All Stop: Tragedy at Witch Head
24 Jan 2022Aurora Bael
It has taken me several days to process everything that has happened, so bear with me.
I remember scanning a million alien anemones at Altinak. The system is covered in them, even in surface temps in excess of 1000K. I remember turning temperature in my Artemis suit to full cold to avoid burning myself again and never spending more than perhaps a minute outside the SRV, which was still incredibly unpleasant and harrowing. I distinctly remember my throat drying out and my lips chapping by the time I was done. I remember trying a night-side survey since these organisms are huge and bio-luminescent. It was still 700k, which the suit could handle, but barely. And after a while, things begin to blur from mixed dehydration and drunkenness. Ya girl had fun driving around, picking up crystals and ores she knew she'd need later. I seem to recall having a good time, but eventually the ship departed for points to the galactic south. Rigel and 28 ETA Orionis were closer than I thought.
On the way there were a few more species to collect but nothing of particular note, and a few more planetoids to put the first human bootprints on. I remember laughing in joy when I came across a geologically active ice world with beautiful canyons, and hooning around them for hours. It felt so free, so untethered, so joyous. I remember turning flight assist off and trying some basic maneuvering. It's a delightful, fun memory of exploring things the Pilot's Federation doesn't teach; CMDRs have to learn it on their own. I think I recall starting to get the hang of it, but that I should get moving, so the module flipped back on as the ship launched to the next world to visit.
The next ice world I can clearly remember was... green. Not leafy green, chemical green, like it was something in the ice or some non-water ice that made it green. There were some bacterial signs that were easy to locate for once. I remember going to sleep. I remember waking up and deciding to try taking off without flight assist. I remember taking this picture of Barnards loop being so close it was now dominating the sky. I remember practicing thrust vectoring. And I remember that going horribly wrong.
The sound was the worst part. It happened too fast for me to really feel the rest, but the sound was the worst. Bradbury's space-frame was already strained from the crash a week prior. When it hit, I remember hearing and feeling the hull snapping in half, the air rushing out of the cabin, an unbreathable something rushing in, the alarm as the reactor breached, the first of many explosions, the warmth and wet where my leg used to be...
...And then I woke up in a hospital bed at Ray Gateway with a tube in my arm and a splitting headache like I haven't had since I got my right eye replaced, before I tuned down the signal gain to where I wanted it. Come to think of it, that happened before, when piloting the Cobra after a mining run, my ship got shot to ribbons for landing on the wrong pad. That time, I woke up in prison with a fine to pay and a stern talking to from the Pilot's Fed Rep about following proper protocols in the future. But this was definitely a hospital, and the rep who came to see me, with my local Sirius Corp contact, was nothing but apologetic. They told me I was rescued in the nick of time, presented me with a rebuy contract, and apologized that none of the data I had logged could be recovered. Dozens of worlds and genetic specimens, cooked to ash in the explosion. They were all very sorry but had reconstructed a replacement vessel while I was unconscious, and it was waiting for me in the terminal. My gear had been replaced to the best of their ability, but the originals and the personal property in the ship? All gone. All melted to slag. Nothing at all survived. Just me...
I signed where they told me to sign and nodded my head and the nurse shooed them away as fast as she could. That's when I came around enough to notice my arms. They didn't have white splotches all over them. It was like those Betelgeuse burns had never happened. Oh, I had my face scar alright, and my cybernetic eyes, shoulder, ribs, and sub-dermal musculature replacements were all there. But not the burns, though. So I checked my legs, the one I was sure I had felt tear free in the crash right before it all went dark... No scars. No reattachment point I could discern. No prosthesis. Just pink, healthy flesh.
I was torn to ribbons 1500 light years from inhabited space, rescued, and rehabilitated in the space of a day... And as if to drive home the strangeness, when I hopped into the new Bradbury and set out for a quick test, the frame felt, flew, and sounded completely alien to me. It could do all the things the last Bradbury could do... But it no longer felt like... mine. The charm was gone.
...This is me. The me writing this. The me who signed the rebuy. The me who woke up in Ray Gateway yesterday in the wee small hours of the morning.
Except... This is the person that left Ray Gateway two weeks prior.
Something isn't right. And I think I know what it is.
It might sound crazy but... I don't think I'm me. I know, that's stupid, how can I not be myself, right? I have all the memories I used to. At least I think I do. But unless they decided to perform a face lift, a tummy tuck, a full-body scar removal, and to graft whole new lab-grown limbs seamlessly onto a critical trauma patient "saved in the nick of time"... One wonders why they didn't fix my ribs. Or my face. That's what bothers me about this... I'm not supposed to notice the difference. I'm supposed to think an escape pod -- equipment that was not installed on Bradbury and never had been (trust me, I've opened every damn panel and hatch on that ship looking for storage space) -- launched at the last possible instant, freeze-dried me, and held me in stasis until rescue crews could get to me. But whatever.. neural scan or whatever it is inside those CMDR grade helmets -- the one the ship will not launch without being secured to your dome -- was a little too good. Recorded a little too much. I didn't feel the pain of my body being torn to bits, but I do remember seeing it happen before the world went black. There's no way. I've seen -- I remember seeing -- people torn up like that before. They don't tend to be able to sign contracts on the outside chance they survive. Life might be cheap out there among the many stars, but commerce is not. And to keep the wheels of commerce turning, we will always need exactly one thing: pilots. The Pilot's Federation, to play their part, cannot afford to be as choosy as they are, not when so many pilots die so goddamn often to accident, malice, or legal action. Cloning them? Makes perfect sense. That way they can still be cheap as old socks, like every other human life in the 'verse.
So...Whatever or whoever I am, I'm not the same Aurora Bael that set out to survey the constellation Orion. Or who worked with Foxtrot Company for three years. Or who lived as a slave in an Imperial Duke's home. I remember all those things like they happened yesterday. But they cannot have happened to me, to this body. It's just not possible.
...I wonder how many other CMDRs know about this. I'm putting these thoughts in a Public Log because if I'm crazy, you'll all get a kick out of it, but if there are any more of you out there who know what I'm talking about, or have had this experience... Well, I watch my traffic. It would be pretty rough for the Pilot's Federation to find and silence everyone likely to read this. This is my life. This thing happened to me. Believe me or don't, at your leisure.
Regardless of who or what I am, all my biometrics work, to get into the accounts, hangars, and private stores of the last Aurora Bael. So here I am, fresh out the womb, with a bankroll the size of a starport just burning a hole in my pocket. So naturally, I did what any other person would do with 175M credits of someone else's money to spend would.
I bought a Krait.
Look, whether or not I'm right and I'm just some clone of a very hurt and troubled young woman or I AM (in any way that matters) that troubled young woman, this experience has been... relieving. I feel like I can finally breathe. All those principles keeping me from taking certain kinds of work? Well I'm sure they're fine for someone, but they don't feel like mine anymore. All that hopelessness and pain and hurt? From another life, seen only through a mirror, darkly. Call me crazy if you like, but I haven't felt this sane in a decade. This grounded. This much in the present moment. It's that high I've been chasing for years; absolute freedom. Complete self-determination. Abject independence. Unmitigated, uncomplicated liberation.
This is how birds must feel.
The salesman didn't need to do much convincing to get me in one of these. I went looking for an Asp or something, but as soon as I watched another pilot hot-dogging past the terminal in a Krait? I realized what a terrible mistake that would have been. For what reason Rory stood on principle before, I do not know. But I do know this ship is built like a brick shit house and made to comfortably sleep a crew of three with room to spare for R&R on long trips. I know this ship can launch other, more maneuverable ships. Ones I can fly by remote and wreck with no consequence. Tiny birds I can learn how to do the fancy shit in without getting corpsed or losing 12 days worth of work when I, invariably, fuck up again.
I think they're beautiful together.
... I'm going back out there, of course. How can I not, knowing what I now know? All that cool shit is still out there, waiting for me to discover it all over again, and finally bring that sweet bacon home with me. My maps and samples were lost, but the tracking data is still there. I can do it again. There's a few things I gotta take care of Bubble-side first, but as soon as that's done? Back into the black I go. Stronger. Freer. Hotter. Wiser. Better prepared for the dangers of deep space travel.
What more could I possibly ask than that?
Fly Dangerous, Commanders,
-The New and Improved Aurora Angelica Bael
...But you can still call me Rory.