Finally ... Colonia!
28 Dec 2021Karina Forlon
It was October 3305 when Karina left the Bubble with course plotted to 22k ly far Colonia region. She thought that she was well prepared for this journey, but like many others before she was wrong. After spending six months with intensive scanning and exploration of systems along planned route she was very close to the destination. Remained maybe only 2k ly to closest inhabited system of Colonia, when she overlooked readings of the planet gravity during routine landing. It was "just" a 2G planet, but she has never done landing on heavier gravity world before and usual docking routine proved to be almost fatal. Impact with surface was rough, ship's shields immediatelly collapsed and the sound of the deforming hull was deafening. Ship hull integrity was reduced below 20% and most of ship's vital modules were severely damaged. It was another lesson learned in a very hard way, but thankfully she survived ... for now ...  |
After she got initial shock under control she first started with check of oxygen, food supplies and state of the ship energy source. Luckily, all this was in much better state as she could hope, in fact these supplies should suffice for several her lives. "At least some of my preparations payed off", she thought. However results of further check of ship modules were much less satisfying. Ship's FSD engines and thrusters were the most damaged ones and overal damages highly exceeded available repair capacity of small AFMU unit installed on Amethyst. Fortunately synthesis unit was functional and could help to overpass sources shortage needed for AFMU functioning. Her next steps have lead into hangar and it was a huge relief to see her small SRV remaining in one piece safely packed into its transportation dock. It was about time to get SRV out of the ship and look around for raw materials.
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Two weeks later, on the end of another very long day, she sat back into cockpit chair and ordered ship AI to prepare detailed report about ship state. AFMU resources were again almost depleted, like it was many times before in the last two weeks, and repaired were maybe 5% of all damages. Next to this she found that long-range communication device was damaged beyond repair and it meant that she could only rely on herself. "This will last for a while", she murmured. She felt quite tired too and it was obvious that further attempts to continue with repairs the same way would not end well. She decided to slow down and started planning her next steps much more carefully. Sensors data showed that system where she crashed has a numerous raw resources which were however located on different local planets. Ship thrusters repairs therefore needed to be top priority, she needed to make Amethyst fly again.
Four weeks later Amethyst slowly taked off from the place of crash. Ship's thrusters were working well, but they allowed only very slow movement inside of star system. Ship's frame shift drives were still off line, they could be safely operated only when all other ship's critical modules were in good conditions. Karina plotted course to nearest planet with missing raw materials and prepared for a long boring travel.
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In the end repairs lasted almost 19 months ... it was much longer time than Karina originally hoped for, but Amethyst was finally again fully operational spaceship. Karina felt really exhausted, but she was even more proud of herself. It was a time to finish this journey! She plotted shortest course to system Helgoland, which was part of colonia region and had large shipyards. Amethyst FSD's were activated and Karina executed long serie of jumps ...
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