Sidewinder Days pt. 2: Nothing Changes
09 Oct 2016Steve Sake
I was casually jumping from system to system, without a plan and without a destination. I used the money given to me with the Sidewinder to fit her with a 2E fuel scoop and decided I’d spend my time sightseeing the galaxy. The method I used to plan my journey was very simple, at each jump I would open the galaxy map and set the course for a star that looked interesting or had a catchy name. In a couple of days I managed to admire up close many of the things I had planned to see, like white dwarfs, binary stars, ringed gas giants and so on.Of course I had already seen these things when I studied them at school and during my trip from Achenar to LHS 3447 but you feel something special when you’re in your own ship floating all by yourself. You understand how small you are, or rather how big the universe is.
It made me think that no matter how badly I could fuck up, nothing would really change in the grand scheme of things.
Kinda reassuring.
Life as a wannabe explorer was nice but I soon realized that albeit fuel for the Wedge o’Cheese was free and plentiful thanks to the scoop, the fuel for the commander - food and booze - was scarce. Worst of all it costed credits, which I was desperately lacking.
The time of goofing around was over, I needed to find a consistent source of income if I wanted to continue flying around and call myself a decent pilot.
The decision to accept data delivery missions was obvious. The cargo space in the Wedge o’Cheese was very limited and if I filled it up the jump range would have gone even lower than the already low unladen one. Since all I wanted to do was travel around the combination of weightless goods to transfer and a bunch of credits that kept me well fed and hydrated was like a match made in heaven.
I was waiting for the fuel scoop to refill the tank when the voice assistant chimed.
-Incoming message-
***
Hey little brother! Wassup? A little bird told me that you graduated from the Pilots Academy! Thanks for bothering to tell us!
Just kidding, I’m not pissed at you, just a tiny bit.
Anyhoo… Now that you have your own ship you must come back home, you’ve been away for more than a year now.
Don’t you think it’s time to show us your pretty face?
Are you flying in one of those ships like the ones on the posters in your room? You know, we haven’t touched anything, it is the same as the day you left.
Everything else has changed though. Father and brother are away from home most of the time, they say it’s for business, I have no idea if that’s the truth.
Mom stays here at home, she looks bored and I think she’s been drinking a bit too much lately.
Please come back, do it for her too, I’m sure she’d get better if at least one of her sons kept her company.
I’ll keep the rest of the news for when you are here, wouldn’t want to end up with nothing to say like every time.
Bye!
Love you!
***
Coming home, in this piece of junk? Not in a million years. Actually even a million years wouldn’t be enough given this ship is so slow.
I closed the message, promising myself I would answer as soon as I docked at the next station and pulled away from the star I was scooping.
The computer on the ship calculated that it would have taken five minutes to arrive at the station so I put myself in a more comfortable position and gazed absentmindedly at the stars surrounding me, thinking about where I would go next.
My little break suddenly came to an end.
The Wedge decelerated abruptly as it was being pulled by the ship behind me. I tried to follow the escape vector but was caught off guard and there was no way that i could escape, so I decided to submit.
As our ships cartwheeled in the void of space I received a message from the other pilot.
-Turn down the engines and jettison all your cargo if you hold your life dear-
-Dude I have no cargo can’t you see?-
-That is nonsense jettison you cargo now or I’ll open fire-
This has to be the dumbest pirate I’ve ever seen.
I was going to type him that I really had no cargo and that he was wasting his time when he began to shoot at me.
I hate people that attack me for no apparent reason and I hate even more those who interrupt me when I’m trying to talk.
It is rude.
That pirate totally deserved to get shot down.
I boosted away from his fire, deployed my hardpoints -the standard pulse lasers provided with every ship- and diverted the power to weapons and engines.
The pilot that was attacking me was flying in an Adder, like any cheap pirate would, and luckily he was far slower than me at turning around.
I managed to get behind him and shoot down his shields, taking down the hull took a lot more time but eventually the poor Adder was riddled with glowing holes of molten alloy and silently exploded in front of me.
My first dogfight was surprisingly easy and even though I wouldn't admit it I enjoyed channeling my hate through the lasers.
It was also much more remunerating than data transfer.
In the later days I alternated light trading with letting myself get interdicted and then kill the pirate who thought that a Sidewinder would be an easy prey.
I have to say it was fun and I was getting confident.
It was because I was getting overconfident that I ventured to do something that even seasoned pilots would avoid, I shot at a wanted elite Anaconda that was flying in front of me while I was scanning a nav beacon.
The dogfight lasted only a blink of an eye because the ‘Conda had been already gravely damaged by system authority. I didn’t notice it but apparently I was the one who dealt the killing shot or otherwise the bounty on his head would have been awarded to someone else.
I pictured in my head how the pilot in the Anaconda would totally feel ashamed of being killed by a measly sidewinder.
I looked at the number representing the value of the bounty, then looked it again.
Holy mother of Duval.
Three hundred -freaking- thousand credits.
I did some quick math in my head, with the sum I earned by trading and the credits cashed in from the bounties I could hit the 450K, mark which meant I could finally get my ass out of the Wedge o’Cheese.
I decided to send the Wedge to the scrapyard, it was a hard decision even if I loved to hate her, but in the end I opted not to sell her. That poor Sidey was old and badly patched up, she deserved a well earned retirement and I really didn't want another beginner pilot to start his career in a rusty malfunctioning ship.
The Viper was a much better ship, I went for the updated Mk IV model because I still wanted to move around quickly and do data runs so I was fine with trading speed and agility with jump range and better internal compartments.
In the end I was back to the start, doing the same things as when I first set out foot from LHS 3447, broke as I was on that day.
The only change was the ship.
What did I say? No matter what you do, nothing really changes.