Escapade aka Night-out on the Elysian Shore (part 1)
18 Feb 2022Tiffany Yür
So, it's possible the faction responsible for sending the assassin after me due the Viper theft has recognized that it wasn't me. I needed to get away for a bit to let things cool. So I went and bought the Asp Explorer I test drove last week, and outfitted it with what I could speedily gather up, thinking a long voyage is what I need. So off from the Bubble to the easiest direction from the current home system. Needed some time to think anyway, what could I do to help those young rascals who plan and try to execute harmful political acts. Normal behavior like terraforming at Lewis Vision is not their cup of coffee, at least not the whole cup, it looks like. There are better ways of action, which is why were in the Alliance, I guess. The paramilitaries for example, trying to take out the small time criminals in space, the types who are not part of any stately organization. So with these thoughts I went off towards the Perseus Arm, you know, the one with the Double Cluster shining brightly over the Galactic Rimward skies all over the Bubble. This would be a lonesome trip like some pre-high wake thing flying to the distant Double of a System - made alone. Yes I've done those, but always with company. Those were the more peaceful days, where the main rival in space was the space itself. The invention of high-wake changed everything, almost all the old ships have been scrapped. Remnants of the Big Starships of old still float in space, though, they say. I don't know where, but these should be all considered hallow ground, for remembrance of the intrepid souls of old.
My past trips beyond the border of the Bubble have shown there is regular human activity within 100 ly from the border. I believe nowadays it's mostly independent miners who have grown tired of interdictions and regular politics of the factions of humanity, there's very little if anything new to be seen or even map here. There have been, I believe, several hundreds or maybe even thousands of people like me before, trying out the capabilities of these new ships, visiting and mapping the nearby space very thoroughly. I think on the whole trip I saw at least 200 names of former visitors to the places I went to. It's an automatic system in exploration ships to leave a small beacon tuned to fss scanner freq so you see in the planetary map who has been there first. If you do not see planets on the map, but the fss says there are some, congratulations, you have stumbled to a system no one's been to. There are a few levels of scanning. Quite often you may come to a system where only some of the planetary bodies have been found. This likely means the discoverer has just used D-scanner while travelling with speed towards some destination. Using Fss takes of course some time, so if someone has a destination in mind it's very easy to skip full spectrum. Like the experienced explorers say, "once you've scanned a thousand icy bodies, you've scanned a thousand icy bodies.' Meaning of course planetary bodies and not corpses.
Of course I had to try my newly gotten planetary scanner as well. This is a wonderful device which launches a simple cheap, acoustic, seismic, or other ballistic probe according to the planet-type you're approaching. The device can make it's own probes, I guess directly from the debris elements caught to your fuel scoop, so no fear of running out of them. Unless of course you run out of gas by which time you got some more serious problems at hand. The system even tells you if you're going too fast towards a moon to try to map it quickly. The probes map a standard size of area so larger planets are a challenge to map quickly. Couple of times I managed to map a whole planet requiring seven probes while flying past it, but for larger ones I definitely need to (essentially) stop to map them. The same is true for ringed planets.
Past the 100 ly mark from the Bubble, signals of human presence go weak, and I soon started to wonder why I need the 32tn cargo rack with me. With no mining equipment nor skills to do that there's only the rolligon you can use to gather up some materials. This wasn't such a working trip though and I happily skipped all the mapped resources. Luckily Universal Cartographics is interested in news that "there's a new Void Opal hotspot 1200 ly from sol!". I mean, who travels that far for a mining operation?? I did some scavenging/rescuing/cleaning up and rather enjoyed the accuracy needed in that line of work. Even the Cargo rack got some use. "item, Scrap from 200 ly out, highest bidder?"
Still too tired to write more, second part of the lower middle class old-guy escapade likely coming out sometime later.