Deciat
13 Nov 2022Claude Lecardunoie
- "No, no, no!! I told you already, don't plug the injection into the overcharge module. Putain, merde, Claude tu déconnes!!", yelled Jérôme watching the injection pipes slowly melting.If he was cursing in french, you could tell that Jérôme Cynar was really pissed off. I guess he had the right to be, as I just burnt yet another practise FSD module. I had been at Farseer Inc. on Deciat 6A for two days already. Jérôme was one of the top FSD experts there and for two days he had been trying to train me on the subtleties of FSD modules and on how to improve their range.
When I reached Deciat 6A, and Farseer Inc., it was a real surprise. I had been expecting Felicity Farseer to own a small engineering lab, hidden in some small and dark corner of a spatioport's workshops area. What I saw instead, as I was waiting for a docking authorisation, was a fully operational planetary base, with several landing pads, and on rock, isolated by a canyon, a communication tower, an air traffic control system, a greenhouse, generators plus five residential and worksop buildings. I would later find out that about a hundred people were living there: Felicity Farseer's engineers and technicians, but also a medical team, traffic control operators, a marshall, 2 cooks and a teacher because some of the families were living there too.
Farseer Inc. facility
Felicity Farseer... On your first days as a Pilot's Federation cadet you would hear from her. On the other hand, it seems that she has access to Pilot's Federation registry and to pilot's records, because she, or her staff, had contacted me some months ago, once I had proven myself as a worthy pilot, I guess. I had forgotten about it until I told a fellow pilot, on the Musashi, about my concerns about ships modules improvements:
- "You know, Claude, forget about local stations technology brokers they are worthless", he said, "Even Guardian tech modules, save FSD boosters, may be. You're from the Pilot's Federation, right? Then go to Deciat and talk to Felicity Farseer."
- "Ok, but what? I just show up there and ask for her assistance?"
- "Nope. Not that simple. But as everyone else, she always need meta-alloys. Go to Maia, buy one ton or two and fly to Deciat. But beware of pirats! Carrying a cargo of meta-alloys, best way to attract them."
The same day, without waiting for the end of Azimuth Biotech. campaign, I took off from the Musashi and left Wandrama to Maia. There, in Darnielle's Progress, a small planetary outpost, I bought one ton of meta-alloys. The supply was really low anyway. Darnielle's Progress being the only place where meta-alloys was sold accross the human inhabited systems, it was of course incredibly expensive. To tell you how much meta-alloy is a sensitive commodity, there was an armed escort to watch over the transfer into my ship's racks.
If you put aside the 3 interdictions I had to escape on my way from Maia, the journey to Deciat was rather uneventfull. I just stopped for one day on the Musashi to pick my paiement for the tons of cobalt and power generators I shipped there and also for securing Wandrama. And, surprise: Azimuth also granted me a permit to Mbooni system. Apparently, you can buy their experimental AX weapons there, which could come handy with all these Thargoids incursions.
Farseer Inc. landing pad. I stepped out of my Asp Explorer to meet the local ground crew. A woman, wearing a jacket flocked with Felicity's engineering company logo came to me:
- "Good day to you. I am Keiko Shota. This ship is the Steve Zissou Explorer, so you must be..." and she checked on her personal com terminal, "you must the Commander Claude Lecardunoie?"
- "Yes. Indeed"
- "Welcome to Farseer Inc. I am Madame Farseer's assistant. I will walk you to our guests residence."
We crossed a gateway above the canyon linking the landing pads to the core buildings. As we walked Keiko Shota kept questionning:
- "So, what business brings you here?"
- "Well, I brought meta-alloys with me, and thought that... aaa... well", I said, not daring to ask
- "And you want to know if we could use our discoveries to upgrade you ship, right? Well, this is our purpose, here. And our engineers are here not only to work on your ship, but also to teach you some state of the art technologies developped here. Ah, here we are. This is your room. For your information, the computer in your appartment is only connected to the local network and your personal devices are jammed. Personal communications out of this facility are forbidden. I am sure you can understand. Madame Farseer will meet you in one hour. You'll find her in the main lab."
In said main laboratory, actually, more a factory workshop, there were 4 different working benches, three to six people working at each of them: one for thrusters, one for DSS, another for shield boosters and the main one for FSD improvments.
- "It's the main one, because FSD is my main interest", said Felicity. "So, Commander what could we do for you? There are two ways of seeing ship components upgrades. Either you improve their main asset or you counter balance their weaknesses."
- "I want to improve my FSD jump. That's an obvious choice with an Asp XP, right?"
- "You are a Commander who knows what he wants. I like that. Ok. Jérôme, come here a minute" she told to a man, about 30, in a white lab coat. "This is the Commander Lecardunoie. You will work on her FSD and teach her the basics regarding our technology in that area so that she can work on FSD by her own later on."
And so, two days of hard work and complicated lessons on FSD theories were about to start.