Rifts and Graveyards
18 Mar 2019Arbilac
Been a couple' days since I took my leave of that oddly comforting rock. Seems most travellers out this way tend to end up staying longer than they expect. Meet a same same in the bar and shoot the shiz. Come back the next evening after toiling away making the girl ready, and there they are, propping up the bar as usual. That was me, or was gonna be if I didn't haul my ass in to the black.Thing is, I ain't in a hurry, nor am I headed anywhere. I've had my luck recently and can take some time for me and the girl, so figured I'd go sightseeing. Itchy out here.
I headed out toward the Rift; passed through a fairly well lit area, much already seen by human eyes, and then through the Graveyard. Now, that place is creepy, but not for the reasons I expected. See, as you fly through, it's dark on one side, and shiny on the other. A cluster of red dwarfs, best my maps could say, seemed to be forever on my horizon, then they passed me by, a shining beacon, tempting you in.
I didn't go.
See, the history of that place is that for some reason, ships ended up wrecked there. Not disappeared, wrecked. Now, I ain't saying these pilots took fancy to a rock and faceplanted, no. These were in space, mostly. Blown up, floating husks. Best bet is a local pirate installation or fleet took that area as their own and plundered those with a little too much curiosity in their tanks. As far as I know, those must be long gone as the wrecks have too. Don't make that area any less creepy though.
I did suffer an oddity with the girl. I lost partial power whilst out by a binary pair; came up on me real quick whilst scooping. Barely 80LS away from the Yellow was a Red, and as I came in system it was on my panel but out of sight. I swung round and it was right in my face. I guess you do this jump/scoop enough you get complacent. Silly really; that all said, I can't account for the power loss, nor the drop to normal space whilst my FTL drive decided to reboot. Odd.
I'm now in the Heart nebula; there's two almost toe-to-toe - in galactic terms at least - out here; Heart and Soul. Cute, no? Well, There's a couple of bases here, right on top of the rift. I passed the Alpha listening post.. that's a story in of itself - them "Children of Raxxla" (ain't that creepy) placed a couple out here as listening posts. For what? Thargoids? Something else? I guess they know. But, it's well hidden. I scanned the system and came up blank, so carried on my way. There's curiosity, then there's stupidity.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I passed that and settled here. Around 5k LY since my last stop, and around 7500LY from home. Not small amount, to be sure, and now it gets interesting. There's a ship out here. A big one. Said to be haunted. I aim to pay her a visit and then, well, see what I see. I'll put a log in if I find her.
After that, I gotta be careful. My girl has the range I think to get me through, but there's plenty of Red out here I can't scoop.
Then do I make a left, or a right?