Finding Eden - Home Sweet Home!
14 Oct 2017LongDistanceClara
Finding Eden - Home Sweet Home!
I'm writing this a good two days after getting home - largely because I pretty much slept solid since we crawled back into port! I've done my fair share of deep space journeys but the crazy prolonged jumps-per-hour cycle on the way home was ridiculous and as we neared the core, it just suddenly hit like a ton of bricks.
As much as everything up to that point had been such a blast, out of nowhere the fatigue hit everyone and all of us (the Cass included I imagine!) just wanted to stop and relax for a while; we needed to be back in the bubble asap however - but more on that later
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We'd left Beagle in good spirits, having seen a lot of great stuff on the way and buoyed with the achievement of getting the Cass there for her first time. Our plan was to take a long, leisurely circuit back down along the Scutum-Centaurus arm to about level with Colonia, cut in and drift down the arm to the Formidine Rift, then dogleg back to the bubble.
Before we jumped back in from the rim though, we put some twenty kls between us and the star and I took the SLF out for a little quiet spin by myself. With no light pollution and precious little to get in the way this far out, the Magellanics looked beautiful:
Moment over. Docked up, swung the Cass around and started the first plot. There was the usual pretty along the way, including this cheeky little pair of moons at the end of the tenth day in close orbit of a ringed gas giant. Yari and I both got to let our hair down a bit and have some laughs buzzing along the canyons before locking up for the night:
Next day, we headed off as usual, nothing overly remarkable until we picked up a message from Sol; someone from home I'd known for ages had just gotten his pilot license and would be certified to fly in a few days! I'll be honest, I was doing cartwheels at this point until I suddenly remembered - we're the wrong side of fifty k from home in a (albeit glorious!) Cutter.
This one was going to hurt >.<
All thoughts of "the big loop" were scratched; course laid in for the bubble, keep the coffee coming and off we go. And everything was going fine - even had time to take in the odd ELW!
As we started to hit the neutron fields around the core, we were rattling along at a good pace. Everything was going great until we pulled in to offline the FSD and make some flying repairs - and I made the fatal mistake of checking the map. Damn we'd barely moved! I've been horribly spoilt by the Clair's enormous jump range; up to now, the journey had no schedule to it, just calmly drifting along. But now there was a chequered flag, it brought home just how much slower this big beautiful whale was.
Nothing for it - grit teeth and go. Jump after jump after jump we'd creep along and I'd keep telling myself "don't look at the map, don't look at the map" - but it was impossible not to take a peek - and every time I'd groan, almost felt like we were going backwards! Finally, absolutely shattered at some ungodly hour (without even the energy to find a landing spot), we just put a safe distance from us and the primary, shut everything down and collapsed into our bunks while the Cass quietly cooled off in deep space.
Day twelve and an offensively large mug of coffee to start the day. This was it, we'd get back to the bubble today if it killed us. Course laid in, let's go. And I'll NOT look at the map this time - I'd learnt my lesson! Sleep is a beautiful thing, so much so I felt rested enough to appreciate this gas giant poking its nose in on the nearby star:
The grind was oddly not as grim as the day before. We knew we were closing in and while the galaxy map looked daunting, counting down the jumps on the nav panel was much more bearable. I could break it down - there goes another 50, 23 more and we'll be at an even 400; and before long, the familiar shape of the Cat's Paw nebula jumped out at me. BIG grin at that point - landmarks were appearing that I recognised, we were getting there!
300....250....200.... kept ticking down. The final 50 dragged on forever as expected, but soon there it was flashing up on the hud "Shinrarta Dezra". I have no idea what time of night it was when we rolled in and set down but there was absolutely noone around. As shattered as I was though, I had some precious cargo to log with UniCart before I could hit the hay.
Despite not finding my Shangri La, it was a very productive little mission! The Cass blazed a trail and racked up a very, very healthy list of ELW's, not least that binary - and also earned her BP badge
And while it's incidental to the exploration itself, there may have been a credit or two earned along the way Time for a shower and then will see what trouble our exploration paycheck can get us into here at Jameson
Footnote: Super tired writing this one so I'll freely admit it's a mess. I don't think I've ever done quite as many jumps-per-hour for so long as this one, especially after several days of pretty heavy jumping anyway! But as (hopefully!) the log shows, a certain someone I know finally got off his procrastinating bum and is going to give Elite a go
So I wanted to get back to the bubble asap so we can team up and start doing engineery bits etc, hence the rush to get home Unfortunately, it was COMPLETELY unnecessary >.< RL rears its ugly head and we couldn't start till this weekend, so I may have snuck off on another little trip in the conda - but that's for another time