AKSS Intrepid: The Kerbals gone interstellar.

[VelocityPolaris]

Prologue - an ancient discovery part I

A faint breeze blew by Munson Kerman, whipping dust into his face. He wiped his face with a rough cotton sleeve and carried on. He looked behind him. His assistant, Erfal, was about ten meters further down the mountain, slumped over in an attempt to catch his breath. Munson sighed and stopped, panting for air at their high altitude. He eventually gave up on catching all of his breath to call his friend.

Munson: huff... Erfal! Huff...

Erfal looked at him, tried to stand up and lift a small haversack of cloth over his shoulder, and froze at the sight of the ground below him. The wreckage of their plane was barely visible, as just a dot. The boulder that their landing gear had collided with was smaller than a snapper. (A snapper is an insect on Kerbin. It is essentially an ant with larger mandible and slightly less volume.) In fear of falling, Erfal slowly sat down while looking around to make sure that he was on the ground and not in free-fall. Because of the slope, his rear hit the ground sooner than he expected. Erfal yelped and cringed, expecting to fall for some reason.

Munson groaned mentally, not wasting breath on expressing emotions. He looked at the hill high ahead of him, then back at Erfal, who had lain down his head and fallen asleep almost immediately. In alarm, he stumbled over to the sleeping biologist.

Munson: huff... huff... Erfal! Huff... wake up! Huff...

Erfal did not stir. Munson, who had tired himself out trying to talk, gave him a small kick in the stomach. Erfal grunted and slowly opened his eyes.

Erfal: Munson... I'm tired... huff... huff... you go on ahead. Huff... I'll just get a quick rest and then I'll catch up. Huff...

Munson: huff... huff... no. If you sleep now, huff... you... huff... you won't wake up... huff... there isn't enough air to breathe unconsciously... If you fall... asleep... your brain will just... huff... stop working...

On that note, Erfal managed to force himself up, and just stood there panting for a minute. Finally, he regained his breath enough to speak.

Erfal: huff... I thought... huff.... I was the... huff... biologist!

Munson did not have the breath to laugh at the joke. He did, however, manage to smile. He pointed up toward the summit and began walking.

Munson: huff... c'mon.

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited May 17, 2014 by VelocityPolaris

[TheDataMiner]

The ending is kinda sudden

[quasarrgames]

I presume this will have more stuff added later?

[VelocityPolaris]

Correct. I only stopped in the beginning of it for two reason:

1: it was the middle of the night and school was tomorrow

2: I ran out of amperes

[Transits]

I'm looking forward to the continuation.

Good luck!

[VelocityPolaris]

The next part of the prologue is coming - when I get around to it.

[VelocityPolaris]

I love my new signature. It's very Kerbal.

[VelocityPolaris]

AKSS Intrepid: The Kerbals gone Interstellar

Prologue - an ancient discovery part 2

Munson groaned as his toe, sticking out from a large hole in his left boot hit a rock for the umpteenth time. He fell down, shivering at the cold of being on a huge mountain on a windy day. Erfal noticed and hobbled over to him, taking special care not to slip and fall down the steep slope. Munson tried to wave him off, but his friend was too tired to waste time arguing and saw to treating it anyway. Lacking medical supplies, Erfal tore off part of his pant sleeve and wrapped it around Munson's toe, which, by now having been bruised raw, Erfal tried very hard to look at. Munson groaned again, as the rough cotton was a little painful. Fortunately, Erfal managed to spare a little water from his canteen to dampen the discomfort. It wasn't much, but the wounded archeologist was able to struggle to his feet. Erfal, who was quite exhausted from exerting the effort needed to tear off a strip of rough cotton, accidentally looked down. A few thousand meters below, he could see a structure. It looked smaller than Erfal's right eye, which was the dust-less one. He cautiously embraced the ground with his legs, and slowly twisted his head around. Erfal could see the peak, hundreds of meters behind him, with the grand empty satchel they had partially dug into the peak flapping in the wind. Trying to process all of these distances while staying still himself was not helping Erfal. He suddenly felt faint, threw up, and blacked out.

Munson, who had begun to hobble along down the mountain again, saw Erfal fall and managed to jog over, wincing in pain the entire time. Erfal had chosen a rather slippery slope to lose consciousness on, and he had began to slide the kilometers down. This may sound like a fast and easy way to get down, but, rest assured, it was not. You see, eventually, Erfal would slide to a cliff in the mountain, where he would stop sliding and start falling. After that, when it became less steep, he would hit the ground at a rather uncomfortable speed. This particular cliff was only about half a kilometer away, and it encircled almost the entire mountain, except for their original path. Munson did not know how far away the cliff was, but he did know that Erfal was approaching it fast and that there would be a lot of paperwork to fill out if Erfal died. With unsurprisingly painful but surprisingly fast speed, Munson began to run after him, almost slipping several times and wincing all of the way. He slipped too, almost screaming in pain but relieving the pressure on his bad foot. He tried to slow down but the rock was too slippery. It seemed that they were both going to fall off and die, until Munson remembered that he had a parachute. While, not entirely. He had an umbrella stowed away in his haversack. It was unlikely, if this was an ordinary umbrella, that he could survive falling off of a cliff with it. However, this umbrella was one of the few nonrigid umbrellas ever made, quite a collectors item but not quite useful in a storm. Munson would normally had thrown the heavy thing away, but he had completely forgotten it was there. If it was nonrigid, however useless in a storm, the thing could serve as parachute. The entirely idea sounded extremely stupid, thought Munson as he shot off of the mountain to begin his deadly descent.

However, considering that there was no dumber idea for use, he decided to go through with it. First, enjoying his feelings of weightlessness, he tucked himself into an aerodynamic headfirst position and began falling toward the ground a little faster. Next, he spread his arms into the same floppy position that Erfal was in, shot out a hand and grabbed his arm with some difficulty, and finally reached into his bag, frantically searched for the parumbrella with his hand, finally grabbed the handle, shot the thing out as the ground was getting close, and braced for the impact of deployment. He felt an intense pull, like every part of his body was being yanked toward the ground like an SRB was pushing it. He felt an incredibly strong force try to push his arms away from the umbrella and Erfal. Every ounce of logic on Kerbin stated that he would let go. But at that point, an incredibly inspirational thought crossed his mind: "MY umbrella, physics. No touchy." For reasons beyond the realm of logic, he held on to both Erfal and the umbrella, although in doing so, it became quite painful. After what seemed like hours but was really four seconds of intense pain, he had slowed to a reasonably comfortable crashing speed.

Any moment of satisfaction he may of had was rudely interrupted by the ground, which painfully hit his bad foot at a twelve meters per second, sending intense pain up his body and causing him to yell; "This hurts!", as he considered screaming below his level of mental discipline. At this point, they were off the steepest part of the mountain, but the at their altitude averaged about thirty degrees. Munson groaned as they began sliding again. It was a long trip to the bottom.

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited May 22, 2014 by VelocityPolaris

[FlamingPotatoes]

Very nice! Can't wait for the next part!

[Transits]

I'm so excited!

[VelocityPolaris]

AKSS Intrepid - The Kerbals Gone Interstellar

Prologue - an ancient discovery part 3

On the Mun, four spacecraft were present. A science laboratory, a bar and repair station, a gas extraction probe, and a colony module. Jebediah, Bob, Malney, and Barlas, the leaders of the colony, were sharing drinks of Hydrazine (actually used quite commonly as a beverage among Kerbals) with the other sixteen scientists, engineers, and colonists who had newly arrived. Of course, it would have been unwise to have everyone in the bar while the experiments and radios were unmanned. So Dilzon and Derbin Kerman, two of the first five arrivals, stayed in the science module, monitoring biology experiments and waiting for their shift to end so that they could join the festives. Suddenly, as Derbin watched protists eat each other, the radio beeped.

Derbin: Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep? Dilzon, what's beeping? Is it an alert? Are meteoroids going to hit us? Are we leaking oxygen? Are the fuel lines leaking into the ventilation systems? Help!

Dilzon had known Derbin for years, and was quickly able to calm him.

Dilzon: Nothing's wrong, Derbin. Someone's just calling us.

Derbin, quite relieved from his friend's reassurance, calmed down and answered the phone.

CONSTRUCTION ZONE

Edited June 2, 2014 by VelocityPolaris

[VelocityPolaris]

Next part will come out after someone asks for it!

[VelocityPolaris]

I'm one of those fellows who doesn't have much motivation. So unless someone leaves a comment asking for more, I probably won't have the motivation to add more. Please? Attention? I need attention. A little attention please?

[VelocityPolaris]

Ok, Thread is over. I can't work without more attention. Sorry, look for my next story soon.