Oolite Bulletins

I thought the beeps of a heart monitor was something they added in the vids for the audience's sake. Hearing them in reality gets annoying really fast. Especially when it's something you wake up to after being in a coma.

So this is what happens when you get cocky.

***

"That is a nice ship," the woman said. Brandi, I think she said her name was. She was a regular at the Deep Helmet, one of the groupies who got off on pilots and were looking for a free ride, if you know what I mean.

I ran my hand over the ship's hull, feeling the welding marks criss cross like a giant metal jigsaw puzzle. "We're looking at the same ship, right?"

"Don't be modest, flyboy. She's a lot more dangerous than she appears." Her eye went over it in detail. "Extra energy unit. Mill-spec beam laser. Very nice. Bit risky, on something with only one energy bank, isn't it?"

I shrugged. "I try not to let them get a chance to exploit it."

"The hull's reinforced. I mean, really reinforced. And what did you do with your cockpit? It’s like you dumped it inside a cargo container or something."

"I’ve been dead before. Not something I can recommend. Lots of ‘me’ time to collect your thoughts in, but no neural activity to actually do anything with it. So I try to avoid an encore.”

Brandi smiled. “I can’t believe you were ever taken down.”

“In this? How can you not?”

She leaned against the hull, back arcing just enough to put herself on display. God I love being a pilot.

“So, tell me, flyboy. Why didn’t you brag it up back at the Helmet the other day? After that pirate raid on the cruise liner?”

Ah hell. One of those.

“I wasn’t there.”

“That’s not what I hear.”

“You heard wrong.”

She looked me in the eyes, disappointed I suppose. Weren’t they all? But not a fraction as disappointed as I was in myself.

“Guess I did,” she said, and got off the hull. “I’m going back to the Helmet. You coming?”

Guess I wasn’t going to be showing off my fold down bucket seat in the cockpit any time soon. “I would, but I’ve got a cargo run to make. Unless you’d like to join me? There isn’t really room in the cockpit for two, but that would just make things more cozy.”

Brandi smirked. “I don’t think so. Take care, flyboy.” She walked off with a handwave that said better luck next time.

***

You know what’s more annoying than hearing your own heart monitor beep? Hearing it beep too fast, and then too erratically, and then realize your brain is all fuzzy and the disco party of pain going on is your body shutting down under protest.

***

That crazy miner dropping off loot at the Pi-42 was my key to the fast lane, but it meant being stuck in an armpit part of the galaxy I didn’t care to be. Xexedi was far more fun and besides, my Adder was doing just fine. The Xexedi cluster was tight enough that if I couldn’t outrun or outshoot someone, I always had enough witchfuel to jump somewhere else.

But the fact was I didn’t want to. I was considered an average pilot by the GalCop rankings, and it was starting to go to my head. I’d use my fuel injectors to scream into a docking bay only to break and swerve at the last second. I’d jump into minor pirate skirmishes whenever I saw them, confident my Crouching Adder, Hidden Upgrades shtick would see me through. Ever since the Princess Cruise, I’d felt more inclined to give pirates a hard time. Because fuck those guys.

Today I was flying through an asteroid field, doing some torus drive-by shooting of rocks for spare change and keeping an eye out for assholes as an added bonus. I figured I’d had things figured out.

I had made one unfortunate miscalculation, though. I’d gone and talked to the GalCop liaison about that pirate leader. I’d been inside their offices, which are monitored. And while all my IDs might be different now, my face sure as hell wasn’t.

Actually I’d made two miscalculations. I’d stayed in one area for far too long. If anyone was on my tail staying in one place simply mean they’d track me down all that much easier. I was getting complacent.

But right now that didn’t matter. Right now I had a few pirates to splash. Three jokers picking on a miner. Judging from the state of all ships involved it looked like a cripple fight. But I wasn’t beneath beating up a bunch of cripples, as long as they were evil cripples.

Then it turned out I’d made three miscalculations.

“Hey there, flyboy.”

***

I didn’t think you could hear your own flatline, but for whatever joke of a reason, be it the drugs or technology they had me hooked up to, I did. I didn’t see the monitor, mind you. Everything swam to black, like an evening on Xexedi evil juice but without the pleasant buzz and ten times the hangover. But through it all I heard the steady flat tone of my own dead heart drifting away, fainter and fainter.

***

I never stood a chance. The words “Hey there, flyboy” had come through in the middle of the battle, when the Cobra MKI I thought had been about to blow suddenly had its engines and thrusters flare to life and launched a missile at me point blank as it screamed past. The missile hit me square in the hull, and my escape capsule barely launched in time. My cargo pod disguised as an escape capsule kicked in its thrusters and screamed away and I waited for the all-clear before drifting my disguised pod to the nearest space station.

I saw the Cobra fly away, stop, turn, and come back towards me. It stopped dead in front of my pod, engines off. Great. The bitch was showing off. Brandi or whatever her name was had worked me up at the Helmet, got me to show her my ship and in the process all my tricks. She even knew about the escape pod fake-out.

“It’s just you and me out here,” said Brandi. It was true. The miner had fled and the other two pirates were space dust. I didn't remember taking them out. Guess that miner had more fight in him than I gave him credit for. Or maybe Brandi didn't like to share.

Oh well. No point in pretending. “It’s cold in space and I’m getting hungry. So, you going to scoop me up or what? My insurance will pay for my release. More than you’d get on the slave market.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t hired to capture you.”

Oh fuck.

“Space ninjas,” I muttered.

“What?” Brandi had no idea what I meant. The perils of in-jokes.

“Never mind.” So, this was it, huh? Well, that sucked. I didn’t even get a chance to go out in a blaze of glory, or more likely, kicking and screaming. Just a polite little ‘Hello, my name is Brandi and I’ll be your assassin today.’ And boom. Swell. “Do me a favor, would you? A condemned man’s last request. I'd like you to relay a message.”

“I might. What’s the message?”

“Tell my dad… tell him I know I wasn’t the best son. Tell him I know I was a greedy, selfish, egotistical brat and I’m surprised he put up with me as long as he did. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t make more of myself before the end. But most importantly, tell him this: Tell him he really sucked ass as a father, and I hope his dick falls off so he doesn’t subject the universe to any more offspring. Okay?”

Silence on the other end, then. “One condition and I’ll relay your message, word for word.”

“What’s the condition?”

“Why won’t you admit you were at the battle over the Princess Cruise?”

Goddamnit.

“I know you were, because I was there as well. I saw you take down over ten ships. Why is it you’ll brag and exaggerate pretty much everything you do, but you won’t admit to that?”

My teeth were clenched so tight I think I broke a filling. “You were there?”

“Yes.”

“Were you one of the pirates?”

“I was in the asteroid field the cruise ship was passing, waiting for you. I had planned on ambushing you there when the liner came under attack. An unexpected complication.”

I thought about this a moment. “Then I’ll answer your question with a question: I was a mess after that fight. Half my systems were damaged. Why didn’t you finish me off?”

The laser on the front of the Cobra MKI powered up, and cut straight through my pod with a single pulse. I was blown into the vacuum of space. The last thing I saw was the asteroid the wreck of my Adder had settled on, and the fact that I was drifting towards it.

The last thing I thought was. “How does the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

***

Someone had turned off the irritating beeping noise on the heart monitor. I saw two people talking at the foot of my bed, catching snippets of conversation.

“—for a while, but he pulled through.”

“—frozen, but no cellular—”

“—another five minutes and he—”

Yeah, yeah, heard it all before. So what missionary saved me this time? I’d have to actually make a donation or carry some pamphlets for them to other stations, I think. Only seemed right.

One of the figures left, and the other came and sat next to me on a chair.

“Hey there, flyboy.”

Oh fuck.

I reached for the nurse alarm button, but she already held it in her hand. “I don’t think you’ll be needing this. I was hoping for a bit of privacy. I’m not here to kill you.”

It seemed my voice wasn’t quite back yet, so I settled for just giving her the squint-eye of doom.

“My contract was specifically to destroy your ship and if you escaped in an escape pod, destroy that as well. I did both. It took forever to make sure the shot was going to hit the way I wanted. The contract also said nothing about not scooping up the body and taking it a hospital. Funny. It focused so hard on trying to avoid loopholes it didn’t even notice the loopholes it created. Now, if they had just said that they wanted you dead, well, you’d have passed out at the Deep Helmet and never got back up…”

My squint eye of doom changed to a single arched eyebrow of questioning.

“No I don’t know who put out the contract. These kind of things are done anonymously or with a false ID set, just like the assassins themselves use. Kind of like the one I found in your escape capsule wreck." She placed a data crystal on the counter next to me. “Keep using it if you want. As far as I know I’m the only one who’s figured out who you are.”

The single arched eyebrow of questioning shifted to a furrowed brow of not-understanding.

“That’s a pretty expressive face you got there. You’re wondering why I went to all that trouble to blow you out of the sky and then save you. The first part’s easy. A contract is a contract. As for the second…”

She shifted her chair closer, to make sure I could hear her. “I’ve heard about you, even before the contract. When I took it on I learned everything I could about you. You can change your name and your ship and even your face if you felt like it, but you could never change who you are on the inside. That’s how you find a target. You learn who they really are and they can’t hide anywhere. And the more I read, the more I knew I was going to enjoy this job. I don’t go for innocent blood. And pal, you are as far from innocent as it gets. Sure, you’re no pirate or murderer or lawyer or anything, but I looked at your profile and asked myself ‘Would the universe be a better place without this asshole in it?’ And the answer was a resounding ‘Yes.’”

I conveyed a “thanks a lot” through an eye roll.

“Then I saw you fight. I heard you on the com channel. I heard your voice when you realized the Princess Cruise was lost.”

Now I tried something that got across “get to the point” though it might have just made me look constipated.

“The thing is, as I watched you fight, I realized I had hung back in the asteroid field, waiting for the right moment. I could have helped, but it wasn’t my job. You were my job. The thought didn’t even occur to me until after the Princess Cruise was lost. And what was worse, I didn't feel nearly as much as I knew I should have over it.

“Then I realized that this guy I was supposed to kill—this egotistical, low life, cowardly scumbag who had coasted on his daddy’s coattails to get away with whatever he wanted—was a better person than I was. Not exactly the kind of revelation I was happy with, so I decided to prove myself wrong by meeting you. Figured it would take all of five minutes. But you refused to admit you even took part in the battle. That really pissed me off, because I knew why, and it meant you weren't who I thought you were. I couldn’t go through with the contract. Not exactly, anyway.”

I’d finally managed to find my voice and croaked out, “Why do it at all? Why not just let me go?”

Brandi smiled. “Letting you go meant losing fifty thousand credits. You think I'm crazy? Punching your card meant I got to trade up to a Chopped Cobra MKIII. Besides, you’re still a self-centered, sexist jerk. How could I resist?”

Couldn’t exactly argue with that point. I’d been staring at her breasts for most of the conversation.

She patted my shoulder and got up. “Like I said, your ID should still be good. Just get the numbers tweaked by a hacker so you don’t show up as the same person anywhere. You show up on the radar again and people are going to start thinking you have nine lives. When you check out of the hospital, get a shuttle to the salvage yards. There’s an Adder I trashed set aside for you there. The pilot ejected before it blew and I didn’t bother finishing it off. I bet you have enough in savings to get it up and running again.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked myself again if the universe would be a better place without this asshole in it, and this time I realized that maybe there was something worth keeping around.” She left the room without the sultry swagger she'd used as part of her cover in the bar, without inflicting some kind of last minute pain on me as a sick joke, without even looking back. “Take care, flyboy.”



Dear Diary: I think I’m in love.

mossfoot wrote:

I really like those vector maps, but the information is so tiny it's not something I'd normally use on a computer or printout - However, I do have a tablet computer that it would be perfect for (since I can zoom in and out with a pinch) that it creates a more "sci fi" vibe to my flying around

It all depends on how you print it out..

Adobe Reader (or Foxit Reader) will let you make poster prints.. printouts spanning multiple pages, that you trim and join together to make a large poster. And being vector-graphic maps instead of bitmap, you can blow 'em up as big as you like with no loss of definition. I have a 3x2and-a-bit A4-pages (90cm x 50cm) chart of G1 (that reminds me, I need to make one for G2 as well) over my desk that I printed up myself with the "printer friendly" version. Ideally, I'd like to have gone for 4x3ish, but that would be a little too big for the space it has to fit. While it's not quite large enough as-is to read the system names, all the other info encoded into the system-symbols is easily readable. It comes in quite handy.

The other thing I plan on doing is having a local office-supplies company print up the full-colour version as an A0 size (119cm x 84cm) poster to go on the wall.. just $33 for printing, and another $23 if I want it laminated. Or I can have it printed on high quality gloss or satin paper for just an extra $20..

When you do, take a picture and post it! A0 is a hefty momma!

I'm really liking this story, it's evolving nicely. There is some good character advancement here (as someone who can't do it very well I do have to say I'm a touch envious!) You even varying the way your writing him as he grows emotionally. He's bitching less and slowly coming to terms with who he was and from there get some sort of clue as to where he might be going. He's walking through a hall filled with dark mirrors and he's not liking the reflections. As each one is giving him more of an insight.

temet nosce, indeed.
(probably not the correct usage, but arguably the most popular. Nosce te ipsum is probably more accurate)

Diziet Sma wrote:

mossfoot wrote:

I really like those vector maps, but the information is so tiny it's not something I'd normally use on a computer or printout - However, I do have a tablet computer that it would be perfect for (since I can zoom in and out with a pinch) that it creates a more "sci fi" vibe to my flying around

It all depends on how you print it out..

Adobe Reader (or Foxit Reader) will let you make poster prints.. printouts spanning multiple pages, that you trim and join together to make a large poster. And being vector-graphic maps instead of bitmap, you can blow 'em up as big as you like with no loss of definition. I have a 3x2and-a-bit A4-pages (90cm x 50cm) chart of G1 (that reminds me, I need to make one for G2 as well) over my desk that I printed up myself with the "printer friendly" version. Ideally, I'd like to have gone for 4x3ish, but that would be a little too big for the space it has to fit. While it's not quite large enough as-is to read the system names, all the other info encoded into the system-symbols is easily readable. It comes in quite handy.

The other thing I plan on doing is having a local office-supplies company print up the full-colour version as an A0 size (119cm x 84cm) poster to go on the wall.. just $33 for printing, and another $23 if I want it laminated. Or I can have it printed on high quality gloss or satin paper for just an extra $20..

i did that with the map i got for Frontier . Had it laminated and on my wall. put a pin in every star i visited... explorers oxp does it for me now .But i did print out gal 1 map on to 6 A4 sheets but havent trimmed it and joined it yet....
A0 is huge!! had a thought that you could get 2 of them one with the first 4 gal charts and the second with the rest. that would still make each chart 594 x 420. should still be easily read..??

sorry mosfoot for the derail..... loving where this is going.. i find myself logging in 2 or 3 times a night to see if there is any more.. lol

Topic moved to Fiction. Nice storytelling, mossfoot, keep it up.

I was released from the hospital a week later. No missionaries to thank, Brandi (or whatever her real name is) dropped me off at Xexedi's best hospital on the station.

What a fantastic woman. As much as I remembered her sultry cover story back at the Deep Helmet, it was the woman I saw in the hospital room that stuck in my mind. Red hair like the flames of a rocket. Statuesque. A face that was not so much born as created in the mind of an artist. My god, what a woman.

I'd never felt this way about anyone before. It was strange to say the least. She'd not only spared my life, but she'd given me a chance to start over. I wondered if I'd ever see her again? I caught a shuttle to the salvage yard and asked about the Adder heap that she'd left for me.

"Oh yeah, that." The foreman almost laughed when he said it. "You sure you want it?"

Thinking about what was left of my old ship I said, "Don't exactly have much choice."

"Don't say I didn't warn ya." He took me to the back of the yard, where an Adder, or what was left of one, lay on its side so as to take up the least amount of space. The cockpit was missing, of course, so it needed a new escape pod system. As for the rest it didn't look too bad. I'd have to take a look at it up close.

"Any idea what's left working in it?" I asked.

"The left turn signal, if you're lucky," the foreman said. "Look it over. I got some things to do. If you want to try and restore it, I know a guy who can do it for you, cheaper than the guys at the shipyard would."

So, this was going to be my new ship, huh? Could be worse. As I started inspecting it I thought again about Brandi. Good gal. Flawed personality, of course, but hey, who am I to talk? Got her heart in the right place, just like me. And a looker, too. Can't say I'd ever go out of my way to help someone like this...

Are you kidding me? The energy bank is busted? Those things cost... and the fuel injectors were just so much silicone spaghetti tubes. The thrusters were... nope, those needed to be replaced too. Wow... this was going to be expensive. A hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new Adder, mind you, and this time I'm going to do things right. Focus on profit. Forget about being a big damned hero, at least until I'm commanding a warship or something. Even if your ship's got an iron ass which...

"Goddammit, this ship isn't even armored!"

"I warned ya!" came the foreman's voice far down the yard.

Sigh... The problem was, I could focus on profit, sure, but sometimes you just can't avoid a fight. That means you still need to sink money into your heap of scrap parts just in case - money that would be better off going to my "Buy a Imperial Star Destroyer" fund. And that investment does not come out in trade as much as you'd like.

Still, at least Brandi gave me this start. Decent kid all around, not too hard on the eyes when you think about it. Best of intentions. And with the gold and platinum I'd had in my cockpit, I could probably get this heap up to my standards in no time. I might not have much after that, but at least I'd be back where I was.

I called out for the foreman to come and talk numbers.

***

"What do you mean the metals are gone?"

I was on the vidphone with my bank, who was supposed to have received everything from my wreck they could retrieve.

"I'm sorry, sir, but when you were taken to the hospital there was no record of anything being left with you. Just enough to pay for the hospital."

"But I had thousands of credits in there."

"I'm sorry. Your finances are secure, I assure you, but none of your cargo, of any sort, had been retrieved. My apologies."

I sighed, which I seemed to be doing more than breathing lately. I'd be mad right now but, remember, Brandi left me with my skin intact. That's something, right? Be grateful for what you got. "Okay, so how much can you do for this?" I showed him my bank account. He scratched his beard.

"My guy can get her flying, but that's about it. Rest is up to you."

I sighed. Square one, huh? Story of my life.

The thing is, if Brandi blew open my cockpit and scooped me up, and she got her hands on my ident data crystal, no way she didn't actually go through my cockpit and find everything that was in there, including the strong boxes I keep my precious metals in.



THAT BITCH!

I think that will be a good place to leave the story for now. Got paid work to catch up on I'll probably start up again when 1.8 comes out, since there will no doubt be lots of surprises for me there. I assume one of the OXZs is going to be the variable start points (including Hardcore)?

mossfoot wrote:

Got paid work to catch up on

Heheheh.. Oolite gets a bit addictive, that way.. enjoy your time back on the chain-gang..

Oh, I'll be back. I figure binging on 1.8 will be the perfect way to restart his adventures

Look forward to when you revisit, and or, start again. Very entertaining it has to be said.

BBD

"Python escort to unidentified Adder... what are you doing?"

"Python escort to unidentified Adder, I repeat, what are your intentions?"

"Python escort to unidentified Adder, in case you are getting any ideas, I'd like to point out that all of our ships are equipped with rear mounted lasers and carry anti-ECM missiles, so if you think you're being clever setting up for some kind of sneak attack..."

I turned on the comm channel. "Why do you think I'm following you guys?"

My new Adder, registration ID "DIEBRANDIDIE", felt about as secure as a cardboard box in a rain storm. I think there's a small leak somewhere. I keep hearing a hiss of oxygen escaping, I'm sure of it.

To get my replacement ship flying took every credit I had and a bunch I didn't. I had to do some odd jobs for the salvage yard just to break even. I could have stayed on and got some fuel money and starting capital, but I saw a Python escorted by four Cobra MKIs jump system and figured, why not? They're bound to pass through an asteroid field or something and I can earn some change popping empties.

While my fake pilot's ID was kept intact, the hacker who got everything set up for my new ship had to wipe the old data on it. Said it was a precaution against someone tracking my movements up to this point. Now I'm just a goddamn "harmless" shmuck again. That is not as comforting as you might think. The thing about pirates is, they prefer to take on the harmless people of the world. From their point of view it makes good business sense.

From my point of view it makes them assholes. Hence my little tailgating escort party right now.

"Look, I'm not trying to cause any trouble. Just looking for a bit of safety in numbers, okay? I'll even clear any asteroids in your path so you can stay focused on legitimate threats. Scan my systems. I'm about as big of a threat as a water balloon."

There was a pause on the radio. "Python leader to Remora, roger that."

"Remora. Ha ha. Stop it, you're killing me. I'm just yucking it up here."

Eh, it was a fair enough comparison to be honest. Sticking close to the big sharks and cleaning up the loose bits of food in its wake. I should get that painted on my hull, because I got a feeling that's going to be my life for the next week or so.

Yay!

BBD

I'd like to preface this by saying I'd like the technology this event no doubt leads to be named the "MF Effect." I'd use my real name, but, you know, space ninjas and all.

I was waiting to dock at a Coriolis Station after I'd left my Python escort behind.

(Yeah... I left them behind... that last transmission from them wasn't "so long, sucker" or anything...)

And I got the all clear to dock. Yeah, yeah, kick in the thrusters, match rotation, read the latest issue of Maxim magazine, wait till the station grabs hold of your ship.

Only this time I looked up from my magazine to see a ship leaving the docking bay and heading straight for me.

My hands flew up in front of my face. "Oh shii---"

It hit me dead on, full speed. It was a huge cargo ship, a Python or a Boa, but I wasn't exactly paying attention because I was more worried about being a splat mark on its windshield.

It's simply physics, kids. For those of you planetbound in low tech worlds let me put it in more relatable terms. Imagine your donkey cart... wait, maybe that's a bit too low tech. Imagine your two seater electric car just got plowed into head on by an eighteen wheeler cargo truck. Multiply the mass and momentum of one and then multiply the mass and momentum of the other, then compare the numbers (I'm fuzzy on the math, but this sounds good enough to me). The bigger the difference, the bigger the splat.

This should have been a really big splat.

While I'm on the subject, why did my hands fly up in front of my face? What possible good was that supposed to do? Protect my eyes when I am forced to eat my own viewscreen?

Anyway, this is just one of those many times you have heard me say "I should have been dead." Only obviously I'm not since I'm writing this... though I have been technically a couple of times before but... oh skip it you know what I mean. Point is, I'm not a splat on a windshield.

When I peeked over my raised arms, I realized was no longer anywhere near the Coriolis station or the transport. In fact it was receding in the distance like I was using my Torus drive. Only I wasn't. And I was going faster than fuel injectors would let me, but I didn't even have those installed yet.

All of this was only slightly less worrying than the fact that my engine exhaust was streaming in front of me.

Fun fact about modern spaceships. A lot of it is automated. I mean, a LOT. I've seen people who don't know better complain about the physics of videos they see. Stuff in space does not seem to operate the way the laws of physics would dictate. And it's true, but that's because operating in a ship under true Newtonian physics is harder than you'd like to imagine. So most of it is handled by computers, thrusters, compensators, all kinds of stuff that is behind the scenes and so innocuous that you don't really know it's there. It's gotten to the point where every ship (except perhaps the Thargoids) use this same technology because it makes manual piloting that much easier for us.

And one of those things is a lack of going in reverse. A ship can go to a dead stop (in relative terms to the nearest planet-like mass) but not backwards. It simplifies things for everyone. Sure, there are some jocks out there who rip out those safeties so they can do unbelievable stunts, but they're by far the exception. For the rest of us, there is Ship Physics, which runs on rules that would piss Newton off to no end.

So, to sum up, I should not be flying backwards at this moment. Moreover, I should not be flying backwards at Torus-like speed when there are any number of ships around me that should be preventing it (or were for the first few seconds anyway till I slipped away from them), not to mention the planet I'm approaching at an all too unnerving speed.

Aaaaand I don't know how to stop.

How this happened is not nearly as important as how I was going to get out of it. I try turning my ship around, thrusting up, thrusting down, flying in different directions. My engines were responding, but didn't seem to be having an effect. I was going so fast backwards, the my engine plume was streaking in front of me.

For several minutes I desperately tried righting myself until suddenly it just stopped on its own. My engines worked properly again and I was slowly on my way back to the Coriolis station.

So now I had time to wonder about what the hell happened. The nearest I can figure it had something to do with our shields colliding. Ship shields are meant to both block energy and matter, to protect against lasers and missiles. Ray shielding deals with incoming energy, while particle shields are of a repulsive nature based on magnetic/gravonic principles. The kind of advances that gave us artificial gravity and inertial dampners that keep our guts from going liquid against the back wall when accelerating at speeds like this.

(in case you're wondering, artificial gravity becomes increasingly difficult to maintain over larger surfaces, and require exponentially more energy as well. So plenty of ships use it--including cruise liners--but not most stations, which prefer to rely on rotation and put its energy to better use elsewhere.)

Anyway, I think somehow the two shields colliding created some kind of weird feedback and caused me to be repulsed instead of just being crushed against it like a beer can against a frat boy's head. I intend to report this incident and give them my flight data to analyse, on the condition that the phenomenon become known as the MF Effect.

One question, though... I wonder what ever happened to the other ship?

As someone who has been "MF'd" a number of times, that has to be the best description and handwavium about it I've had the pleasure of reading..

mossfoot wrote:

One question, though... I wonder what ever happened to the other ship?

Hopefully.. propelled at similar speed back through the Station 'til it punched out the other side..

So I picked up an unexpected passenger.

"Hey there little guy."

The Trumble cooed on my dashboard. It had appeared out of nowhere when a ghostly Cobra MKIII flew by. I thought nothing of the ship, probably just decked out in stealth paint.

Seemed a shame to think these little guys were dumped into boiling oil and cooked up by the bucketful. Who would ever want to. It's lonely out on the spacelanes sometimes, and having a pet is just the thing I need to relax and feel like there is something warm and innocent in the great void.

***

Ten minutes later...

"No. No no no. Hey, those wires are not food. Hey! I just had that detailed! Wait! Not the dash! where are you going?"

Next thing you know the little bugger has burrowed into my dashboard and found his way into the space between the inner and outer hulls! I jabbed my hand down to try and grab it, but the bugger bit me and rolled off cackling.

Son of a...