Alien Salvage
06 Aug 2019Tenescio
I went about 800ly out of the bubble on a short two-day salvaging mission. I had gotten a tip that there was an alien structure in a system out toward the Coalsack Nebula, and I had heard of pilots coming back with valuable salvage, materials, and blueprints. I've been in love with this Diamondback Explorer lately, so after I gave it a paint job and a name (Volucris) I took it out to see how things would go. The Volucris wasn't optimized for travel. I set her up with armament and reinforcement packages under the misguided assumption I would take on any pirates I might come across. The truth is, though, that I avoided combat entirely. Fuel, jump, fuel, jump. Get in, get out. When you leave the bubble, fuel, scan, throttle, jump. It got to be a satisfying routine. Hell, I even like the coffee in the DBX and considering it doesn't have a large crew area, it is entirely good craftsmanship that Lakon put in a quality coffee machine in. I will only improve it further, working with Farseer Inc to get some truly powerful jump distances. Maybe with the alien salvage, I can increase that.
I landed outside the alien ruin. Whatever they were, they were craftsmen: beautiful, ancient, well made and well-designed works of art. One of the works of art floated out of the ground and started shooting at me. I've never been more stunned by the beauty of a missile.
After painting over the artwork with a heavy coat of plasma bolts from the turret of my SRV, I salvaged the ruins and began to charge their power grid. Once up, I managed to scan the... data bank? Command center? We really can't know. I scanned whatever it was and got valuable data out of it. I'll be honest, graduate school didn't train me to become this kind of archaeologist: the bad kind, who breaks the ancient dig site. I know better. Done properly, by the proper authorities, these Alien ruins could be sources of a whole century's worth of Xenoarchaeology research.
I looted it for ship upgrades.
It's the sort of thing that makes you reconsider what you're doing with your life. What sort of choices you're making. I just spent 80 mil on a fighting frigate that I'm honestly not qualified to fly: I was just rich enough to buy it. You kind of lose yourself in the money, you know? I'm not going to starve. I can take care of myself, and my family. Hell, I sent mom and dad a mil each so they could retire early. But here I am, wasting money on good ships, yeah, but ships I'm not good enough for.
I earned the Vanus. It's a good ship, and I'm a good captain for it. Same with the Volucris. You can buy a ship but you have to earn the skill to use them well, and the money made me lose sight of that. You start to think that with the money, you can just buy... anything.
I'm not an Imperial. Never will be. Don't get along with Imperial ports, don't plan to. Yet here I am, filthy rich, thinking and acting like an imperial. I'm not about it. I sold my unneeded ships. It's time to focus on using ships I've earned, becoming a better pilot, and figuring out what my principles and priorities are. No more of this looting and pillaging ancient sites; no more selfish bullshit.