Racing Against Death

And so…finally…we come to the end of the Buckyball season. The final race entitled “The Last Gasp – Resuscitated” might well be the race to end all races. This time, we aren’t racing for a time. We’re gambling with our lives. How far can we go? How many times can we dock and get back to the start before we die? We are, literally, racing against Death himself.

Unlike the previous race which looked like it might take a lot of research, maths and scouting but actually turned out to be reasonably straightforward, this race really does involve a fair amount of research, maths, and scouting. You see – we must begin at Rebuy Prospect in Fullerene C60. We have to get to at least three, and at most five stations as far away as we dare in order to sell our cargo of five tons of Buckyball Beer Mats (one ton per station). And then we have to make it back again to land at Rebuy Prospect.

Oh, wait a minute, there’s one itsy bitsy detail I forgot to mention. Before we leave, we must turn our life support off. With the life support modules that we are allowed in the regulation Cobra Mk III class, that only gives us twenty five minutes of air. If it runs out before we get back.

We die.

But first, even before we consider launching, we have to find bases where we can sell our beer mats. We can only land at outposts, because if we land at other coriolis or orbis stations then the artificial atmosphere will replenish our air supply and that would be cheating!

For myself, I decided to use the EDDB station finder tool to look for suitable outposts. I decided that having them all around a hundred light years away and only one jump away from each other would be the most efficient run. I thought that would be somewhere to start at least. I should be able to get a five station run with that. Five outposts at an average of a hundered light years away would mean a score of around 500ly. They would also have to be within 20-30 ly or so from the main star so I wouldn’t have to spend too much time in supercruise. I didn’t have a lot of time to play with this race as real life commitments would considerably eat into my usual Elite time, and I really wanted to choose stations at a distance that would be a bit of a challenge (for me at least – you know the trouble I tend to have landing at outposts) but should be quite doable too. I would only have enough time to have a couple of tries at this.

After about an hour of searching, and then scouting the stations in my DBX (some I would have to reject and then find new ones) I settled on Tanaka Landing (Ngargambo 106.84ly), Torricelli Terminal (Samnach 90.21ly), Gohar Refinery (Tripuru 110.47ly), Peano Orbital (Ross 409 97.85ly) and Weber Station (Jittabed 95.35ly). This gave me a total of 500.72ly.

And so I set off. Without life support you don’t notice any change until you exit though the slot, then everything is different. There is now no air in your cockpit to allow the sound from its environmental speaker array (a clever concept that translates everything we do in space into sound in real time to give pilots the illusion they can hear sounds through the vacuum of space) to reach our ears so everything is muffled. and the only sound is the sound of your breathing rattling inside your flight suit helmet.

It took six jumps to reach Tanaka Landing, rather than five because of the extra weight of the five tons of beer mats I was carrying. However, landing there proved to be straight forward as the pad allotted to me was on the same side of the station I dropped out of supercruise from. I landed, sold a ton of beer mats, took off and jumped to the next system.

Things went a bit downhill from there.

I had real trouble finding my allotted landing pads on the next four outposts, as well as a panicked take off from Gohar when I completely forgot which stations I’d already visited and which I had yet to visit. There’s something about flying with a limited air supply that addles your brain. The rattled breaths in your helmet, the muffled sounds of the ship felt through your bones rather than through your ears, and it severely affected not only my ability to fly but also my decision making.

Once I’d dropped off the last ton of beer mats I only had four minutes of air left, and, after the five final jumps back to Fullerene C60, only a minute and a half to get back to Rebuy Prospect. It seemed to take a whole day just to make the 200ls trip to the station and when I eventually dropped out only fifteen seconds left. It spun slowly before me as I boosted toward it in desperation, now choking as I fought for the last dregs of air left in my supply.

I’m not going to make it, I thought. I screwed up too many times.

NO, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT.

The sound of a voice like a thousand coffin lids closing all at once drew words in my brain. I looked to my right, and sure enough, there He was, sitting in the co-pilot seat in a black cowl, eyes of pale blue light and a smile that never left Him.

DON’T WORRY, I’M ONLY HERE TO ESCORT YOU TO THE REBUY SCREEN.

I fared no better on my next attempt, which really stung as I had no more time for any further ones. This was to be the only race of the Magic 8 Buckyball Racing series in which I would not be able to appear on the leaderboard. Not even on the bottom. I would just be far too busy the rest of the week. But then, a couple of nights later, I found I had forty minutes or so to myself and I thought I’d have one more run.

I decided to do the stations in reverse this time, starting with Peano. It only took five jumps to get there this time as it’s much closer and the landing was pretty straight forward, sold my ton of mats, Ninteen minutes left.

The next station, Torricelli Terminal I had a little more trouble finding the pad but it wasn’t too bad, then came the landing at Gohar Refinery.

Ahead of me were pads two and three but I had to encircle the station to find pad four, my allotted pad, before landing and selling my third ton of mats. Keep calm, keep cool, try not to panic. Two stations to go, just under twelve minutes left.

At the next pad, Torricelli Terminal, I had trouble finding the pad too, wasting yet more time but at the last, Tanaka Landing, it was pretty straight forward again, although my approach to the pad was a little panicked and I took more time than I should. Dropped off my last ton of mats, took off, six minutes left!

Now that my cargo hold was empty, it only took five jumps, rather than six, to get back to Fullerene C60. Of course! Why didn’t I do this in the reverse order the first time? Never mind, I dropped out of hyperspace with around three minutes to get back to the station, surely there was enough time!

I managed to drop out of supercruise with about a minute and thirty seconds of air left. Easily enough time! And when I sailed though the slot I still had a total of one minute and four seconds of air left.

I’d done it! The relief of actually being able to post a score on my final attempt almost brought tears to my eyes.

Sigh! And there I am, at the bottom. Again. Where else? Who knows, if I had had more time I could have scouted out a further route? I did have plenty of air left after all. But it doesn’t matter. I have now managed to register a score in every single Buckyball race this season, and I’m damn proud of it!

Special thanks must go to the incomparable Alec Turner for running this race like a boss. Thanks Alec, it’s been an absolute banger of a race this. Special mention also has to go to Shaye (Wait…What? How?) Blackwood for that unbelievable score of 1453ly. How they can mange that I will never fathom! But also, and this is important, an extra special thanks must go to The High Wake for their amazing trailer they put out for the race at the request of Alec Turner. It can be watched here and if you haven’t yet seen it you really should watch it. And then subscribe to their channel and watch all the other wonderful animations they’ve done.

So that’s it commanders! The final race is over. It’s been an absolute blast taking part and being a member of this truly wonderful community! If you haven’t taken part and you would like to (I mean why wouldn’t you?) then I’m sure there will be another season next year, so look out for it!