Through the Darkness of Space

by Lt Rainbow Slash

Day 5: Mistakes were made

17 November, 3603
Day 5
1,427LY from Cel

Pardon the language.

I'm a complete fucking idiot. Like really Con?! What the fucking HELL!! Stupid stupid stupid!! Seriously! How could you fuck up THAT bad!

Ok. Now that I've vented all of my self loathing. I did something dumb. Like you'd have to be missing half of your brain to be this dumb.

SO: I decided to land on a moon to take some surface samples and have a look around. I came in, remembered to put up my shields so I wouldn't have a repeat of last time (thank Celestia). Being the daredevil that I am I decided to do a bit of stunt flying. I dove down full throttle, pulled up...And then panicked as my momentum kept me heading downwards. I threw all trust upwards but I hit the surface going over 150 meters a second. Knocked myself unconscious in the process.

When I came to two minutes later I cried. I thought my trip was over, and that I maybe even crippled Curiosity. When I got over feeling sorry for myself I got around to actually checking the ships readouts. Turns out, while she was badly damaged, Curiosity is a tough old bitch. There was a minor hull breach ventrally. A rock had punched a hole beside the cargo hatch. Luckily it isn't connected to my crew compartment so the atmosphere didn't vent. The reactor was dinged a bit, as were the sensors. A few internal systems were bashed around a bit.

I deployed the landing gear and landed properly. Then I had to spend five hours making repairs. I had to deploy and use my SRV to fix the breach. That took three hours. Another one hour to make sure the Reactor wouldn't kill me with radiation poisoning. And one more to recalibrate the sensors and check over the internals to make sure I hadn't missed any fuel leaks or anything else busted. Luckily nothing was.

It was 9:30PM by the time I was done. I've decided to stay put for tonight.

I still can't believe I did something so stupid. It's a good thing I dinged my ship a couple days back and learned my lesson. If I hadn't remembered my shields...

Well, let's just say I'd probably be space dust.

That's a sobering thought.

I'm going to have to be extra careful from here on out. I came too damn close to getting myself killed today. Way too damn close. I...I here give me a second.

---

Ok. Sorry. It just caught up with me how close I came to ending my life. I may have gone into a bit of shock for a few minutes there. I'm ok now. I'm ok.

...I think I'm going to comm Mom and Dad now.

Somehow still alive,
-Con