Red-Shirt Adventures
22 Nov 2015DNA-Decay
Kicking around the homeworld, running missions. I run into Thunda in her hot pink mining 'Conda, and she's got a full load of Triple P:: Platinumb, Palladium, and Painite. (and some Osmium to boot).
We're working on the unproven speculation, based on some shit Braben said while force feeding his code-slaves on pizza.; that more CMDRs doing a little is more effective than a few CMDRs doing a lot.
So I rack up some missions - 3 mining & 3 combat (no civvies please) and head out the mail slot in the Punchbuggy to swap a bit of cargo down by smokers corner where the cool kids hang out.
Now I get excited at the prospect of winging up with Thunda. I kick around in a Cobra and a Clipper and I'm pretty happy; but Thunda is a heavy hitter and cool and funny. Girl got a handful of 'Condas in gold and pink, and a whole fleet of smalls. You should hear her whinging on the teamspeak about how culling the fleet is a royal pain. First world problems.
But anyways, me and Thunda got this thing where we always invisible to each other.
Winged Up, Beacons On, Same System, Same Station.
See her in the top of the HUD. Comms check: voice, text. cool cool.
In the scanner: - nuthin.
Super cruise, drop out, high wake, low wake, wake up and smell the coffee,
out of system, in system, leave wing, join wing, beacons on, beacons off,
smash the canopy out with a torque wrench, lean out and shout: COOOEEE!
Not a blue square to be seen.
Nuthin.
*sigh. Didn't we do this once before?
Nevermind - leave wing kthxseeyabye.
Not to be defeated , I park the Punchbuggy and warm up the Milfhunter (that stoopid mining Clipper I bought cheap).
Some days I think the name is too much, but I gotta have some sort of dig at Arissa. Ziljan reckons that: "The clipper is silly and effete looking - a 1970's spaceship with Tron trimmings."
I got one from Leroy Rui's used ship lot for a stacked discount after Arissa re-curtained the Palace with the skins of a thousand slaves and gave everyone a Clipper because she was so happy with the way the morning light filtered through their tanned hides.
Like Oprah - "YOU ALL GET A CAR"
It is a ridiculously powerful ship at the price. (15.1MCr - no rank needed)
For me - getting a Clipper was confirmation that Empire Bias is a real thing.
I had been saving for An All-A Alliance Alioth Asp, but this was an offer I couldn't refuse. Had to strip my T-6 (the Yellow Submarine) to afford the outfitting. The T-6 is still sitting up on blocks down there at the back of the lot in Arjung - I didn't have the heart to sell the thing. I loved her when she was A rated.
I had the Clipper painted butt ugly yellow and take it mining, but the tattoo on the leather trimming on the co-pilot seat still gives me the creeps. One guy who bought a clipper during the discount found a slavetooth bracelet in the glove box.
When asked for comment as to how she slept at night Arrissa had this to say: "I sleep at night between satin sheets, in a glorious Palace with a partner whose beauty would make you weep with desire."
Anyways back to the story - Thunda had given me a lead on a local Pristine Metallic so I jump on over and slam sideways into the A ring for two percent hull damage (but a time saving I guess).
Hardpoints Deployed and I realise I've forgotten to reload munitions so I've only got like a dozen limpets.
A dozen.
Fine whatever, I only need like 1 Painite and 3 Palladium to make this work, so I give it a shot and the rocks turn out to be:
Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Bertrandite, Gallium and Silver.
Fine.
What-fucking-ever.
So I go back to the system we're working, park the stoopid Milfhunter get out the Punchbuggy, and have a look at the transactions tab and all the combat missions are going to expire in the next hour.
No Probs. Can Do.
Scooting out the mail slot again and I bump into MDN.
Now I like MDN - nice guy. But he also holds the Keys To The Kingdom on the LAMP server that runs the Influence Tracker.
Ooooooh SHINY!
See I REALLY want to know how to run that thing, so instead of pew pew and stacking missions we sit down with the PHP output and he takes me through a long session of "#onmouseover" and "filter by expansion radius" and "What's the abbreviation for Orbis?", and "sort by faction rank", and finally:
[Update System Data]
Woot!
Now you might think this is as tedious as tax, but to me this is a beer sculling milestone!
Yep - Like my VET badge, I've now got my boy scout merit badge for Cert IV in Data Entry (Influence Tracker).
.
.
.
But now it's like some ridiculous hour of the morning, it's Sunday so there's work and the dog will want his pre-dawn beach run.
So I let those missions expire.
And now I'm wondering if I have to report the mission fails to the Secret Masters or if it's only deliberate abandons that count against you in the BGS.
And then I think - I'll just do a quick update on Inara.
.
.
.
.
And then my session cookie expires and the whole thing you just read disappears when I click save.
No really.
Gone.
I re-wrote this at work the next day.
Elite Dangerous FML.
Some days I think I should chuck in the Diplomacy and go run drugs with a bad grrl.