This is my third story following the "Real Life EVN" series. Everything that happens in this story is inspired by how events actually unfolded when I jumped into the Kerella system. This story is set significantly earlier than the other two stories in this series. The other stories in the series are as follows:

1. "So Much For Impartiality"
2. "My First Rescue"
3. "The Maiden Voyage of the Indigo Star"
4. "Good Intentions Lead To Bad Consequences"
5. "A Trap"
6. "There & Back Again, An IDA Frigate's Tale" (will be receiving a rewrite a bit later to fix various story and grammar issues)
7. "Reunion" (very tentative title, will be released after the rewrite of There & Back Again, and after I find something in game to write about )




When I first started my career as an independent pilot I was of course a bit naive about galactic politics, but one thing I always told myself is that no matter what, I would stay impartial to the world around me. I thought all I wanted to do was make my a name for myself, and a lot of money. That changed on July 26th, 1177. It had been less than a week since I had bought my Sigma Light Shuttle, and less than a month since I had graduated from the Federation flight academy on Viking. I was on my way to the South Manchester system to deliver some medical goods to the city of Truro on the planet Cornwall. My jump into the Kerella system had gone smoothly and I intended to stay in system for a few hours while my recently purchased solar panel recharged my shuttle's energy reserves. But after only about a couple of minutes of drifting a distress signal came over one of the unencrypted military channels.

"...repeat! This is Federation Destroyer Rubies under heavy attack by Auroran forces! We need help NOW or we aren't going to make it!" came the captain's terrified call. As I tried to figure out how to point my shuttle's long range camera at the Destroyer a second voice came over the comm.

"Destroyer Rubies, this is Wild Geese captain Charles Duffy, hold on, help is on the way. I'm about four minutes out of weapons range and a whole bunch of my friends are coming right behind me!"

As if on cue a group of ships, a Modified Starbridge, a pair of Valkyries, and what appeared to be a trio of small Vipers, blazed past me, so close that I could feel their engine exhaust buffet my small ship. Just as I finished inputting the last of my course changes into my Shuttle's primitive navigation computer there was a loud series of quick bangs that nearly threw me out of my seat. Seconds later one of the Valkyries flashed by my cockpit window, maybe 100 meters away. I had somehow drifted into the middle of the battle! In the distance I could just barely make out the massive Federation Destroyer, and beyond that I could clearly see the form of an Auroran Carrier, backlit by the local star. For the next ten minutes it took my best piloting just to stay out of the way of the opposing forces. As best as I could tell nobody was targeting me specifically, but every once in a while I'd catch a stray burst of fire that would plunge my shields to nearly zero. Finally after many tense moments I managed to dodge my way to the outer edge of the battle.

I stopped my shuttle at took a look back through my long range camera. The Federation Destroyer my camera was still locked onto was now nothing more than a burning hulk, I could barely even tell what type of ship it had originally been. I switched my camera's target and watched as the Wild Geese ships formed up for another attack run on the huge Auoran Carrier. They closed and released a variety of missiles, but quickly the Carrier's fighters intercepted the formation. The remaining Valkyrie took a devastating railgun hit to it starboard engine and tumbled out of control. A moment later a Firebird closed in destroyed it with a burst of chaingun fire. The two remaining Vipers met a similar fate, one was torn apart in a duel with a Firebird, while the other managed to ram into the side of a Phoenix destroying both fighters. The last Wild Geese ship, the impressive Modified Starbridge, fought extremely well. It killed the last two Firebirds and was about to turn back on the Carrier when a flash of green light caught it in the side. A trio of Thunderhead fighters had engaged the light capital ship. Again the pilot of the Starbridge preformed far better than I expected, but his ship was quickly disabled by the flurry of missiles launched by the heavy fighters. What came next still breaks my heart.

In what was obviously a conflict of cultures the pilot of the badly damaged Starbridge pleaded for his life on an open channel, he said he simply wished to return home to his family. Just before making his final attack run the pilot of the Auroran Thunderhead replied in a disgusted voice, saying that his enemy should be honored to have fought so well, and be even more honored to be killed by such a skilled warrior. I closed my eyes and looked away just before the Thunderhead finished its attack. Now surely both cultures probably made sense to their respective pilots, but even to this day I find myself angry at that Auroran pilot. By the time I was ready to jump to the next system I had made a choice: While I would never kill for no reason, if I ever had the opportunity to assist someone, to save their lives from an Auroran attack, I would.

So much for impartiality.

Back in business Raga?

I guess so. Also congratulations on unlocking the director's commentary. Just don't expect it to be so easy for the other stories, it'll take real comments on those stories.



This story was written two years after "A Trap" and "There & Back Again" after I happened to stumble upon "There & Back Again" on my ftp server. Just after I finished reading "There & Back Again" I fired up EV: Nova and started a new game in, strict mode of course. I had completed one or two cargo runs when I jumped into the Kerella system only to have a Wild Geese reinforcement fleet jump in right on top of me. I really did have to dodge around a bit before I could get out of the middle of the battle, and I did really watch as most of the Wild Geese ships were destroyed, though not in the order or way described in the story.

One interesting thing to note is that the captain in the story was never actually impartial, even at the start. His training in the Federation flight academy saw to that. But what the academy and by extension the captain are good at is masking their true feelings, so much so that its actually pretty hard to pick up on the biases they have.

My ideas of the Sigma Light Shuttle are shown just a bit in this story. I figure the shuttle is not a tiny ship, it can after all hold several tons of cargo, or several passengers for an extended period of time. It just happens that all the ships around a shuttle are even bigger. Inside I imagine the cockpit being up front with some sort of window to see out the front. There would be two, or maybe three padded chairs equipped with harnesses just in case the artificial gravity failed.

In the story the captain struggles a bit with both the Shuttle's navigation system, and with its camera system. I did this for two (actually three) reasons. First the captain has only owned this ship for a month at most and most of his time has been spent doing other things like making sure cargo is loaded and unloaded correctly, performing various maintenance, sleeping, etc. He simply hasn't had time to play with things he doesn't need to use that often. The trouble with the navigation system and camera show that while he is in a spaceship, and any spaceship must be suitably complex to be realistic, it is also in a very cheap spaceship. It has the lowest end of everything in it, no fancy well designed interfaces here, heck I can imagine some controls actually being labeled in poor english, or maybe even a different language altogether. (The secret third reason things were hard to operate was to give enough time for the Shuttle to get to the next event, without these pauses the story will seem to move the shuttle along from place to place far too quickly.)

The captain's decision to attack Auroran vessels will come into play later in the series, but it will die down nearly as quickly. Despite the biased teachings he received from the Federation the captain is actually a fairly honest person, and events will happen that will make him again reconsider his opinions of this incident.

Nice work, Raga! I didn't notice your stuff here. I'll go read through the rest of it tomorrow....

Edit: Obviously I'm in need for sleep since I said "notice" in past tense.

Heh. Unfortunately, I don't usually comment on writing, for the simple reason English is not my first language so I'm not sure of what makes good writing (actually, I'm not even sure I know of what makes good writing in French… but I digress).

I applaud this; you obviously have a knack for writing that probably will come in handy later in life, and I recommend that you make this a more permanent hobby(if you already haven't done so.)

I'm waiting on the 7th installment of this series, then I'll leave. For now.

...

There is a tether, it attaches me to this board. Whenever I try to get away from the board it pulls me back. Talk about irritation, and nonsensical rambling...

That happens to everyone.

Interestingly I recently had a good idea for the in game basis for another story in the series. The thing I haven't figured out yet is how to tie it into the rest of the series...