It begins
16 Jul 2020Korzhakov
"Sir we are approaching Rylie's Hope" Captain Shelton calls to me on my terminal. "Thank you, I will begin preparations" I say back to her. I get up and walk into Jean's office and give her a big hug and a kiss, and tell her I will see her soon. I zip up my jacket and head towards my hangar. "She's ready to go Korz" Randy my crew chief tells me. "Thanks Randy, if you says she's good, then she's as perfect as she can be, thank you" I say back and mean it, he is the most thorough crew chief I have ever seen.
I take the lift to the airlock and board the "Karelian Dawn" my long jumping Krait Phantom. Bella, my cat has decided to stay in the cabin with Jean so this trip is totally solo.
I have Astra pull up the course that I plotted yesterday. We lift to the flight deck and Yumi clears me for flight. I let her know that she might get a bit bored with no other pilots for thousands of light years in any direction. She laughs and wishes me luck and I tell her I will talk to her soon.
I clear the carrier and Jump to my first system, out in this part of the galaxy, star's are't so tightly packed so most jumps are at good distances, which is why I am in the Krait. I start the process, jump, scan, evaluate and if viable, map. So far nothing exciting except for one water world and good spate of high metal content planets.
I found a great source of selenium, a metal I tend to need a lot of with the engineering I like to do. So after an evening of jumping and scanning I land on a planet with a lot of selenium, and set off in the SRV to go gather some. I spent a good hour doing so and have a nice collection of new materials to show for it.
For now though, it's back to the Karelian Dawn to cook some dinner and then off to bed to get myself on a regular schedule during this expedition.
Space can really mess with your circadian rhythms and with the light and dark cycles it's easy for a body to become confused. So I know to stick to my time table quite carefully so that I don't overdue it one day and put myself in unnecessary danger.
I watch the star set on this little planet and sip a little whisky before heading into my cabin and calling it a night.
This whole new experience has begun finally, and I have to say that I am both excited and a bit apprehensive, as we are way out here in the middle of nowhere.