Elite IS Dangerous Episode 2
20 Aug 2022Vodan
Improved life support and assisted mobility upgrades did it to me; I mean I can’t blame myself for this predicament, I’m better than that. They sound like sensible additions to your Xeonsbiology suit, but man I’m telling you, just don’t stray that far from your Scarab. If you need to run so far that you require more breathable air, just god-damn drive there then you won’t be in my shoes. This is just another snowball moon with ten bio-returns orbiting a Gas Giant with water-based life. You know, worth landing and cataloguing for the credits. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this; even the tricky finds in craggy hills and mountains are nothing I worry about, but this time, this one god-damn time I fucked up.
The landing was nothing; the moon didn’t even boast a half-G, so I put her down in the hills was easy. I fly a D-Back like so many explorers; the small light body means you can land almost anywhere. While Asp and Phantom pilots are doing the ‘looking for a spot’ dance, I’m landed and off in my Scarab hunting down flora to sample and scan.
I always start with the hills and mountains and I always land so the system's star is in the sky. The up-lands are the most dangerous to navigate, so if something is going to go wrong, it’s going to happen there. An SRV can get stuck or flipped easily if you don’t know how to deal with that terrain so being fresh helps if I need to get out and right my ride when the boosters won’t get me out of a tight spot.
With hindsight, and thinking about the hills, improved jump jets would have been better than assisted mobility on my suit. I mean why did I think running would be important? Plants don’t need chasing down for crying out loud. Sorry, I’m going off track and I don’t have much time left. Ok, there were four species to sample on elevated terrain and I got all of them quickly, so I moved off to the craters for the two plants that could only be found in depressions.
On this landing, I didn’t get to pick where the star was in the sky, so I had to put up with long shadows being cast by the walls of the crater. If it wasn’t for HUD visual enhancements and the sampler highlighting what I need to find, driving the base meteorites' grave in the dark could be just as dangerous as the mountains. I drove a standard spiralling search from the centre of the crater until I had got both plants catalogued. At some point, the computer reminded me I needed to refuel the SRV, but I could handle that once I was back in the ship. Damn it, I wish I had listened to the covas when it said twenty-five percent.
So that was all the hard-to-find, or hard-to-reach returns sampled. I only needed to cruise the plains, nose down in my ship to finish off another ice-ball. I put the star right above me and started skimming. The icy ground was smooth and flat, shining like a mirror under the yellow star. Plants were growing everywhere; tall orange fungal trees were fringed with a carpet of spiny green grass and big bushy tufts topped with tall red flowers dotted the landscape all over.
Landing only to pop out, gab a scan, and take off again would be a waste of time, so I got in my Scarab and got three more easy-to-see plants catalogued. The last few were not much of an effort to find, but I’d found my stride and got carried away jogging from patch to patch, looking for the last of the little flat blue flowers with ground-level fleshy leaves.
Once I had that done, I used one of the tuffty plants as a pillow and laid down to listen to the latest message from my wife again. Exploring was my thing, not hers, but hearing her voice always brought me home. This time she was giving me a list of jobs that I needed to do when I got back, but still, hearing her voice when I’m away is heart-warming, even if she is giving me a list of DIY and housework that needed doing. I’m going to miss that voice, even if she is nagging at me.
When she was finished, I stood up and looked for the SRV marker on my compass. One thousand three hundred meters! God damn Improved sprinting, I didn’t realise how far I had run until I was heading back. By the time I could see my SRV again, I was getting low on oxygen so I gratefully grabbed the handle and flung the door open.
No lights welcomed me back, and the HUD didn’t activate, nor did the life support unit pressurise the bubble. I must have left the damn thing running. By the time I worked out what was wrong, my suit gave me a low oxygen warning. I’ve called my ship, and I think I can see a streak in the sky, but the sun is in the way and I’m finding it hard to focus my eyes.
I guess I’m trying to say it doesn’t matter what you’re doing out here, even if you’ve done it a thousand times before, you have to remember..
It’s dangerous out here.
This event was based on a friend of mine that had been out exploring for a month or two when he was called away from the PC to do a quick job around the house. When he got back to the keyboard, he found a rebuy screen thanks to the SRV running out of fuel.
Better luck next time Kitty.
PS
Same thing happened to him again a few weeks later.