3-27-3305: Looking at the New Research Vessel
27 Mar 2019Ingrid Elfridr
When I was approached by one of the NR eggheads a little over two and a half months ago I admit that I didn't exactly take the little lady seriously when she told me that I was selected by one of the research teams to fly one of their ships on some data gathering mission that would last who knows how many months. Mostly because the details were sparse, but I have spent far too much time simply leading combat sorties to take months off of work. Granted there is always someone who can temporarily take my place, but it has been months since I've been sent on a simple scouting mission amidst all of the combat vouchers I turn in at the end of most days. Another thing that made me not take her seriously was the fact that she said I would be acquiring the ship for them. Despite the headache that this induced and the huge crater that it blew in my credit balance from the looks of things the ship will likely wind up paying herself off.Needless to say I indulged them, working alongside the NR mining crew for long enough to gain about 600M in profits. I bought a second Anaconda and sent it over to my mechanic so that he could change out the crappy factory internals. I feel bad for anyone that has had to fly a Conda with a factory outfit, but would buy a bottle for the person who was successful with it. Afterwards I had her towed into HQ so that the eggheads could do their thing on the ship's lower decks.
I'm no scientist, if anything I'm more proficient in history than anything else. Honestly it's strange having no idea what the eggheads are installing aboard my ship, and I'll have a few skulls if anything they install messes up detrimentally. Mug keeps reassuring me that he is helping install the lab equipment himself, but I've seen how he works on his own ships so that doesn't exactly reassure me. Ratchet-banging isn't how you remove wall panels. At any rate I made sure to lock them out of engineering as well as the entire command deck, though I believe they noticed my motive and took over half of the observation deck. Not sure whether they did so out of necessity or just to try to get my goat, but in their shoes I would've done the same thing just to take a shot at the latter. Given that I simply find it funny. Either way the ship is so compartmentalized that I halfway expect the non-flight crew to begin playing capture the flag with those of us on the bridge just to pass the time in off hours. Imagine a video of that sh*t, "NR Research Team Hard at Work"... I'm just going to stop myself right there.
Lastly, I made a mistake by letting Mug choose the color. Granted I was drunk when I made that bet with him over a game of darts, but I did lose and I have no choice but to honor it. I swear he kept buying those mudslides just so that he could win that very bet and have me stuck flying a blue ship. Folks, can you imagine somebody leading a MAGPIE BLUE Anaconda into a combat sortie? I wouldn't even take that joker seriously! Granted it's not an ugly paint job, but I prefer a flat black or silver. Just depends on how much I want to be shot at in a fight I suppose. However this says nothing of the squad that Breez and I used to fly with. We would go to lawless systems just to shoot at each other for fun, and all of us would be flying BABY PINK ships. Sort of like a group trolling session I suppose? Either way to this day we all blame Caldwell for starting it in the first place. However that's neither here nor there.
The expedition begins in exactly one month, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't getting excited. I'm just looking forward to all of the photos that I'll be taking along the way. I came back empty-handed as far as a photo of binary earth-like planets last year, but Breez wants me to keep on looking. I just hope the eggheads that are actually working aboard this ship don't mind constant slingshotting around planets and someone whom they perceive to be a barbaric psychopath as a pilot. It will be fun to use this misguided perception to seriously mess with their heads, maybe I can win a pack of cigarettes over it.
Lastly I partitioned off a section of the ship's cargo hold that the science eggheads won't be able to use because I've decided to haul some very special cargo to that new starport I've heard so much about over the grapevine and I am curious to see what it will sell for. Not mentioning what due to specific reasons, but let's just say that when I told Mug he nearly fell over. I wonder if the folks working the docks will do the same when they open the cargo pods a few months from now.
Anyways, here I am getting antsy in my pantsy and just rambling to no end. Again I'm going to stop myself there. My next entry will likely be the day of or the day before departure, and I'm going to warn anybody who reads this mess that the next one might be a drunken mess.