Icarus had it easy

[norcosis]

It’s quiet out here. Beneath me Hades rotates slowly, burning black and malevolent red, while around me the ever present asteroids loom like bad debts and hangovers. Hell, it was bad debts and a hangover that got me here.

The last few hours had been spent sitting watching the worlds and stations fly past from the bridge of the new Mercury that my one stroke of good luck had handed me.

Yesterday Id picked up a hold full of microchips from a station that literally had them falling out of the hangars when the bays opened and was on my way to sell them at a tidy profit. Nowhere else ever has them so I was confident that id be able to put the profit towards getting out of this argnu’s ass of a discoverer and put a deposit down on a real trading ship.

You can imagine my disappointment then when the chips turned out to be infected with the organo-silica symbiotic virus that causes hardware to literally rot away in front of you. No wonder those kha'ak sucking scammers were overloaded with chips and selling them cheap. I added the station and its crew to my list of people id be visiting if I ever found myself in possession of a M2 destroyer and a squadron of fighters. Well you never know…

Id sauntered down to the bar and met a teladi who had offered to convert my discoverer into to cargo crates so I could avoid the scrapping costs. It took a few goes but I finally managed to bash him in the mouth. I checked my profile at the bar. 2800 creds to my name. What is it with me? No sooner had I sat down and plunged my fist into some ice to take the swelling down (teladi really do have hard business heads), than another chancer turns up.

“Want to buy into the station lottery? 2500 creds and you stand the chance to win a million credits!! Simply choose one of these number lines and if they come up you’re a million creds the richer. The draw is tonight so register your ships id and wait for the call!”

I debated whether or not my hand was up to another impact on another set of teeth but to be honest, the spacefuel had done its evil work and I had lost all hope while being euphorically optimistic.. What the hell. I transferred the credits to the conman and everything I had left went on space fuel, weed and an accommodating argon lady who took her fee and everything else I had left in the cabin.

The extent of my problems began to insinuate itself through the cold sweats and nausea when as I made my way back to my decrepit ship's berth the next day. My detonating head was introduced to a new concept of pain when an irate teladi with no front teeth clouted me with crate iron. When I came round I had been glued upside down on the nose of my discoverer. Naked.

After station security had managed to dissolve the adhesive (never mind the skin irritation sir, itll dissipate in a few days) and cautioned me for breach of the peace, I made it into my ship and managed to find some almost clean clothes and a coffee bulb that was only a bit moldy. I hate my life.

Anyway, eventually the incessant blinking light on the comm finally got my attention. One message from station control telling me my ship had overstayed its docking slot and I was now paying for a TS class freighter to standby in orbit. The total amount owed was more than my ship was worth. The other one was from the station commander asking me to join him for drinks to celebrate my winning the station lottery.

After rapping my own knuckles to confirm this wasn’t some spaceweed induced hallucination, I graciously accepted his offer and emerged from his stateroom a couple of hours later tanked to the gunnels on finest Boron brandy. Don’t know what effect it has on the fish heads but when station security rescued me from the air recycling filters with a teladis trading robe tied round my head and then charged me with assaulting a toothless teladi and leaving him bound and gagged with an arcturan peacock feather inserted somewhere I really shouldn’t have, I realized that perhaps it was about time I found my way to another system.

I took off and wandered down to the shipyard at Argon Prime and I invested in a nice shiny Mercury, some fantastic upgrades and the best damn spacesuit money could buy. More a self contained spaceship than a suit, it provides you with nutrients and fluids and recycled air taken from your own body’s non essential reserves!! Amazing. You could live for years in it.

I bought a shipload of ore and set off to sell it to the most desperate and needy at the highest price possible. Hey, charity begins at home right?

Anyway, im sitting on the bridge of my new ship, in the luxury of a proper captains couch watching the planet Hades swim by when the triplex scanner gave a beep. Then another. And another. From behind a massive asteroid appear 3 teladi M3 Fighters. The comms open and a now familiar teladi face appears. The typical teladi sibilance is compounded by his lack of teeth, and he appears to be sitting most uncomfortably. However, his message is clear as watching your shields stripped away under heavy ion bombardment then having the computer start reading off the essential parts of your ship that are being blasted off is a pretty universal indication of hostile intent. When the life support goes I take it as a sign to jump into my super new spacesuit and abandon the once gleaming Mercury which now more closely resembles the discoverer I abandoned in the President End sector.

You know, the damage looks even worse from out here. Scorched and torn, my ship is left to find its own way to hell. It’ll be there before me. You see, as I floated around looking for somewhere to hide, my old friend the teladi approached me in his ship, drew alongside and promptly donned his own suit. Seconds later he walked out onto the hull of his ship, right up to me and put two precision shots into my suits pack.

I have no comms or thrusters. He’s going to a lot of trouble if all he wants to do is kill me. He gets back in his ship and moments later a tractor beam seizes me. Slavery it is then....how original. Typical teladi. Strangely I am not drawn into the cargo bay; instead we seem to be following a precisely calculated series of movements. Then, with a little spurt of acceleration the tractor is cut and I drift away from his vessel. He turns and boosts away leaving me alone.

It took a year but I worked out what he did. He comes back every now and then to taunt me, holding up a board to let me know how long it will be before the decaying orbit he put me into will draw me down into the planets atmosphere. I have another 5 years up here…at least ill never hit the surface. No, ill be crisped in the atmosphere long before that. Ill end up just a black snowflake on the surface of hells back garden.

Its cold out here even though my suit regulates the heat to keep me warm. Maybe just the infinite silence of the void seeps in and chills my soul.

There’s an old Terran story about a guy who jumped off a tower with wings of feather and wax, but he flew to close to the sun and the wax melted and his feathers fell off - a little drop and dead.

Trust me – Icarus had it easy.

[HasItNow]

Keep up the good writing.

[Paranoid66]

Good Fun short story, but I think you lost it a bit at the end with the OTT time line.

How has this Argon survived so long. OK even if the suit magically recycles the air - which for this long seems most doubtful - what about the poor guys sustenance you can't eat vacuum!

Maybe you might like to consider changing years to hours. Hours in a slowly decaying orbit - might seem like subjective years - and could be just as dramatic and a lot more credible!

I like that image of a Toothless Teladi for some reason.

[norcosis]

Yeah i think youre right. Even utilising body fats and excretions there would be nothing left to recycle fairly soon. I thought about leaving him in a crippled ship in a decaying orbit but theres no way he wouldnt be discovered and rescued / enslaved.

Thanks for the responses guys, it was a bit of a first so im glad you enjoyed it!

[Avis]

'Hi-Tech Subspace Compression Technology' as it's called in the X-Universe, i s a sort of Tardis effect where storage space can have a greater internal volume than it's external volume.

[TheBypasser]

Very good indeed! However with a few inaccuracies. The Hades planet means the story took place at the Black Hole Sun sector, it's not that deserted at all - as the population of the sector is alike to one of Argon Prime, eg the planet is inhabited. (however I wonder where do people live in that US next to Patriarch's Retreat then - as it's population is huge). Also the pirate activity is quite low there - as the sector is deep in the Argon territory and is cut off by a Xenon sector a Falcon would barely be able to cross in one single piece, even a small one - especially because that small piece would all that's left of it after crossing Split sectors. Also a spacesuit never would last a day, not to say a year. Btw a Teladi pirate never lasts that long as well - as there's some freaked up girl (Anonymous Argon start huh) flying LX seeking for revenge on those who attacked her in her harmless unarmed Disco long ago. And btw a year to figure out the things are bad.. that guy is a slow-thinker, no wonder he didn't set the Mercury on autopilot following it in his Disco
But still the story is really good, I like fiction that has sad endings!

ps As for the pilot - hundreds of corpses shattered on her way, but the lust for destruction remains inside her. Recent scans show that a pirate M2 "Carrack" dropped it's speed upon entering Split Fire, and in a matter of minutes suddenly disappeared from the scanners.

[The Zig]

Cool short story!

The 'years' time-line didn't seem that implausible to me. If the energy is there (e.g, solar power) there's no reason a sophisticated suit couldn't just keep 'recycling' (i.e. reversing chemical reactions - turning excrement back into food) indefinitely.

Dunno how great it'd taste tho!

[TheBypasser]

The 'years' time-line didn't seem that implausible to me. If the energy is there (e.g, solar power) there's no reason a sophisticated suit couldn't just keep 'recycling' (i.e. reversing chemical reactions - turning excrement back into food) indefinitely.

We are speaking of X-verse, don't forget that Also to launch a guy so accurately that one would fly for five years.. Also a year to think of the Teladi plan.. I bet yourself you came up with this idea way faster - and the guy has nothing else to do anyway so should get it all even quicker So, better just switch to hours.

[norcosis]

Couple things, i didnt know that there were names for the planets in the sectors ( not been playing that long!) so the story wasnt set in any particular sector. I saw a volcanic planet belted by asteroids in power circle and thought 'that'll do!' as a basis.

The years in orbit idea came from me wanting the guy to have a long time out there. he wouldnt really have any points of reference to gauge his trajectory and so for all he knew he could be geostationary, just left to rot in his suit. All he had to go on was a teladi showing him a decreasing sequence of numbers. As it was i wanted him to have something to look forward to once he worked out once was happening.

Next one i write ill spend a bit more time on, this was kinda run out as an idea to see what happened.

Thanks for all input, hopefully have something new for you soon

[norcosis]

Cool short story!

there's no reason a sophisticated suit couldn't just keep 'recycling' (i.e. reversing chemical reactions - turning excrement back into food) indefinitely.

Dunno how great it'd taste tho!

Man, i didnt really consider that! Guess burning up in the atmosphere wouldnt seem such a bad thing after 5 years of eating your own excrement!

[TheBypasser]

Give no f&$k to the critic in me actually - the story's good indeed! As for sectors and planets, there's Hadesfire nebular as well, and it fits your description properly as it's surrounding a destroyed Boron planet, and also is pretty distant so a pirate could probably somehow sneak in. Or a perfect icy planet in Nopilios' Memorial which is pretty pirate-heavy and always unwatched.

ps Teladi's not wicked enough - myself I once had a pirate bail in Nopilios' Memorial and die of suffocation as there was no station and I had no cargobay lifesupport as I take no prizoners (indeed - why would I need 'em - better either they get caught by station security or die)

[MacDuck]

good story

very creepy...