First Flight, a Gecko and my father. (Image included)
23 Feb 2021CMDR CWolfXUK
(In memory of my father)
I don't know how many of you grew up on holovids of the classics, when space battles were fictional and the technology we use today was not yet possible. I loved them, even though I knew that they were fantasies based on other worlds they also felt like a guide to what I would do with my life. We now had interstellar battles, space ships that could leave a world, save another and return, all these things that must have seemed crazy when they made these movies. It was after watching the latest remaster of A Star War that my father took me to the Sirocco Starport on Ross 154 to try my hand at real flying. My father had flown the original Cobra Mark Three series when it had first launched and I have fond memories as a teen taking the controls myself, although at that time it was purely on the simulator that we had in the house. Now I was to fly an actual ship.
The Gecko light fighter sat on the launch pad, a fairly basic wedge design with a number of different manufacturers making them the gecko model came in a variety of different forms. This one was a two seater, which made perfect sense as I was going to be flying into space under my own control for the first time. At first I had thought we were going up in a kestrel airfighter I had spotted when we first arrived. This would have made sense from the fact that it was a very limited ship and I wouldn't be able to accidentally jump out of the system, less so that to fit two people into it would have been an unbearable squeeze. The kestrel and the hawk airfighter series were ships which had been converted from being atmospheric to spacefaring with little external modification, meaning everything was packed inside with no spare space.
Arriving at the main hatch my father gestured for me to climb aboard the gecko first, I did so then turned to face him from the top of the ramp.
"Permission to board Captain?" he asked with a smile.
I laughed as he hauled himself into one of the seats in the cockpit, cursed as I struggled with the safety straps then sat back and felt elated to have the controls in my hands. A single flightstick went from the floor, between my knees and into my hands, a standard design in many ships including (from what I had seen) the cobra mark one. They changed it with the cobra three, the viper and pretty much retrofitted any other ship - if it was still in production - to a left and right handed arrangement. The gecko, which at the time was still being made, got missed out as it was such a cheap ship to start with.
We contacted traffic control before launching and were told to wait as another ship was launching. I watched as a harris fighter soared over our heads and at the time I was struck with awe at the seemingly high tech Perez designed ship aimed straight up and fired it's powerful engines. Later on, of course, I discovered that those engines only looked powerful - the harris was notoriously slow in hyperspace and was outmatched by the Imperial Courier in every way.
Once the ship had vanished from sight we were given the go ahead to launch. I reached forward and keyed the launch engines, the gecko rising from the planet surface with surprising smoothness. Another sequence of presses and the landing gear retracted, getting a nod of approval from my father I pulled back on the main stick and pressed the throttle set controls to leave the atmosphere.
Blue skies and the thin clouds over the starport gave way to the black of space and the distant stars. I check a monitor and watched the wet world of Ross 154 shrink away. I was in space!
My father had plotted a course to take us around the nearby moon and then on to Ross 128.
"We are just using it as jump practice, there is nothing there but Grant's Claim and the prison and I better not have to ever visit you there!" my father had joked.
Now back in those days we did not have the Frame Shift Drive, as the technology was not yet available. We did not have the Torus Drive that my father had used in the past and I had used on the simulator - those had been removed due to concerns of how they worked. No, in the 3200s we had the dreams machine - it had a proper name but I cannot remember it! Basically once you achieved the correct speed and heading you would effectively speed up time, this worked by inducing a sort of waking coma - my father and I were still awake and I was still able to operate the controls, however, because our metabolic and mental functions had been greatly slowed time appeared to move a lot faster than normal. To us a week long journey travelling through space would feel like half an hour and we would only age about half an hour. This system had some benefits, such as being able to do more in a personal day and not having to endure space madness at the incredibly low process of timing the various thruster bursts needed. Instead the onboard computer did the piloting for simple journeys. The big downside was that although time moved quickly for us it ran as normal for others. So we might be gone a week but the people we see when we return have aged months.
Anyway, I set course for the moon and watched the stars blur as we seemingly raced through space. Taking the controls once more and coming out of the dreamlike state I entered the ship into orbit and my father checked the comm systems to make sure the next part went smoothly. Satisfied that all was safe he gave me the nod to continue.
I set the navicom for Ross 128 and fired the hyperdrive. A large blue whirl of energy burst into space before us and the gecko flew into it. An almost blinding tunnel of energy swirled around us and I felt a mild panic in my bones. When I was a lot younger my dad told me stories of ships being plucked out of these tunnels by the Thargoid race. I knew that this was unlikely to happen now as the war had ended yet I still worried a little.
We popped out of the other end of the tunnel, leaving a blue rip in space behind us that would vanish in a few minutes. I marvelled at the new system before us. I had done it, my first solo jump (with a watchful passenger mind you) to another system.
After that I followed in dad's footsteps, gradually working my way through the academy and then going freelance. Space agreed with me and I couldn't see how anything could be better - other than the time lost. Family was not really an option as far as I could tell.
Then the event happened and I lost even more time. When they thawed me out I was in a much changed galaxy. The advent of the Frame Shift Drive meant I could get around without losing weeks, which meant I could settle down. I did, for 10 years I stayed pretty much on one planet. Then, once it became apparent that we would need money (my wife and daughter needed more than we could provide on the planet since the entire political situation took a huge change), I decided it was tie to return to space, make the money I knew I could.
I started, as most do, with a Sidewinder and soon found that I could make good on bounties by supporting local law enforcement. The rest, as they say, is history.
Which I will, of course, recount in future logs!