Explorer's Anchorage Morphing, And A Close Call At Sag-A
04 Mar 2019Scubadog
The metamorphosis (pronounced construction that's turning Explorer's Anchorage into a full station instead of a ball with engines strapped to it is progressing nicely. I pulled up to the station after a couple of days exploring the surrounding systems and hung just outside the speed trap, and hopped in my fighter to take a leisurely cruise around the construction areas. I could see laser torches at various places lighting up the superstructure. It's pretty amazing, really, to watch this feat of modern engineering.
There are a lot more distress calls happening in the system lately. But, here's the kicker: There's nobody there when I drop on the signal location. I don't have any idea what's going on. Francisca and I have hunched over the scanners, cruised the vicinity, just sat and waited. But in almost every case whoever made the distress call has not been found. No debris, no nothing. I've followed the waves the DW2 fleet has been broadcasting during their journey. I've seen how Neanderthals have been attacking and destroying ships for no other reason than the joy of killing. But I haven't heard of any tech that's so devastating that it leaves nothing behind in its wake. Is it possible there is something...else...out here doing this? This system does have the stellar phenomenon here with those strange L04 sprites. Those things will do your fighter up a treat, sure enough, but unless they gang up on you, most bigger ships should be fine. But, what if they are more sentient than we thought and they perceive us to be a threat? Are they capable of organizing? Are they capable of completely obliterating any trace of a ship? I don't know that I want to be the one to seriously research that.
Anyway, on my way back to the station I decided to drop in on Sag-A again. For some odd reason I wanted an adrenaline jump, and you have to admit it's pretty heart-racing to drop out of hyperspace next to a black hole that completely fills your view. Much to my surprise, there were two ships nearby, one of which quickly began scanning me. And then I heard a laugh over the comms. Of course, once people started arriving at the station I fell back on my usual practice of having a high-wake destination cued up on my nav computer. My scanner showed the ship targeting me was beginning to maneuver to a flanking position, so while I was shifting power to shields, I told Eden to execute the jump. Within a nano-second of the FSD beginning to spin up the alarms went off telling me I'd been tethered.
So, one thing I've figured out is that often if I am close to a planet, star--or black hole--I can make a dive for it and break the tether. In this case, I didn't even have to move that much toward the black hole because the bastard couldn't hold the tether for more than a few seconds before it broke and I was jumping to the next system. Crisis averted. He should have known better than to try that close to a supermassive black hole.
Subject change...you might recall I determined that I was on a personal mission to accumulate Arsenic in my material stores. It's a rare enough material on planets and moons, and even when I find it that max percentage I've ever run across has been 2.6%. I set down on a moon this last time out and made some pretty good headway on my goal. After a while I got tired and took a few minutes to just enjoy the view--one of the main reasons I explore in the first place--and it was a nice pause before heading back to the station.
