Clara's Core Tours
09 Sep 2017LongDistanceClara
Thought just for fun I'd post up some blurb about my shenanigans during my first week or so back in ED after hiatus
First time posting a log on Inara so apologies in advance for the unintelligible rambling!It's been a fairly busy comeback to ED - after a pretty enthusiastic career, I took a break from space-jockeying for a while (I guess my avatar was sat on a beach somewhere spending her bounties/ill-gotten smuggling gains). With 2.4 on the way however, I decided to pull the Clair De Lune out of mothballs and get my butt back into the black.
Not to knock the old girl - the Clair is an exploration/long range transport fit 'conda that (kiss of death incoming) I've had since pretty early days and never had to go cap-in-hand to the insurers (although getting a 0% integrity hull down to 10% hp courtesy of a particularly suicidal mailslot npc was touch and go). Love that boat to bits and it has over half a million light years under the bow at the moment - but grapevine says that Lakon are about to let rip with a Type 10 and my imagination's running wild
My credit balance not so much, however, so it was time to earn! So the Clair got a refit - out with the deep space exploration toys, in with a few cabins, cherry picked a few likely passengers and off to the core.
Bit rusty on the way out but it's kinda scary how much muscle memory takes over! Pretty soon was back in the groove of close-orbit slingshots of the corona and out, scanning as I went. Kept waiting for the space-crazy to set in but for some reason, didn't feel all that tedious, just relaxing - absence and memory and all that jazz I guess.
Out to EEMBAISK (a region on the far side of the core), flipped a u-turn and straight back home. Normally I'd relax for a while in the bubble after a three-day trip like this, maybe help in a CG or resupply some synthesis materials. This time however, I was actually feeling pretty good - so much so that I figured I could drop a couple more light years per jump and squeeze some more cabins on board. Another round of cherry picking and headed straight back out with a boatload of "famous explorers" that same evening.
Again, kept waiting for the tedium to start making the old eyeballs bleed but - nope, nothing. Just quiet and relaxing - I'm clearly getting old. One thing I was noticing was the number of previously undiscovered Earth-Like Worlds the scanners were picking up - at one point I was getting three or four per plot. Granted some of them weren't exactly places you'd want to colonize - don't think I'd enjoy almost 2g with a 0.5 atmosphere and 15% O2! - but the data pays just as good so I'm not complaining!
"Hi EEMBAISK, remember me?" Got out, stretched the legs/SRV's wheels, then homeward bound. The ELW situation was getting kinda ridiculous on the way back but still a case of "close but no cigar" for that perfect settlement world. Rolled back into dock just under three days after departure with a ship of happy campers and a healthier looking wallet.
Hmm.
Still not tired/burnt out.
That AFM's still shiny, untouched and fully loaded.
Out it comes, in goes another cabin, metaphorical "For Hire" light goes on and pretty soon I've got my heaviest passenger load yet looking to go out to near-Colonia, Sag A and (surprise surprise) EEMBAISK. Repair, repaint and off we go again - starting to wonder if the Clair really needs landing gear.
Third time's a charm. Either I had a stroke en route or I'm calling shenanigans but it felt like we absolutely rocketed out to the core - our first overnight rest stop was in orbit of a gas giant about 1k past Sag A*, with time to spare! Maybe the space crazy has set in in a different way...
Seriously EEMBAISK, we've got to stop meeting like this.
Motoring back home, honk jump, honk jump - another ELW. But this one looks interesting - 0.7g for a bit of a spring in the step, 22% 02 and 0.8 atmo. Getting warmer - figuratively that is, was only about 280 kelvin so not exactly a place to hit the beach. Ah well, search continues...
It's now 21:17 and we've been back at the dock for a coupla hours now. Passengers offloaded and they're satisfied, their wallets offloaded and I'm satisfied. After just shy of a quarter mill light years in nine days and three quarters of a billion credits later, I think I'm due some "bubble-time". The Clair could use a rest and so could I, so might grab the Jackrabbit (my courier hotrod) and go scrape some paint
o7 CMDRS, see you out there and here's to 2.4 being a good'un!