#001 - Starting "To Infinity and Beyond" expedition
03 Jul 2023Daniel Reis
On this stellar date of 01 JUL 2023, galactic time 23:00, the expedition "To Infinity and Beyond" was scheduled to begin, organized by the Squadron and also In game faction BLOP - Brasilian League of Pilots, one of the biggest in the galaxy. This expedition will cross the galaxy through the leftmost region, passing through Colonia, Sag. A and much other sights.The day before departure, I traveled to the system where the expedition fleet carrier "Titan" was located, with my main ship "Valkyrie", a Krait Phantom fully equipped for exploration, and there I transferred 3 other ships, one of them being a Mamba (called Friday), a small explorer, with 31ly jumprange and most basic exploration equipment for faster and more fun exploration, especially on planets. A Fer-de-lance (called Thunderbird), a combat craft for possible combat sessions between squad members and a Python (called 4A 2311 N) for tritium mining. Soon all the ships were on board and ready for the long journey.
The next day arrived, and already on board of the fleet carrier, I found the traveling companions who were arriving little by little with their ships and the excitement of heading out into the unknown. After some drinks and conversations about the expedition, I returned to my Mamba "Friday" ship, because earlier in the day, I witnessed a small failure in one of the thrusters and decided to do a visual check in the hangar. Visually I didn't notice any anomaly and so, in a totally risky decision, I decided to leave the hangar and fleet to try a systems reboot, aiming to solve the failure. The problem is that there were only 10 minutes left for the fleet carrier's departure, but if my attempt didn't work out, there would still be time to return to the "Titan" (That's what i thought). Here things start to go wrong. After the reboot, all my control systems stopped working, and I found myself unable to move my ship anywhere, while watching the tick tack of the clock approaching the moment of Titan's departure , which in a short time happened and I was left behind.
Now here i was, drifting in space, with a motionless ship and without much jump range, and the fleet carrier rapidly receding every 15 minutes. But there was no time for regret, if I wanted to catch up with my comrades at some point, I needed to get out of this situation first. I soon called a friend who had a fleet near my location, and he promptly came to the rescue and towed me to his port. There, his personal engineer quickly solved the ship problems, but with a jump range still low on my Mamba, there was no chance of me reaching the "Titan", which according to the schedule would make its first stop about 12,000ly away, where would stay for 48 hours.
To my surprise, my friend, hearing my story about the expedition, very kindly decided to lend me one of his ships, so that I could rejoin the fleet at the first stop. For my happiness, it was a Krait Phantom, a model slightly inferior to my mainly ship, jumping close to 45ly. I promptly accepted and thanked my friend for the great help that night and quickly contacted my traveling companions to find out if there was any possibility for the Fleet Carrier Titan to make a stop before the first waypoint. To my dismay, the schedule went exactly as planned and the first stop was maintained. With no time to moan, I soon plotted my route, 300 jumps and 12,000 ly to go.
So I transferred my personal things to the Krait Phantom, said goodbye to my friend and again thanked him for his great help and left to rejoin the expedition. On the first leg, I performed 161 jumps without stopping, while hearing an astronomy podcast in the ship's multimedia system, and off I went, quickly completing half of the route. Later, i retired to the ship's quarters, and rested until the next day, where I completed the remaining jumps until I finally reached "Titan" again, hours before this moment where I write this log.
The expedition has already started with great emotions, at least for me. Now I will rest again after the long trip and from tomorrow I will join my traveling companions again to go in search of new discoveries throughout the galaxy.