Bad Taxi Review
07 Jul 2022Mcneilsmith
(Made a mistake, and hired a glorified taxi driver during a War.) ME: “Ahaha it worked. Son of gun I got it. I told you if crossed the wires it wouldn’t spark!” I yelled to the only other soul on this drifting hunk of junk. I had just managed to restart the ship’s manual drive— I crossed the plasma output with the flux actuator cooler and dumped it all into space where its someone else’s problem. “It’s Cooling our engines down enough to power our way out of this goddam F* gravity well you got me in!”
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Nearly a month ago I had received a distress call on a secure Vindicated line, it was the Eternity’s Gate.
KAIL: “All Vindicated - All Vindicated, this is Wing Marshall Kail Austin calling in any available wings”.
The message was looped until the line had a response and became a party, one after another vindicated ships radioed in, but they were deep in the black.
VINDICATED: “Commander, static interference, sending our potential flight path static now”.
They static in the signal was a clear enough indication for any experienced captain to know no matter where they were, they were not coming to the Eternity’s aid in time. With a background theatre of battering shells launching from the Eternity’s main cannons, Kail radioed again with the loudest confidence of only a senior Officer,
KAIL: “Roger, the Eternity’s hails have been ignored, we are engaging the hostiles!”
I immediately knew I had to join the barrage. The only problem, I was docked in a space-cow getting the dock hands to unload a dusty forgotten crate of Hutton mugs, while I filed the last of my transfer papers with the DSV at Ford station so I could finally get my python stationed here for just this kind of a call! My fighters were still docked at the Maquis refugee station in Diaguandri.
The move to Aruru has been slow, especially with the New Vette build. The build was recently christened “The Maquis Mauler”, and successfully A rated in a similar build schematic to Kail’s blueprints… but the ship has never left the drydock in Diaguandri. It’s untested and needing of some serious engineering. But my Vindicator II, a python build, was designed for federation combat missions, and just this kind of enemy fishing. Regardless, I needed a way to Diaguandri and Fast.
Leaving the slow T9 to be unloaded, I had eyed an old docked cannonball run ship that looked like it had been retrofitted and liveried to be a medical supply runner. It looked fast, and unsuspecting. I was surprised when I approached the docking bay that the commander already knew who I was…
B. SCOTT: “Mavis, I mean Admiral,o7”.
I mock formality, but I indulged, o7,
ME: “At ease”, I said.
I found out that the commander was Barney Scott. He saw me dock with a 1% hull after a medical run went bad, but we never met in person. Even though Barney was only a recruit level captain he spoke of flying medical supply runs, doing his part to stop the Cerberus Plague. He was a runner up a few years back in the mischief mile. Most importantly he was looking for a seat on a real ship, a paying one to help his daughter. So, I made the captain a deal—If he flies me in his ship through conflict zones to get me to my python in Diaguandri, faster than my T9 could, I’ll give him a seat on my ship, a high paying one.
I swear, minutes later we were airborne. And only minutes after that we were deafened by the sound of a full size Siris Corp Hyperdrives powering up behind a two-seater fighter.
ME: “Are you sure about jumping something with so little mass?”
I said mostly to tick off the rookie, but he surprised me with his answer,
B. SCOTT: “Being small means avoiding radars”, as he finished switching on the powerup cycles, “this craft is designed only for a few jumps—we can dump heat out to the shields, but we’ll have to eject the hyperdrive stages as soon as we reach Diaguandri to avoid melting through our backside once we burn all our jump fuel.”
I was surprised but I knew it meant this was a one way shot to Diaguandri, and we had only enough fuel and heat dissipation to do it right the first time.
I could now see the glow from the hyperdrives reflect on the inside cabin glass as my vision became unstable from the rumbles and shakes in the ship, now violent and uncontainable. We launched! Blue streaks of light and the force of gravity bending around my chest, we jumped—dumped heat, and jumped again. Jump, jump, jump—I could feel the heat cook our cabin and fog our helmets with evaporating sweat. “Two more!” the captain yelled with some hesitation as he dumps the last heat the shields could take. Jump! The rivets on the outside wings were now visibly glowing a fiery orange, JUMP! The force of gravity became bearable again as we dropped from witch space in Diaguandri. Barney reached for the sparking stage separator with worry. The computer had overheated, and without it no hydraulics-- it would take the force of both of us to manual turn the stage separators. The 10 minutes of terror followed by the relief of finally separating the hyperdrives was very short lived. We both clued in we were still taking heat damage… Our trajectory without computer aid had angled us right into the sun’s gravity well. I managed to get us out by cooling the engines and speeding into the well and sling-shotting out. Only issue is we were left a drift without hyperdrives and almost all of our internals, it took us nearly 2 weeks total to get the ship out of a drift, reprogram our computer, and get super cruise running. All I got to say is good thing this guy had medical rations on board and an o2 scrubber.
I did eventually get to my ships. I got my python to Aruru and aided the Vindicated. But I keep thinking it’s quiet on this ship, and did I pack rations? I think maybe I just found my first crewmate.
*Sends job contract to join crew “Welcome to the Maquis Fleet, we fight for the Vindicated”*