Once the ship was finished being repaired, I walked back up the ramp into the cargo hold, and up to the cockpit. I still have my helmet on, so I just plugged it in right away, sat down and fastened the harness.
I try my best to re-start the ship before my skill prompts can activate, I get all the steps except one and have the ship humming along in short order. I also notice through no effort of my own during the startup process that my fuel is back to 100%. Must be some sort of game mechanic or maybe just part of the tutorial I don’t know.
“Control, Shuttle One. Ready for the next step in training please advise.”
“Shuttle One, Control. Glad to hear back from you next step in your training is twofold. First you are going to make an FTL jump, and then an atmospheric entry.”
My hands tremble with excitement as I hit the com button.
“Control, Shuttle One. What do I need to do?” I ask.
“It’s simple Shuttle One, below your radar orb you have a navigation MFDS. Select local celestial bodies and scroll until you see Hastias Seven. Select it and set as your destination. When ready you are clear for departure from the hangar bay contact control when one mile from station.”
I find the MFDS he mentioned and navigate through the options until I find Hastias Seven. I hit set as destination, a nav marker appears on my HUD pointing out and to the left of the hangar exit.
I pull up the knub to lift the shuttle off the deck. It raises slowly up to 5 feet and settles. I advance the throttle to 100% and the ship scoots out of the bay at 15 mph. Soon as I feel the tingle from passing the bay shield, I activate my own shields and disable the FR.
Expecting the sudden G acceleration, I prepare myself as the ship launches out into space at 4Gs. I quickly reduce the power and hit the CQC switch, the speed rapidly decreases at -4Gs. I guess I could turn on the CQC before toggling off the FR, I bet it would make this transition easier.
I align with the nav marker and call back to control.
“Control, Shuttle One, I am past the one-mile marker waiting for next instructions.”
“Shuttle One, Control. I guess I did not say exactly one mile so sure. It appears you are already aligned with Hastias Seven. All you need to do is find the FTL jump command on your panel, set your throttle to 100% and hold on tight. You are cleared to jump.”
Checking my alignment one last time I advance the engine output to 100%.
“Here goes nothing.” I say to myself.
I flip the safety cover off the FTL button and press it down.
Directly in-front of the ship turns deepest black, the stars on the sides form a ring around the ship and shift into the blue spectrum then streak into the red near the back until they vanish into blackness forming a sort of tube of shifting light. It’s as if the universe was unwinding itself into colors.
Awesome! The trip is surprisingly short though, it feels like only a few seconds pass before the trip ends.
The ring of light resolves back into stars in reverse, like the universe is collapsing back into reality. A small planet looms ahead of me, white clouds swirl around in the atmosphere. I can see green landmasses underneath the clouds and several vast oceans.
Magnificent, my first view of a planet from space and I am not disappointed. I could never in my lifetime imagine something so beautiful. It makes me feel so insignificant like how my problems as a human being could amount to anything compared to the vastness and splendor of the universe. We truly are ants pretending that we matter in this grand scheme of the cosmos.
A crackle over the radio interrupts my musings.
“Shuttle One, Hastias Orbital. Welcome to the system I see you are here for your atmospheric entry course. You are in luck weather conditions on Hastias are optimal for your training right now.”
I respond back. “Hastias Orbital, Shuttle One. What do you mean in luck? Are the conditions normally not good?”
“That is correct Shuttle One, this planet is normally a chaotic mess of storms and wind. That is why it is used for training.” Is it lucky then? How much would I learn doing this in the worst conditions instead of ideal ones? “For this portion the idea is to get you touched down on the planet’s surface at the designated training area. We are sending you the waypoint now.”
A nav marker shows up on the HUD with a ping. It looks like it’s an island in the middle of one of the oceans. I already notice a section of the MFDS turning blue. My skills indicating the next step. Checking the display, it has a checklist displayed and a button that says, “Atmospheric entry checklist”. Pressing it does nothing since it appears to already be on the page.
I flip the appropriate controls and point the ship at the planet.
A flight path appears on the HUD that leads towards the nav marker.
“Shuttle One, Hastias Orbital. You are clear for approach via nav route and landing on designated pad. Watch your airspeed and shield integrity, fly safe.”
I notice a temp indicator next to my ship icon on the left side and another on my HUD.
I’m trembling a bit as the planet starts filling my view screen. Isn’t this sort of thing usually reserved for astronauts and highly trained pilots and the like? Here I am barely having done a solo flight in a Cessna trying to land a ship from orbit like it’s something as common as going to pick up your mail from your driveway.
As soon as the ship hits atmosphere streaks of read cover the view port. I can see my shields activating under the heat, blue and red merge together like a psychedelic dance. Checking my shields display on the ship icon on my left they appear to be holding steady at 99%.
Vibrations flood through my controls as the winds start buffeting the ship around. I franticly try and keep my flight path indicator following the nav route. I see my airspeed start climbing up steadily it’s sitting at 900 mph and climbing.
A button on the throttle glows blue, reading it I see it says “reverse thrust”
Before pressing it, I pull the engine power down to 10% I don’t need to snap my neck slowing down, I think I’ve learned my lesson on rapid speed changes. Once I hit it, I hear the engines rev up into a low pitch rumble, like a truck’s engine brake. The airspeed starts dropping down 850, 700, 650. An altimeter has also started counting down from 120,000 feet and rapidly decreasing.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I’m breathing heavily as I fight to balance my speed and maintain the nav route, I don’t even notice the planet zipping by underneath me. After what seems like a lifetime of fighting the ship finally settles into true flight. I’m now cruising at 500mph at 35,000ft like an aircraft. The shields are no longer fighting off the heat of re-entry and are back up to 100%.
The radio chirps startling me.
“Shuttle One, Hastias Orbital. Passing you over to Hastias RAPCON, congrats on your first re-entry and not turning into a blazing fireball.”
“Hastias Orbital, Shuttle One. Thank you, and it wasn’t so bad really. How often do people end up as blazing fireballs?” I reply back whishing I could wipe the sweat from my forehead.
Instead of Orbital answering another voice chimes in.
“Shuttle One, RAPCON. You are still clear for approach for landing pad 14, reduce altitude to 10,000ft and reduce speed to 250 mph. Continue following nav route, it will guide you in from there. As for fireballs, more often than not.”
Sure, enough the nav routs path drops down to 10,00ft, I also throttle down the ship until the airspeed says 250mph. I can see the island approaching at a steady pace, the nav marker says it’s about 40 miles out still.
Almost like the game wanted to emphasize Orbitals point about entry a system message pops up.
System Message: Congrats Pilot you have earned “Not a shooting star” Achievement. For successfully entering atmosphere for the first time without turning into a streaking fireball across the sky. When this title is equipped winds during re-entry effect you 10% less, and heat tolerance is increased for re-entry by 10%.
Well, that’s handy might be worth looking into other achievements and see what free perks I can get!
Doing my cockpit sweep I notice a blip has appeared on my radar orb. It looks like it’s on the same inbound path I am. I wonder if it’s one of those others I saw at the orbital station doing training. I wonder how many of those continued the training or gave up. I can definitely see people washing out if they have a short attention span or want the instant gratification of ground combat or whatever else this game has to offer.
About 20 miles out from the island my tail has almost caught up to me. On the radar orb we are practically on top of each other.
“RAPCON, Shuttle One. I have another ship who appears to be nearly on top of me. What’s going on?” I ask into the radio waves.
All I get back is static.
I start to panic, “RAPCON, Shuttle One. Do you read me, another ship is on a collision course.”
More static.
Out of my side viewport I see a Mk 1 Starfighter pull up even with my ship.
They are so close I can see the person flying it. They have on an identical flight suit and helmet. They glance over at me and wave, I raise my hand to wave, and they quickly drop back out of my view.
Suddenly my radar orb flashes, and I see the ship behind me has changed from a green to a red color.
Streaks of light flash across my canopy, and my shields start to pulse.
They are shooting at me! My ship icon’s shields are flashing where they are taking damage. They drop from 100% down to 60% in short order.
I kick on the throttle and start weaving around the sky, trying to throw off their aim. I try and keep the general direction of my flight towards the landing pad, my hope is they have some sort of air defense system and can shoot this guy down.
My shields keep dropping every time they get hit, they are sitting down at 20% now. Even with my maneuvers they are still scoring hits, if I don’t do something soon, I don’t think I’ll make it to the island.
Think dummy think. I tell myself, what can I do to get this guy off me? I have weapons too, but they are facing the wrong way. I doubt I can get behind this guy seeing as they are in a fighter and I’m in a shuttle. Oh! This is a spaceship not an aircraft, I have an idea.
I take a calming breath and think through the plan. I activate my three class abilities at once.
Over-G Immunity Minor – Activated -10 AP
Shield Overcharge Minor – Activated – 20 AP
Weapon Overcharge Minor – Activated – 20 AP
I then twist my control stick around and smash my rudder pedal. Rotating the ship 180 degrees but keeping the ship right-side up. I hold down the reverse thrust button and set the throttle to maintain my 500mph airspeed but in reverse. I arm my weapons and squeeze my trigger down for the railguns. With my Over-G active my body does not even react to the violent maneuver. With my shield boost going the inbound rounds barely even register as damage, the shields only drop a few percent. I slew my nose around with my stick and pedals trying to bring the crosshairs onto the enemy ship.
Even in atmosphere the railguns don’t have any recoil through the hull. However, they sure do have a loud report. It sounds like hell on earth is being unleashed right outside the hull.
I see blue sparks blooming across the fighter’s shields. I get the crosshairs to finally settle more or less on the enemy’s ship and it tears into it. All this happens in less than 5 seconds, but it feels like eternity.
The enemy’s shields pop quickly, and the railgun rounds start shredding off pieces of the hull, and wings. Before I can outright destroy the ship, my skills wear off. The enemy fighter veers off quickly avoiding my rounds. I release the trigger and take stock of my ship and surroundings. Radar orb shows the Starfighter has flown off away from me and keeps receding away.
I hear some static resolve into something audible.
“Shuttle One, RAPCON. Do you copy?”
I activate my Over-G skill again.
Over-G Immunity Minor- Activated – 10 AP
I slew the ship around again getting the nose back on the nav path and adjust my speed back down to 250mph.
“RAPCON, Shuttle One. I had an altercation with another ship. I seem to have scared them off for now.”
“Shuttle One, roger you are now within the defenses of the base. Continue inbound on course cleared to land pad 14.”
“RAPCON, Shuttle one. Cleared to land on pad 14, thank you.”
I can see an island getting larger in the distance, the island is huge, and it stretches for miles and miles either direction. It also seems to be a patchwork of different terrains. Like someone stitched a quilt together and forgot to make any sense of the colors. There is a desert ran area directly butted up against a frosty blue ice area. The division between just a neat line with no transition.
As I start to fly over land I can see people, NPCs, or players maybe? And loads of gunfire everywhere seeming from every direction down there and the occasional explosion from who knows what.
“RAPCON, Shuttle one. I’m passing over what appears to be a war zone on route to nav is something going on?” I ask, I’m wondering if I should be trying to defend the base if it’s under attack maybe? I’m also concerned about getting shot down by stray gunfire or heaven forbid they think I’m an air threat and they have AAA.
“Shuttle one, RAPCON. No need to worry, what you are seeing is the training tutorials for some of the ground combat classes. Should stray weapons fire hit you it will do no damage. Continue inbound for pad 14.”
I zip past a few of this miss matched zones, it’s kind of neat to see the world from above while everyone else is going about their business below you. Everything just seems so mundane compared to the ability to fly. I can’t imagine for example being stuck in some tank on the ground lumbering along at a snail’s pace. Which of course I also see a convoy of heavy armor trundling along, big cannons sending rounds out into the open fields.
I arrive at what I’m guessing is the base. It’s just a huge boxy building surrounded by landing pads of various sizes. There are a few other MK 1ships on approach to pads coming in from other directions. I don’t know if they got lost, were joy riding or what but I’m the only one coming in from my direction.
I see one of the fighters come screaming over the pad but not slowing down enough to make a safe landing. It collides with the pad in a rather spectacular explosion of fire and light. I see secondary’s going off, missiles and other ordnance detonating after the initial explosion. Thankfully none of it comes near me, others are not so lucky. A hauler gets hit by an errant missile and careens out of control. It manages to recover but too late and skids across the pad it was trying to land on. It does not explode but it’s not in good shape.
I focus on my own landing, as I near my pad, marked with a floating “14” on my HUD.
I cut throttle and circle around and down aligning with the pad. I ensure my landing gear are out this time and fly the ship in and down, it flies almost like a helicopter. I can stop and rotate in flight, but it does behave sluggish, I doubt it could perform very well low to the ground. After finishing the post landing checklist and the ship is shut down, I exit out the back of the ship helmet in hand and take my first slightly smoky breath on a VR world.