Log #21 : Excitement for distant worlds 2, and ship trouble .
20 Jan 2018(Wettoast) Wanda Fersegi
3304 :Near the tip of the Scutum-Centaurus arm
A piece of news snapped me right out of my usual slouched posture and hallucination at the controls, the famous distant worlds expedition of 3302 would have another go across the galaxy ! I was absolutely enthralled by the idea of crossing the galaxy back in 3302, a massive fleet flying 65 thousand light years away from home . Wonder turned to insult as I had missed it completely . Even after joining the 65k club in my shoddy little diamondback, the thought of doing it with the distant worlds expedition has stuck with me and mocked me for the majority of the past near two years. Well, one way or the other I'm going to catch it this time around. Once back home and set down, I'll immediately inquire left, right, and center for ways to get on that goddamned list for a fleet across the stars.
3302: August
I had just made an upgrade from the old beat up De-lacy cobra, to a Lakon diamondback and was getting ready to ferry an easy to despise Hudson affiliated explorer to multiple nebula near the core of the galaxy . I had been eager to begin exploration as I wanted time away from the human inhabited bubble as cargo contracts were wearing me down, along with coming out of a rough financial strecth . With the recent mis-jump of Jaques station to the Eol Prou nebula, many researchers wanted to use the Colonia area of space as a point to launch missions.
The meager accommodations of my living quarters being suitable for two persons had to do, they seemed to be running out of options because they were quick to accept my offer. Not too prestigious or too sketchy, 20 million credits was agreed on and we were on our way after clearing out my rental quarters for anything else I may have needed. While there was a short worry about space, we convinced ourselves that once we were settled in and comfortable we wouldn't mind sharing a confined space with a stranger, I just wish he didn't keep leaving his damned slate on my bunk for me to flop down on and break...
I could swear that for some of the quiet hours of the evening flying out to our next destination, they would stop attending to their equipment and readouts and stare at the back of the flight chair trying to psychoanalyze me or something. It was at this time I had learned about the distant worlds expedition, and how I was too late to catch it. Many hours a day on that trip ferrying around this deep space explorer were spent obsessed over information and logs kept about distant worlds, their waypoints, and their final destination of beagle point. We weren't even halfway through our trip and I was completely absorbed by the stories of the pilots that made the crossing.
One drowsy night my nosy passenger finally did have a few words to add to my deep interest with the distant worlds articles and news media. After sneaking up behind my chair and inquiring " Whatcha doin ?", I gained the new ability of tasting my own stomach. After almost dying from a heart attack, I shared my interest in the galnet reports sprawled across the heads up screen, my wide eyed excitement was met with an attitude of know it all.
" Shame you didn't catch the flight out, you and that flock of spacers would have made galnet headlines for at least a few weeks. " I spent the entire flight back fantasizing about being on distant worlds, and furious that I had missed it.
3304 Mare Desperationis interarm void, starting the return trip to Colonia, Ship trouble
Just as I had cleared the edge of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm entering the interarm void, trouble with the frame shift drive started. I had become too eager and reckless with the technique of neutron star cone boosting to get around, I needed to set the auto field maintenance unit to work on the frame shift drive after an integrity warning. Excessive stresses beyond what was deemed usual for neutron boosting caused me to call it quits before a catastrophe. Need to find somewhere to land so I can get into the guts of this thing and take a look for myself. I'm in no way a qualified De-lacy engineer, having only absorbed a less than competent understanding of De-lacy's anaconda through teardown manuals and tying color coded wire ties and tags to what corresponded to what. Going to go back to the cabin to retrieve both paper and electronic copies of the complete teardown manual, and see if I can get the ship's computer to diagnose the issue in a language that isn't too bloody convoluted . "The Faulcon Delacy anaconda complete teardown, repair, re-assembly manual . Updated for 3304 ." Page 1 of 50,000 !?! F*** this with a rusty pipe....No fail safe shutdowns have been triggered yet, but I should have learned my lesson in being careful much earlier. Of course I didn't mount heatsinks, wanting all the jump capability I could get my hands on and it could have cost me big..... Time to get scouting a decent landing area then...
After a few hours of confusion digging through the multi-thousand page electronic copy on my slate, the ship's computer finally put the issue in a language that I could understand. The frame shift housing had just been close to buckling stresses, and neutron cone boosting had caused the drive itself to run hotter than usual post cone boost, possibly resulting in some heat damage during what would be normal fuel scooping temperatures. The housing is a cakewalk besides the area's surfaces being more than hot enough to cook food and your own skin on, actually having to go tool around with the drive itself is going to take a lot more. I can just take the vessel up to space and float the heavier housing replacement pieces into place, but tampering with the drive without the proper experience and knowledge of their complete ins and outs is a one way ticket to being stranded. I forget who said this, " Trying to repair the inner parts of a frame shift drive is like giving a haircut with a spoon. You can't ."
No bulls*** here, I feel I'm in quite deep over my head. Poking around in something designed to bend the very fabric of space around your vessel is out of my league to put it mildly. I can't trust myself around alcohol, how the hell do I trust myself with this ? Ok, this is serious. Very Serious.
The auto field maintenance unit should be able to tackle the drive integrity itself, but the temperature solution will have to be solved by delicate fuel scooping and keeping temperatures lower than I usually would, due to the possibility of heat indication being misleading. I'm going to avoid the insides of the drive for now as I could easily botch replacing something important. The ship could be risking even more heat damage just by flying under normal circumstances..... I'll see about calling in a second opinion before taking off again for sure.
Wanda N. Fersegi, out.