Distractions
01 Jan 2019Vallysa
Two weeks into her journey, and Vallysa felt good. The solitude afforded by the Black was exactly what she needed to get away from the never-ending, ever-stratified politics dominating the Bubble. She was eternally indebted to the Emperor and knew she would return to support her cause, but for now her soul needed this time to explore and discover the mystery of the galaxy around her.She had not departed from Sol and the ancient Earth probe Voyager 1 with a specific location in mind. She was not heading to Colonia, nor was she bee-lining to Sagittarius A*. She wanted to go places no human had been before so set several waypoints which drew her close to the galactic core, with intentions to deviate from her path to check out any interesting sites along the way. She realized early on a flaw in her initial flight planning: she had picked waypoints off the galaxy map pseudo-randomly at nebulae leading towards the Core, only after the fact realizing that many previous explorers had the same idea. She would occasionally be surprised as she looked down at her scanners and realized another pioneer had already mapped the system. Chalk it up to human behavioral predictability, I guess. Fortunately, that did not last for too long as her distance from the Bubble went from 100s of LYs to 1000s of LYs, but she did make it a point to add more "distractions" to get off the beaten path.
The first of these distractions was a cluster of intense, bright stars a short deviation off her route to her first waypoint:
Correlating the cluster of dots in her field of view with the appropriate portion of her galaxy map, she realized that field was simply referred to as "2MASS" by cartographic institutions. Not particularly clever, but she appreciated the occasional times when a simple naming convention could quickly reveal what might be contained within. Setting her new course, she dove deep into the cluster and grinned as she hopped through fields of blue giant stars, often in binary orbit with each other or another stellar mass. The hot blue light cast a beautiful but eerie glow throughout her cabin, reminding her of the jumps into Omicron Columbae which dominated her early career.
Her methodical, steady patience paid off. Hopping around the 2MASS field, she came across a ringed gas giant unlike anything she had see before:
Maybe it was the saturation of blue light cast by the local star--she wasn't exactly sure how far that effect carried throughout a solar system--but the continuation of purple bands interchanged seamlessly between the planet and its rings warranted additional scans, and of course, panchromatic imagery to share its beauty with the rest of humanity.
It was in 2MASS she made her first truly remarkable discovery. Here in the middle of nowhere, there was life clinging to the rocky surface of a harsh, inhospitable planet. A massive lichen field with spherical growths the size of the LLV Ferdinand sprang from the ground, defiantly thriving in the unforgivable environment.
She could not understand how life could develop or grow on a barren field like this, but perhaps with enough research the scientific entities such as Canonn would be able to unwrap the mystery. Vallysa would do her part, and take as many scans as possible on her journey to help answer these questions.
She finished at her first designated waypoint, the Eagle Nebula. Like the lichens in 2MASS, here in the middle of nowhere there was life clinging to the rocky surface of a harsh, inhospitable asteroid: a small but stable human colony providing long distance travelers a brief respite from the emptiness of space along the way to Colonia.
Vallysa had not originally planned on making any stops once she left Sol, but found the temptation to get a meal different from her travel rations too strong to ignore. She knew this would be the last time this happened, as her next waypoint was a selected point far away from any human-inhabited space. She would give the Ferdinand a lookover to see how it was handling the journey so far, make any necessary tweaks, and head off the next day. Besides, a real shower would be a welcome luxury before she had to hermetically re-seal herself back into her cabin for the continued journey towards the Core.