[STORY] Two and a Half Rides

[drakensis]

The transponder (okay, a severely modified cellphone tied to the car's radio, but that's what passed for a transponder out here) chirped.
"Hi," said the message. "This is the pilot of the Vauxhall Cavalier you're probably looking at right now. At the moment, I'm in a parking orbit and I can't come to the phone. This probably means I'm asleep, on the pot, or most likely trying to stay as still as possible relative to Earth in order to maintain my internet connection over several light hours."
"If you're considering interupting me, and in the event that is should be the latter circumstance, please believe me when I say that I've got a little toy aboard that may well pop your structural integrity like a needle to a balloon and all I need is a test subject. So! If you feel lucky, please dial one-seven-zero-one. If you don't then go away."
"Is he for real?" asked the passenger of the Winnebago closing in on said piece-of-British-automotive-industry/improvised-starship.
The driver considered this and then dialled the required four numbers. "Probably."
The first sound to come through the phone was a few bars of music that were hastily dialled back in volume. "You're lucky, the download just finished. Who is it?"
"It's me," the driver said, apparently feeling that this sufficed.
"Lone Star! And his sidekick: Puke!"
"Very funny," the driver sighed.D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

I have had, thus far in my occasionally interesting life, three rides - vehicles that I not only operate, but actually own. Well, more like two-and-a-half. The as-yet-nameless Dodge Charger in the forward cargo bay of the Saint Bernard has yet to make any of this travel under it's own power. But it's still mine.
The first, of course, was and is the Jaime Retief, (named for the diplomat of course). She started life as the possession of a friend of mine, who discovered just before Handwavium hit the collective Fen subconciousness like a very bucket of cold water, that it was not going to be a legal road vehicle as of the next time he took it to get taxed. (It was pretty decrepit even before I and a few others taught him to drive in it). Once I got over the 'My God, this is so damn COOL' reaction, I realised that if I wanted to join in this dash to the stars (or at least to the planets) then I would need: a) Handwavium and b) a vehicle.
I slept on the decision, sent some postage money to a friend of a friend; and then offered to match whatever my friend could get for his car as scrap if he'd sell it to me as was. It took a week for me to arrange for it to be towed out to the street behind my house, and the same day that it arrived, so did my Handwavium. It was clearly an omen and I set to work. Five minutes later I concluded that I had no FUCKING clue what I was doing and used half of my Handwavium to paint the bitch before going inside to get online and figure out what I wanted and what I would thus need.
Let this be a lesson to you. Never. Ever. Leave Handwavium unattended when you're trying to be creative with it. My computers were set up in a room that didn't look out over the car. The first I knew about the results was when I went to the bathroom, which did, and noted that it was rather brighter outside than I'd expect for the time of day. Once the pressure on my bladder had faded slightly, I noticed that the source of the light was down rather than up. Pretty much on the street... just about where...
My bathroom windows are, naturally, not something you can see through, so my first thought was that the car was on fire. Once I yanked the window open, I realised that it was merely, well, glowing. I almost did myself a most embarassing injuring, zipping up as I went down the stairs.
The Jaime was still glowing when I reached her, but the glow faded away the instant I, hesitantly, touched one knuckle against the surface. All the light seemed to drawing away into the point of contact, leaving the car with an oily sheen in which there appeared to be shapes moving... or perhaps not. The seams of the doors had also vanished. Whatever I was going to do for transport was now apparently going to require working with a car that didn't have any doors.
I have never, in my entire life, ever been so tempted to go down to the nearest pub and drink it dry. How the FRAK was I going to do anything with a car that I couldn't get into?
One of the windows slid open.
"Oh you have got to be kidding," I exclaimed.
The window slid closed and then opened again.
She - it had to be a she! - was winking at me.
I took a deep breath and went to get a printout of the advice I'd collected online and the rest of my Handwavium. Evidently this was going to be an all-night job.D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

At the end of the first all-nighter, I had a Vauxhall Cavalier that could (with some warm-up time) hover a few feet above the ground. In retrospect, it was a good thing that I tested this at four in the morning, so none of my neighbours knew about it. It took another week of doing odd bits of work in my front room and two all-nighters installing the parts, but eventually I had a car that by all tests I could make, should be capable of at least reaching orbit and then returning in reasonable safety.
I'd just finished packing - I was literally putting my Last Will and Testament on the kitchen table - when I got call from the friend I'd bought the car from. He knew what I was doing, of course, and was calling in a favour (so to speak - we don't actually track these things). Apparently, a friend of one of his friends was in trouble with the post-Soviet 'Danelaw. His own spacecraft had been confiscated and he was holed up outside of St. Petersburg and needed a lift up into orbit. I was the first person they'd managed to get word to about who was on Earth and had a spacecraft, albeit an untested one. Could I...?
Two hours later, I was hammering across the Baltic at a height of half a mile and trying to sneak through the military radar networks of Russia and the Baltic states. This would be challenging for a professional military officer piloting a sophisticated modern stealth fighter. On the other hand, the networks were designed around the threat of modern stealth fighters, not a three-door sedan piloted by a Fen who hadn't even driven a car in six years.
The SAMs were overkill though.
They lost me over St. Petersburg, largely because I got lost myself, and I finally managed to set down in the park that had been named as a rendevous only twenty minutes later than expected. No sooner was I on the ground than I got rushed by three teenagers, who were being chased several men in what I presume were actually Russian police uniforms. I could only presume that these were the hitchikers I was looking for. I say 'could only presume' because either they didn't speak a word of English or their accents were uniformly impenetrable.
Nonetheless, I opened the passenger-side window (there was no passenger side seat (and hadn't removing that through a window been fun) and one at a time they threw their bags in, dived headfirst through the open window, and huddled at the back of the boot (I'd also repositioned the back seat to give easy access to that).
About three meters short of the lead police officer, I opened up the Jaime's throttle and headed more or less east. The Russian Air Force caught up after a fashion as I was over what I think was Moscow, but they couldn't really match altitudes and they quit panicking when we were over the Urals and evidently far too high to do anything more hostile to the Rodina than give it the finger.
At the time, I had no idea that it was going to be more than a week before I made it back home. Or that one of the teenagers I had picked up would later be better known as the Karasukage of the Village of Hidden Asteroid.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

So there I was, all that kept me from strangling the crazy Russian Naruto-fans the fragile restraint of my seatbelt.
My Russian is limited to three words, two of them a deadly insult, and their English was, well, accented. Their Nihonlish had a much better accent but a rather small accent. Such are the woes of living in a multi-ethnic society. I suppose I couldn't blame them, the three of them having learnt English from school and the internet, which is mostly populated by Americans.
I could probably have forgiven the obsession with Naruto - I'm very fond of the series myself. But their obsession with certain characters...
It was well for the future Village of Hidden Asteroid that (of all the ninja arts) they were focused on taijutsu. After all, the arts of manipulating chakra remain in their 'burning youth' even to this day. The use of fists, feet and sharp implements are easier to learn.
But you do remember who the taijutsu specialists were in the source material, don't you?
Given my early experience of the proto-ninja nation, those who know of it sometimes wonder why I didn't join them when I kicked the dirt off my feet full time. The answer is that I have spent almost ten hours trapped in a smallish space with Ivan 'Maito-vich' Solkin and two of his students (and much more time later, but I'm getting ahead of myself again). And I never want to risk experiencing that again. (Plus, he occasionally calls me his Kakashi. I really don't want to know what he means about that).
It was with a certain relief that I managed to make my way to the one of the space stations that had begin to spring up across the solar station. Utopia Planetia 7 was the current base of the Trekkies who had made it this far, and if a little straitlaced for me, they were as hospitable as I had heard, albeit not the universes' greatest engineers. (The reason for Utopia Planetia 7 was somewhat similar to the reasoning behind Babylon 5 but didn't involve bombs or time travel).
The station was experiencing a little difficulty with it's docking bays so we had to board using space suits. Fortunately, all three of the wouldbe-shinobi had brought theirs with them. I tried very hard not to watch Maito-vich and the other bloke getting into their suits and they were careful to ensure that I didn't get a look at the girl when she was getting into hers. All three suits were green spandex and fell into the class of 'skinsuits', although they then festooned them with ninja gear of questionable provenance. Mine was a bit bulkier, having been made out of some snow gear, and was thus not quite as cold as theirs (although since we were passing through space with a temperature of absolute zero, they had to be fairly good at maintaining an internal temperature).
Inside I passed the three of them off to the local leaders, got patted on the back for the rescue and went off to look around. Fortunately the local Captain had time to give a noob space traveller a few tips, the first of which was that I probably shouldn't go home just yet as the Russians were really very unhappy with me. The second was that right at the moment, costs were a mite higher for little things like food than I could afford if I was to hang around here for a few weeks.
The solution was for me sign to up with one of the asteroid mining crews. This was still a very new industry at the time - I'd be joining the fifth group ever (sixth actually, word hadn't reached UP7 about one), but they would organise food and the like, taking the costs out of my share of the profits of the operation. It would have the advantage of taking me out of sight for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months and make me a bit of cash (always welcome). And as I had my own transport, I'd get a better share of the profits than I would if I had to get a lift out to the Belt. The only downside was that I'd only got a week or so away from work, so I'd have to quit my job.
So I made some bullshit excuses via email, resigned, effective of my holiday running out, and called one of my multitude of cousins, with instructions to keep an eye on my house for a little while.
Then I made ready to go out to the Belt and earn my living in a new and doubtless tedious fashion. Can you guess which new and transportless fellow miners hitched a ride with me? I'll give you a hint: they were all Russian...
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

I won't bore you with the long story of what it's like to mine asteroids. There are hundreds of Fen who've done it and will give you chapter and verse at the drop of a hat. It's probably less painful to go dig out a documentary on the subject, but if you really want to know then ask around and you'll find someone willing to bore you silly about it.
Suffice to say that weeks after I left the Earth, I was headed back there. I'd ditched the Russian ninja squad back in the Belt, where they'd been mumbling about setting up their 'Hidden Village'. The scary thing was that they actually had some recruits. I figured, at best, there might be a semi-useful Search and Rescue operation out there next year. Boy, was I underestimating them. But that's another story for another time.
So I and my trusty Vauxhall Cavalier, the Jaime Retief, hovered in orbit for a while, catching up on the news and various mailing lists for a day or so, and then I headed down into a reentry pattern. Even after a single month, there was noticably more traffic out there. I wasn't heading straight home - I'd agreed to drop off a few packages and letters for some of the Fen staying up in space, so I would be making a stop off in North America to get them into the postal service. Two stops actually, one in the US and the other in Canada. Since it didn't especially matter to me where I mailed them from, I decided to indulge myself and decided to put down in Seattle first. There was a pretty good second-hand bookshop there if I recalled correctly, and I what would normally have been a year's salary in hand after a month of asteroid mining.
What I hadn't considered, or to be more precise, hadn't seen the significance of, was that my descent would start over the Siberian Plain and progress eastwards over various Asian mountain ranges before I reached the north Pacific. And the Russian Federation Air Force were still twitchy about the way I'd escaped them previously, so they were playing very close attention to all the Fen air travel. I don't know how they determined that I was me - probably recognised Jaime from a satellite image - but I was intercepted just short of the coast by a pair of aircraft I later identified as Su-35. I suppose that I should feel flattered - the Flanker-E is probably the best fighter in the Russian inventory and there aren't very many of them.
Being fair, if they just wanted to shoot me down they would probably have succeeded: by the time I noticed them, they were well inside missile range and could have reduced me to flaming wreckage any time they wanted. But what they apparently wanted was to force me down. Instead they introduced me to their presence by crossing their cannonfire right in front of me.
It didn't take me totally by surprise - I'd noticed them on my (admittedly somewhat rudimentary) sensors a minute or so previously, but I hadn't known who they were or their intentions until then. I still practically wet myself when they started shooting. The automatic reaction for a real pilot, I suspect, would have been to break away from the shots. However, I was honestly too shocked and if they hadn't quit firing to avoid actually hitting me, I'd have been perforated by their cannonfire.
Instead, once I had gathered my wits, I lowered Jaime's nose and headed for the ground alright - accelerating as I did so. If I stayed high up then there was essentially no chance of avoiding their infinitely greater firepower (I had nothing whatsoever, thus the high ratio) but down amid the ground clutter they would be much less able to track me.
The result of course, was that they wound up chasing me for a very long time as we put two of the world's better jet fighters up against an amateur job of handwavium. Before long it became evident that they had given up the idea of shooting at me but they were certainly doing their best to keep track of me. I don't know if they tried to speak to me, or even if they were pinging me with their radars, because I was far too busy trying to negotiate my way across Russia without flying into some of the trees.
The main advantages I had, as against their vastly greater experience of air-to-air combat, were that I could fly lower and longer than they could. Lower meant that they had trouble picking me out of the ground clutter a lot of the time, and longer meant that after about an hour they had to break off to get some fuel.
Twenty minutes later I was out over the sea, and forty minutes after that I'd left the island of Sakhalin behind me and was heading across the Pacific at a low level. I'd changed my plans a bit. Seattle was as far as I was going today: I'd get a hotel room for the night and get myself cleaned up a bit before I went on to Toronto and then later, home.D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Sirrocco]

Two thoughts:
- Asteroid mining paying out 12 times as much money in a month as your last job? For essentially unskilled labor? (admittedly, it's unskilled labor plus handwaved car, but...)
- Flying into Seattle, given the Potential For Unfriendliness sounds a bit risky to me. I suppose you might be able to get away with making landfall somewhere relatively unpopulated (Though I don't have any *clue* how far away that would be) and driving in. Was that the plan, or am I missing something?

[drakensis]

As far as income goes, I'm looking at the asteroid mining being a partnership deal as far as these things go - bear in mind that it's hazardous, a relatively new industry that's carried out entirely on the basis of extra-vehicular activity. assume that the asteroid's metals are worth, say $2 million profit to the Fen-side of the workforce. Assume 100 workers, half with a double share for providing transport, splitting 75% of the take (the rest to the 'experienced' asteroid miners) and that's $20,000 each with no tax or other deductions. That's a below average wage for a year, but it's not exactly poverty. For comparison, a dozen or so 'experienced' miners (the permanent company whose name escapes me) would take about twice as much.
As far as flying to Seattle, the General Lee's not expecting unfriendliness, although he's not planning on setting down anywhere too obvious either. The Jaime isn't functional as a car, but if he can find somewhere quiet to land (flying without lights after sunset isn't too obvious and isn't likely to be heard over the city noise) then he can get around with a taxi or the like. Of course, this won't work if law enforcement are looking for him, but why would anyone be looking for him in Seattle specifically?D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

There's something about stooging around in space, it gets you away from the general calendar events. I'd been amused to find out that it was not only December when I got back, it was lateDecember.
Thus, I spent almost as much time in Seattle and Toronto bookshops looking for presents as I did gleefully splurging on books for myself. By the time I left Toronto, the inside of the Jaime looked like Yomiko Readman lived there. There was also an overnight bag, a bag of christmas gifts and barely room for me.
Six hours later, I was hovering over northern London, trying to navigate without having a very good view of the ground and in the dark. I think it took me as much time to get from there to my parent's house as it did to get from Toronto to the Atlantic. Eventually I reached what I was pretty sure was them (all these little commuter places look the same to me) and set the Jaime down in front of the garage.
Knocking on the door got me a familiar face and "Merry Christmas" got me a hug. After weeks in the Asteroid Belt with crazy Russians and almost-as-crazy Americans, a hug from Mum was just what the doctor ordered.
"Welcome back!" she said, ushering me inside. "How was your trip?"
"A little long," I said dryly, sitting on the stairs to remove my boots. "I haven't been home myself yet. How are you?"
I've seen what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars, but there is not, and has never been, anything sweeter than being able to turn up unannounced on a doorstep and being treated like the prodigal son.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.