Symphony of The Planets
17 Dec 2020Elkyri
Betancourt Base3306.12.13
A couple thousand years ago a famed composer put together his symphony of The Planets. There was a movement for each of seven planets in the Sol system. He left out Terra, or Earth if you prefer, and Pluto was unknown then, never mind the debate about whether it is or isn't a planet. The pieces vary greatly -- Mars is strident and anxious; Jupiter is happy sounding and uplifting; Saturn is slow and mellow. The idea was to communicate with music the association between the planets and the characteristics of the gods for whom they had once been named.
But did you know planets actually do have sounds? Their own music of a sort. Or at least that's how I imagine it when I have my head down over the Full Spectrum Scanner. There is an audio component to the scanner and over time I learned to tell what type of planet was going to be resolved when I focused in based only on the sound coming from the scanner's speakers. Well, that and the location of the signal on the spectrograph.
Other things that show up on the FSS also make sounds. Thargoid clusters have their own sound. It's very distinctive... and spooky. It's hard to describe but once you've heard it you will never forget it.
Hicks was right about Sirius Athmosperic's survey project being easy money. In a week I pulled in a bit more than two hundred million credits just from selling exploration data. There were some moments that were just a little too exciting for my tastes. Twice I jumped into systems with two hundred or more thargoid clusters. That was a quick scan then huge relief when there were no planets I wanted to map with the Detailed Surface Scanner. But overall it was easy work and they paid well for the data collected even if that planet had been surveyed in the past. I guess they wanted the survey updated so they are working from fresh data when they start their project, whatever it actually turns out to be. I still have reservations about that, asking myself again why they are even considering trying to colonize that region of space when there are plenty of other and more reasonable places.
Oh, two other things came out of that besides the money -- Sirius gave me an upgraded DSS that will make planet mapping much easier and quicker. Based on this experience I think I'll keep it fitted even if it does take up a bit of cargo space. There is free money to be made scanning and mapping while also running cargo. The other thing is a permit to enter Shinrarta Dezhra. That's quite the deal. I hear Jameson Memorial is the cat's meow when it comes to finding a place to base. Cat's meow. Where does that phrase come from? Maybe I should get a cat. Didn't all the old ships have a ship's cat?
As you can imagine this survey project drew lots of explorers into the area. Real explorers, not just a cargo hauler with a couple of scanners bolted into her T6. Let's just say they are a breed apart -- solitary people, mostly, who prefer their own company to that of others. Some are more approachable than others but conversations at Betancourt are quite different to the usual exchanges where freight haulers gather.
"What you getting for jump range in that T6?" He was tall, dark, and nowhere near handsome. He had introduced himself as Skeeter.
"Thirty light-years fully loaded." I was proud of the engineering work that was done on it.
"What's that empty?, he asked. "about fifty?"
"A little less than that I suppose but you don't make any money running empty. I always want a full load on the backhaul even if it turns only a little profit."
"I guess you put in a lot of time on a long haul then," he sounded sympathetic. "Come over here for a bit," he said as he motioned me to follow him to sit at a table near the wall.
"You ever hear of the guardians?" Sketter asked as he settled into his chair.
"Sure. Who hasn't? An ancient race that was exterminated by the thargoids." Here we are with the thargoids again.
"Wasn't all that simple but, yeah, I guess that's how it ended up." He motioned to a server to get his attention then asked "lunch?"
"Sure, I'll buy." With the recent payouts I felt like I was rolling in credits.
Skeeter continued where he had left off after we placed our orders. "Part of their problem, if you want to call it that, is they put too much stock in tech and machines to see them through. Didn't work in the end but some of the things they created are pretty fantastic -- like a way to get a good extra ten light-years out of your FSD."
I tried not to show it but that certainly caught my interest. That kind of range could cut transit times significantly. But who was this guy and what bill of goods was he about to try to sell me? "Go on," I said.
"It's a booster. They plumb and wire it into your FSD. That's all there is to it."
"Then why haven't I heard about this? And where do I find one? Or is this something they only sell to explorers?" I tried not to sound suspicious but I expected to hear a friend of his just happened to have one for sale and all I had to do was follow him down some dark alley to meet him.
"Well, that's the thing," Skeeter said. "You can only get them from certain brokers and they want you to cough up some things you can only find in the guardian cities before they'll sell them to you. Getting that stuff is a bit of a trick but there is just such a place not that far from here."
Skeeter gave me the rest of the story over lunch. It wasn't as simple as finding the ruins of some guardian city and picking up some relic to trade in. It was a complicated routine like something out of an adventure holo-vid where the hero turns this knob then pulls that lever then presses four hidden stones in just the right order to get the golden idol out of its hiding place. It actually sounded exciting and I wondered at the patience and problem-solving of which ever intrepid explorer first discovered one of these places and sorted out how to make things work.
First getting paid to scan planets and now poking around inside ancient ruins? This explorer thing is looking more and more interesting.