Timeline Part 2 – More Pilot Survival (Biting Off More Than You Can Chew)
02 Feb 2022AKAArthur
I know, I know. I said I wanted a Federal Corvette. In fact I did get one, but it took such a long time to get the respect of the Federal Navy that… …well that’s an entry for another time.What I do recall now is what ship I did get after the Sidewinder. It was a Cobra, but there may have been a Hauler I’m forgetting now. I wonder why…
Man, the Cobra is such a super ship. It has hardpoints and compartments – and it feels like a condominium more than the small box that is the Sidewinder – but more importantly to a new pilot finding their way, it has the necessary speed to get away should the need arise. And there is always a need to get away when you bite of more than you can chew in space.
There’s more than one time I’ve relied upon the escape pod to be able to save my backside, but I recall one fight where I arrived at a Combat Zone in an unengineered Cobra to find that the people I’d agreed to support hadn’t turned up. That left me all on my own against 15 ships all hell bent on destroying anyone on the other side. I didn’t survive that long, but what it did do was make me find out more about the elusive creatures called “Engineers”, allegedly dotted around the galaxy.
The first one I’d heard of was of a lady over in Deciat, called Farseer. Now, I’ve read the antique series of books by the old Earth author Robin Hobb on the Farseer Trilogy, but I was intrigued to find out about this Engineer and what she can offer. And wow, she has a lot she can help with – but mostly in a minor way. What I mean by the word “minor” is that all her specialisms are defensive or jump range related.
My first foray there – I think it was actually a Python I was in at the time – resulted in a fellow commander destroying me after a very long jump with exploration data. No reason, just a fool radioing me to tell me I was a noob, before ruining my first attempt at moving forward and getting an advantage in the galaxy.
It didn’t take long to get over it, but it sure did sour the taste of my first couple of months in space.