Home At Last
23 Dec 2019BNSF1995
We've done it. We've finally done it. It's taken us almost four years, but it was worth it.We're home.
Since 3301, Suki and I accumulated a small fleet in addition to the Sidewinder, including a Viper MkIII, an Eagle, two Haulers (one for trading, one for exploration), and a Federal Dropship that I recently kitted for mining. Through two one-year tours of duty aboard a Federal battlecruiser, lots of trading, bounty-hunting, taking missions for various minor factions, and frustration trying to keep up with bigger ships without engineering, we attained the rank of Petty Officer in the Federal Navy, and also through our lot in with Zachary Hudson.
Upon obtaining the Sol System Permit after salvaging some black boxes for the 10th Fleet, I turned off Lave Radio (which I might stop listening to because they just have the same music all the damn time) and started playing the end credit music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind for our big homecoming.
After the jump was completed, we stared in awe at our sun, and began making our way to Earth. We passed Mercury, before arriving at our destination.
Home.
We did a short flyby, noting California's San Joaquin Valley (or the Central Valley, as we usually called it), and picking out cities like Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, and Sacramento, none of them looked any bigger than when we left, though other communities like Firebaugh, Kerman, Los Banos, and Hanford had certainly boomed.
We then made our way to our current home base, Abraham Lincoln Station. We docked, then began transferring all of our ships from Miller Depot in Barnard's Star.
Since arriving in Sol, our fleet has changed. The Eagle and both Haulers have been sold, the Federal Dropship is fully-equipped for deep core mining (mining Void Opals and Low-Temperature Diamonds is how I was able to go from barely scraping by on 3 million credits to amassing a fortune of 246 million credits), and several new ships have been acquired, including a Vulture, Type-6, Type-7, Asp Explorer, and Dolphin. We've also finally begun engineering our ships, our current goal being to engineer the Beams on our Vulture to G5 Efficient to create the ultimate fighter (though to do that, we need to attain at least the rank of Outsider in the Imperial Navy, which neither of us are looking forward to; I had enough weighing on my conscious when I had to smuggle just to get in The Dweller's good graces). The current overall goal is to acquire a Federal Corvette and harass Imperial and Alliance shipping (with engineering, of course).
Until then, Suki and I are content to do whatever is necessary to get to that point.
After all, it's a huge galaxy out there...