Data log found in an abandoned spacecraft pt1 - My story
13 Aug 2020Orion Blacksun
<audio log begins>I don't really know where to start. I could start with the ship I found but perhaps that won't be enough to explain why I must follow in his footsteps. It must seem foolish, mad even, to do so. So I'll tell you a little bit about myself so that perhaps you might understand why I am now preparing for such a desperate voyage. I have an hour until my Phantom is fully fueled. So I'm sitting here in the seediest cafe in Daedalus recording what might actually be an epitaph. Perhaps someone will find this log in an empty ship... But now I'm just brooding.
My name is Orion Sun. I supposedly have some oriental ancestry although you'd never know it to look at me. We have a tradition in my family of naming kids after constalations. Could have been worse. My uncle is called Triangulum.
I grew up in Hasattra in the Thirsk colony, which if you've ever been there you'll know is a wretched backwater of a system, and if you haven't, don't bother. My folks were miners. They had a battered type-6 which they would use to collect metals from nearby systems. It barely ran but they couldn't afford to fix it. I later found out that they had spent all their credits on my education. Growing up on a two bit outpost is not much fun. I wanted to be a space adventurer. I met plenty of commanders who passed through and idolised them as heroes. My parents managed to scrape together the credits to enroll me in the Miskatonic University in Mukusubii, they wanted me to have more opportunities than they had had. A chance for a better life.
Those university days were very happy for me. I studied Xenology and Archeotechnology. I was halfway through my second year when I heard about the accident. The official report was that the cause was a frame shift drive malfunction. My folks jumped into witch space and never came back. The echo showed 'anomalies' was all they said. "Sorry kid, we see this ocassionally with these old rigs. They might turn up at some point but don't hold your breath."
So that was it. I tried to go back to uni but couldn't focus and ended up dropping out. I came back home to find a measly inheritance of a couple of thousand credits and the rent on our home paid up for another six standard months. I blew the cash on girls and booze then ended up homeless and begging to survive. My folks were well regarded and it's a small station. I guess people took pity on me. I never went hungry. I would hang out in the bars all day listening to stories of adventure from the few outsiders who passed through and dreaming of a life that could have been while on a dark spiral of self destruction.
Then I got a lucky break. To this day I still don't know who my mysterious benefactor is, but someone enrolled me in the pilots academy with all fees paid up front for the entire course. I managed to beg the transport fee to get to the academy (cargo class) on a type-6 of all things. It was so old it should have been condemned. A wave of fear passed through me every time we jumped.
When we finally reached our destination I vowed never to set foot on a type-6 again.
I half expected to be turned away at the door of the academy. Like it was all a joke. A great summary of my life. But no. My name was on the list. It checked out. The admissions clerk asked me where my luggage was. I didn't have any. The other new intakes all looked really young. Young and rich. I hated them already.
I won't dwell on my academy days. We had talks from veteran commanders saying that their time at the academy was the happiest in their lives, that you would forge friendships that would last a lifetime. Not me. I didn't fit in with the imperial kids with the right names, or the excellent scholarship kids, or the pampered rich ones. There was no one like me there. And to top it off I wasn't very good at it.
The story is is supposed to go 'and he was a natural, top of the class. They soon accepted him.' But I wasn't and they didn't. Blacksun they called me. Some inbred snotnosed Empire kid coined it. Trying to bring dishonour to my family name. That's a big deal for them. I can generally take insults but when they started having a go at my family I just flipped. That kid ended up in hospital and I was so close to getting expelled. I went from being unpopular to being a pariah. They still whispered Blacksun when they thought I couldn't hear them but pretty much left me alone after that.
I don't expect you to feel sorry for me or anything. This is just some stuff that happened.
I got through it though, just. I graduated third class. But I got my pilot's licence. I was a commander. Several people take a different name when they become a commander. I took Blacksun to remind me of what I went through to get here. There was one more surprise waiting for me upon graduation. A ship from my mysterious benefactor. Ok, only a sidewinder, but mine. This was it. What I had dreamed of for all those years.
One thing I did have over those other kids at the academy was the will to do what others might not want to. Political assination? Sure. Drug running? I'm your man. Need some chemical manipulators? No problem, I'll destroy cargo ships for them. I know for a fact that some of those kids I graduated with are still hauling crap in adders while I've got a fleet of 10 ships including a corvette and getting on for a billion credits.
Once I'd built up enough cash that I could afford to not work for a couple of years, I went back to the Miskatonic University to finish my degree. I did that for my folks. If I hadn't I'd probably be a space pirate or something by now. I also went back to Thrisk for a visit. It was the same crap hole that it had always been. But I owed these people a debt. I bought the bar and chucked a few million credits into it. Free drinks if you were born there.
The field of archaeotechnology was particularly hot at the time with the discovery of alien ruins attributed to a species that they call the guardians. And the goid sightings made the xenology side of my degree also particularly relevant.
The Miskatonic is a strange place. There are lots of odd folk and loners there, some of them on the edge of what you'd consider 'acceptable' perhaps. I won't say sane. I'm coming to think that that term is too subjective. If you haven't heard of it, the university specalises in folklore and legends. You might think that these subjects are irrelevant today, but you'd be surprised at what kind of groups exist. There's an underground church on Mars who worship a machine god and modify their bodies with extreme cybernetics. There's a doomsday cult that see the thargoids as harbingers of the apocalypse and others that try to appease them. And guess what the most talked about topic is on the CMDR message boards is? Raxxla. And this just skims the surface.
Of course all these cults are nonsense, right? Just crazy people being crazy. Right?
But what if there is some truth behind some of it? What if some particulatly sensitive people are able to tune into 'Something' in their dreams. Something that has a very real source?
I'm getting ahead of myself. If I'm going to tell this I might as well do it properly.
So I was back at the Miskatonic. I fitted in well there. Made some good friends. Finished my degree and stayed on to do a masters in historic xenology. It was interesting. I enjoyed it. I didn't know how it would be relevant to a commander though. But then I heard about a guy called Ram Tah operating out of Meene who was sponsoring expeditions to guardian ruins. I went out to meet him and he was very excited to meet a commander who knew about xenoarchaeology. Most commanders he meets are just after the cash he offers them. So he sent me out to look at guardian obelisks, but also told me to use my knowledge and see if I could spot anything that less practiced eyes might have missed. I spent a couple of weeks cataloguing guardian ruins and scanning their obelisks. I did actually find somthing strange in one of them. A different kind of obelisk, unlike the guardian ones that were everywhere. This thing was smaller, erroded and covered in curious symbols unlike the ones on the other obelisks. It was on the outskirts of a small settlement inside a ring of guardian obelisks. My scanners couldn't retrive any data from it though. When I returned to Ram Tah he was most interested in this and said how it was unlikely to be of guardian manufacture. Given the inconsistant weathering on it and exotic materials it was made from, we concluded that it had been located on a different planet before being moved to its present location. Could the guardians have found this and recovered it? If so who made it? The guardian obelisks surrounding it spoke of a religious sect distinct from the one that led to their civil war but were also a warning not to approach. Ram Tah had not seen any reference to this cult before and was very excited about that.
Well, my ship's fueled now. I didn't end up telling you a thing about the ship I found. But I pretty much told you my story. I found the ship some six months of so after working with Ram Tah. I went back to my life as a commander, although I was more focused on exploration now than assassinations. Perhaps I was mellowing out? It was in a barely explored system. Degraded emissions. I haven't got time to go into this now.
The first few systems on the route are all nearby and well in the bubble so should be fairly straightforward. I'll add to this log when I next dock.
First stop, Saturn. To look for cats. Yes, you heard. Maybe I am going mad?
This is Commander Orion Blacksun signing off.
<audio log ends>