The High Metal Highway
25 Jul 2020Korzhakov
"Arrival in 5,4,3,2,1" Astra counts down, and woosh, the star is right in front of me, I pitch down, align the "Karelian Dawn" for fuel scooping, discovery scanner charging while this is going on. "Whoooooom" the energy pulse releases. scanner indicates 23 planets in this system. I complete the refueling and gain a bit of distance from the star, settle the phantom into idle and begin to scan the planets. Two icy bodies, three 1 gas giant and the rest are high metal content worlds. Hmmm I amusingly acknowledge, you see, since I departed the Archangel, my fleet carrier for this 11,000ly trip, I have been encountering an unusual amount of high metal content worlds. The entire trip, I mean very few systems that were just space snow balls and useless junk. This data is going to be worth a fortune to Universal Cartographics, as I have found just about every metal known to humankind, and in massive quantities. Water worlds also seem to be plentiful in this region and many that are terraformable. I have mapped them all so that when I sell this data, that UC will be able to make good use of it for corporations, pilots or governmental powers to come out here and mine if this see fit.
That last system, was the last jump before arrival at the nebula. What a sight this is, a giant red gas cloud in front of me. I have been able to see it for quite a while now and it gets more beautiful with each jump closer.
I launch into the nebula, and scout around, I travel to 8 different systems within the nebula. and although nice systems, nothing special and in most of them, I am not the first one here.
Disappointed with my nebula experience, I start plotting my return course. I decide to jump straight over to the Vulcan Gate sector of space, I only crossed a brief part of it as I headed towards this nebula in Temple. I will continue to scan and map as I go, gathering as much experience and data as I can along the way, and it's the experience that I am here for, to put the light years behind me, the stars and planets in front of me and to learn how to do some proper exploration, to help discover the mysteries of the galaxy, and maybe discover enough clues to help scientist to solve them someday.
Tomorrow I should make good progress on the trip back to the Archangel, my fiance, our cat and the crew of our carrier. Until then it's just me, my machine, the slightly condescending AI.