God Damn Humans, they ruin everything
22 Apr 2023Dante Ragnarson
Serebrov Beacon Dryaa Phoe WV-C d0 9,994.08All alone in the night sky.
The Seberov Beacon which lies in the vacuous between the Perseus and Cygnus arms. Not many Galactic maps with only one star within 65 lightyears of the star, but such is common here in this darkness. Even looking back at the Galactic disk behind me, giant puffs of hydrogen gas and nebulae hide parts of the band that lies across the sky.
I had to replot 4 or 5 times as my nav computer had ever greater difficulty finding passage in the dark between spiral arms. There are jumps now that are black apart from the central dot of light forward, as there are simply no stars nearby. I read that the old explorers of last century managed to navigate with 55 lightyear jumps, but even my beast of an Anaconda struggles to find safe routes with a jump range of 80 lightyears. Two times now I have come to a star from which I could no longer move forward and had to retrace my steps, before once more moving onwards towards my goal.
Eventually I reached Dryaa Phoe WV-C d0, the star named Seberov Beacon by the first survey team seeking to discover habitable worlds south of Sol. I landed on the mustard yellow planet closest to the sun. Lay in the co-ordinates of the beacon and descended. I landed a respectful kilometer away from the beacon and alighted into my Scarab. As I looked forward from my scarab, no stars were visible in the sky. I was alone. The only things visible were Andromeda and the Triangulum Galaxy, but no star of my own galaxy.
Historically only 250 odd humans had ever made landfall on the planet. I looked up the codex for a picture of the beacon, a 3 meter titanium sphere. There were some tracks of other scarabs on the way, but much to my surprise as I neared the location of the beacon, there was no beacon to be seen. On closer investigation I could see a century of wheel and foot marks, 3 beer bladders, but no beacon itself. I looked this way and that and finally noticed thrust marks on the ground. My supposition, some complete bastard has dropped down, and stolen the whole bloody thing!
I swore and cursed and took a few captures before driving back to my ship and launching in disgust.