My journey to the center of the galaxy
05 Mar 2020Marushka
Once I had my first look at the Krait Phantom I wondered about its unconventional shape, how it came to be and what kind of substances the chief engineers consumed when they designed that peculiar-looking pressure-cooker. "That's it!", they said... "Let's take a Viper MkIII, scale it up and turn it into a light and fast multi-purpose ship!", they said. The design of the new vessel was finished by 95% and it looked quite cool. So far, so good. Then one of them whispered: "Alright buddies, we gotta celebrate our progress!" and put a bong on the table. As all engineers were stoned, one of them accidentally pushed a wrong button and flipped over the blueprint so that the ship now stood upside-down. Then he stared at the screen, frowned and mumbled: "Hmmm... Something looks horribly wrong... What happened here?". He clapped his hands and added: "But of course, we forgot to apply the landing gear! Let's do it like this and... Yeah, now it's finished!". He staggered over to the chief mechanic and gave her the finished blueprint. The mechanic hardly managed to maintain a serious face expression and left the office. After the door closed behind her she laughed herself silly and ordered the staff to start the assembly of the prototype... Yeah, maybe things started exactly like that...Anyway, I somehow was attracted to this strange ship and decided to give it a try. It was faster and lighter than the T7 Transporter that served well as "flying livingroom" with magnificent cockpit view on my last journey to the near Swoiwns- and Nidgiae regions. After dubbing my newly achieved ship "Stygian Owl" and stripping it almost naked in order to get it as light as possible I planned a direct route to Explorer's Anchorage. As the docking clamps released my ship I took off and wasn't sure whether I would ever dock at Jameson Memorial again. I left the letterbox and jumped...
After leaving about 4000 lightyears and all the senseless quarrels between the superpowers behind I stopped at Amundsen Terminal in order to get some sleep and my ship checked. It should be the last station before reaching Explorer's Anchorage, and after a few stopovers on some lonely planets in the middle of nowhere I was surprised to discover not only some waterworlds but also an Earth-like planet. Rumors say there are even some more untouched waterworlds waiting for getting discovered in the Zuni region...
Eventually I reached Explorer's Anchorage in order to sell my exploration data before performing the final step... And then there it was: The gigantic Black Hole Sagittarius A*, bending time and space... Slack-jawed and unaware of my high speed, I got dangerously close before I got torn out of supercruise just in time by the ships security protocol. Suddenly red warning lights flashed and I deployed a heat sink for emergency cooling as I regained my breath and used the cool-down time of the FSD for taking some photos. In these moments I felt really, really minuscule...
And here I am again in one piece, safely returned to Jameson Memorial. The Krait Phantom turned out to be a very interesting, versatile and reliable ship, regardless of its awkward looks and horribly low yaw rate. Out there in the void I trusted it with my life. And I wouldn't want to do without it again.