What difference a year makes.
21 Jul 2017Rufus Vegas
I've been a year in the void since the last time I bothered to write anything down; turns out keeping journals is about as hard for me as keeping in one place. Most of that year was spent on my latest scheme- straight runs from the bubble to Colonia. Wealthy researchers and tourists alike are willing to pay big for that little adventure. It doesn't pay as well as grinding the trade lanes but it's a damn sight quieter and the overheads are much smaller.The side bonus to flying those kinds of distances over and over is that the Pilot's Federation have decided I'm an elite explorer now, which comes with it's own benefits (can you say discount?). Since I was getting used to spending my days in nowhere special I decided to head out rim-ward again to look at what's happening in a certain nebula I called home (before the Feds, the Imps, and everybody with a gun decided to fill it with cap. ships) back when stealing artefacts we weren't supposed to call alien was good business.
I've seen plenty of the spooky stuff out there in the past, but in the year I was gone the place has moved from feeling like an old 20th haunted house ride to full on "this is what the edge of your seat was made for" stuff. The aliens are called aliens now (the mythical Thargoids, no less) and Ive seen them up close and personal out at the barnacles. I've also seen their bases, complete with functioning drones and star charts (those bugs know how to build star charts). All this fun has drawn pilots form all over the bubble- out on some kind of witch hunt, or gold rush, or whatever they think it is. It reminds me of that Don Quixote character except the dragon is real, we just don't have a lance long enough to spear the fucker!
The Feds are especially interested in the bugs, and vice versa. If I'm going to learn anything about these things I'm going to have to get back into my old hobby of dicing with Fed security, draw them out so I can know what they know. It's been a while since I was on their radar and SolSec haven't shown any signs of caring about me in a long time, so I'm doing what any self respecting thrill seeker would do: I'm joining their Auxiliary Navy... Hows that for belly of the beast?!