and now was in a Kestrel class, frigate grade gunship, it was clear I was moving up in the world. I also had significantly more room in the cockpit than pretty much anywhere else by then, so I moved my sleeping bag up to it. At least when something went wrong, I would be close by.
I then, having the unusual and super powerful ability called 'pattern recognition,' returned to the Outpost to get the newest quests. Thankfully, there were only four this time, and they looked fairly simple. Just find an avian moon symbol, a glitch book on a stand, some poison and cheese, and finally a… what was it… a piece of string, that's right. Had one on me, got a sweet mellow guitar. Sadly, I can't play. But if I ever wanted to inflict horrible noises upon my prisoners, now I can. Though bagpipes would be a better choice, and those I can play.
What? I was a marine before I became a mercenary, and spent two of my six years in the service as part of the regimental band. The middle two, if you are curious journal. The first two was as a basic line grunt, which SUCKED Apex balls harder than a twenty pixel date, and the last two as part of the marine starfighter division. And that's how I know how to pilot a starship.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, but add like seventeen cat attacks during the weeks leading up to the ocean planet. None after, finally figured out the little fuzzy demon from the underworld was hungry for something other than the paste the ship spat out for it, and after frying enough fish to feed a planet for a month, gave it all to the thing. Even got it a nice little house (dog, sadly, no cat houses, but whatever) and a couple food bowls, one for food the other for water. I still hate cats though.
…
And that is it. Wow, that took WAY too long, nearly two hours. Anyway, the ship is getting bigger, so need to get an actual crew, the little computer controlled repair drones won't cut it if something big happens. Hmm, gonna need an engine crew at least, but no idea where to find them. Maybe should check for distress signals later.
Whatever, going to finish formatting and adding some minor edits to that video journal of me beating a bunch of fail birds. Mostly enhancing the lighting, reducing the static from the explosions overloading the mic, things like that, so drop the look computer. Journal, end dictation.
End of entry, formatting, removing accent, and archiving