Aborovi Causeway 1 Exploration: stop ou encore?
23 Apr 2023Claude Lecardunoie
After 3 weeks, I had realized that exploration was mostly about sitting in the ship's cabin coms hub, to analyse and process data collected during the mission of the day: systems scans, images and signals from DSS probes and analysis of material samples collected on planets surface. I would always use the 2 main screens there plus the digital panel of the desk itself to display ledgers, atmospheres composition charts or to run AI image processing algorithms on planets and moons pictures.I was there, scrolling up and down information about Veil West Sector GR-M b7-2 and cross checking it with the official codex database, when I realised: no doubt possible this time, that was it, although not the first one to reach this system, I would be the first human ever to discover and map this system's stellar bodies! Oh, not a place I could call home: no earth-like worlds, not even a terraformable moon, only metals planets and icy rocks, but still, they'll be forever labelled with your, then, not so humble servant's name: the Commander Claude Lecardunoie!
I was planning the next day DSS scans and surface explorations when several warnings popped up on top of the ship's alarms manager banner of my displays: sudden pressure drop from the SRV hangar. As a matter of fact, I repaired one of the SRV elevator hydraulic cylinder some days before and it looked that I didn't do it well. It turned out that the part I replaced jumped out of its axis, perforing the isolation layer. No SRV deploiment possible anymore, and so long for the surface explorations I had scheduled for the day after. That was a major blow for my expedition, and I had to decide weither or not to abort it.
Ok, first off, I would carry on with the DSS of Veil West Sector GR-M b7-2's bodies, as they had never been mapped before. And then I zoomed out the galactic map and set course to Veil West Sector DL-Y d68 to at least reach the Veil Nebula West.
Under Veil Nebula West sky
To my surprise and my relief, 2 fleet carriers where anchored in Veil West Sector DL-Y d68. Although stationed some hundreds of thousands Ls from the system's main star, I flew to one of them: the Garry Hogan, matricule HFX-73G. A quick request gave me the details: owned by Jace Koll and member of the Aisling's Angels squadron. Well, obliously Imperials.
- "Commander, you have entered a neutral zone, please identify yourself", said a the female traffic operator with, I must say, a very charming voice.
- "Commander Lecardunoie, here, on the Steve Zissou Explorer, ID SZ-XP1. Requesting docking permission on the Garry Hogan, please."
There was 30 seconds of a long silence. Would they let in a pilot from the Federal auxilliary navy?
- "Ok, commander, please follow docking procedures to landing pad 3", said the traffic officer.
Pad 3. I checked in with the landing crew, 4 people who also happened to be the maintenance team.
- "Listen", said their chief officer "you have no hostile record against the Imperial fleet, we are far from the Bubble and this fleet carrier has no landing restriction, but back in the Core Systems, we probably wouldn't have granted a docking permission for a Fed pilot, ok? Now, what's your business here?"
- "Allright", I said, "I am not looking for any trouble, I am on an exploration journey and I need some maintenance on my ship. So, would it be possible to repair heat damages and kinetics impacts on my hull and fix my SRV hangar?".
- "Ok, give us 12 hours", said the officer after spitting on the ground. Ok, the message was clear: they would repair my ship and resupply it, but I couldn't expect anything else from them.
After this somewhat hostile reception, I avoided the bar and the crew lounge. The Garry Hogan concourses were empty anyway. I checked the fleet carrier's other services on a terminal. Well there was a Universal Cartographics desk. At least, they were supposed to be neutral. There, the UC representative estimated my exploration data to about 9M credits. With or without the Garry Hogan's 25% tax? I was not sure. Well, selling all of them was tempting, but I remembered that I signed an exclusivity contract with Farseer Inc. However, I couldn't resist selling all the data from Veil West Sector GR-M b7-2 to have my name officially attached to the planet's I was the first to discover and map! Would Farseer Inc. figure it out and bother, I hoped not.
I waited the rest of the time on a bench, just below the landing pads, getting the Galaxy news on my pocket terminal. During my 3 weeks of exploration, I didn't have any as I configured my ship coms system to filter out everything but exploration data to save some bandwidth. News, they were bad: Thargoids were taking over systems after systems but corporation kept on their own private wars, Caine-Massey and Torval Minings, lately, and instead of focusing on the Thargoids, it raised the tension between the Empire and the Federation, which explained why the local personel were so cold with me.
Part of me felt that my duty was to fly back to the Bubble and take my share in the Thargoids war. But my ship was about to be repaired. So Aborovi Causeway 1 Exploration: stop ou encore? I decided to carry on one month: first to Elephant Truck Nebula, and then I would leave the galactic plane upward then downward, before starting the journey back to the core systems.