With the cropping of problems in Elite Dangerous Odyssey, I had the perfect impulse to brush this idea off. This is why we keep projects shelved and not deleted entirely.
CHAPTER 1
One full year had gone by since the early days, when one very specific Jason Blaze (
THE Admiral Golden-Knight, self-proclaimed "Hero of Earth" despite Congress' explicit refusal to acknowledge his feats he performed in the eyes of GalNet) had first come to do right by his bloodline and would claw his way up to the Triple Elite. It had hardly been lonely at the top, even though there was no female in sight - well, maybe some punks with extravagant dyed hair, though some of the lore said that even the MEN project grotesque cosmetic chemicals like primadonas. Only a couple months ago, the situation in Danger Star had been scrubbed from the records, but not from this eager young pilot's memory. And now, hardly a week ago, the Pilots Federation had pushed a universal update to all ships, though that came with many side effects...including some very broken light switches in the cockpit of the Federal Corvette
Hero Leader.
On the other hand, the big key it brought had been functioning spacesuits, so now the pilots no longer needed to wear their skin-tight flight suits bearing ninja shoes. More importantly, for ego purposes, the "prime real estate" in the core systems had once again been open for business! It had been forever since the "First Mapped" and "First Discovered" tags were claimed by other middle-aged men while this hero had been a mere teenager brimming with rebellious defiance.
So with that, the race for the prime real estate was on!
All alone, with just his Corvette, he went from system to system in order to touch down on the planet, since the "First Footfall" tag would be immortalized until the end of time. All the spots were gone in a matter of days, so Golden-Knight had to hurry like an eager dog marking its territory. Setting down the Corvette with all the spiky mountains and subtler hills had been inconvenient, particularly with the tedium of gravity messing the Frame Shift Drive in ways where it does not decelerate fast at the end or accelerate fast at the beginning, which was the absolute opposite of optimal racing performance. The stars still glowed with a blinding contrast that stood out as the only light sources against the absolute blackness of space, so much that certain patches of darkness started to cause subtle feelings only described as "existential crisis".
At one system with a name not intended to be pronounced by human tongues but more aimed at accurate scientific cataloging, there had been a scattering of cargo deposits. When Golden-Knight went to visit on foot, a handful of automated drones popped out from the ground. He instantly sprinted for his idling ship. While the drones left him alone, he saw four dots magically spawn far into the sky on his way. Those spots grew bigger and bigger as he hurried for his ship. Winded and unable to keep up the pace, against all his superhuman conditioning, he eventually made out the triangular shapes of spaceships.
He could barely catch his breath when the arcade-inspired sound effects of pew-pews from blue energy shots scored at the huge top hull of his Corvette. He cursed as he ran and jumped with all his jetpack and legs would allow, but by the time he had been climbing the boarding ladder under the belly, the pew-pews breached the shields, electrifying his whole body as he clung onto the metal ladder, and even as he resisted long enough to get back into the cockpit, he started up the thrusters and their booting sequence.
Lifting off from the planet, the Frame Shift Drive (henceforth abbreviated as FSD) had been disabled. The CMDR names of those ships could not be identified, only providing a vague error. The weirder issue was that from his point of view at the time, the FSD had been working as intended. He spun it up, and it had counted down as normal.
"4"
"3"
"2"
"1"
"ENGAGE!"
FWOOSH!
Stuck in the so-called "Braben Tunnel" in honor of the genius himself David Braben, that's when it made sense. With the enemies flying past his cockpit, Golden-Knight could still make use of his Grade-A God-given Eyeballs, and spotted the wing of four, all flying uniform ships of a very specific model and a very specific colored paint job.
"The Orange Sidewinders!"
His shipped rocked even despite being stuck in this "Braben Tunnel", and with a final uniquely powerful EMP pointed squarely at his face right on the bridge, everything went black as he passed out...and his ship too fell unconscious as well as its pilot.
CHAPTER 2
Once he came to, Golden-Knight found himself completely naked (yes, boy-parts on full display) and stuck in a cell made of concrete and solid metal. As he woke up with a manly groan, he had been jolted by the violent entry of his warden. "MEAL TIME, SCUMBAG!" And a packaged MRE had been chucked into the nude pilot's face, landing on his lap.
"Wha? Why am I here?"
"Why AREN'T you here."
Golden-Knight shook his head in confusion. "I don't understand...am I special? Or, uh..."
"No, you're not special. We've rounded up about a couple thousand other skin-suits like yourself." Right on queue, there had been a collective choir of moans from despair and/or pain, with the rare odd howl of anger and frustration.
"I heard about you...the Orange Sidewinders. Are you just glorified criminals?"
The warden laughed deep from the belly. "Partially. It's closer to what you nerds call 'ganking', but we don't kill; we only capture."
"Well," Golden-Knight said with a shrug and noticing how there isn't much escape, "If you can't beat them, join them. How can I speak with your leader or recruiter."
Another even meaner laugh followed. "Do you think we're some kind of CLUB?!! HA, no! We don't clan up in your so-called Squadrons, either! You wanna be an Orange Sidewinder, just get the ship, get the paint, and start disabling other Commanders...kids or casuals like yourself where Commander-on-Commander action is like KRYPTONITE! That's all there is to it. It's all decentralized."
Just as the guy walked away from running out of patience with this kid asking so many questions, one last question slipped out of the prisoner's mouth: "WHY are you DOING all this?"
"The same reason you go blowing up ships. Because it's FUN!"
And then the giant metal door slammed shut, even more aggressively than it was opened a couple minutes ago.
One long breath of air came through, and there had been not a single datapad in sight within that cell. It had only been later, during the forced communal showering where gruff men (and sometimes the odd female; there was NO segregation based on boy-parts or girl-parts OR the even rarer lack thereof), that along the way Golden-Knight caught a glimpse through a dark tinted window...and there, he saw the rectangular shape of a computer monitor. He would NEED to get to that in order to send a distress message!
With that plan, along the way back, he came through a mess hall, where other members of the Orange Sidewinders could eat. Golden-Knight, like their other prisoners, had been held in solitary confinement, but along the way through the nicer eating area (nicer by the standards of getting an MRE literally thrown into your face), he snatched a metal fork. Once back alone in his cell, he used his unarmed hands and some leverage from the sink in his cell to snap all but one of the fork's prongs. The last prong had gotten bent as a side effect, but for his "lockpicking" needs, it still became good enough.
The patrol routes had been airtight, but that same fork had been chucked to create the cliche distraction that allowed him enough room to slip through the door he saw earlier, and down the hallway into the room on the right. From there, he gasped and wanted to exclaim, but couldn't due to the obvious stealthy nature of his shenanigans. Because yes, it WAS "A COMPUTER!"
Booting it up, though, and it came into a lock screen for a password. Naturally, rummaging through some nearby drawers revealed pages upon pages of passwords, where one of them inevitably pointed to this very machine. So, upon logging in and getting to the galactic equivalent of "The Internet" from traditional Earth days, he could finally write to a very special unit called "Frontier Help".
His message had been quick and simple:
"CMDR Golden-Knight
Abducted by Orange Sidewinders
Last Known Coordinates: KOA ENTRAHA 3
Please Help!"
As soon as the message had been sent, he had been caught at the terminal. The anarchist punk saw his fleshy back and screamed, "YOU ANIMAL!" Before he could react, he barely started getting into an unarmed fighting stance, but he got beat to the punch by a stun baton of electricity right to the heart.
One jump-cut later, and he found himself tied up to a chair, promptly kicked backwards, to which the two members of the Orange Sidewinders there had went to place a piece of fabric onto his face and subsequently dumped a whole gallon jug of water onto his face. They had effectively waterboarded him for his transgression.
CHAPTER 3
MEANWHILE, back at "Frontier Help", the dispatch operator (a bit like the person on the phone for a 911 call) tried saying, "Please send a ticket." No answer from Golden-Knight.
"Hello?"
Three others all took that on, all saying the same thing: "Please send a ticket." None of them came across in any hurry. It took one whole real days before one CMDR Vulcan puffed out the chest, and just said, "Hang on. I got this." The second whole real day was scouting and plotting the breach maneuver required for the rescue. This hadn't been guns-blazing, but was more "under cover of night" with cutter torch - the same machine used to slice red panels and red locks. It whirred at the back of the concrete cell, which roused Golden-Knight who could not do anything but restlessly stare at the ceiling, in solitary confinement, with only a toilet, a sink, and a solid slab of steel for a "bed" to keep him company.
"You Golden-Knight?"
"Yes...how'd you know?"
"I got your FID. I'm here to rescue you."
The ship used for the escape had been a Federal Dropship, specifically the sort of model that does NOT appear in any of the crashes which have been conspiring. Compared to the slowness of the cell where it felt like time turned painfully glacial, the ride to an adjacent star system might as well have been teleportation.
His Federal Corvette
Hero Leader had also been recovered, and while a bit dinged up, a minimal maintenance fee had been no sweat for an Admiral. He had to rearrange all his controls, since the panel got fried by the Orange Sidewinders and as a direct result everything went back to factory settings. Again, though, that was only a minor consequence when compared to imprisonment and torture by waterboarding.
Some time later, the rush for the initial land grab had come and gone; all the prime "First Footfall" spots had been claimed during those days of imprisonment. And the Alliance Elections had minimal turnout from all independent pilots, unquestionably because either they're doing related footfall exercises...and/or were fellow prisoners to the Orange Sidewinders. Once Golden-Knight got back out, and accepted the reality that the chance had forever come and gone, he just went to do some shopping, and a couple of contracts for settlements. The guard patrols were ironclad, so he quickly figured out that "restoration" had been the way to go, with the fixer outfit - rather than combat garb - ideal for collecting "materials" needed to "upgrade".
But, while at the concourse of Jameson's station, he took a five minute break to look out the window, admiring the spinning of the station and all the adventures so far. Of course, yet ANOTHER adventure was literally heading his way: it was a Taupe Cobra. And on that note, the Admiral narrated:
"Aww Nuts."
