Beware of high-paying courier missions!
30 Nov 2021Vinesse
I grabbed the data courier mission off the board with only a cursory check of the station distance. It was paying 3 million, which usually means the outpost is so far out that nobody wants to bother. I'm in my DBX, so I can't do large cargo, so this should be a nice little earner.I exit witchspace facing a moderately large red-orange star and pull around before things get too toasty. My destination is a scientific research outpost, almost directly behind me according to the nav. I put in a lazy turn, eyeing the scanner to spot which planet or moon I'll be heading to. However the spot on the nav is pointing back towards the star. Well this is a new one: The outpost is in a low heliocentric orbit (what's this thing made of?). Keeping an eye on my thermals, easing the DBX towards the station at around 30 degrees. The exclusion zone looms. The output must be just outside it. The distance ticks down. The problem with the exclusion zone is that the nav only gives an approximate boundary - the point at which the FSD will drop out is a much more variable thing, which I discover as my ship snaps out of cruise.
With the canopy doing its best to counter the glare of the photosphere, I can see it: A glint of reflected sunlight off the tiny speck of outpost in the far distance. I ignore the alarm cries of my rapidly overheating craft as I spot what can only be the subject of research... tendrils of glowing plasma arcing out from the star's surface and swirling down to a tiny bright point: A black hole, although unlike any that I'd experienced in my travels. Not so large as to disrupt the star, but not so small as to exponentially evaporate from Hawking radiation. Maybe the mass of a small gas giant - event horizon of a couple of meters... could not have come from a stellar collapse... perhaps a primordial singularity?
While I've been absorbing the spectacle before me, I've not noticed that my shields have dropped and my hull is taking damage. Snapping back to the reality of my situation, I hit the coolant purge, charge the frameshift, and orient myself to the escape vector. Hull at 4%. Not great, but at least I'm back in supercruise to fly another day.
New strategy: Direct approach. 90 degrees. Highest possible entry speed to minimize the time in the heat-zone. I'll have a window of a couple of seconds to make the drop on the station. I know what I'm dealing with now and exit supercruise on a good vector for docking.
The outpost seems to be entirely devoted to dealing with the colossal heat flux. All star-facing surfaces are mirrored and angled sharply to minimize direct exposure. The small amount of available shade is devoted to arrays of black radiators. As I enter the shadow of the outpost, I can finally make out the single small landing pad.
I hope whatever mad bastards live here appreciate this data, if they need me I'll be gladly spending my earnings fixing my warped and melted ride.