Well, that was close.

Guess there are some things that will get me flustered, still. I've flown the edges of black holes, raced across the galaxy on the neutron highway, even stared Thargoid ships down more times than some commanders are comfortable with.

But, hearing a friend is in trouble... That will apparently override a lot of ingrained habits.

Rei pinged me to let me know she'd be late for our planned rendezvous at the bar in Jaques Station. She'd somehow been left behind by the carrier she'd booked passage back to the frontier from Beagle Point. Being left behind would normally be an inconvenience, only she'd been left behind at Erikson's star. As far on the edge of the galaxy as you could conceivably get.

I finished module installation in record time. Thrusters swapped, scoop online, decided to keep the shield generator - a .2ly difference in jump range when you can clear 80ly isn't enough to get tweaked over. Ready to go, off to the rescue, right?

Nope. As Reyvene lifted to launch position, the docking clamps let go, and instead of the normal litany from COVAS as the launch commences... Silence. Deafening silence. Systems began to shut down in rapid sequence, leaving Reyvene dead on the pad.

We commanders like to joke about how harsh station control is about pad loitering, but when it's YOU on the pad, knowing the clock is ticking down but unable to move your ship... It's a wildly different experience.

I won't lie, there was a LOT of very panicked swearing, praying, and sweating for several minutes.

Reyvene power plant could charitably be described as 'Three suit batteries and a potato' - one of the prices you have to pay to jump further than anyone else is an extraordinarily minimal build. the power distributor makes that 'hot capacitors' smell any time I run the engines hard and charge the shields at the same time, or if I cook dinner without shutting some less important systems, like the sensors. Or the life support(which honestly only works in the crew spaces during flight - the rest of the ship is vacuum to shave weight).

Running a ship as big as an Anaconda with an exploration loadout with so little power plant output means power management is a way of life, even after doing some tinkering that probably voided the warranty on the power plant. Part of normal preflight is making sure that modules that don't NEED to be on during normal flight, aren't.

Guess which modules I neglected to shut down when I rushed the install and preflight, so I could ride to the rescue? That's right. Overloaded the power plant's breakers and killed power to the entire ship.

Before the power to the flight console shut down, I absolutely FLEW through the internal systems menu, desperately shutting down and reprioritizing systems, anything, whatever would give me enough power to get the Reyvene moving under her own power, before the cannons inside the docking bay(who the name of Raxxla decided THAT had to be a thing?) did it for me. I'd fly her out on full manual if I had to.

The inner lining of a flight suit has really phenomenal wicking. I had to be sweating buckets, racing the clock to save my ship. Never felt a bit of damp.

I finally felt I'd done what I could, and hit the power plant restart. "Yes!" lights on, a hum carried through the deck and I suddenly had thruster control. Fully manual - auto-dock module still offline, flight stabilizer offline. No sweat, done this plenty during evac missions. Pushing as hard as I could towards the slot, systems booting on the move. Feeling the main thrusters kick in was one of the happiest moments I'd had in weeks.

As Reyvene cleared the slot I finally dared to look at the station exit timer - it wasn't in single digits, but it was entirely too close for comfort.

A few minutes of coasting on full throttle helped the adrenaline pass. As I was going over the systems and laying in the plot for the first neutron star, the comms panel dinged for my attention. Rei, updating me on her situation, no doubt.

"I got a rescue and a lift back to the carrier!"

I'm really questioning if I'm going to share the Lavian brandy sitting in my cabin locker when we meet up, now.

Going to Colonia is never easy. For most commanders and most ships, it's prepping for days to weeks in the black - spare parts, supplies, entertainment. Even taking the connection highway it's no simple flight, there's thousands of light years between each stop, though apparently they're upgrading the route with new places to stop.

It's not easy even for commanders like me or ships like mine, though many would tell you otherwise. We're the rapid couriers, the neutron riders. Ships tuned and modified and stripped to the edge of what they can do. For us, it's being prepared to push the ship well past what the designers intended.

It's worth it though, because for those of us crazy enough to take it to it's natural conclusion, you could lift off after a late breakfast, be in Colonia in time for lunch and back in the core systems for afternoon tea.

I was in the middle of supervising the conversion of my Anaconda, Reyvene back to it's racer configuration when the message ping hit my insight unit.

It was short, "I think I'm going to be a little late."