Personal Log, 10 September 3303
11 Sep 2017User78245
I made it to Farseer Inc. in the Deciat system with little trouble and no fanfare. Felicity's not too bad, for a Fed. She reminds me of an old crew chief I knew in the 351st, salty as the seas and takes no crap from anyone.So I've gained a tutor, of sorts. She teaches me all of her exploration tricks, but first I have to prove that I'm worth the effort. First stop was a trip to W Ursae Majoris to get scan data from the contact binary there. It was...disappointing. When I get back, she asks, "How was it?" "It was crap," I say, "I've seen a lot better." Turns out out I passed a test, W Ursae Majoris is a bit of an inside joke amongst veteran explorers. A bit like sending out new recruits to find the Part Number ID-10T Spanner Wrench. She wanted to see if I was going to tell her what she wanted to hear, or what I actually saw.
Next she sent me out on a two stop trip: first to the neutron star Jackson's Lighthouse, and then the Imperial capital ship docks at Malaikudi. I'm not sure what the point of that was, but regardless, neutron stars terrify the crap out of me. Apparently I did something right though, because Felicity nodded in approval when she looked over my flight recordings.
"Head on over to Skardee and land on the closest planet. Take some Heat Sinks while you're at it," she said, giving me a knowing wink. I've never been to Skardee but I fit out two launchers, which should be plenty. Nasty surprise, Skardee 1 is about a light second away from the surface of the primary. I didn't even get into orbital cruise before I run out of heat sinks and bingo back to base, absolutely livid. "That was not funny," I say. "No, it wasn't. Did you bother to ask anyone about Skardee? Do any research beforehand? Next time you'll plan ahead better, won't you?" she says.
Next, she sends me to Hez Ur to find and scan the derelict generation ship Pleione. I find it 8000 light seconds out from the outermost planet, in the direction of Teuten. It's huge, and falling apart, but it's still broadcasting the final journal entries of its medical officer. Those poor people, they grew old while they lived every day with the anxiety of not being able to produce female children. Then they just left. What use is a generation ship if you can't give birth to females? "Explorers go deep into the black knowing something may happen and help will probably never come. The hard part is being at peace with that fact," Felicity tells me when I return.
"Head on over to 40 Upsilon-2 Hydrae. Have some fun." What a trip. A B-class blue-white, an F-class white, a black hole, a white dwarf, a red dwarf, and 14 brown dwarves. All in the same system, dancing out in the black. The splurge on that Asp was worth it, for that cockpit view. "In the end," Felicity says, "All that stress, the threat of being lost and forgotten, seems trivial when you see what's out there."
I've been running errands for her the last few days, then she tells I'm starting to stink. Not literally, she says, there's a historical figure from Earth that says something to the effect of guests and fish starting to stink after 3 days. So she's sending me on a sort of final exam. Pick someplace interesting and go there, no less than 400 light years away. Then come back and tell her a story. So I've been pouring over my charts and I think I'll head to the Coalsack Nebula. She talks about it enough and she's perked my interest. She nods in approval and I head to Garay Terminal to install a better FSD.