AESA expedition pt1 - There
15 Jan 2021Orion Blacksun
I've been back for a while now. The excitement and emotions have faded and populated systems feel normal again. But before I forget I wanted to document my experiences on the first AESA expedition. For those of you who don't know them the AESA are a group of commanders led by CMDR Ubermeg who's nominal goal is to find new new worlds for settlement. I've been with them for a short while and they tend to spend more time killing pirates than anything else, but this is no bad thing. But when they announced that they were planning an expedition to the centre of the galaxy to explore uncharted systems I signed up straight away as a photographer. I'd not travelled far before but knew how to document findings. The opportunity to look for clues to the old civilisation that I'm studying in different parts of the galaxy was too good to pass up. We would be accompanied by a fleet carrier, the Shackleton, which would serve as a mobile base of operations.The timing wasn't ideal for me as I was in the middle of retracing the route of a lost ship but I was confident I could catch up with them when I got back. I loaded my corvette, anaconda and dolphin onto the Shakelton and continued with my quest.
I won't reiterate what happened on that fateful voyage here. Suffice to say that I got back to the bubble with my mind in tatters and a long trip in the opposite direction to the one I had just come from seemed like a very good idea.
The first few days were spent flying as quickly as possible to try to catch the Shakelton. There were a few unexplored systems that I stumbled across but nothing of note. Icy bodies soon lose their charm. The expedition was organised with a series of waypoints to visit along the way. Carbon star, super giant, black holes. The waypoints were certainly interesting and I dutifully documented them. When I caught up with the Shack I was relieved. It was good to see the guys again and to get an irradiated coffee.
What followed were several days of careful exploring. I flew my dolphin as it was very well equiped with all manner of scientific equipment. I would fly ahead of the Shack and then wait at the waypoint for it to catch up. My most interesting find during this period was a previously undocumented system containing albulum gourd molluscs. I took a sample of the strange creatures for later examination in the lab and the kitchen.
I found a few water worlds that were suitable for terraforming and several HMCs. I also discovered my first ammonia world. Universal Cartographics pay a lot for them for some reason. I can't see why, this hellish planet is not at all conducive to human life. I mapped it quickly and moved on. I wish I'd explored it a bit more thoroughly, but I didn't know then what I know now...
Being primerly combat pilots, boredom started to set in with some of the commanders on the expedition. We took to having duels in SLFs to keep our skills sharp. I gave as good as I got but one of the commanders had brought an eagle and he cut through the SLFs like chaff. Good fun though.
The expedition moved to some stars that were very isolated including one in a greveyard region with many solar remnants. This place felt sinister to me and ancient. My jump drive couldn't even reach the next nearest star. A commander told me about fsd injections and neutron star boosting but at the time was a bit too scared to try it. Something about being surrounded by the corpses of starp perhaps? I climbed back into my cabin and took a few days off feeling unnerved.
We were now headed to Colonia and one of the commanders announced that he was turning back. I don't know what happened but had he waited until we reached Colonia he could have just grabbed a ride in one of the taxies. Was it a moment of madness, did he have a falling out with someone? I don't know and I haven't seen him since. The carrier began to feel opressive and I also wanted to leave so I decided to make a dash for Colonia. I tried the neurton star jumping technique and by the time I reached my destination had mastered it.
As soon as I reached Colonia I hired a pilot to head out to the Shack to collect my corvette. There were pirates here...
There followed a week in Colonia in which I visited four engineers and made deals with them to be able to use their services on any station where I dock. Every station has a workshop but access is restricted to the engineer's friends. One of them wanted escape pods. Ok I could find them. Occupied escape pods. What? Essentially he wanted captive people is stasis that had been declared missing presumed dead. I... Didn't ask, but got him his captives. Such is the life of a Commander sometimes. Feeling a little guilty I bathed the hull of my corvette in the blood of pirates. So many slain. But it was good to be blowing stuff up again. Then the rest of the squadron arrived and the pirates took another pounding. Although we were only there for a short time, Colonia will remember the AESA. Feeling refreshed I was ready for the next leg that would take us to SagA*.
The star density here was much higher than in the bubble. Black holes appear haloed in a sphere of dots. Imperssive but it started to affect my sleep. Everything was so bright. Fortunately the dolphin is the ideal ship to deal with this with its tinted windows.
I experimented with tuning my route plotter to only stop at stars that were the right age and type to be good candidates for Earthlikes. After doing this I found many more systems with interesting planets. Dozens of terraformable HMCs, a score of water worlds and five or six Earthlikes by the time I'd reached SagA*. This was more like it, these were the kind of systems we were looking for.
And then finally we were here. SagA*. The supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. I had seen many black holes by now and taken scores of pictures. I was expecting great things from this giant. And it was... Underwhelming. Was that it? Sure it was big, but pretty it wasn't. As a photographer I was quite disappointed really. I had a friend back in the bubble who wanted to see SagA* so I invited him to project a hologram of himself onto my ship. Equally unimpressed he suggested that we shoot some 'pirates'. Now there was a tourist beacon here and there were several ships around. When you've been in the black for a while and are used to being alone any ship can look like a threat. We attacked them, several of them. It wasn't my finest hour I must admit. More skulls for the trophy room on the Shack but some of them small. Well, space can be a dangerous place..