Discovery Gaming Community

“Get off me already,” Olivia growled as she kicked her ship into a roll around a small ice asteroid, the hull groaning under the stress. Bolts of tachyons slammed into the rock, explosively vaporizing the frozen water, and sending it on a wild tumble through the cluttered field. A second volley of orange energy followed, splashing against the Sutinga’s shields.

Olivia glanced at her instruments as she threaded her craft between two more enormous blocks of ice, narrowly avoiding clipping its wings. The Outcast fighter was gaining on her, smaller and more nimble than her own. A third barrage of shots whizzed past her, blasting apart smaller shards of frozen water ahead, turning them into clouds of mist that the two ships promptly rocketed through.

Banking around yet another asteroid, Olivia scanned her surroundings, looking for any route through which she could escape. They were deep within the seemingly endless field of frost, the rocks that constituted it glittering in the harsh sunlight of the system’s white dwarf star as they tumbled aimlessly through space, occasionally colliding with each other, and sending spurts of pulverized ice cascading into space.

The display gave the mercenary an idea.

She punched the throttle forward and ignited her ship’s afterburners, the extreme acceleration pressing her into her seat. Up ahead, an enormous rock of ice slowly spun through space, listlessly shattering smaller brethren that dared stand in its path. Behind it, for just an instant, Olivia could make out a second, slightly smaller asteroid spinning out of view, mere tens of meters separating it from its larger cousin.

The Sutinga shot towards the pair, seemingly on a suicidal collision course with the larger of the two. Sprays of energy pelted the craft’s shields, overloading them. Bits of steel paneling exploded away as tachyon bolts struck the naked hull. Olivia held onto the stick, her knuckles whitening under the grip, staying her course towards the battleship-sized asteroid before her.

With meters to spare, she yanked it to the right, sending her ship careening around the iceberg, then threw it back to the left, looping around. The second boulder, hidden behind the former, came into view in alarming proximity, blotting out the sun. Olivia gritted her teeth and gunned it for the gap between the two rocks, the distance between them shrinking as they slowly tumbled towards an inevitable collision.

The Sutinga burst through the opening, its engine plumes vaporizing gallons of ice into mist that trailed the craft like a stunt-craft’s smoke. An instant later, the asteroids struck each other, merging into one and crushing the Outcast fighter as it attempted to follow Olivia’s breakneck maneuver. The contact vanished from her instruments.

The Sutinga came to a gradual halt amidst the vast expanse of the ice field, swirls of mist and smoke trailing behind its battered but for the most part intact body. Swarms of nanobots deployed from their cannisters and scurried across the ship’s hull, welding shut breaches in the armor plating and rewiring severed powerlines. Olivia let herself relax into her pilot’s seat, taking multiple deep breaths to calm her nerves.

God damn sniffers, she thought to herself, absentmindedly rolling her shoulders to loosen the taut muscles and tendons. She had hoped to get some rest at Holman before heading back to Liberty after a week spent fighting alongside Guild and Crayterian forces. Getting chased hundreds of clicks through an endless field of ice by a genetically punched-up cardamine addict had not been her intention.

The mercenary glanced at her instruments. She was in the middle of nowhere, the scanner readout not even bothering with a precise distance to the nearest station, instead taunting her with a nondescriptive far.

“Very helpful,” Olivia muttered. Her eyes wandered up to the canopy and out into the bright blue space of Tau-31. Life support was undamaged and could keep her comfortable within her fighter for days, so settling in for a long, well-earned rest out here was a plausible option. The only issue with that, however, was the chaos of tumbling rocks around her, each one on a possible course to collide with her and turn both her ship and her into little more than unidentifiable dust.

A relatively small, white boulder of ice slowly rolled through her field of vision, a few hundred meters ahead. It caught the system’s sun’s light and refracted it brilliantly, rainbow colors cascading off its surface in a beautiful, almost blinding display. As it tumbled calmly along, a shadow appeared on its surface, a spot far less reflective than the rest.

Olivia squinted at it, trying to make out what it was. Solid rock, perhaps? No, it wasn’t dull enough for that. Compared to the rest of the surface, it glistened a dark, greyish sheen. Her curiosity aroused, she nudged the throttle forward, letting her craft glide slowly towards the asteroid. An overzealous collision warning went off, droning out the low rumble of the engines, only to be silenced by the flick of a switch. Two hundred meters out, the mysterious object on the iceberg’s surface spun out of view. Olivia killed the engines again and waited for it to reappear.

A quiet minute later, the rock completed its rotation, the dark body embedded in its surface coming back into view. Olivia leaned forward in her seat, squinting again to make out what details she could find. It was metal, that much was certain. As the asteroid kept slowly turning, the sun’s light fell onto the object, exposing seams and rivets and – Olivia let out a quiet whistle – an engine array, the appearance of which she was more than familiar with.

It was a ship, wedged tightly into a crevice upon the iceberg’s face, its prow partially buried within the ice. By the looks of it, it was a Zoner vessel – a second-generation long-range escort craft. And despite its haphazard position, at first glance, it appeared to be in good condition.

Olivia leaned back again and took a moment to think. A ship like that could sell for a fair price on the used market, especially if sold back to a Zoner community. They tended to be short on spare parts and even shorter on actual ships, which would make finding a buyer easy. Getting the ship to a potential buyer, on the other hand, could prove a challenge.

A glance at her instruments revealed that her fuel reserves were at roughly half. Enough to get the Sutinga back to the nearest station without a hitch. Towing a ship twice its size, however, could cut it awfully close and the last thing Olivia wanted was to strand herself in the midst of an asteroid field, waiting to either be crushed by rocks or discovered by Outcasts. No, that was not a risk she was willing to take, not without knowing exactly whether the effort would be worth it.

Time for a walk, Olivia thought to herself and reached behind her seat, grasping a cannister of oxygen. Getting out of her seat, she clipped it to the magnetic latches on her flightsuit’s back, attaching its flexible tube to the vent on the chin of her helmet. With a hiss, the oxygen feed was established. The mercenary stepped to the back of the cockpit, sealing the bulkhead to the rest of the ship’s small cabin. Then she returned to the front, glancing out at the endless void of space beyond the canopy.

She didn’t have a thruster pack to maneuver with, meaning she’d have to eyeball her trajectory and launch herself the good old way – with a kick of the legs. A flick of a switch decompressed the cockpit, another unlocked the canopy and slid it forward. Olivia stepped up onto the edge of her ship’s hull, clearing its artificial gravity, her boots’ magnetic soles automatically latching onto the steel surface.

It had been a while since she had last gone for an EVA. Her heart beat loudly and she could feel the blood pumping across her temples. Olivia took a deep breath, focusing her eyes on the ship lodged in the oversized block of ice, a mere hundred meters away. Adjusting her posture, she dropped into a crouch and disengaged her mag-boots.

This’d better be worth it, she thought to herself.

Releasing her breath, she lunged forward, plummeting away from her craft and into the cold of space.