A Costly Lesson
08 May 2018Gatimũ Kamau
CMDR’s Log, 3304.05.08, Sol Calendar; Yesterday, I learned a very valuable, yet costly lesson. Even in a universe wrought with political assassinations, pirates running rampant and zeno assaults, there is little out there that is more dangerous to someone than their own ignorance, lack of planning and/or stupidity.
During the second leg of my expedition, my wife and I found ourselves weary by the time we made it to the sixth planet of note in our on-board system which was the seventh planetary body in HIP 13431; a world comprised completely of water. An endless ocean. (On a personal side note, as a man of science, I understand the need to designate the nearly infinite number of solar bodies with alphanumeric designations. But as a human being, I hate that names like “HIP 13431 7” for a planet are such cold and impersonal ways of describing something so…beautiful and majestic.) So, deciding to rest a bit and take visual stock of our supplies, (can’t trust EVERYTHING to computers ALL of the time), we double backed and I decided that the best place to set down en lieu of an available station or docking port was on *sigh* HIP 13431 1. It was baron and seemed fairly safe from any who might wish us harm.
After we entered atmo and successfully completed our glide, I can’t honestly say what went wrong. Maybe I was more tired than I thought. Maybe the gravity of the planet was stronger than I believed at first blush. Maybe I wasn’t yet used to the thrust and mass of our new Chieftain as I’d never flown it in atmosphere. Maybe my angle of decent was too steep. Whatever the reason, we came in far too hot. And before I knew it, alarms were going off all over the helm. I dropped the landing gear to break our speed, banking on the additional wind resistance, and I nosed up while leaning into the throttle and diverting power to the engines. But it was far too little far too late.
We bottomed out hard. So hard in fact that the ship rebounded skyward.
Despite the Pride of Afrika’s engineered bi-weave shields, her shield boosters, her double layered military grade hull and her military grade module protection, the shields were still shattered. All of her systems were heavily damaged. And her structural integrity was severely compromised. And in my daze, I could do little more than sit and watch in horror as the glass of my canopy slowly cracked about me and explode outward; taking all of the atmosphere out with it. Luckily I was wearing my helmet and my wife our cat were behind the bridge’s bulkhead door. But I couldn’t be sure what was happening back there and I didn’t want to expose the rear cabins to the planet’s alien atmosphere needlessly. That’s when I looked up and my horror compounded under the realization that my life support system only offered me five minutes of emergency air.
As an explorer, an upgraded life support system should have been one of the first things I invested in. Not the last. It was a stupid and amateurish mistake. And a nearly fatal one.
My first thought was to break atmo and frame shift to safety, and I started to do just that; quickly attempting to recover and gain speed and altitude. But that line of action was quickly countermanded by the computer’s voice telling me that “that course of action is not advised”. My mind raced. “Can I survive the transition from planet-side into the wider verse with no canopy?” “Can I survive a frame shift?”
As I tried to decide whether to risk going against the computer’s advice, I felt my stomach lurch. The Pride of Afrika couldn’t maintain her new found altitude and was falling “back to earth”, as the colloquialism goes. I tried to shift all available power to systems, but it wasn’t enough to get the shields back up. I knew in that moment that we were going to die.
The ship impacted the ground again, and everything went black.
I don’t know how, but I woke up several days and several lightyears later at a friendly spaceport in a Chieftain which was not our own. A new Chieftain. Somehow, my wife must have pulled me and our pet to the escape pods and gotten us away before the ship before the end.
My brilliant wife saved my stupid life.
Sadly, however, we didn’t have enough to cover our insurance by nearly 500K CR. Not to mention the lost data from the planets and systems we’d explored…many, many lost credits. The second leg of our trip was supposed to cover us and secure or financial freedom. As it now stands because of me, we are 485K CR in debt to the galactic powers that be. And for the foreseeable future we will be relinquishing 10% of all our earnings to pay back the debt.
Better than losing my life? I suppose. Better than losing my wife? Defiantly.
As my father once told me, “It’s not falling off of the horse that matters. It’s how fast you get back on.”. So, starting tomorrow, we retrace our steps and re-explore those planets. And as soon as possible, I need to invest in a better life support system and possibly research the viability of using an auto dock planet side when I’m exhausted.
First thing’s first however. Tonight…I just want to enjoy my wife’s company.