A Nice Gift To Come Home To
13 Jan 2018Scubadog
As the dust was settling from all the work gathering and delivering materials in Ogmar System to help them finish the new station, I decided to head out for a short while to do some more mapping and unwind. Once I got back to my home port at Colonia Dream, cleaned up my Keelback, The Ceti Lisica, and then set about to prep my AspX, The Ceti Vixen, for a week-long jaunt away from the Colonia bubble. When I head out into the black for extended periods I try to tweak out as much weight as possible to extend my range, no matter what ship I'm taking, to the food replicators are fine. I can't really afford the luxury of taking containers of normal food. But on this trip I decided to treat myself a bit and break my ritual. I didn't go wild, mind you, but it sure was nice to spend a week away from everything, curl up inside my head. Just me, some cheap wine -- my tastes aren't that refined -- some honest to goodness cooked meals, and nothing to damage my calm amidst the low droning of my ship's systems except the occasional command I bark at Verity to do something with the ship. A minor annoyance, though, to repeat myself when she couldn't understand me when I was talking with my mouth full. No need to harken to manners too tight while out in the black, but communication is communication.I was happy to run across three earthy worlds and as many wet ones on such a short trip. Nice money-makers, those. One of them was about as perfect for me as it gets, what with most of the dry land closer to the equator surrounded by turquois water so clear I could see make out the coral reef system from orbit. Damn, and me without my scuba gear this trip. I'd take a mind to call that my retirement home. Something to ponder, for certain.
Well, when I finally made my way back to settled space, I started catching waves that more attacks are happening back in the Core Systems. Cripes, things are escalating a fair bit, but with the back-and-forth bickering between Thargoid hunters and Thargoid sympathizers who's to say which side is doing more poking. One thing I do know is that a lot of innocent people are dying without even such as a whisper of why. And just as the shiny new Whirling Station finished being built to help handle the folks fleeing from that mess, now I hear The Pit is getting fouled by some sort of sensor interference being pinned on the Thargoids. What does that mean? Does that mean they suddenly realize there's a stretch of humanity all the way out hear and they aim to invade here? Or is it just something more "accidental", like stray probing that's making its way out here? If that's the case, cripes, how powerful are is their tech to still have enough strength to bleed out here and jam up the works? Or...maybe someone has been collecting Thargoid material and shuttling it out this way. That would be just great, wouldn't it? Thinking we're safe out here only to find some damned fool drew the aliens here because some commander fancied a souvenir. If that turns out to be the case, that's more proof why cousins should never marry. Maybe I'm just overthinking all this.
One nice surprise was that when I cashed in that last batch of cartography I was notified I finally reached the Elite Explorer rank. Yay, me. I wasn't chasing that in earnest, since there's nobody out in the black that is impressed by that, but it was a piece of pleasing news just the same. It does mean I get to spend the next couple of days having my fleet's paint tidied up with the new rank. The reason I keep my ships tatted with that in the first place is to let anyone sees me know I'm probably not worth a bother since I'm not carrying any cargo and I'll be happy to be on my merry, thank you. Of course, could be false advertising, but it seems to keep the honest people honest.
Now I need to think about what my next steps are.