In trouble once again.
19 Aug 2019Hugues De Payens
I've been flying around the Galaxy for nigh on 60 years with two-thirds of that as an officer in the military. In the military, our ships did a lot of the grunt work for us, which made for poor piloting skills on my part.I'm still on my way to Colonia for the first time since leaving the Empire behind me and joining up with the Federation. I'm happily jumping from system to system taking my time, exploring new worlds, mapping a few, doing some ground searches for materials and generally just playing tourist.
I'm doing this with all the voice output from my nav panels turned off so I can listen to some great music to pass the time alone in the dark. I make a scheduled jump next to a Neutron Star to Supercharge before my next jump, and my screen says I don't have enough fuel to make the jump! I glance over at my fuel guage and am, obviously, surprised to see it at one lonely little bar. Crap. I pull up a star map to see if there is a closer star that I can jump to and refuel. Hooray! There is a beautiful class M star only 105Ly away. I set it as my new destination and hit the throttle. "Not enough fuel to make the jump." Crap. I check my computer to see what my current jump range is now that I'm supercharged, it's 104.44Ly. CRAP.
Never in my life have I had to call someone to refuel me in deep space. While it's true I had to call the Hull Seals a while back after a close run-in with a couple of stars that dinged up my hull quite a bit, I've never, ever, run myself out of fuel until yesterday.
When I did need the Fuel Rats, I was delighted that it only took, them about two hours to get to me. I had taken several days to get to where I was located. When I called on the Fuel Rats a lovely Commander informed me that she would be at my location in five to ten MINUTES. Damn, she must have been close. She popped over a couple of fuel canisters, and I was good to go to get to that class M and refuel the rest of way myself. I expressed my sincere appreciation for her work and went on my way. A couple of stars later I noticed that my hull, which had been down to around 91% was up to 100%. In addition to giving me enough fuel to live another day, she tossed in a Repair Limpet as well. I called her up and thanked her once again.
The Fuel Rats and the Hull Seals are a credit to the tradition of peace-loving space farers everywhere.