Survey Vessel Stargazer
27 Nov 2017Robert Phillips
Following my most recent lead, I headed to HIP 19026 B 1 C to see if there was anything unusual there.Nothing appeared on my Nav Scanner when I arrived in orbit of the planet. A cursory scan of the planet did not reveal anything unusual to my eyes either.
I could have spent my time eyeballing the planet's surface, but not knowing what to look for, I felt my time would be better spent following my other lead - searching for traces of the missing survey vessel Stargazer in HIP 16378.
Upon arrival in HIP 16378, I checked my Nav computer. There was a Listening Post in orbit around the star.
I dropped out of SuperCruise, scanned the Listening Post, and received the following message:
LISTENING POST SIGNAL DATA
…Unregistered Transmission DGE-163-B Detected…
Signal Match Detected in Bhadaba system.
Joci, I’m going to be delayed, I’m currently in the HIP 16378 system and I’ve received a distress call in orbit around 3b, out of fuel by the sounds of it.
I’ve got some refueling limpets on board so I’m going to check it out. After all I’ve had my share of near misses and we always say that if it was one of us out there, we’d hope someone would come to help us.
Comms are a bit sketchy at the moment, getting weird glitches, so I’m not sure if you'll get this before reaching Maia. I won't be long hun.
Luca out.
…Signal Blocked at Source…
So, now I had a body to search - HIP 16378 3 B.
I headed there and checked to see if anything was apparent, but I saw nothing unusual on my scanners. Performing a visual inspection of a whole planet for 1 ship was impractical, so I decided to purse the next possible lead from the message - a matching Listening Post in the Bhadaba system:
LISTENING POST SIGNAL DATA
…Unregistered Transmission DOE-163-A Detected…
Signal Match Detected in HIP 16378 system.
…Joci, I found something out here.
It’s huge. I’ve no idea what it is, but I’ve taken survey samples and I’m heading to Maia to register our claim.
Honestly honey I think we’ve hit the big one on this.
I’ll call you again when I’m station side.
…Security Breach Detected. Signal Lost…
Frustratingly, the message from this Listening Post did not reveal any more clues as to the location of the crashed ship. Not wanting to eyeball a whole planet for a crashed ship, I considered this a dead lead.
So, what next?