Betancourt Base: Exploration for Profit
10 Dec 2020OmegaPaladin
Sirius Atmospherics was wanting the latest readings on ammonia worlds, so I reached out to my contact at the Sirius Corporation. Some HIP 13644 corporate types had connected me to Sirius,since I had been a good corporate agent for them. They wanted a series of worlds nearby scanned on a tight deadline . I set to work rapidly on the task before me, using the Amelie Morello for the mission rather than a larger ship, since I didn't have other crew around. It could jump about as far, and went through less fuel.Each system I approached was one that had been scanned before, but they needed fresh data. It was methodical, precise work - jump to the system, do the quick pulse to get the system information, then do a detailing world by world scan. After that, find any planets that were potentially terraformable or ammonia worlds, then map them. I was even able to find a few gas giants that had never been mapped before. However, there were 100 systems to be scanned. I normally would take this slowly, gathering photos and landing on planets, but this was different. The time crunch was only getting worse. I worked faster and faster to improve my scanning abilities, pushing myself to work longer hours. Each day was nothing but system after system, until my vision began to blur. Finally, I was done. A few more jumps dropped me into the destination system.
Exhausted, I pulled into Betancourt Base, wired on coffee and whatever other legal stims I could wrangle. I turned in my data, and nearly fell out of my seat. Not only had I just received a windfall greater than my mining work over weeks, I had just earned the status of Elite.
As I got over the elation, I fell into bed and slept like a rock. When I woke up, I heard on Galnet that Lakon was doing a closeout sale on some of their less popular ships. I figure I could use the massive exploration windfall to do shopping. I'm sure there was something useful that could be done with an Asp Scout, and I had seen enough Diamondback Scouts in combat to appreciate the little ships. Before I left, the Sirius representative had another job for me - I needed to survey a series of systems around HIP 22550. She was cagey on her reasons, but she needed up to date data. What was another dozen systems after what I had done tthis week?