Adjusting to a personal temporal anomaly
18 Nov 2022CMDR rtimmis
The medical bay is cold and silent except for the regular bleep from the monitor next to my bed. My head and legs ache, and tingle with a throbbing regularity that feels similar to when you've got a recovering dead leg that has gone numb from sitting on it for far too long. I don't recognise these surroundings, but clearly someone or something is taking good care of me. There are bandages on both feet, and some weird jelly contained in a clear plastic like bubble which has been wrapped around both my knees. An intravenous drip is attached to a Cannula in my left arm, and a strange lime coloured glove fitted to my right hand and forearm which seems somehow linked to the monitoring device which continues to bleep. The readings look like vitals, but nothing that I would commonly recognise.I have two distinct memories swirling in my mind. The first is supported by a sense of jubilation at the acquisition of a Cloaking Device for my Cobra, and the second is the sense of fear and dread as I realise the cloak was not hiding me from the Thargoid and Tharglets who had just ambushed me in witchspace.
At first the interdiction seem ordinary, two Pirate vessels pulling me out of Hyperspace, with some garbled message about a large haul, and how they were planning to grind my bones if I didn't yield. Of course that was before they realised that 'Mable' was fitted with Class 6 Beam Lasers, and a Missile rack.
Mable was my first and only ship, a Cobra MK III, she'd served me well, and together we'd fitted her out to have sharp teeth, and a vicious bite. Seeing to it, that the two pirates were now sleeping soundly in their escape capsules.
Mable and I began cargo scooping the contents of their holds. Suddenly Mable's shields were being depleted and she was taking incoming damage from her port side. Yet nothing showed on the Radar, and there were no other ships on the contact scanner.
I brought Mable around hard to port, and sure enough there were 2 burst lasers being fired right at us from probably about a thousand metres, and yet there was no ship!!
"What the hell is going on!" I exclaimed
My auto-targeting systems gave no lock, and the missile rack couldn't see anything either. I opened fire in the direction of the burst lasers, I could hear that there was contact, but still I could see nothing. The burst lasers tracked vertically, continuing to impact Mable and deplete her shields. I manually fired both beam lasers just a little above the source. Suddenly I saw flickering vector lines which resembled the shape of a Mamba, but instantly it vanished. "That's really weird, I have never seen that happen before in Elite, maybe it's a code glitch or bug with my remote viewer portal" I thought to myself
Suddenly the burst laser impacts, rang out again, this time from high to port. I slammed the throttle back, and span Mable to meet the gaze of the inbound lasers, and opened fire once again with her military lasers. Impact, the sound of 'on target' fire power, and then a sudden flash of the vector shape of the Mamba. This time the Mamba was visible for only about a second, but it was enough for me to eyeball a definite identification. This time I knew for sure it was a Mamba, as it once again vanished.
We continued the dance for several minutes until the Mamba's visibility stabilised. Suddenly my auto-track weapons found their target, and I launched Mable's missiles. As the missiles streaked to seek out their target, I maintained near constant fire on the Mamba with Mable's military lasers. Moments later the Mamba was in pieces, and a sole target blip remained on the radar. I deployed the cargo scoops to bring the canister aboard, and a message flashed on the HUD.
"Cloaking Device Press Y to activate"
I feel weirdly older now, and my body feels tired and strained. The last thing I remember is being slammed into my flight suit restrainers as Mable stalled out of hyperspace. The energy banks were out, and the frameshift drive temperature alert was squealing in my ear. Mable was under fire from a Thargoid, and several Tharglets. This Thargoid was right on us, it must have pulled us out of hyperdrive and into witchspace at a range of only a couple of hundred metres. We were in big trouble and I knew it.
I hit the boosters, and rolled Mable right underneath the belly of the beast, the octagonal vector lines stretching across my whole field of view. Grsping at Mable's controls and slamming her throttles wide open, directing flight out into the darkness of interstellar space.
Realising the Thargoid, Tharglet fire power was far too immense to handle alone, I shut the throttle to zero and 'Pressed Y' the message on the HUD appeared.
'Cloaking Device Activated'
I paused to take breath as we just floated there silent and still, looking out upon this immense Thargoid vessel, and thinking "This is going to get tricky"
Suddenly we were under fire again, Thargoid and Tharglet salvos incoming, impacts shattering everything. Shields offline, Cloaking device disabled, Hull damage, Eject, eject, eject....
"Commander RTimmis, I see you've regained consciousness, how are you feeling ?" A man had entered the room through a sliding glass door, and stood at the foot of my bed, in his hand he held a piece of iridescent blue glass.
"Where am I ?" I replied
"You are in the medical bay at Powell High, Coriolis Station, in the Wolf 359 system. You've been in stasis for a very long time commander" said the man
"A very long time ?" I questioned
"Yes commander, 38 years to be exact. Your escape capsule flight box recorded your last hyperspace jump from Leesti on March 7th 3270. Your escape pod was found drifting in interstellar space by CMDR Azulas during a reconnaissance mission to investigate 'A Rogue Signal Source' now termed a 'Stargoid'" he said
"And my injection portal ?" I asked
"Indeed a relic of antiquity. Your flight recorder details you as injected in game using a ZX Spectrum, although it appears those injector portals were only ever issued from Earth in the Sol system" he continued. " You'll need to remain with us in medical for the next 48 hours, and we'll need to see you drinking, eating and performing bodily functions before you can be discharged. A member of the nursing team will be with you later this morning to bring you breakfast." he said
"And your name ?" I asked
"Dr Mitchel Burrows. Rest up commander, you're lucky to be alive" he said.
Continues in part two