A month of updates - saving lives, fighting scrubs, smashing bugs, meeting Aisling Duval
10 Oct 2022Ember Lacson
I haven't posted any updates in the past month, for a couple reasons. First, I spent a week or so traveling to the Crystalline Shard sites and filling up on high grade raw materials and picking up occupied escape pods from remote crash sites along the way. I personally saved thirty-six lives, and I feel a sense of accomplishment over it. It makes up for the fact that I frakked up my power priorities, dismissed my Anaconda, and watched in horror as the thrusters shut down immediately after takeoff. I stared up toward it as gravity took over and over a thousand tonnes of spacecraft reversed direction and started returning to their master. Thankfully, I was able to leap out of the way before becoming a human pancake. My SRV, on the other hand, didn't fare so well. The explosion caused a minor hull breach due to the crash taking down my tissue paper shields. I also couldn't get the access panel to work, so I had to cut through the bulkhead to reach the cockpit again and fix the power distribution. Thankfully, there was another CMDR's carrier in orbit, and the crew helped me fix the Conda and sold me a new SRV without any added tariffs. Once I got back to the Bubble, I decided it was time to make some more money, especially since outfitting my Corvette was going to be a long and expensive process. (Hundreds of millions of credits.) I slapped some Plasma Accelerators on my Vulture, Catarata, and made a couple hundred million taking out pirates in the vicinity of Cemiess, where Aisling Duval was holding her charity gala. I meant to do some trucking for it as well, but I ran out of time. Right after the initiatives were completed, Nicole got herself clearance to fly, and I received something I never thought I would get—an invitation. Now, this struck me as odd, for a couple reasons. First, I am not an Imperial citizen. I was born and raised is Federal space, I spend most of my time there, and I have far more honorary ranks in the Federal Navy than the Imperial. I don't even own a Clipper, the largest Imperial ship I'm eligible to buy at this point. I have, however, kept an ongoing pledge of support to Princess Duval for well over a year at this point, and as far as I knew I had been randomly selected from among her pool of supporters to attend.
Regardless, I was allowed to bring a plus one, so naturally I chose Nicole. We took a shuttle from Mackenzie Relay down to Emerald and went shopping. I got a nice, fitted tuxedo, and she got a nice blue gown with white accents. We both got our hair done at an expensive salon, and we spent a night on the town on our first real date. We got dinner at a five star restaurant, then went to the opera. It was fun pretending we were as rich as those around us, but it was even more fun getting a taste of Imperial culture from somewhere besides a cockpit or concourse. Nicole had always idolized Imperial culture, more so than I, and she said it was the best night of her life. I definitely think she wants to live within the Empire at some point in the future, and I certainly wouldn't be opposed to living there with her.
The next morning we decided to join one of the palace tours so that we could see what might be in store for us at the gala. For those of you who have never seen it, picture the level of opulence you might imagine an Imperial palace would have, and crank up the dial by about three notches. Honestly, I felt a little overwhelmed, but Nicole was over the moon, especially when we saw the princess herself speaking with the tour group in front of us. When she started walking toward our group, Nicole put the tightest death grip on my hand that I have ever felt, and I told her to be cool, to which she said, "I don't know if I can."
Once the "Oohs" and "Aahs" had passed, she thanked us for visiting and invited us to donate to the Citizens' Relief Trust, expressing sympathy for those who lost family and friends in the recent Thargoid attacks as well as the Proteus Wave incident and its aftermath. The group started moving onward afterward, but she addressed me by name and asked for a moment of my time. This caught both Nicole and me off guard, and we stayed rooted in place until the rest of the group was a few meters away. Princess Duval stepped up to me and shook my hand, saying she didn't expect to see me at the palace so soon. So, I explained that Nicole and I wanted to see it along with the hoi polloi the first time, since we didn't feel like we belonged with the elite. Then she said something that caught me even more off guard.
"Well, you are a member of an elite group of sorts. Most Commanders pledge just for the benefits and then defect as soon as they buy all the Prismatic shields they can carry. But you clearly pledge for loyalty. I appreciate the support, and I look forward to speaking with you more at the gala. In the meantime, we could always use your help in the field. After all, you're not any closer to those shields than when you started. I wouldn't install them in a Federal ship, but I will concede the Corvette is a capable machine."
By this point my face was tomato red. I knew she was being tongue-in-cheek about it. But it gave me pause to know that she had done enough research on me to put a name to my face, know I had been lazy with my support, and know I was outfitting a Vette with Prismatics. I made sure to mention Nicole's accident in HIP 22460 and say that I've been kind of stuck until recently, and I promised to make a donation to the Trust, as we had both lost friends to the Thargoids. That seemed to have a little bit of a cooling effect on the conversation, and once we said our goodbyes, Nicole and I caught up to the group.
During the brief time when we were out of earshot of both the princess and our tour group, Nicole said she couldn't believe Aisling Duval knew my name like that. Lost for anything else to say, I replied, "I can't believe you introduced yourself as my girlfriend." Up until this point, we haven't really been attaching a label to our relationship, and I doubt we will in most contexts for some time. But honestly, it feels good to have some semblance of officialness in that department.
I think I'll write more about the gala itself in a separate post, but I did donate a bunch of the money I earned from bounty hunting to the Trust. I hope they can do some good work to help the displaced and grieving.
And this brings me to the past weekend. We stayed on Emerald for a while, until the AXI put out another call to repel the Thargoids in Alliance space. Both Nicole and I feel like we were given a special lease on life in HIP 22460, so we had a talk about participating and defending human space. We didn't have to spend long before we both concluded that we will not go silently into the coming night. While we will not seek trouble, we will not sit back and watch our friends, families, and fellow humans be destroyed. We jumped over to the vicinity of Andecavi, and she stayed aboard the Morningstar while I headed out with the AXI and fought. All said and done, I accumulated over half a billion in bonds. While my profile here might be a bit laggy, I can say that I'm a billionaire once again, even after spending most of my fortune on Vette outfitting. (Reactive armor and large fuel scoops are insanely expensive.)
The Stargoids are just over a month away from Sol by most people's estimations. And when they come, I'll be waiting.