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.
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.