Most people who ply the spacelanes have heard of the Fuel Rats – those selfless and brave Commanders who dedicate their own time and money to rescue stranded ships in the depths of space. Commander Altsain had an idea that she could be a brave and perhaps a little bit selfless too so, some time ago, she signed up to join the Fuel Rats!

She even built herself a dedicated Fuel Ratting ship, a Diamondback Explorer known as the Fuel Rat Jenny (she thought that name might have a chance of dissuading the more, umm, aggressive Commanders from senseless attacks – as it turns out, even that does not help in a Community Goal system…).

The Fuel Rat Jenny was dedicated to just one thing – jumping a really long way to refuel another ship. To this end, it carried no weapons or utility modules, and had a super-lightweight Power Plant, Power Distributor, Sensors and Life Support.

On the flip side, it had an auxiliary fuel tank (with a total fuel load of 48 tons, enough for at least 16-odd jumps without scooping), Fuel Transfer Limpets and Controller, and a Deep Charged 5A Frame Shift Drive that threw the ship 55 light years with a full load of fuel and limpets, and 65 light years without.

And then the Commander did nothing.

This was partly due to her Grand Tour, and partly due to some heavy demands being made by Felicia Winters. However, it was mostly due to fear – the actual process of reaching another ship and refuelling it is relatively simple, but the Fuel Rats have their own comms channel and their own code for relaying instructions and status updates, all of which is done in realtime while the Rat is racing towards the client (they call them clients, rather than victims…). This was all a bit intimidating for the Commander.

However, one idle evening, she decided that it was time to put the best foot forward, and she logged onto the Fuel Rats channel to see if she could arrange a drill that would demonstrate her talents. Unfortunately, there was no one available for the drill but one friendly Fuel Rat suggested she simply log onto the emergency channel, and answer any calls that were close by.

So she did.

Commander Altsain did not have to wait long – in less than half an hour, a call went out. Commander Sanganitor had run out of fuel, and he was a mere 4 jumps away from her. Nervously, she relayed this in the comms channel, and the dispatch controller gave her the job.

The Fuel Rat Jenny was off on its first mission!

As the Diamondback Explorer raced through systems, the Commander was in constant touch with Fuel Rat Dispatch and the client, enabling wing locks and counting down jumps so everyone knew where everyone else was (this will be covered in a future post, but the organisation behind the Fuel Rats is both daunting and amazing).

When the Fuel Rat Jenny jumped into the target system, the client was just a couple of hundred light seconds away. Commander Altsain dropped out of Supercruise to find the stranded Vulture-class Black Sunday hanging in space. A Fuel Transfer Limpet was launched immediately, and Commander Sanganitor was back in action!

Commander Altsain enjoyed this work. Commander Altsain enjoyed it a lot and as soon as the Black Sunday departed (after a brief chat about how it is a good idea to have a fuel scoop), she was back on the Fuel Rats channel looking for another client. She wanted more! Immediately!

As it turned out, she did not have to wait long – another client made a distress call within a quarter hour and, once again, the Fuel Rat Jenny was off to the rescue!

Being a Fuel Rat is now Commander Altsain’s new Favourite Thing in the Galaxy, and she is now almost permanently on call whenever she is in the cockpit.

However, being the Commander she is, she could not resist tweaking a few things here and there. The Fuel Rat Jenny is the perfect Fuel Ratting ship but it is a little lacking in other areas, and the Commander began thinking about another ship, one that could perform Fuel Rat duties while engaging in missions for Ms. Winters…