Captain's Log: Stumbling Blocks
04 Sep 2021Pon Pon
Well, I'm a few million credits shorter with pretty much nothing to show for it.How did that happen? It's... Well annoying, to be frank. I was doing some favours in Ngalia, a bit of couriering work that you could do in a Sidewinder, and had a job accepted some humanitarian work, moving a few hundred units of survival equipment from Green Enterprise to the outposts in the system. Some pirates or mercenaries or whatever caught wind, and, even in the Reichweite II, I was getting harassed by them. With the Bewegung pulled out of deep storage and en route, I didn't really want to back out, so I pulled an old project ship of mine out of mothballs too: The Tödliche Ruhe, a Lakon Type-10 Defender designed specifically for the purpose of clearing harassers like this from low res sites. Well, she was doing well and I took out the first of the harassers with a little help from system security, and thought that the rest would be just as easy.
That was a naive assumption. Let's just say the rebuy on that ship is around 25M credits, and I just happen to have lost that amount of credits while flying around today. So, with my combat aptitude (or lack thereof) reaffirmed, I hopped into the Bewegung for the first time in a long time. Cancelled a couple of the contracts, which pissed the friends I had made in Sirius Inc off a bit, but nothing a "donation" of a "few" credits couldn't solve. At the very least, I kept my allied status leaving Ngalia, which was good because Ms. Martuuk told me about a guy named Marco Qwent who could probably do the reactor work I need on my Chieftan. To get to him, though, I needed to talk to his man in the Sirius system, and they couldn't issue me a permit for that system in Ngalia. I briefly dropped into Procyon to get my permit, and soon found myself in proper contact with Mr. Quent--who wanted a couple modular terminals as a "sign of goodwill."
OK, more than a couple. 25, to be exact, which is 25 more than the galaxy seems able to offer. Now, that's only the first of many problems. Another problem is that the Reichweite II was designed for gathering materials for engineering and tech brokers from far outside the bubble--which, as most pilots know, those materials weigh quite a bit less than commodity units. For those of you who don't know, in the trade world a "commodity unit" is about one ton, roughly the weight of a fully laden standard cargo container. The Reichweite II holds 8 tons. Problem? Yes. And then the final problem: These modular terminals are in such short supply that the only way you can get your hands on one is from independent commanders, or favours for a faction.
Plugging things in to my trade computer, it seemed there were a few fleet carriers around 60ly away that had amply goods for someone like myself, so I ran out to the shipyard to see what ships the station had to offer. I was hoping to find a DBX, and basically kit her to be a long-range low-volume hauler, but... This place ain't exactly Jameson Memorial. All they had were a bunch of Federation naval ships, a couple of Zorgon Petersons, and a Sidewinder collecting dust in the corner. Well, among the Haulers parked there I found an Adder that suited my needs--decent jump range, A-rated thrusters and distributor, and, most important of all, capable of hauling 25+ tons of goods. Shields? I've never needed those. Nope, I totally haven't been trying my luck leaving the mailslot by boosting up to 300 while in the docking corridor. And I most certainly didn't, just an hour or so ago, have to park my ship because I crashed it into the side of the mailslot leaving it at 30% hull.
I shall restate here and now: The reason I purchased a new ship is because it would be too troublesome and time-consuming to refit the Reichweite II to hold 30 tons of goods. It is most certainly not because the Reichweite II is being rebuilt right now.
Anyways, I set a course for Eulexia, the system where a couple of fleet carriers that supposedly were selling modular terminals were stationed. Conveniently, it was only two jumps away... If I used a jet-cone boost, of which the first time I have performed one was a few hours ago in Lawd 86 on my way to Procyon. Needless to say, I wasn't able to perform the feat a second time. Damn this Adder and its second-hand FSD. For whatever reason, I couldn't get it to overcharge, so I plotted a course the old-fashioned way and made the few extra jumps.
Arriving in Eulexia, I was able to quickly find the fleet carriers I was looking for. I selected them in my nav panel, locked in a course for supercruise assist, and began looking at its offered services as I put my feet up... Or, well, I would have put my feet up except the damn docking access was wrong! Squadron only? Well, it didn't take a genius to realize what was going on. Every ship, apart from the Princess of Something-or-other, was prefixed with the same tag. All of the fleet carriers in the system (with one small exception) belonged to members of the same squadron. So, yeah, obviously they wouldn't want to randomly sell their squadron's resources.
I can't say I was surprised by that, since fleet carriers in the trade networks always seem to either not be where they should be or not trading what the should be. I'm just mad at myself, mostly, because I've basically wasted a bunch of time and accomplished nothing. No, worse than that: Since I had to rebuy my Type-10, and buy the new Adder, I've lost money with nothing to show!
That's what I get for trying to take the easy way out of things. Well, I guess I'll just have to buckle down in the coming days and see who's willing to trade a modular terminal or two for a favour.