Sidewinder/10c/what just happened
17 Sep 2016Tristan Pacheco
We're all happily reunited once again on Earth, being showered with various amounts of alcohol and lovely ladies, or, at least a few of us are. CMDR Napier and Phillips have 'achieved' their own steady partners. For my potential partners' sakes, I'm gonna keep playing it solo. Upon hearing about the Battle of Mu Koji, it took every fiber of our beings to resist charging in and fighting tooth and nail for the glory of the Federation. Naturally, we didn't need it. Although we ended up winning the battle, the Empire still got off with loads of stolen intel, which we've of course been tasked with recovering or somehow falsifying. This is surprising on several accounts. First of all, why are we being tasked on retrieving (probably) useless intel when there are larger matters at hand. We've found a crashed alien ship and now every conspiracy theorist in Federal space is probably gonna want to incite a rebellion. I myself was on-board the conspiracy boat for a while. That's why I got myself an SRV in the first place. Either way, we should forget this petty conflict like I've been saying all along and seriously start preparing for first (second? third?) contact scenarios. Second of all, even if we are ignoring the aliens, the Empire rarely fights us traditionally, so our defensive/offensive strategies (with the obvious exclusion of our new Delta-Delta fleet formation) being revealed aren't going to do them much good. I just think it's a misallocation of resources. Unfortunately though, I'm only paid to think when I'm on missions, and now I'm getting some R&R. Before I go to bed though, I'm going to spin an account of something that happened earlier today because I think it needs to be in writing.
When we all got back in system a few days ago, our first actions were not to come to Earth, but to visit Mars High and debrief with our CO. That took longer than it should have because Goodwin kept bringing up auxiliary details that command just ate. up. Afterwards, we were offered a mercenary contract by Mother Gaia (yes, I know that's extremely out of the ordinary-I'll explain it some other time) to take care of a burgeoning pirate problem in Barnard's Star. 32 dead pirates later, we get back, and I as usual agreed to cover hotel fees so I headed to Earth while the rest of the squadron headed to Haberlandt Survey to pick up our bonus. Now, I've mentioned this before, but I've always been too lazy to actually upgrade my ships for atmospheric re-entry, so I have to take a very shallow reentry angle so I don't melt my hull clean off, and anyone who's done a manual shallow descent knows that it takes forever.
I contacted ATC, business as usual, until they inform me to lookout for traffic, 6 o'clock high. Sure enough, a little orange box was just resolving on my sensors display. I noted its presence but took no corrective action. 30 seconds later I get a message from a CMDR StarFox: nice shuttle bus, could you take it down faster than mach .2? I don't know why, but this got my blood boiling. I looked over at my contacts screen to see what this hotshot was flying, and I'm dumbfounded when I see...a Sidewinder. Several smart-ass comments later, and he challenges me to a race, which I initially declined, on account of the potential damage to my hull (at this point I still had a solid 12 minutes left on my descent). Turns out this guy was chock-full of suprises, because the next message was as follows: I'll make it interesting: 100,000 cr to the winner.
Immediately, my naivete gets the better of me and I immediately accept, since that would likely cover any repair costs plus the hotel fees, not to mention that it would probably be this kid's entire budget. Boy was I fuckin' wrong. I typed go and this Sidewinder bolted past me so fast I thought he'd burn up like a meteor. He had to be going 600 m/s, which I knew to be WELL beyond the capabilities of a Sidewinder. After following him to some old spaceport in Africa (the largest continent on Earth, for those unfamiliar with it), I forked over the cash and inquired on how the hell he managed to get such modifications in such a tiny ship. Apparently he got lucky in a race once, then steadily used his winnings in further races to purchase (probably illegal) modifications to his ship, some of which were even custom built by engineers.
He was rather expertly playing on people's perception of the uselessness of Sidewinders, and in the end I kind of respected him for it. Fortunately, 100k was nothing to me, so after a bit of extra conversation, I left. I had to go get my hull repaired first though, and thanks to that I was late to the hotel. Everyone was waiting in the lobby trying to convince the manager that they were with someone who had gotten rooms for them (oops). Upon seeing me walk in they were all understandably embarrassed and pissed simultaneously. After telling them the story later over drinks, they forgave me. Anyways, that was today's adventure. Hopefully I'll live to tell another. Until next time,
RADM Tristan Pacheco