Call Me Moss – 9 – The Resource Zone

Reese was trying not to look embarrassed.

“I guess I’m just not used to fighting against military spacecraft,” she said. “I was a bounty hunter before I signed up with you.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured. Your forget that pirates want room for cargo, and that’s mean big empty spaces where your bullets can easily pass through to hit something important. Military ships reinforce those areas, or put in stronger shields, and generally add stuff that’s intended to make your job as hard as possible.”

She’d shot down a few ships, but those victories were hard won and she’d lost several (expensive) remote fighters.

“Look, you want to go up in the ranks? Learn what it takes to be Elite? Don’t go punching the biggest kid in the playground unless you’re wearing brass knuckles. Let’s go back to what you know.”

“Bounty hunting? Back home, it could take days to track down a target.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, there’s your big mistake! You were trying to find them. Why not let them come to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re pirates, right? Go find a watering hole and wait.”

The watering hole in this case was the ring around a gas giant near Piaget Station. Lots of people went there because it was rich in rare metals, which meant lots of other people were ready to take some or all of their hard earned work for themselves for a fraction of the effort.

We like to call these people [censored]. I mean [censored]. [Censored]?

Er… you get the idea. Stupid profanity filters.

Anyway, we dropped into the ring and saw a number of ships happily carving big rocks into smaller rocks, and occasionally blowing rocks up. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before some vultures came looking for a carcass to pick. According to the chatter on the comms, this was a persistent problem. No end of douchebags looking to take another kid’s lunch money.

Now Reese was in her element, and I saw she really did have the makings of becoming one of the best. Good thing I snatched up her contract cheap!

And one of the other things that helps in these zones is the local police are never too far off. Things get hairy, and they’re bound to come lend a hand and provide you with a pirate gank party.

By the time we’d left, I’d picked up a lot of useful scrap I could use upgrading the Back Bacon Express, as well as a lot of escape capsules with grumpy pirates in them (always good for a few extra credits) and she’d risen two ranks in the Pilot’s Federation’s eyes–in part because of the assist she got in taking down an Elite Anaconda mothership that had been shepherding a bunch of smaller fighters.

Not bad, kid, not bad at all.

But I doubt she’s going to like our next adventure very much. The money we made taking down these pirates was enough to buy me a favor from a ship dealer I knew on the station. I needed to borrow a ship, because I had a cunning plan.

“Call Me Moss” is not set in the Get Lost universe, per se, but the game that inspired my love of the genre: Elite Dangerous (which is where the screenshots come from). Writing little bits like this is just one way I get in the right mindset for the next big adventure in my world. Consider this Moss as being from an alternate universe 😉