Log 6: Fatigue
25 Oct 2020Tala Wren
I recently got the news from Ram Tah that I'm now able to purchase his Guardian FSD boosters for no material cost, as thanks for my participation fighting off the Thargoid incursion. So, naturally I was excited to try it out; I hurried to the nearest tech broker in Razorcrest, and I purchased the module--size 5, the biggest size booster you can currently get--and worked on cramming it in and hooking it up to the rest of my ship's systems.Of course, while I was doing this, the galaxy continued to spin, and things continued to happen. It turns out, those of us fighting to protect the Marlinists a few weeks ago were at least successful in allowing a few of the megaships to escape, which was welcome news; of course, those megaships now found themselves in Federation territory. The Empire, probably hungry for blood after the assassination of Harold Duval, is demanding they extradite all Marlinist refugees, and the Federation is refusing, citing galactic laws and treaties between the super-powers. But as one might imagine, a mega-ship full of refugees suddenly showing up can wreck havoc on a system's infrastructure and supplies, so a call went out to help supply a charity that is going to distribute necessary supplies to the systems affected, and ultimately support the Marlinist refugees.
As fortune would have it, in the interim between the ending of the major Thargoid incursion and the call for aid, I had gone and purchased a bulk hauler: an absolutely massive, lumbering beast, a Lakon Type 9 Heavy, which I have named Inari's Grace, which is capable of hauling an impressive 752 tons of...well, anything, really. So while Razorcrest was being upgraded, I hopped into my new cargo-rack-on-thrusters, and got to hauling vital supplies to help the Marlinists, whom at this point I consider to be kindred spirits. I know the struggle they are going through all too well.
I made dozens of trips, carrying everything from basic medicine, to food cartidges, to fruits and vegetables, and clothing, and shelters; anything that you would expect to be in an emergency survival kit, I probably had in my cargo hold at one point. It was honestly calming, and soothing, making repeated trips back and forth, station to station; I would almost have called it serene, if not for the pirates. See, the charity is based in a station called Fox Enterprise, which is unfortunately located around 45 thousand light-seconds from the main star. And with the galaxy-wide call for aid, the Federation had alerted every pirate in the bubble to a new potential piracy hotspot, full of transports and ripe for the picking.
The Federation had called on bounty hunters and mercenaries and combat pilots of all kinds to help protect the transports making shipments, of course, but there were just so many pirates. Naturally, a lot of the pirates would go after the biggest, slowest, and seemingly least dangerous targets in the system, which included me and my limbering bulk hauler. But what they didn't seem to ever realize is that I am a very skilled pilot; the pirates were flying Adders, or Cobras, or Vipers, or even Fer-de-Lances, but I was always able to evade them, because I knew my ship better than they knew theirs.
I must have made dozens of trips before I had enough; I was congratulated for being in the Top 10% of contributors, and I think maybe that broke me. I had only hauled a little over 9,000 tons; that's enough to support a town, maybe, not an entire system. And I was starting to get fatigued from the stressful happenings in civilized space.
So the moment Razorcrest was finally upgraded, I and a fellow commander (and avid explorer) agreed to travel out into the black together; we've set our sights on Saggitarius A*, the super-massive black hole at the center of the galaxy, and we also planned to take the Neutron HIghway, both for the first time.