Personal Log 5: 27th April - 3rd May, 3301
04 Sep 2016Jemine Caesar
27th April - 3rd May, 3301I stayed at Sun Takush three days, in deep mourning for the death of my parents, and overwhelmed with guilt for not having died with them. On the third day, my papa spoke to me in a dream.
"Jem," he said, "Enough tears. We have crossed the bridge, your mama and I. But you are still young and alive and free. Move on, and grasp the rest of your life."
I had always listened to my papa, and the dream had seemed so vivid and real. So on April 30th I left Sun Takush behind to face my future.
In the Brani system I was hailed by a CMDR Venomine.
"Hi," he said. "I patrol this system, looking out for anyone in trouble. Give me a call if you need help while you're here."
"That's good to know," I said, and thanked him for his kindness.
At Brani's Wundt Hub I invested in an A1 Life Support system for 20,195CR, and sold about 6,500CR worth of astronomical data. A few missions delivering fruit, coffee and scrap metal took me through the Chimba and Koskit systems. I was interdicted in both, each time heavily outgunned, but managed to escape both without taking too much damage.
On Koskit's Meucci Survey platform, I called Rudolphus. We had a long chat, and I was grateful for his company, albeit by k-cast over dozens of light years distance. He was very sympathetic when I told him about my parents' deaths, and he listened supportively to my vague plans of revenge against Caz, when I eventually find him on Earth.
* * * * *
The skirmishes with Andreyasn and Turner, the two pirates I had escaped from earlier, had shown me that my flying skills were not yet good enough to use a fixed Beam Laser effectively in combat. So, reluctantly, I replaced it with another gimballed Pulse Laser. The Pilot's Federation notified me that my Explorer Rank had risen to 'Mostly Aimless'. Rudolphus had already urged me to buy a better ship, but I had grown more fond of my Sidewinder, and didn't want to part with her yet.
On a whim I decided to set course for the Abukunin system, after reading about its tourist industry in VoyageAdvisor magazine. This meant passing through several intervening systems, including Verbigeni. Here I was interdicted by Otto Kopra in a Viper. My gimballed Pulse Lasers proved their worth, and I was relieved to claim a victory at last, despite being helped by the eventual arrival of the system police. The 13,997CR bounty was very welcome. My ship was unscathed, but I had painfully wrenched my right shoulder during the prolonged battle with Kopra. I carried on to Abukunin, and after docking at Reilly Hub I took a shuttle down to the system's first planet to go sightseeing.