X2 Week – Tuesday

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.”

-Albert Einstein

After my travels yesterday I found myself in the lawless territory controlled by Pirates.  Since I am not a serious trader with a fancy TS I don’t get any trouble.  I expected the area to be fairly desolate but was surprised to discover that there were still a lot of stations around.  After spending the night at a run down station I am eager to move on, new horizons and all that.

I had just departed from the station when I noticed a trader under attack.  A strange, exotic looking four masted pirate ship attacking what looks like a Boron…Dolphin I think, the pirate ship was almost constantly firing, but the Boron ship was holding it’s own.  I could have just moved on, I should have, but something inside me felt great empathy for that poor trader, after all I hope to own a ship like that one day.  As I had just gotten back my weapons and shields I also felt it was time to give them a trial.

I raced towards the pirate ship, sadly standard flight training doesn’t prepare you for the complicated manoeuvres required for combat and I ran into the back of the pirate ship.  The one upside of this was that I was now dead-on his tail, some ships have rear turrets but this one just had forward firing weapons, despite the damage to my engines I still had the more manoeuvrable ship, and since he had the more powerful weapons this was definitely a plus point.  I open fire giving his shields quite a pounding, I get a warning from the computer, Energy Low.  Standard armaments draw from the ships main power source, since my disco is light and nippy it doesn’t have the beefy setups combat ships have.  This just means I’ll have to wait occasionally for the power reserves to build back up.

With his shields down I take several chunks out of his hull, this particular pirate isn’t the fearsome kind you read about in fairy tales and he starts shouting over the comm. channel that he wants to give up.  He hops out and leaves his ship behind, running (drifting) for his life, the ship now belongs to me!  The trader by this point has run off, I don’t blame him really, hope he makes it out of the system alive.  I bring up the computer access screen, hands shaking in excitement.  A Unix system, I know this.  Since the pirate ship is a bit battered around the edges due to my amazing combat skills it’s not much use to me, so I access the navigation computer and send it to the Shipyard in Argon Prime, hopefully I can sell it for something.  My disco is in pretty bad shape too so I best head there myself for repairs.

Previously my ship could travel at ~250m\s, now it’s struggling to make more than 150, but it is still faster than my newly acquired Pirate Bayamon which limps along at 60, I get to the Shipyard a long time before it does.  I get a quote for the repairs, a man comes out in grimy overalls, he tells me I’ve got a problem with the flow regulator and it’ll need replacing.  Funny that shouldn’t be broken…  Anyway when I see the repair bill my heart drops, I can barely afford to replace the furry dice, looks like I need some more work.  A quick scan of the boards only turns up a snooty passenger who doesn’t want to come near my poor ship.

I try another of the stations and manage to find someone who isn’t so picky, it’s a bit dangerous but I think we can make it, I just hope the drop in speed won’t be a problem.  I race for the Mass Driver Forge, on the edge of my seat the whole way.  We arrive safely, the payment barely makes a difference, I need something bigger.  By this point the Bayamon has barely covered half the journey.  I pick up some Energy Cells and go in search of somewhere that’s willing to pay a good price.

I dock at the Silicon Mine in Home of Light, after offloading the cells I find two promising looking jobs on the boards, a passenger that’s willing to pay 2000cr for a relatively short flight, and one from the station itself.  I don’t want to choose between them, and if I take one you can bet the other won’t be there when I get back, so I decide to go for both.  I’ll drop off the passenger then get to work on the station’s job.  They’ve apparently got a shortage of Energy Cells and need a contract pilot to fill their storage bay, I remember the last job like this fondly, it was nice and simple but also paid well.  This one is a much bigger job however, they want 3379 cells, I don’t grasp just how big this is going to be…

I drop the passenger off and head for the nearest Solar Power Plant so I can get started on that order, my Bayamon has also finally arrived at the Shipyard, that’ll just have to wait.  When I arrive back at the Silicon Mine I get a message, I stare in horror at the remaining time, I lost almost an entire stazura dropping off that passenger, now I’ve only got seven and a half left.

Fortunately the TerraCorp Solar Power Plant is right next door, hopefully I can make up the time.  I also didn’t realise quite how small my cargo bay is, I can only fit thirty cells at a time, and with 3000+ to deliver that is a lot of trips I need to make.  After several drop-offs I become even less certain that I’ll be able to finish the job in time.  I chat to a nearby trader in a TS (transport ship), he isn’t hiring himself out though.  Then I remember that I saw a Mammoth somewhere in the sector, Mammoths are used for transporting stations to the construction site and are always available for hire, maybe they could fit a few energy cells in instead.

I call up the captain and ask to hire his vessel, he tells me it’ll cost 5000 per Gate we pass through, since I don’t need him to leave the system it hopefully won’t cost me anything.  When I try to get him to dock with the Solar Power Plant he has no idea what I’m talking about, apparently Mammoths can only dock at the larger stations, oh well at least it didn’t cost me anything.  That’s when I check my account, he charged me up front and I didn’t even realise, now I’m almost completely broke…  I drop off another batch and am told that I’ve now reached the grand total of 210 Energy Cells, after reading this I feel really deflated, at this rate I’ll be delivering Energy Cells until I’m 50, I need a plan.

The place to start is with my Bayamon that’s just sitting there in Dry-Dock, so I set a course for Argon Prime.  When I get there I find that I can sell it for over 44,000cr, now that’s more like it.  Since it’s pretty damaged and I don’t have the money for repairs I just sell it.  Now I can buy a new ship to help me with the deliveries, I can only afford the most basic of Discoverers, that’s the same as my ship and it does a good job.  The salesman remembered me from last time and hadn’t come over, when I tell him I am ready to purchase his eyes light up.  Do you want the optional enginge tuning?  How about the custom paint-job?  No thank you, I just want the basic ship.  Okay then, now just select your equipment.

I scan down the list and look over the Command Software.  As I won’t be in the ship I have to control it using software, as I don’t have a Trading system extension I won’t be able to give it trading orders so I need to buy some software.  What to choose though, do I want the latest version or will the older but cheaper one do?  Do I want the Premium or Ultimate edition?  In the end I just grab both the MK1 and MK2 software.  The salesman passes me something to sign and then the ship is mine.

First, a very important job, I name the ship Mary.  I start reading the software manual, click next, input the destination directory, yes.  Ah, slight problem.  I need to set the Home base for the ship, since I have no stations I can’t do this, apparently this software is for stations owners…great, moer money wasted.  I’ll just have to do it manually, so I set Mary to fly to the Solar Power Plant.  This is when I realise that Mary is moving a bit slowly, I made several tweaks to my disco when my uncle gave it too me, apparently I did a better job than I thought.  Not only that but Mary also only has cargo space for nine Energy Cells…  I head to Home of Light, I need to catch up with the order.  I manage to make one trip in the time it takes Mary to arrive, I load her and myself up with cells and we both travel to the Silicon Mine.  There is more trouble however, the Mine owners aren’t too happy about taking shipments from an automated ship, they want me to be there for every transaction, this negates most of the benefits of having a second ship, it will just be more hassle.  So I send Mary back to the Shipyard.

I make several more trips, trying to come up with a new plan of action.  I also pay a visit to the Federal Argon Wharf, they offer a different range of ships, most importantly a TS.  These have enough cargo space to do the job in three trips, compared to the hundred it’ll take me.  Their price is a tantalising 100,000cr, it’s more than I have but not by much, Mary alone only cost a third of their price.  Thinking back, I sold the Pirate Bayamon for 44,000cr, if I just had two more of them I could afford to buy a TS and complete the order in no time.  But the idea of taking on more Pirates doesn’t thrill me, I could be running into some serious trouble.  But I do need something, I’ll sleep on it.

I have a restless night.  All this planning has filled my dreams with strange ideas.  In them I take on a series of Pirate ships, the first had invulnerable shields, no matter how much fire power I sent their way the shields never lowered.  I ran away, but the pirate followed me.  I couldn’t escape, that’s when the Titan came to my rescue.

It flew over me and blasted the pirate into pieces.  The next ship I encountered was a much easier target.  This was going to be the solution to all my problems, I would capture the ship and have enough money to buy my own TS.  I whittled down the shields till they were almost gone, but then the ship exploded and I got nothing.  More and more ships appeared in my dreams, each one just out of grasp, the solution to my problems dissolving into sand and slipping between my fingers.

One of the times I thought I was pretty close, yet another ship that my weapons made no impact on, but strange fairies were helping me attack it.  They were defending themselves, but they too couldn’t make an impact, feeling for their plight I joined in.  Between us we started making an impact, the pirates shields kept regenerating and we kept knocking them down.  I must have really being tossing and turning during this part, time went on, the shields would still not go down, but it felt like we were making progress, bit by bit.  I woke up with a start, I could feel the sweat all over my body, it was just a dream, the solution once again left my grasp.

Attacking the pirates was not a good idea, maybe the dream affected me or maybe I just realised the truth.  In reality there was no easy solution, only hard work.  There was one thing I could do however, even though it pained me, I had to sell Mary.  The fact that I got 10,000cr less than what I paid for her made it that much more excruciating, but it had to be done.  With the proceeds I fixed my ship up, getting the engines back up to speed, I also bought an extension to my cargo bay, instead of thirty I could now transport forty-five Energy Cells at a time.  That might not sound like much but it would make a difference.  Back and forth I went, trip after trip after trip.  Slowly chipping away at the total.

The one benefit of not being able to transport many cells at a time was that by the time I had gotten back to the Power Plant they already had some more for me to transport, I wouldn’t have had to go anywhere else if it hadn’t been for the fleet of TS’.  As stations build up their supplies the price goes down, as I wasn’t making an impact on their stock the price kept dropping, eventually this attracted other traders and they could transport large amounts.  Their stocks went, the price increased, cells now cost 22cr each meaning I was only making 1cr profit.  This meant I would have to travel to another system to find more, wasting more time.

In the end it was pretty close, I did spot another Solar Power Plant in Home of Light so I didn’t have to travel quite as far.  It took many, many runs, if it wasn’t for the SETA time compression it would have taken many more hours instead of the one it felt like to me.  But eventually, with one stazura remaining I completed the job.  I lost a fair amount of money on this job, but in the end I had almost 30,000cr in my account.  I still think it would be a good idea to buy a TS, I just have to save up a little more and you know what they say, ‘Tomorrow is another day’.

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