Journey #3 - Final Approach
25 Aug 2022FiveStringJeff
I wake up 30 jumps from the Hawking Nebula. Today is the day!The nebula is an unmistakable purple cloud that grows with every jump. And because it's a little lower than the galactic plane, there aren't as many stars behind it, making it truly stand out against the black of intergalactic space.
15 jumps away, and I come across a system that someone else has discovered. This has happened maybe twice in the entire Norma Expanse (minus the systems with DSSA carriers). Nothing here but a couple of K-class stars, but still, it's oddly comforting to know that someone else has been this way. A couple of systems later, it happens again. This time, there are planets, but only the star has a discovery tag. This system must have been discovered on an early expedition.
As I get closer, the clouds of the nebula start to gain definition:
A couple more jumps and I hit paydirt: a terraformable HMC and an ELW! It's my eighth ELW discovery.
Finally, I've made it to the DSSA Bougainville. I've got about 150,000 cr in repairs to make, but Universal Cartographics hands me a receipt for 387 million credits, plus more First Discovery tags than I can count. That's gonna pay for some fancy new ships when I get back to the Bubble!