Pressganged! (by accident)
01 Feb 2023Tytonid
I heard on the grapevine that the Pilots Trade Network were planning a meetup a couple of weeks ago to squish some goids, so I thought I'd tag along. Loaded myself and my AX Krait onto one of their carriers, moved out and had a blast (pun absolutely intended) of an evening defending a surface settlement, despite the high gravity slamming us into the ground every few minutes. Made a fair few credits too!
But towards the end of the evening, disaster struck - I hit the ground a bit too hard, blacked out and broke both arms. I managed to limp my ship back to the carrier despite what felt like a nasty concussion, but barely got my ship docked before I passed out on the way to Medical.
(Incidentally, I had the strangest dream, or perhaps nightmare, while there - or at least it must have been a dream, though it seemed more as if I was seeing events in a parallel universe. A university student got an email from her Faculty Office, telling her 10 days before her module's final exam that the module was oversubscribed and their solution to this was to remove her from the module and she would not be taking the exam. It took two full days of fruitlessly emailing them before she contacted the module leader for help and he told the office to get it together, which wiped out a full week of gaming time from her schedule in favour of making up revision time. At least the exam seemed to go well, because she went on a very celebratory Booze Cruise of her own the weekend afterwards!)
I woke up a week and a half later, with the carrier showing an unfamiliar system name on the displays. After being released from Medical, I sprinted to the docking bays to check on my ship, which had been repaired nicely. Launching my ship, I took a look around me at the sky. It seemed awfully empty. Checking my galaxy map, I couldn't see any systems within jumping range - though in a ship optimised for short-range combat, this was pretty pitiful anyway! Then I turned around.
My dream about the student's personal Booze Cruise must have been some kind of awareness filtering through, because while I was unconscious the PTN had announced their own Booze Cruise and we were almost to the very top of the galaxy with a cargo hold full of wine - and I had 4 tonnes of cargo space! Quickly docking back on the carrier to avoid being left behind, I weighed my options. First, there was the obvious: I could destroy my ship and not rebuy it, being transported back to the bubble to buy a Sidewinder, though this would lose me both my combat bonds and my carefully-engineered, beloved Scarlet Krait. Second, I could commit a crime once we reached Rackham's Peak large enough to be sent to a detention facility, but I couldn't be sure this wouldn't just lose me 400 million in combat bonds or get me destroyed in self-defence. Or third, I could get my hands on a Python full of cargo bays and join in the fun. Either way, we were a few hours away from anywhere.
The next morning, I woke up to find that we had reached HIP 58832. Going through the list of carriers up there, I couldn't find any selling Pythons - fair enough, since it seemed everyone was bringing their own. So a very kind carrier owner, Cmdr Wholelottacake, ferried me to a carrier 530Ly away which was selling both Pythons and cargo racks. Very impressive how they get the stock up here, but I suppose Faulcon DeLacy has a few gigacredits for marketing, and they must still make a profit even shipping them up this far! I hastily re-docked my new ship at the P.T.N. Starhammer, making a mental note not to forget to transfer the Scarlet Krait to a carrier with a shipyard which would be making the journey back to the Bubble later on. An anti-xeno ship 4kLy into the intergalactic void isn't much use, after all, and stars forbid we'll ever be needing defence from bugs that far out!
So I suppose I'm a hauler now. The sky is disturbingly dark up here. At least the people are friendly, and I found some communication channels where I can get alerted for carriers to hitch a ride on. I do not want to miss the bus home!