Jump Drive Failure (Fiction)
Had a very weird Elite related dream last night…
In the dream I was sitting at my computer playing Elite, I’d just taken off from an outpost and whilst leaving the ‘mass lock’ area I was plotting a route back to my home system…
Route set I aligned the ship up with my destination and initiated the jumping procedure to the next system. As the Frame Shift Drive engaged and I entered hyperspace, settle the throttle to zero and sat back to relax for a moment.
All of a sudden the ship lurched as if we had hit an invisible barrier which then threw the vessel in to a uncontrolled spin, yet still under the power of the Frame Shift Drive.
Warning lights were flashing, the ships AI was shouting ‘Jump Drive Failure’ and I was sitting there thinking “Oh Frell..! What’s happening… There’s been no reports of ‘Witch Space’ or ‘Thargoids’ for years”.
We dropped out of hyperspace and as the spinning slowed I could see that place I’d arrived at was unlike anything we’ve seen in the game so far. ‘Space’ looked as if it was soft focus and slightly creamy. Not creamy in colour I hasten to add, more in the texture of the Space!
Suddenly a whole load of signals appeared on the scanner, I looked up and saw three, four, five, six, ten or more Thargoid warships racing towards me. I checked the ships shields and weapons, everything was at full power but they’d be no way I could survive an attack by all of them. I thought that this would be the end of me, no one would be able to rescue my escape pod from wherever I was. So I prepared myself to be blown to smithereens…
As they approached I sat there sweating… the sound of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie seemed to be coming from somewhere, perhaps from my old memories of playing Elite in the 1990s!
Closer and closer they came… and then flew straight pass me, they ignored me totally. Not even a drone ship stopped to examine me. And then I noticed the markings on the ships, I realised these weren’t by design… it was battle damage. Huge rents in the bodywork of their ships, scorch marks scattered across them. Something had attacked them and they were fleeing!
My mind racing trying to work out what could’ve made the Thargoids flee like this? Stories from the strange Thargoid Mythology about a warlike alien race that had come before them… Could this be them? Could this be what our greatest foes were running from?
I was dragged out of my thoughts by the blaring ship’s collision alarm, perhaps the Thargoids had come back for me. But no there was nothing on the scanner. Then the cockpit lit up, all the space around was glowing as a large portal formed before me. It wasn’t like the tears in space that appear when one of the Imperial Capital Ships jumps in to a system. This was like a pool of light, as if someone was shining a bright torch in to a wall of fog and it pulsed as it grew larger. What seemed like a gravitational forcefield pushed me to the side and I found myself again spinning out of control. I tried to keep a view on the portal as I span and then I saw the enemy the Thargoids were fleeing..
Strange fluid like ships were racing out of the portal. Each was about the size of a Python, their hulls were perfectly smooth and I couldn’t see any canopies, weapon points or even engines! Yet they came through the portal at great speeds and manoeuvrability.
And then something huge started to appear, it was at least as big as out Capitol Ships… if not bigger.
My ships console was flashing, somehow the navicomp had got a fix and the frame shift drive was ready to be activated. I was torn between staying to see this new ship, or leaving now to bring a report of what I’d seen back to Imperial Powers. The longer I stayed the more information I could gather, yet the greater danger I would be in.
But then the decision was taken away from me, one of their ships had seen me and opened fire. Some sort of energy weapon that ripped my shields to pieces and sent my flying from my chair in to the console in front of me. I grabbed for something to hold and hit the jump button, hoping that my ship still had power to jump…
I jumped… The sudden ‘falling off a step’ type of jump which wakes you up. I sat there in bed, heart racing as I remembered the dream I was just having.
http://www.fenris.co.uk/elite/project/jump-drive-failure/
Had a very weird Elite related dream last night…
In the dream I was sitting at my computer playing Elite, I’d just taken off from an outpost and whilst leaving the ‘mass lock’ area I was plotting a route back to my home system…
Route set I aligned the ship up with my destination and initiated the jumping procedure to the next system. As the Frame Shift Drive engaged and I entered hyperspace, settle the throttle to zero and sat back to relax for a moment.
All of a sudden the ship lurched as if we had hit an invisible barrier which then threw the vessel in to a uncontrolled spin, yet still under the power of the Frame Shift Drive.
Warning lights were flashing, the ships AI was shouting ‘Jump Drive Failure’ and I was sitting there thinking “Oh Frell..! What’s happening… There’s been no reports of ‘Witch Space’ or ‘Thargoids’ for years”.
We dropped out of hyperspace and as the spinning slowed I could see that place I’d arrived at was unlike anything we’ve seen in the game so far. ‘Space’ looked as if it was soft focus and slightly creamy. Not creamy in colour I hasten to add, more in the texture of the Space!
Suddenly a whole load of signals appeared on the scanner, I looked up and saw three, four, five, six, ten or more Thargoid warships racing towards me. I checked the ships shields and weapons, everything was at full power but they’d be no way I could survive an attack by all of them. I thought that this would be the end of me, no one would be able to rescue my escape pod from wherever I was. So I prepared myself to be blown to smithereens…
As they approached I sat there sweating… the sound of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie seemed to be coming from somewhere, perhaps from my old memories of playing Elite in the 1990s!
Closer and closer they came… and then flew straight pass me, they ignored me totally. Not even a drone ship stopped to examine me. And then I noticed the markings on the ships, I realised these weren’t by design… it was battle damage. Huge rents in the bodywork of their ships, scorch marks scattered across them. Something had attacked them and they were fleeing!
My mind racing trying to work out what could’ve made the Thargoids flee like this? Stories from the strange Thargoid Mythology about a warlike alien race that had come before them… Could this be them? Could this be what our greatest foes were running from?
I was dragged out of my thoughts by the blaring ship’s collision alarm, perhaps the Thargoids had come back for me. But no there was nothing on the scanner. Then the cockpit lit up, all the space around was glowing as a large portal formed before me. It wasn’t like the tears in space that appear when one of the Imperial Capital Ships jumps in to a system. This was like a pool of light, as if someone was shining a bright torch in to a wall of fog and it pulsed as it grew larger. What seemed like a gravitational forcefield pushed me to the side and I found myself again spinning out of control. I tried to keep a view on the portal as I span and then I saw the enemy the Thargoids were fleeing..
Strange fluid like ships were racing out of the portal. Each was about the size of a Python, their hulls were perfectly smooth and I couldn’t see any canopies, weapon points or even engines! Yet they came through the portal at great speeds and manoeuvrability.
And then something huge started to appear, it was at least as big as out Capitol Ships… if not bigger.
My ships console was flashing, somehow the navicomp had got a fix and the frame shift drive was ready to be activated. I was torn between staying to see this new ship, or leaving now to bring a report of what I’d seen back to Imperial Powers. The longer I stayed the more information I could gather, yet the greater danger I would be in.
But then the decision was taken away from me, one of their ships had seen me and opened fire. Some sort of energy weapon that ripped my shields to pieces and sent my flying from my chair in to the console in front of me. I grabbed for something to hold and hit the jump button, hoping that my ship still had power to jump…
I jumped… The sudden ‘falling off a step’ type of jump which wakes you up. I sat there in bed, heart racing as I remembered the dream I was just having.
http://www.fenris.co.uk/elite/project/jump-drive-failure/
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