Rear Admiral TheDarkLord, To You
04 Apr 2016TheDarkLord
Paradiso Outpost, 17 Draconis. Asp Explorer “TDL Eratosthenes”.February 3302.
I’m pretty much a ‘horses for courses’ kinda guy. I’ve amassed a small fleet of specialist ships, and I’m happy with it. Recently though, I’ve been eyeing up the notion of a heavily armed freighter. But when the Gutamaya Shipyard revealed its long-awaited Imperial Cutter, I was underwhelmed. And when a fellow commander suggested that its handling was on a par with the Type-9 ‘space cow,’ I knew it would not fit my requirements. What I want is a large ship that can make pirates regret interdicting me for the rest of their lives. If you catch my drift.
I was operating deep in enemy territory, when a 9th Legion commander showed up in one of the new Federal Corvettes. Now, that is a sexy ship, I thought. Only trouble is that you need to be very high ranking in the Federal Navy, and the Federal Navy kinda doesn’t like me, what with all the Federal Agent killing that I’ve been doing recently.
But politics is politics. Grease enough palms with “charity donations” and you can get whatever you want. Especially if you pick some far-flung outpost in a long-forsaken system.
And so that’s how I found myself in a long-range Asp Explorer, fitted for covering over 1000Ly per hour, at Paradiso Outpost, at least 350Ly from the nearest inhabited system. All I had was a big wad of money and a few collector limpets.
Docking for the first time was an interesting experience. The Feds really hate me. Their Security Service flatfoots all showing red on my scanners. But they let me in, so I parked up and grabbed quarters in a station hostel. I was doing this on a barebones basis, and chose a small low-g hideout in the central station axis. Rocking a property in the habitation ring would be more comfortable, sure, but all the glitzy bars down there didn’t have my kind of people in them, if you know what I mean.
Soon enough, the local shills all sent their begging messages to me. That they were all aligned with the Federation was my only criteria. I handed out alms.
There was a knock on the door. A navy officer soft-soaping me into doing a fetch-and-deliver mission. It was menial, but it moved me forward. I just had to go find a tonne of Ancient Artefacts, somewhere out in space. Well, I was bored, and Eratosthenes’s engines needed firing up.
I travelled to the nominated system. It was uninhabited, and there was only a single planet, some 20,000Ls from the star. I turned the Asp vaguely in that direction and set the throttle to 20%, hunting for Weak Signal Sources. After about half an hour in deep space, I found one. Dropping in showed that there was not one but five tonnes of cargo, all ancient artefacts. I greedily grabbed them all and jumped back to 17 Draconis. I rinsed-and-repeated the grind, and greeted each naval officer with a tonne of pre-grabbed cargo. Even now, looking back on the process, I can’t really remember any of it. Ultimately, I got so fast that each individual assignment barely flickered across my consciousness. It seems ridiculous though that I could attain repeated Navy promotions while my second-least combat-capable ship lay powered down in the dock.
I got called back to homeworld to take care of some Imperial business. That worked for me. It was exciting, and poured more credits into my account. But the 500Ly there and back was a pain. Still, I grabbed some long-range delivery missions, and with the exploration data I was amassing, I managed to cover most of my costs.
Oh, and I’m a Pathfinder now. Get me!
Looking forward to little but more costly boredom, I made my second trip out to 17 Draconis. Commander PeachslicesV had passed on some useful techniques for making the process more in tune with my personal situation. And after the last session of donations, the Feds kinda liked me, with the station calling me “Respected Ally” when I fired off a docking request.
My next promotion opportunity came pretty quickly. One tonne of Experimental Chemicals. I didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t care. Out in deep space, my limpets hoovered up all 6 canisters that I found in a Weak Signal Source. All I had to do was to play the mission boards right, and I should be set.
I grabbed a slab of expensive imported lager, and headed back to my bunk. I was chatting with friends over the Witchspace voice comms. One of them was here doing the same thing. I thought I should head over and catch up with him face-to-face. Would have been good to crack a few of these beers together. But he and I had work to do, and the station was big. Lancaster’s voice and his manner of speech suggested he’d gone slightly crazy. As someone who was a few steps further from the brink, I talked him through it, and he reached his target an hour or so before me. We were also talking to Wing Commander Nathan, who was the thick end of 20,000 light years away. He’d also gone a bit bonkers. I bet he hadn’t showered since he left the bubble.
When that final ascension mission came in, most of the lager had changed its spatial relationship with me. I was pretty drunk, if truth be told. The first few Navy suits wanted me to go get some random thing from some random system, but that seemed too much like hard work, and I was sticking fast. I slammed the door on offer after offer until one came to me on the hunt for Experimental Chemicals.
“Now, Admiral Akhbar here is someone talking my language,” I told one of this suit’s aides. “It’s like I’ve anticipated you guys’ every whim.” They were lapping it up like they either didn’t know that I needed to close one eye to focus on them, or they didn’t care. Perhaps everyone up here was drunk. I know I would be if I lived here.
I hand over my stash, and the Admiral enables my rank tick. I’m now Rear Admiral TheDarkLord, and I can go buy the Federal Corvette.
Now, surely I can find six hundred million credits down the back of the sofa?
Can’t I?