This is ridiculously long, and it's not even ready yet.
Jack poked the scanner everywhere, waiting for the elusive blip of dense ore to pop up.
"Leave it, there's nothing here", said Dan from his small cargo ship.
"I'm sure there's something here. I can feel it.", Jack replied.
"Just like those forty-three other dry ones?"
"Forty-one."
"Whatever. We're not getting any fuel today, if you can't find some Nidurite soon."
"Trust me, Dan. I'll find some."
At the same moment, he heard a blip. It was a weak one, but the rock was big, so the amount could be great.
"I found something"
"Start digging then. You're the one who can have fun with a laser."
Jack aimed the laser at the signature and shot. The giant rock cracked, and tiny splinters flew of in zero gravity. Soon there was a giant hole in the asteroid. Suddenly, the laser bounced back.
"Dan, did you see that?"
"What was I supposed to see?"
"The laser bounced back."
"That would need a pretty hard mirror to do. What you found?"
Jack zoomed the scanners at the hole.
"Something black and unnaturally shiny."
"Not Nidurite, then. Try a prospecting drone on it."
Jack launched the prospecting drone. It flew through space slowly, pushing tiny rocks away. It hit the object, and tried to puncture it with its legs, and comically bounced off. Jack beamed it in, and re-loaded it.
"It didn't even scratch it."
"Could you dig around it?"
"Yes, but I have an idea."
Jack shot a scanner probe on the asteroid. Within few seconds, the insides of the asteroid light up.
"Wow."
"Show me too."
Jack send the model to Dan.
"What am I supposed to see here? Oh wait. Wow."
It was a vessel. Probably a ship according to its shape. It was egg-shaped, with a pointy end. It was the size of a bomber, with no visible weaponry. As always with First Empire ships.
"Are you thinking, what I'm thinking?"
"First Empire? Of course."
"What did you say about fuel? These things are worth a billion serus.
"Dig it up. We're going to be rich."
Jack started carefully digging around it. First Empire was a misnaming, much like supernovas. They were nothing like the Second Empire, who found the first artifacts, and named themselves to be the straight descendants of them. Further analysis proved them wrong, but the name stuck. The First Empire was a species with extremely advanced technology. Their ships were nearly indestructable, fast, and posessed the most powerful defences in the known worlds. None of the found ships had had any weapons, which has lead the arkeologists to believe, that they were pacifists. Few billion years ago they just... disappeared. It's theorised, that they now live in the "white zone"; a sector where nothing ever comes back, pure white on the map.
The ship's shape slowly cleared up, as the rock shattered and flew off.
"Get your string here."
Dan launched the carbon nanotube rope at the ship and started dragging it.
"That just doesn't work. Every pirate passing us by within ten kilometers will come chasing us."
"Unless you have a trustworthy cargo container supplier within a jump, this is the best we have."
"Would an industrial production unit suffice?"
"Yes, it would. I do have some blueprints stored just in case. Empty boxes of aluminium are not very costly in terms of data."
"I know a place that no one uses anymore. It's not far from here."
"Is it still operational?"
"War-time military outposts always are."
"Aha. And you also suggest nothing monitors it, just in case someone tried to use it?"
Jack sighed.
"Military has more important things than watching abadonned stations. Come on."
"Only if you authorise me to cut the rope and run, when they come to the conclusion, that you're a Union spy."
Jacks nodes rapidly moved for a moment.
"We're living in peace now. We have lived for decades by now. The latest war ended way before we were even born."
"Have you listened? The Empire is producing humongous amounts of battleships, and moving them towards the Union borders. They're preparing for war."
"Ah, the conspiracy theorists. You believe in them? They're crazy, as they have always been."
"Isn't that even a little bit suspicious?"
"What if we stop talking, and get moving before some pirate finds out we're dragging trillions worth of money on a leash, basically free to take?"
"Okay, then."
The wierd duo started traveling towards the gate. Asteroids got catched in the wake, and drifted forwards, eventually dropping off. Eventually, they got to the gate, and jumped through.
The system was the polar opposite of the previous one: instead of a black asteroid field, it was a orange-tinted gas cloud. Jack lead Dan to a far edge of the system. Slowly, the station came into view. It was a functionalistic cube, the same color as the gas cloud, and nearly invisible from further away.
"How are we going to use that?", Dan asked.
"We have to board it."
"Oh great."
Both of the ships shot their boarding cannons. They pierced the hangar door.
"That always feels weird."
"You just don't do it often enough.", Jack said while looking around. He had lied a little bit: shifting from a ship to a drone always felt really odd. He looked at Dan, who was stumbling around in the mantis-like boarding drone, similar to what he was using.
"Walking is hard."
"They do it automatically. Just let go of manual control."
"Easier said than done."
"Let's find that control panel."
Jack walked and Dan stumbled around the walls of the hangar using six legs holding to the wall with gecco-like pads. Soon they found the panel. Jack plugged the drone's hand to to panel, downloaded the blueprints, and activated the machine.
"That's it."
"And I was right about to get the hang of this."
They both walked towards the hole, and got reloaded back in the ships.
The cargo container was spit from the station, and it the First Empire ship was pushed inside it.
"Now the pirate will only think we have a load worth a ten thousand serus, not a billion."
"Five orders of magnitude."
"The ones who hide, they won't die, but only the ones who fight, may survive."
"Are you criticising your own plan?"
"No, just some old poem that came into mind."
"What is it called?"
"Ragnarok"
"I didn't know you know poetry."
"Do you know, what I'd have become, if I wouldn't have met you?"
"Rich?"
Dan laughed a bit. "No. A philosopher"
"You must be ki-"
"No, I'm dead serious"
"You were really going to be imprisoned in a hivemind to answer unanswerable questions like a slavemind in a research unit. What madness."
"Yes, exactly. Now, do you have any dark secrets in your past?"
Jack's nodes rapidly spun around and darkened to bloodred and violet, slowly pulsating.
"I really don't want to talk about them."
"Okay, then."
Silence fell upon them, as they continued their travel towards the sector's core, Eruk Beta. Suddenly, Dan became alerted.
"What is it?"
"I'm being scanned."
"Goverment auto-scanners?"
"No. Old technology. Pirates."
"That's what you'll get from mining on outer sectors."
"Are they going to come for us?"
"Yes. Do you have any weapons?"
"Two beam cannons."
"Load them up. You're going to need them."
"What does yout scanner say?"
"The signature mostly matches Amber-class"
"A bomber. What weaponry do you have?"
"A pulse laser."
The ship started shooting. Jack and Dan both started shooting at it.
The pirate did a fly-by, guns blazing, and started flying around in a ring. Jack shot the pirate with his transfer unit, distrupting the field, and slowing it down enough to hit the ship with the pulse laser. The pirate's field readjusted, and it accelerated away from the trap. Jack and the pirate engaged in a dance of dodging and spinning, both firing at each other. The pirate was armed way better, but Jack's cheap mining ship had less mass, making it more agile. Dan shooted at the pirate, weakening the shields. Then, the pirate changed direction as fast as the heavy ship could, making the computer use all of its potential to escape. While the ship was fleeing, Jack charged the mining laser, and pierced the pirate's hull, making the Extractor to explode in a yellow-ish white flash.
"Why did you do that?"
"He would've told his friends about us. I really can't handle a gang."
"You just murdered a person. Shouldn't you feel bad?"
Jacks nodes turned bright violet for a moment.
"I have murdered more. Many more."
"What do you mean?"
"I once was a mercenary. A spy."
"Union?"
"Exactly. They caught me, but I couldn't tell anything. So they freed me, after changing my IDs."
"So that you couldn't ever go back?"
"Exactly. Nobody would recognise me. And you were right. The Sixth Empire is preparing for war. Or atleast according to what I recall."
"Could we get moving? You can continue on the way."
"Okay."
The H-fields produced glowing rings, as the ships accelerated to full speed, Jack slowing down to help Dan keep up with him.
"I got to a high goverment databanks using a synchronised IDCS , given to me by my contractors. Get in, get data, get out."
"What happened?"
"They catched me in action. I must had been betrayed."
"What if they just got lucky that time?"
"I was nine jumps away, in a inactive stealth ship using an old and rusty station interface, looking at the core databanks with an authorised access. No, it was not pure luck. And now, I'm M.I.A, probably marked as K.I.A."
"You made my tragic story seem like nothing."
"Nothing ever could make it seem like nothing. You were right about to make a suicide."
"How old are you?"
"About double as old as you. 600 cycles."
"Still 400 left."
There was a slight disturbance in his nodes.
"Yeah. Past halfway."
"Why can't we just live forever? The current system seems pretty cruel."
"Thousand cycles is a really long time. Some get bored after eight hundred and go to the army to be killed. And, it's impossible to change."
"Hey, look! A border checkpoint!"
Jack turned his sensors around until he found it too. It was a smooth, steel gray ellipsoid with a hole in the other end.
"I haven't seen one of those for a while."
They moved towards the checkpoint, and passed through the hole.
Post
Fri Feb 21, 2014 6:08 am
#1
Stonehard
In space, no one will hear you scream. #262626
I've never played a space sim. Ever.
Vos estis tan limes.
I've never played a space sim. Ever.
Vos estis tan limes.