I shouldn't have
12 Aug 2021Seamus Brand
It was a pit stop on the way to Colonia. "Less than 24 hours" the Cap had said, but he'd said that in the wee hours of my morning.
"We're moored till we sort in the new tritium. Might as well take a boat out and try and find a new planet."
I was meant to do that sort of thing in the restored Anaconda with Connor. But my scanners were picking up some landable planets. With the 'Vette.
Surely my marriage was worth more than being the first person to step foot on a fucking planet.
About an hour later, I was steering An Mícheál Ó Coileáin through the breeziest OC I'd ever had. I am beginning to think humanity was born on the worst possible planet. Everything out here was beautiful. More stars than I'd ever seen, planets of every type in the same system of a friendly star. Hell, the easiest ever jump from supercruise to OC I'd ever seen. I must have died. The Carrier had blown up and I'd gone to heaven, to experience the best pilots could ever have. Na, that wasn't it. Connor wasn't here. Fuck. Connor. I was meant to do this with him.
The Gs on the planet weren't high but I must have been distracted as I grazed the shields comning in. These aren't your basic shields, these are heavily augmented bi-weaves on a Federal Corvette. Still, I had to remind myself I was literally a jump away from one carrier who was himself nearly 20,000 ly away from civilisation and who I hadn't told where I was going, just that I would be back before jump. There were no second chances out here. I was alone. Suddenly, I realised that Conda back home needed to be top notch if it was actually going to carry Connor and I safely to Sag A* and back.
Donning the G3 Artemis I felt a strange sense of camaraderie, like the suit was a person. I'd called it Flinders, after an explorer I read about years back, and couldn't help myself from talking to "Flin" as I put it on. "We're heading out to an Ice World Flin...First person ever to step out there Flin...If the discovery scanner is wrong we're going to die immediately Flin." Fuck me, I thought, as the lift descended, I'm not a god damn explorer, I'm a combat pilot and marine. Those thoughts disappeared as soon as I saw it.
Unseen
Unheard
Unsmelt
Untasted
Untouched
Un Seamus Brand'd.
Seeing a foreign sun bounce off foreign ice and hit me in the eye was...just as annoying as when sun hits me in the eye back home yet somehow, I was grinning like a fuckwit. I'd just seen a sunrise on a foreign body 20,000ly from home and according to my computer, I was the first person to have ever done so.
Suddenly, the Anaconda resting back at The Mesa became my ultimate priority. Everything had to be towards getting that baby ready to fly out amongst the stars so that I could improve on today's experience.
I wasn't going to improve on it by standing on an earth like or running my hand through the water of a water world or kicking the dust of a rocky body.
Nah.
I was gonna watch the sunrise over a new body for the first time in history.
With Connor.
With the love of my life.
Who was never going to forgive me for doing this first without him.