Logbook entry

HAPPY 3305!  

And on another note - SO tired. This last week has been rather grim, rl has been a beast and trying to keep up the travels & exploration in Elite have been killing me, as stupid as that sounds! I've never wanted to call it quits on an E:D challenge as much as I do right now, but I'm hoping this is just the equivalent of the "wall" and things will get better from here on.  

I was chatting with some friends who are on the Distant Worlds 2 trip (good luck to all on that expedition btw, hope you guys have a blast! ) and we worked out at the moment the Clair de Lune is travelling the equivalent distance of the entire DW2 route every five and a bit days Couldn't do this without Inara, that's for sure. Huge thumbs up, thanks and sorry for the self-indulgent moping, normal goofiness will resume soon, just in a bit of a low patch atm!





I don't know whether to laugh or cry!

We have just hit the big 1,250,000, which marks the half-way point of the expedition! It's been about five and a bit weeks of more or less continuous travel, long, long days and more systems and scans than I can bear - rough estimates are about seventeen thousand new systems logged! We're on our twenty-something'th synthesis of AFMU's and I am frankly amazed our poor beleagured friendship drive is still in one piece, let alone functional!

Speaking of which - Lauren wasn't at dinner this evening. Flynn had mentioned she was hammering away at something down in the engine room and refused to come up to get dinner, so I grabbed some munchies and have taken it down to her. She's replacing something deep in the nest of cables and pipes that keeps our big girl ticking along and the only time she can do it is after we've shut down for the night and the drive components have cooled. So I'm perched up here, sat on one of the fuel pumps and keeping her company while she works.

There are no viewports down here in the ship's butt - the engineering section is nestled between the two towering, massive exhaust chambers of the Clair's sublight engines. Even so, I wouldn't want to look outside at the moment - we're parked up on the edge of the Norma Arm, looking out across the Styx. It's pretty grim and dark this far above the plane too, and it just makes me wonder - how terrifying it would be to be floating over a million light years away from either the Milky Way or Andromeda, drifting in the middle of the vast inter-galactic void - gives me the shivers just thinking about it!


ANYWAY!

What have we been up to since our Christmas short break? Well, no rest for the wicked - we had a grand total of ONE day off then straight back in the saddle! We zipped across to the Orion-Cygnus arm that creeps up around the back of the Colonia region and had a quick meeting with an old friend



I hadn't seen him in almost a year, aside from a very quick one around September I think, but Cmdr Leomon dropped by - he'd been doing a bit of deep space mining with the new toys that had come on the scene. His T10 was a very welcome sight after slogging around in the deeps on our lonesome and it was great to see another "face" out there. Sadly our stupidly tight schedule allowed for nothing more than a quick "hi/bye!" - safe travels and good luck with the digging!

Skirting the Fallows, the inter-arm gap between the backside of Colonia and the Perseus arm; and one evening, we set down on a big ball of goop. But as we were coming in to land, we picked up some weird readings. I decided to go check them out myself this time, much to the chagrin of Hal and co but sometimes it's nice to exercise Captain's prerogative (I don't think anyone actually gave a crap, they were all far too exhausted!).

The SRV and I have a love hate relationship; I love it, it loves me and we both hate my inner ear! It's so much fun charging around in it, it's a very rugged, tough little cookie and it's a massive rush when you launch over a canyon or some obstacle! However - and I don't know why this is, because my inner ear has no problem with zero-g gymnastics when floating around the ship! - I get horribly motion sick in SRVs sometimes! So I was fairly slow-and-steady on my drive over to the anomalous readings. Which turned out to be tremendously tentacular.



A field of bizarre tubular, bulbous structures with the weirdest, creepiest tentacle appendages poking out of the top of some of them, space fungi growing on the side of others, and - I have no idea what to call it, sponges/corals growing on yet more! All in all there was a lot of very funky stuff out there that in all honesty is well beyond my pea-brain but I knew that Yan in particular would be overjoyed if I brought some samples back. So a rather arms-length bit of prodding and scraping, a few very gingerly obtained biopsies and I scurried back to the safety of the Clair.

And the weird stuff isn't confined to the planets! We keep running into the most bizarre oddities out in space, although my favourite is probably these little space jellyfish guys we found in a lagrange cloud. I say little - they're pretty big in all fairness, bigger than the SLFs Hal and I took out to take a closer look! Jan said they were probably not sentient although they seem to demonstrate some kinda phototropism or other sensitivity and it was a bit alarming at first when the one we were looking at turned to give us a sniff!

Lovely things though - that having been said, the little sparks dancing around its tendrils reminded me a little too much of getting stung by a school of jellyfish back on Capitol and I'm glad there's a good couple of inches of metal, glass and shields between us!



Anyhoo - was great fun goofing around out there. I've been getting out of the ship more and more, every opportunity I get. I don't know why, since the Clair is an enormous beastie, but I've started feeling very claustrophobic! It's weird, I've been out on much longer runs than this before - we've barely been out of dock for five or so weeks! I think it's the huge distance that's behind the strain, the fear of failing the challenge and losing my beloved ship to a stupid bet. Sometimes, it all feels a bit too much!

Fortunately, I have a little distraction in the form of a certain amazing crew member who, aside from the fooling around, has been a bit of a rock through this rough patch. Hal has been such a star and has managed to keep me more or less sane! Although I was worried the crew might find it a bit weird, us being together; but they're totally fine - I guess I was just so used to things in the Navy, where fraternisation was fairly heavily frowned upon!

I do need to behave a bit better though - Hal and I were goofing around a bit too much in the SLFs and when Kei's voice came over the comm, quietly calling us back to order, I felt like a kid in school again! I love Kei to bits and although he can be kinda strict and very "by-the-book" at times, that's exactly why he's here - to keep things safe and sensible. So, suitably chastised, Hal and I finished up with the space squid, hopped back on board and I meekly buckled in on the bridge and let Kei take us on our way.



So everything had been going well. And then suddenly, completely out of the blue, we get a cryptic message come through on traffic saying "FAO: Lauren, c/o CDL, See you soon, Ziva". Cue shout down to engineering of "OI LAUREN! Who the hell is 'Ziva' and how the hell does she know where we are? WE don't even know where we are!". This is then followed by loud whoops of unintelligible excitement from down below and eventually a shout back "I'll tell you this evening!".

And eventually evening rolls around. I dropped us out of supercruise in our last system of the day, we stampede down to the common room, everyone wolfs down some food and collapses in the lounge - and Lauren (who LOVES an audience) clears her throat oh-so-theatrically and begins...

"So a bunch of years back, I'm in Lave, doing my engy apprenticeship for Saud Kruger, fixing junkers, agrotrains, barges - just about everything. 'Solid, hands-on experience of the fundamentals' - my ass, it was the most exhausting, tedious crap imaginable. Not helped by the fact that my mentor there was a complete asshole, had no idea what he was talking about and just bitched and moaned at all the apprentices every day with a Y in it. Typical know-nothing corp stooge. "And one particular day, he really had his panties in a bunch, just making life hell on toast for all of us. So come the end of the day, we're all absolutely donezo and well and truly ready for a drink. There was this really scuzzy bar on station we all used to hang at, total rat-trap - anyway, we can't get there fast enough. "So everyone starts putting away the moonshine, pretty much degreaser with a splash of pure alcohol; and before long, my stomach is telling me a quick trip to the bathroom would probably be a good idea, so off I stagger. And when I come back, there's this girl sat in my chair at the bar. "So I politely ask her to leave-"

At which point Flynn piped up with "Ok, I'm sorry, clarification please - you politely asked her to leave?"

"Shup. I POLITELY - told her to get the hell out of my seat. And this stick of a girl who looks like she'd be knocked down by a stiff breeze looks up at me and says, "Find another seat". "So I grab her, heave her off the chair, dump her on the floor and sit down. NOT my finest hour but I was in a piss-awful mood and a little bit tipsy. Anyway, I expect this lost little lamb to get up and skulk out of the bar, so I go to order another drink; and the next thing I know, I'm being spun round and all I can see is a rapidly accelerating forehard coming to make friends with my nose. "And all hell breaks loose, I mean we're going at it - tearing seven shades of shit out of each other, the bar, anyone in the way - just everything. And she's winning - this stick of a girl is fighting like a banshee, no technique but trying her best to tear me apart. So I'm kinda relieved when someone pulls her off me, until I realise it's station security. "And I may have a bit of history with them - STOP SNIGGERING HAL - through no fault of my own you understand. So they get us both stood up and this fat bastard of an officer swaggers over to me and asks what's going on. Now, it'll be a cold day in hell before I turn anyone over to those corrupt assholes, so I say sweet as you like, "Absolutely nothing, Officer", trying to look as nonchalant as I can with my nose smeared halfway across my face! So he turns to the girl and asks her the same thing. "And at this point, I'm thinking "I'm screwed." But she looks over at me, looks back at the officer; and with blood all matted in her hair (mostly mine, I'd like to add) and a clearly busted rib or two, she says bold as you like "I don't know what you mean Officer?". So security goes to work on the other patrons and the owner; but no-one wants a rep as a grass, 'specially in this flea-pit of a bar, so they have to leave. And although it cost me a round for the house (and then some to smooth things with the owner!), it was worth it to see that fat sack of crap leave empty handed. "ANYWAY - I turn to this girl and apologise-"

Flynn again (the boy never learns); "You apologised-"

"I SAID SHUT UP! Jesus Flynn, I swear to god if you interrupt me again - YES, I APOLOGISED. And I stick out my hand. She looks at it, looks at me, then shakes my hand, says "apology accepted", turns around, tidies herself up - and cool as a cucumber, sits straight back down in my chair. At this point, I'm basically thinking "OK - I'm in love." So I grab the seat next to her and introduce myself slightly more diplomatically and we get to talking. Turns out, she's just arrived on station, has no idea what she's doing, doesn't know anyone and I get the sense she's on the run from something pretty bad. All I can work out is that she's trying to lay low from the Feds, and you know how much I just looooove those guys...

Flynn once again chimes in; "Wait wait, hang on - you are a Fed, Lauren, you literally told me you came from Sol-" before the entire room yells "SHUT UP FLYNN!" and Lauren continues;

"Thank you. Anyway, she's clearly in a bad way and she's obviously in trouble with the Feds which immediately endears her to me! And despite being tough as nails and damn near sending me to the medbay, my clumsy ass has obviously caught her at a low point. She hides it well, but half a bottle of poison in and it's clear that she's only just keeping it together, despite putting on a brave face. And Lave, for all its propaganda isn't a place you wanna be without a credit to your name or a roof over your head, so I pretty much bully her into coming and crashing at my fleapit of an apartment for a few days, just till she gets on her feet. "And that in a nutshell is how I survived the shittiest year of my training at Lave Station; because that cheeky bitch who whooped my ass ended up sticking around for nearly a year and if I told you even half of the batshit crazy crap we got up to, it'd make your toes curl. Anyway, long story short; "That's how I met Ziva."

//Just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to Cmdr Ziva for kindly letting me borrow her for this log and spending unbearable, literal hours making sure this would fit with her bio timeline and posing for pics! I really enjoyed including some of the other people on Inara and in-game earlier on in this trip  so this was just so much fun for me I would love to do some more in the future, on the off-chance anyone fancies it, I know I've chatted about it briefly with a few Inara friends and finally need to just get around to making it happen!

Again - thanks a bajillion, Ziva, and ty also to 12 Ronin for letting me borrow one of their flight leaders briefly!

//Hope all the DW2 folks are having a giggle! Glad to see the launch went ALMOST trouble free - poor server hamsters!

Haven't been posting much - largely as I haven't had a spare second to scribble anything! Barely finding the time to sneak on game and make my distances at the moment, I'm only JUST on target and this is the first opportunity I've had to scribble; however I wanted to finish off 'part deux' of the previous log and pay a big BIG homage to someone who has kept me going - the struggle of keeping up with the schedule is getting quite demoralising and definitely feeling the fatigue! Anyway - stuff!





There's a myth about exploration.

It's not exclusive to explorers of course! But since that's the spacefaring community I deal with the most, I run into it a lot. And it's this slightly avuncular, somewhat patronising "me big splorer, me great". Then there's all the bragging about how big their 'jump range' is (seriously, what is it with that?!), how many first discoveries they've made and I generally excuse myself and leave at that point before they have a contest to see who can pee furthest up the wall.

The fact of the matter is this; exploration isn't hard. It doesn't take much skill. It's not even that dangerous! The reason I can say this is because I'm a great example - I have the survivability quotient of a depressed lemming and all the competence and piloting dexterity of a drunken - well, me. And even I can get out there and zip and zoop across the galaxy while barely killing myself! But a lot of people would you have believe it's this BIG deal, you can't just up sticks and go off exploring. Which was most certainly true once upon a time; but not today.

And the best example of why this kind of attitude is so much hot air happened this week.

After my last log, we'd carried on for a few days, pinballing around. And it's ironic I should claim that space is largely safe so long as you're sensible, when I nearly cooked us by playing around in the corona of one of these four quarternary stars;



Jump, scan scan scan, jump, scan, ooh space squid, jump, scan land prod planetary flora... Don't get me wrong, I love exploring as much as the next pilot but after fifty days and over twenty thousand systems, the rather gruelling pace was starting to get on my nerves; and not just mine. Everyone was feeling a little on edge, as the massive distance we'd already covered took its toll, not least because over a million light years still remained!

And every chance I could get, I kept pestering Lauren about this mysterious 'Ziva' and her message. But as much as I might pump my engineer for information, all I could ever really get out of her was that she was "awesome" and "badass". Not exactly overflowing with information nor confidence at this point! Explorers do have a tendency to be a little twitchy - either as a result of the space madness or just the fact that more often than not, our ships have all the defensive capabilites of a five year old with a popsicle stick.

Still - friends with Lauren, we must be ok right? And according to her, although they'd lost touch, Lauren believed Ziva was 'involved' with the Imperials in some official capacity; so I figured what with Kei and I being ex-Imp Navy and still in good standing, we hopefully had some common ground. Either way, she was on her way to us - although I still had no idea how she was going to find us when we didn't even know what course we'd be setting until each morning dawned!


And then one day - she arrived.

We were all at breakfast, just relaxing before we hit the road and figuring out where we would go today when alarms started going off. We all ran up to the cockpit, every one of us, high in orbit over a nice little ELW we had found a while back. I'm jumping into the pilot's seat while Coral and Kei strap in too, the rest just peering out of the cockpit - nothing amiss. Until I see a blip on the long range scanners - there's someone dropping out of supercruise directly aft of us. A quick interrogation of the computer and we get a name of the ship.



"That's her!" Lauren squeals, excitedly, at least relaxing us a little. Ok - time to meet our mysterious caller, although how the hell did she find us, out here in the middle of nowhere! The ship shows on the holo as an Imperial Cutter - lovely ship, slightly unusual for most deep space ships but-

"She's coming up behind us pretty quick," Kei notes in his typically understated fashion when I see she's moving at well over 1800kph! And without a sound in the vacuum of space (which in some ways is even scarier!) - a MASSIVE gleaming white hull blows past us, pirouetting on its nose to flip and face us, missing the bridge by mere metres.

Quite an entrance. And the pilot of that ship owes me a new Remlok, I'm just saying. ANYWAY - face to face at last. The Cutter drifts towards us, dwarfing my dear little Clair de Lune. And a quick glance at our scans show - this is not an exploration vessel. It is a fully-loaded combat ship, bristling to the teeth with armament and defenses - and now I start to get nervous. Because whoever this is, if they open up on us - we're dead. No ifs or buts - her weaponry would shear through our lightweight shield instantly and melt us to slag before we could move an inch!

"Lauren, you're absolutely sure she's not dangerous?"
"Oh, I never said that..."

I'm going to kill you, Lauren.

But it's too late; we're nose to nose, metres apart; and Coral squeaks an alarm - the Cutter's hatch is opening and a number of objects flood into space - hatch breakers? Some nefarious machinery that will tear us apart? Some kind of-

"It's cake." Kei quietly says, looking at his scans.
"It's - wait, what?" I ask, not believing my ears.
"Cake. Eight tons of cake. Good stuff, too..."

The bridge erupts in laughter. And pretty soon a ship-launched fighter scoots out of the Pelessaria's hangar bay and is requesting docking permission with us. Duly granted and we all stampede down to the SLF launch bay, affectionately known on our ship as Tin Can Alley, for all the spares and parts hanging from the ceiling. Good old reliable Kei remains at the helm, keeping us in an orbital flight path with that majestic cutter, cruising alongside.



We get down to the hangar, airlock cycles - and out steps Ziva, grinning widely.

Before anyone can say anything, Lauren barges through and engulfs her in a massive bearhug and excitedly starts intoducing us all - and it's immediately obvious to us that all my worries and concerns were for nothing; everyone gets on so well immediately. Although it's hard to get a word in edgeways - Lauren is chattering away like she's running out of oxygen and starts dragging Ziva around the Clair, determined to show her off. I actually felt a bit defensive about my poor rust bucket, nothing like the gleaming, smooth, war-machine gliding silently alongside my beaten up old 'conda; but our guest loved the tour (or at least was being very diplomatic!).

We ended up on the bridge, where Kei was still keeping an eye on things. And typical Kei, all he did was turn, nod and say;

"Nice flying."

I really need to buy that man a book on small talk.

After a lot of chattering, I grudgingly explained we had to get underway - our schedule was already falling behind and Lauren looked singularly unimpressed! I'd really enjoyed the visit - something so out of the monotony of our routine, it had instantly put a spring in everyone's step! When Lauren asked her where she was headed to next, Ziva simply replied that they had no particular destination in mind but thought they might "swing by" Sagittarius A* before scooting on up to Beagle.

We had no particular plans either so I asked if she'd like to ride shotgun up to Sadge, fully expecting her to say no. The Clair was a far cry from the luxurious, hi-tech bridge of the Pelessaria and as best we'd tried, 50 day old recycled air from seven explorers trapped in a steel tube wasn't exactly smelling of daisies! And yet even so, Ziva turned to me, smiled and said;

"Sure, I'd love to."

A quick chat with her crew on the Pelessaria, directing them to follow and meet at the galactic core, and we headed off, chatting as we went. As we talked about her ship, I mentioned how unusual it was to see a short-range fully combat-fit cutter of all things out so far.

"Oh we're usually engaged in the Bubble; but we had some time on hand so I decided to take advantage and come out to catch up with an old friend."
"Have you travelled a lot to the Core?" I'd asked.
"Not really, this is our first time out of the Bubble."
"And you're going to "nip" up to Beagle Point?" I'd said, somewhat surprised!
"Might as well."

I like her No bragging, no ego, just "sure, why not?".



We finally see the big galactic sinkhole - always a fun sight. And after a bit more chatting and a lot more hugs, we all reluctantly trudge back down to the SLF hangar and Ziva boards; the Pelessaria flying alongside, waiting to pick her up. And just as I'm about to leave the hangar and enter the airlock, a thought occurs; I turn around and yell back over the sound of the spooling engine.

"Hang on - how DID you know where we were?"

And all I got back was a grin, a wink, and a tap on the nose.

As our enigmatic guest returned to her ship, we all scooched up to the bridge to see her off. That beatiful warship fired up its engines and we flashed our lights as she prepared to head off up to Beagle; but before she turned to wake, she gently nudged forwards and gave us a boop on the nose, barely touching our shields but enough to make them sparkle and glow in the eerie light of the Core. And with that, she quickly swung around and  accelerated away before a bright flash as she waked - and was gone.

Safe travels, Ziva - and thanks for the cake.






//a MASSIVE acknowledgement to Cmdr Ziva for very kindly flying all the way out to deliver, yes, eight actual legit tons of cake to me in a full beastie combat cutter to cheer me up Ever since hitting the halfway point of this trip it's just been a monumental grind for some reason and I'm really feeling the schedule! But this visit was a fantastic shot in the arm and I'm so grateful. And if you are interested in exploring - ignore all the neckbeards and just have fun guys, it doesn't matter if you've gone to the far reaches or are a day 1 splorer poking around the bubble in a sidey - just have fun My most enjoyable times were early on, going "screw it" throwing a scoop on some stupid ship and just bumbling off without having the first clue! (and I still dont ).

Credit to Cloud Atlas wiki for the background pic of Ziva's departure.