10.10.3306.1
“Ladies, gentlemen, kids, and pets. Welcome aboard the Ramblin’ Rogue Sirius Atmospherics tour. I’m your Commander, Umile, and I’m going to make sure you all have a great adventure, and make it back safe in time for dinner! Feel free to make use of our observation deck, as we’ll be sunning around the primary stars of Wredugia WD-K D8-65, and Wredugia RM-U C16-0 on our way to the Sothis system.”
Business is good, and I feel like I’ve said those words a hundred times just today. A script so deeply embedded now, that it echoes around my pod while I sleep. Almost haunting. I love my new found profession as a sightseeing tour guide. It’s fun to go find new, far flung destinations, and become so familiar with others, that I can provide a truly unique experience for my customers.
I’ve noticed more and more pirates lately in the Sothis system. It’s starting to be bad for business. It’s difficult to sell the idea of luxury and relaxation when you’re cruising by the debris of a Type 7 that got caught unprepared, or some Viper covered in red paint and skulls that’s obviously scanning you while your passengers try to hide their fear behind nervous smiles. I took the Adderconda out there a week ago to plot safer routes for my tours, but that’s not going to be enough.
While I was out I watched a commander in a Vulture take on one ship after another. It was really a spectacle to behold, until a pilot in a Diamondback Scout got the best of him with a volley of well placed missiles. Eventually the system security ships came and saved his ass, and took out that Scout, but the damage was done. The ship just swirled and twisted in space. I got close, and made a call for a rescue unit from Newholm Station, but in the adder, I wasn’t able to help more than that.
I got the pilot on comms, and told him help was on the way. He didn’t seem too shaken up by the battle, or that he was stuck in a space dryer stuck on a spin cycle. He seemed calm, at ease almost. He asked if I had seen what happened, and I told him I’d been watching for quite some time, and that he was quite the pilot. We recounted the fight, and his kills. We laughed that after so many better ships not getting an upper hand, he lost his systems in a fight with a DBS. He bragged that his ship was the best Vulture in the system, and how many pirates he’d taken out, and I didn’t have the heart to point out that his beloved ship had left him stranded here spinning in the black, talking to some nobody tour guide.
After a few hours floating there without another ship in radar range, my new friend’s mood changed. He was frustrated that he still had so much hull integrity left, but his modules failed to be enough. We went through every troubleshooting guide we could find trying to get his system going again. We talked about universal politics, and religion. I mean the guy told me about stealing money from his parent’s change bucket when he was little to buy all the station kids ice cream. His mom works in the entertainment comms pod in Robigo mines, where I run my tours from. He began to ask me about my life. Who I was. I told him “I’m Umile”, and about my life before piloting, the STARS, the girl Amber that I had a crush on when I was in grade school and at some point he said, “No. who ARE you?”.
I didn’t have a good answer for him. Of course I had plenty of vague generalities about being “good”, and “a positive force in the universe”, and treating people right. The seven words he said next are words that will stay with me forever. “What are you doing to be that?”
I’m not sure how long we sat in silence, as I pondered that query. What AM I doing to be the change I want to see? How grand is my vision? Am I going to clean up my yard, my neighborhood, or everywhere I go? Am I going to help myself, my neighbor, or every living person in need? I’m not sure I know the answers to those questions right now. Maybe you gotta be all of them to be any of them. Maybe you can never truly do any of them, but the merit is in trying.
At some point, I looked up and noticed as the Osprey swirled in front of me, that my friend’s cockpit was dark inside, and covered in frost. An obvious tell that his life support systems had failed. But why did they fail so long after the fight? I got my friend CMDR Ogre Medic on comms after he woke the next morning. He has a ship that can tow this vulture, so he pulled the ship back to Houser’s Reach, and stored it for Bobby’s mom, who didn’t want anything to do with it. I hate how I ended up with this ship, but I’m going to fix it up, and use it as a tool to be the me I want to be. If not for me, for him.
Oh, and I know why the life support systems failed… Because he turned them off. I can’t help but wonder what made him make that choice. We were just outside a RES. We would have been found. Was it shame, frustration, that he didn’t like the answer to his own question, or my company… Whatever it was, he was still my friend in those moments, and I’m glad we met, even if it was just long enough to leave a scar.
CMDR U. Starcaster