A Boombox is not a Toy!
05 Mar 2016Monolith Preacher
OOC: 15 years playing X-Wing and Wing Commander games, and I still can't get my head around FA Off. Lucky I'm patient, is all I can say...sorry if some of the language in this entry is a bit too geeky for the space cowboys out there, but I've gotta write vaguely techy stuff sometimes if I'm writing scifi, right? Oh, and one for you NGE fans again, but as Roosevelt would say, "The whinge stops here!" At least for a while...
Long story short, I got a 'conda, but it wasn't out of boredom. It's been one crazy week. Short story long...
I found myself in Victor's office at the end of last cycle. I'd been meaning to make some money in Robigo, but circumstances had left me grounded, and I'd run out of time.
“Listen, mate, I know we've all got our priorities, and we've been coasting a boom for a while, but there's a war around the corner, and we don't have time for you to learn how to use your Ferdie all over again. You've gotta get yourself some firepower.”
He'd gathered enough about me to know calling my ship a “Ferdie” was immediately going to get my back up. He also had a point. I could do fine in the simulations we had back home on Gcirthi. Heck, I was kinda well-known on the arcade circuit before my walkabout ended all that. But in the time I'd been trying to get to grips with turning off my flight assist, I'd just about gotten to the point I could get it through the letterbox, and it still bumped about on the way out. I could keep myself pointed towards the enemy in a combat zone, but you could flip a coin as to whether I was 1 or 5km away from them.
I'd been saving for my Beluga, but no-one in the bubble had any idea of when it was going to come out, so I decided to call up Orpheus and see if he could arrange to get me a Cutter delivered. He was too busy to see me, but Hilary told me of a system which was having a sale and I went and picked one up myself. I fitted it up as a trader, but added some pulse lasers in the hope it could put down some damage in a combat zone. As I looked around the interior of the ship, I counted over twenty speakers, and decided to call it the boombox. It also gave me an idea.
Scarlet had, upon our first meeting, cast dispersals upon Sheng's hacking ability. I had an idea to convert the soundwaves from the speakers of the Cutter into a pulse frequency that might make them more effective. Not against shields, but against the pilots within the ships. How? By installing the frequencies neccessary upon impact to make the sermon of the Monolith resound throughout their halls through resonance. The science almost went above my own head, but if I could get them both to code the interface, they'd iron out the problems of my blue sky with their mathematical minds and I could pick the winner.
So I took it to Sheng Wu after proposing the challenge to them both, which obviously they accepted. I've never known a hacker worth their salt unwilling to engage in a duel. So Sheng set a few of his apprentices to fit my ship as the hangar became a swirling mass of people betting on an oblivious couple and their stuttering laptops. For as much as we've advanced in time, the basics of coding remain the same. Different languages work best for different functions, and everyone has their own ways to solve the same problems through syntax. Sure, memory load isn't as much of a problem as it used to be, but if you can say in two lines what others take ten to write, you've obviously made a better program.
Sheng was using Conda, a langauge which evolved from Python over the centuries, in order to go about communicating between the speakers and the weapons as precisely as possible. Scarlet, on the other hand, was using Helvetitj, which itself evolved from Perl, in order to relay integers at greater speed via polygraph. I wandered between them and the assembled throng, trying to gauge who was up. Most of the specifics were over my head, but I understood Sheng was trying to do a lot with a few lines of code, and he was having trouble with his parsing. Scarlet, conversely, seemed to have her plan down, but it was taking her a long time to stitch the relevant information in. As the night wore on, we forgave them for abusing a few performance enhancers here and there, but the bookies kept a close eye on their intake to keep the odds even for the punters. I was too busy musing over the parallels. Scarlet's blood-red Fer-de-Lance contrasted with her gaffa tape coding style. Sheng's Lakon monstrosity looked like it needed a body bag, and yet his coding was like haiku. I struggled to find a quote about books, covers, doors, and houses, but it eluded me.
In the end, Scarlet won the day. Sheng's coding was too close to the original sound, and the power of the Monolith's Whisper chant blew the speakers. As he fixed them, we loaded Scarlet's program, and it worked like a charm. I decided to take it on one trade run to get some idea of the monetary potential of the ship before going back to Tjakiri. Now, I've heard rumours of people making over 50mil an hour with the right trade route in this thing, but that's all they are. Rumours. I've not seen one CMDR that can give me better than ten, and I can make that in an Asp. So as I flew a route I know that might've made me eight, I began to reminisce about when I was trading slaves on this route with Hammer. He hasn't been about much recently, and I began to feel a note of changing times as I began my first docking approach. And the right testicle of this phallic ship got caught.
Not a problem, I thought. I'll just reverse. Nope, no change. I tried rolling my ship somewhat, but to no avail. It was stuck somewhere, and my drone's camera merely confirmed the trajectory I was already taking to escape, but....it was still stuck. Anyone who's flown a large craft has been in this position, but usually you're not...wedged like this. Suffice to say I had to pay insurance and lose the lives of over 700 recently saved souls. The money didn't matter. I'd been planning to take my “overall saved souls” tally up from 26 to 30K if I was to use this Cutter. Instead, it had been the first craft in which I had failed to drop off my converts. I wouldn't call myself a murderer, but I'm a preacher, not a trader, so I couldn't consider it a mere loss of assets. I suppose the moral of the story was that you've really got to know your limits with a boombox, so I sold it and bought a taxi back to Tjakiri. I intended to try and talk my way around Victor, pretending I was going to get the Fed ranks for a Corvette, and see if I could just use the Revelation 8:11 with flight assist ON for now. Hopefully, after the war, he'd just let me chill and wait for my Beluga again. I booted her up and decided to do some basic FA Off training until I lost hope in myself or fell asleep and ran out of fuel....or oxygen...
But the Monolith works in mysterious ways. As I flew around the asteroid belt in Tjakiri, aimlessly switching between basic orientation drills and just drifting around, I felt useless. Sure, Gcirthi had stopped having a war for a week and that was a first, but that was more from Pahn's input than my own. Everything I'd tried to do of late had reeked of ineptitude. I was sitting on more cash than I wanted now, but I didn't now if it was enough for later. I could fly with stabilisers, and I was on the cusp of going up a combat rank....to “Expert”, which is a joke if ever I heard one. If I can reliably keep distance from something sans stabilisers by the time I reach “Master”, I won't be the only surprised one at this rate. As I looked for answers in the pockmarks in the rocks around me, they too seemed to be moaning in despair.
Then, I hit something. I'd been hitting rocks all night, and struggling to counter the spin and align my vector anywhere that wasn't another rock. At this point in time, I'd given up, and was spinning so much I hadn't cared to look outside of my cockpit for fear of nausea. And still I was too stubborn to turn the assist back on. But this knock made me hit the switch. This sounded like metal.
As I turned around expecting to see a chunk of iron or sidewinder, I was instead greeted to a far more disturbing sight. An Anaconda. I tried to scan the vessel, but it was cold. The idea of a pilot that would run a 'conda silently was so unintuitive I had to move forwards just to test the waters. As I moved to within weapon's range, I held my breath and waited for the inevitable turn or stray point defence blast. It never came. As I slowed to a halt 200m from its hull, I realised why. The powerplant was missing.
It might have been blown up. There was a gaping hole in the side of the ship, and whatever had caused it must've left years before whomever came back to scavenge it for parts. It was a ghost ship in black-and-white camo. The colours of the Monolith. I circled the ship, and found the name plaque on the side. It read “Ravager”. I did something risky. I used the encrypted Monolith transmission signal to request if anyone within the MPEF knew of this ship. I wasn't sure if Giz was able to hack the transmission, but I was sure Scarlet could if she wanted. In matters of faith, however, one must be willing to make sacrifices in times of need.
A few tense minutes later and I got the reply. No ship of that name had ever belonged to a Preacher. But no-one else had used our colours since we patented them. It was only this year DeLacy had reached an agreement with the MPEF to allow their use on civilian craft provided a Preacher was on board. This ship had been destroyed a long time ago, and something told me it had come from a distance further than my trip to the core. In my experience there's no such thing as luck. I've had to make my own. I don't play with dice, but I can tell when I've been dealt a good hand. This wasn't synchronicity, this was fate. It wasn't the ship I wanted, but it was the ship I needed. So I lugged it back to Tjakiri and invited Sheng over to fix the thing up.
Once we managed to get it up to fighting spec, I was basically out of money. I tried copying Hammer's build, but one run around a combat zone told me I couldn't keep firing as long as I wished. The ship had been fitted in a way unlike anything I'd seen others when we were restoring it. Sure, it had pules, but it also had missile racks. I was the only person I knew that really enjoyed using them, and I felt this was a confirmation of my bias, so I had put two Pack Hounds in as a nod to whomever the previous owner was. Whether it was that or my own lack of ability, I knew I needed an A rated power plant, and so I might as well re-fit the thing up to full specification. I was left with 30mil when I was done, barely enough to cover the insurance. They added some decals for free, but they didn't ask my permission before they did so. A consolation prize tends to be underwhelming, I suppose.
I began to fret about my lack of income. The weeks to come would likely be taken up with Black Omega's expansions, and whilst I might still have time to fit a few smuggling runs in here and there, the “new economy” was fading fast. Pahn assured me I could always liquidate my 'conda later, but it didn't help me feel much safer should I happen to stumble into a Capital class ship one day. My thoughts must transmit further than I thought, because I got a comms request from Orpheus. Apparently, the Empire was irked that I'd given up on yet another one of their ships, and demanded I use my new 'conda to help them in a War they were having in Jera. I didn't care to ask how he came by the information. Anything I do seems to be in Scarlet's databases within a day.
Luckily, I wasn't to be on my own. I had recently formed something of an uneasy alliance with one CMDR Coragon, a squadron leader in the Ghost Legion whom I had met in Phiagre during my secret mission when I was “working” for ALD. Apparently his squadron was in there presently, and would act as my escorts to make sure I wasn't shot down by the wrong people for being allied to the Archon. My Imperial rating had taken something of a beating recently, so it was nice to drop my Federal rating some more. They'd recently promoted me for some unknown reason probably related to my recent promotion to Tycoon, but I knew Admiral Blix was still biding his time, probably plotting another way to take Gcirthi. I felt no qualms about helping a friend in need.
I ended up being a bit late to the party. By the time I got there, I only had an hour or so to help out before they broke up for the night. I managed to meet a few new people, and people seemed to like watching my missiles as much as I liked firing them, but I doubt any of them are going to take the time to get LYR to sell them their own, for some reason. That being said, I made half a mil, and I'll go back to get it whenever I can be bothered to pick up my Orulas pay-cheque. I had to hightail it rather quickly when I was done. Not only was I wanted, but it turned out there was another war going on. Black Omega were finally expanding. I came back in my new ship that still didn't feel my own. I maybe it was the echo of “Friendship Drive Activated” bouncing through the bridge, but I could swear I heard a rasping voice on the journey over. Pahn had no time for my concerns as I docked.
“You're gonna have to learn FA Off later. We need your 'conda, and we need your “A” game, Preach!”
The shortening of my title from a noun into a verb irked me, so I was short with my response. I'd been essentially pacifistic all my life, and suddenly I was being pulled into war after war...
“And what's so important that the girl who wins wars one-handed can't do it on her lonesome?”
Pahn's tone became deadly serious.
“It wasn't just me in there. Victor bought his 'vette, and Marra didn't have fun either.”
I already knew what she was about to say, and my throat became too dry to apologise for my outburst.
“If we want to win the war for expansion, we're going to have to scuttle a Farragut.”
I flew my 'conda over into the conflict zone without picking a faction just to see what a Capital ship looked like. Once I'd done some basic reconnaissance and worked out what parts we'd need to destroy to take it out of the picture, I had made my decision. So I'm writing this in the same asteroid field I found the Ravager in. Everything in here is smaller than my ship, and that makes me feel safe right now. Next week, we'll see what we can do about taking that thing down, but for now, well...I'm just glad I've got some Ceremonial Heike Tea to calm my nerves, or I wouldn't be able to get to sleep tonight...
