This is a story about my character in the Elite Dangerous game. A story of love and adventure, with a taste of science and beauty of space ships. A diary written by Commander Rhea, passionate fighter pilot.

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Day Two

  I wake up, take a deep breath, and upon smelling the fresh natural air, I realise where I am… I find myself in a tent… covered by a blanket, on a soft foam mat, with a man laying next to me. He is turned away from me. He looks like he’s cold, without blanket, and laying only on the cold ground. The tent was small, obviously intended only for one person. The young man laying next to me was Eric, the blond driver who made the yummy piece of food for me. I covered him with the blanket, but he woke up and looked at me. “Good morning,” he said. “Thank you” was my reply, i felt… i felt happy, someone took care of me after all.. I’ve not felt like this since… since ever. Since I lost my family in the Scion massacre nearly ten years ago. I think that this was the moment when I realised that I’m in love.

  “Warning, ship under attack!” a female voice communication interrupted the moment. I immediately required more information “Kirea, status report.” - “All systems functioning with shields at ninety-six percent.” That is okay. I always leave my shields at full power when leaving the ship, that bit of extra fuel may be worth it as I learned over the years… “Kirea extend the shields to cover the whole campsite and report on hostiles.” - “Two fighter-class ships.” I have to act quickly, keeping the shield at this size will drain all the power very quickly, it won’t last long. I look at Eric, he’s all pale. “How many friends do you have here?” - “uhm… we were nine in total.” Great, that’s awesome. Fer deLance is neither transport ship, nor a luxury liner, it is meant to be piloted by one or two people in total with no extra crew, however it does have deployable seats, two in the bridge access corridor, six on the bridge. I took his hand and dragged him out ordering my ship to keep me posted “Kirea report every 20% drop in the shield strength.” - “Acknowledged, shields are at 82%.” Shit. It’s dropping faster than I expected. “Make sure that everyone is calm, we can’t afford to lose time because someone is panicking! Tell everyone to board my ship!” - “But we can’t abandon our cars!” - “I can’t~ [b]- Shields at 62% -[/b] ..I can’t protect you out here! I’ll have to engage them and someone may get hurt in the crossfire!” I ran to the ship as fast as the damn heavy suit would allow me to, while he went around the camp to get everyone moving.
  “Kirea open the ramp!” I get to the cockpit just to hear another shields warning, it’s down to 42%. I immediately engage drives, i can’t deploy hardpoints while the ramp is open, it’s blocking the huge beam laser underneath the belly. I run to the back of the bridge to prepare emergency seats, I hear them stomping up the ramp. I tell them to continue to the bridge to take seats there, counting how many pass by me - getting the last two to the hallway seats. “Shields at 22%” I could see how much more everyone got scared at the sound of that.They were all seated, I grabbed Eric’s hand and dragged him over to the cockpit, he sat next to me, looking at me. I had very serious expression on my face. silently I grabbed the controls, slammed the vertical throttle up, accelerating at two G’s upwards while instructing the ship to return shields to normal.
  Hardpoints deployed, we are in the air. “Shields at 2%” - “Shut up!!!” I slammed the throttle to full forward and engaged boost. We went from zero to 400 m/s in matter of seconds, everyone was groaning behind me, then it was quiet. Most of them passed out. They’ve never experienced more than one, maybe two G of acceleration on the ground, they couldn’t handle the 15g that Fer deLance can push when boosting from zero. “Shields offline.” I’m happy. I know that my ship is very well armored and everyone is safe inside even without shields, but oh my, that repair bill is going to be huge. “Oh my god” said Eric, he did not pass out, having the advantage of an actual flight seat, however he was obviously not doing very well, without any previous training. “It’s okay, don’t worry.” I calmly said, “hold on though, this won’t be comfortable ride.” I flipped the damn Flight Assist off, slammed the stick back as hard as i could, pitching up and 180 degree in but a fraction of a second, I then slammed the throttle back to full forward, pointing my huge laser beam at one of the Eagles. I managed to take out half of his shields before I pitched up again, another 180 degrees flying in reverse. Completely ignoring the aerodynamics thanks to my overpowered thrusters. As soon as I finished the maneuver sensors indicated that the eagle was just passing by, so I went to full forward again, I ended up right behind his ass. It was a quick business from here on. I triggered my railguns and Eagle exploded. “Frame shift surge detected” - “Heh that coward is running…“ I let the other one go, and turn the ship around, slowly flying back towards the camp. “Shield restored.” Kirea announced. “I’m so sorry, i didn’t realise that they will track me down. I’m so sorry! Is everyone okay back there?!” They were fine, just a bunch of bruises and i made them sick…

  As we landed I instructed my ship to extend the shield again, just to be safe. Eric turned at me “Seems like they didn’t damage anything, all our things are fine… I’m sorry about your ship” - “She will be fixed, don’t worry, important is that nobody got hurt.” He got up, and helped everyone to get out and they started to pack stuff.
  I was sitting at the edge of the ramp, watching them. When everyone was ready to leave, Eric came back to the ship. “Well, that was interesting adventure” he sounded relieved. “I’m sorry…“ i said, as he sat down next to me. “Cheer up girl, it’s okay” he said and he hugged me… I felt so.. I can’t even describe it. “Please do stop by the city next time you’re around, I would like to show you around, take you out for dinner maybe…“ I just nodded, and he gently kissed me and walked away… I sat there for a while longer, I was a bit shaken from the experience. I almost got innocent people killed.

  I never found the cargo, those pirates must have gotten to it first. My guess would be that the cargo was already in the Anaconda that I passed the other night, and those Eagles were just a distraction so I’m not following them. It must have been something important. The contract did include a clause that if my ship gets damaged they will pay for repairs, so that’s covered as well. What should I do now though?

 

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