Unguided, 1: Jump for the Sake of Jumping
11 Feb 2021Meowers
( 10.02.3307 - 11.02.3307 )
( Komotae - nowhere - Maia - Deciat )
A pedantic description of some repetitive process probably won't be much of a breathtaking, so I'll focus my text output on something like a compilation of thoughts that have appeared during this process.
These engineers are really a weird bunch, and their ways to somehow 'evaluate your worth' are no less weird. Okay, I can understand handing in bounty vouchers, gold, materials, fifty tons of strong booze, but some of them... You probably know Selene Jean. She wants you to go out there and mine. Mine! Fight rocks and chew on ore! Otherwise, she'll refuse to do any of her magical bingo-bongo with your armour. I couldn't look in the mirror without any disgust for a damn week after that. Total shame. By the way, material traders are even creepier. Look at this - you are a trader, right? You're probably willing to have a steady flow of customers, a bright advertising campaign, stable business, all the stuff. But for some unknown wicked reason it's easier to sell out all your cargo bay, full of fresh-smuggled drugs and illegal weapons, right in the heart of some high-sec system, than to find a shady person with some basic periodic table materials. Do you have to hide 'em under the coat? And they don't accept credits, barter only.
So, let's take a look at our missione la grotesque for today. To gain some favour of wacked individuals living in a middle of nowhere, I have to fly into an even deeper middle of nowhere, without any purpose except hitting that 5000 lightyear barrier. They call it 'exploration' of some sort. But I guess the only thing I'm going to 'explore' there is how long I can run without basic on-station amenities and without pulling my hair off my head out of boredom while performing that pointless voyage. What can I get in return? Much needed shamanic actions around ship thrusters, which, I appreciate the irony, are in no way connected to the whole idea of hyper-jumping somewhere. Also they asked for some Thargoid trinkets, and - that's much better - fragments of these, not intact ones. Carrying an intact one sounds more like painting a target on your posterior. And the paint is highly toxic. And the posterior is naked. But, seriously, that was pretty easy, since the oldest places to find them are public knowledge.
Onboard music collection - updated. Fancy-sized fuel scoop - check. Cheap synthetic travel chow supplies - full. Randomly chosen Something Bah-Blah Oh-Oh worthless unpopulated system 5000 ly away, ready or not, here I come! JUMP! FOR THE SAKE OF JUMPING!
(Y-class star photo)
You know, usually, I like violet. In fact, it's my favourite colour. But not when it comes to stars. Those white and neutron dwarves, black holes and other dangerous things are all like they yell at you: "stahp! or u be dead in space!", and on the other hand, T and Y classes are looking completely harmless, until, say thanks to their low mass and size, your FSD drops you out of jump right in front of that "star", and SC starts a rapid acceleration. And finally, a smelly cherry on a big brown cake, they sometimes tend to form clusters, big areas of space where you can't refuel, and you can suddenly find yourself re-plotting your route instead of making a stubborn push forward. Especially if you are a proud owner of an 8-tons-of-exploration-happiness fuel tank. And the navigation system wants you dead too, from time to time, showing the 'perfect' route right through that kind of stars, completely ignoring the possible parallel way with scoopable ones. Ah, yeah, yeah, pompous Big Expert, wiggling a billion-worth especially-outfitted Anaconda, I know that normally 'it's a matter of two or three jumps', but hey, do I even look normal?
(Sunbathing & refuelling photo)
A road home is always a relief, assuming you have one. If you don't, then you can still drop yourself into some station motel, or land somewhere in inhabited space and sleep in your cockpit in the old-fashioned way. Anyway, to me, any other activity or inactivity beats this hyperjumpathon of floating around hell knows where. Well, almost. I don't even want to mention mining. Final point of my return trip was the Maia system, had to grab another thargoid-fetish-gift for another engineer, in this case a tonne of Meta-Alloys for Ms. Farseer.
(Marshmallow at Obsidian Orbital)
Prior to landing, I docked on a station to check up on how Marshmallow's feeling. Sure was the right time to do some maintenance: paint was a bit scarred, diags showed hull condition at 92%, modules were around 85%-95%. Mostly because of goofy piloting around brown dwarf stars and one even goofier mistaking Tauri for M-class. Then a cosy cup (actually, a litre bowl) of fresh tea and a short run to Deciat... Stop, is that a 'short run'? Few days ago, I thought it was a hell of a way. These deep space flights did something strange to me, have to visit a doc afterwards, I don't want to mutate somehow.
Ah, and the exploration data, it goes to Farseer too. I doubt there's something substantial that is still undiscovered within the 5000 ly radius since the FSD invention, instantly followed by an exploration rush, led by people who are much more fanatical than me. They probably had been everywhere. But, nonetheless, on my way back, I started paying attention to the systems that I visit, scanning the previously uncharted ones, to add some variety into this jumping-and-scooping routine.
So now I officially hold my own share of discoveries too! They range from 'utterly worthless' to 'why the hell are you doing this'. And the Universal Cartographics Service had even made my name ceremonially written under several hundreds of pictures of those floating chunks of ice, rocks, rocky ice, crispy rice, turd-rich etc. Thish ish my planetsh now, my worldsh! Maybe, when I become a kind of crazy old hag, I'd make a treasure map and hide a chest full of stolen lepidolite somewhere there. But now... Do I now feel myself inspired enough to plot a route to Colonia or the Abyss? Of course, the answer is 'HELL NO'. Even the thruster upgrade will wait for tomorrow.
I'd better start my expedition to an oldschool gravitational shower.
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Next part: #2: A Beautiful Place to Riot
Next part: #2: A Beautiful Place to Riot