I'm Almost Home...Dragging A Piece Of Toilet Paper
16 Jun 2019Scubadog
After the awesome events memorializing our departed fellow Silverback I finished doing some housecleaning of my remote fleet. By "remote fleet", I mean the lesser ships I have parked at Jameson Memorial, Citi Gateway, Gurney Slade (Silverback territory) and Janes Horizons (home of The Silverbacks). I sort of had a few ships scattered about since I was doing various bits of engineering and needed to get everything back in its proper place. And, of course, I had picked up both an Imperial Courier and Clipper during my stay. Once I finished the final event -- bug-hunting in Draco's honor -- I stored all the anti-xeno modules and weapons and reconfigure the Clipper to make best possible speed home to Colonia Dream.
Hence the title of this log.
You see, I confess I was a bit tuckered after preparations, so it wasn't until I was well out of civilized space when I happened to see something odd in the module lineup when I dropped out to set the AFMS to task on my FSD (which had dropped to 75% after a lot of neutron star jumping). A decontamination limpet controller. Wait, what? I closed the panel and pulled it back up...surely it was a data remnant (yeah, silly thought, I know) or something. Nope. It was there, real as anything. Damn! I could have eeked out another fraction of jump range! Son of a....
So, I altered my already well-underway neutron-heavy course straight to Ratraii in Colonia to give me a quick lateral swing to Sacaquwea Spaceport at my halfway point.
Stupid me...guess what they don't have -- Outfitting. Nope, not even to remove a module. So, I'm stuck dragging this piece of toilet paper called "limpet controller" stuck to my shoe all the way home. How embarrassing. This module is among the most useless modules to have in Colonia. And it's not even worth having it shipped back to a station in the core systems the next time I go back for a visit. Well, maybe if the Thargoids ever decided to pick on us all the way out here, given we have significantly less resistance--all independent stations, no Federation, no Alliance, no Empire. No capital ships and, for now, the largest reasonable battle ship you can obtain is an Anaconda. Oh, well, it won't have been the stupidest thing I've ever done.
So just after I left Sacaquwea I came across a system with a single massive white star. It's not like I haven't seen these types before, and I've seen bigger. But, for some reason, the fact there was nothing else in this system--not even an asteroid field--left me feeling...insignificant. I pulled up to it and just marveled at the immenseness of it. I fired off a probe to get a distance shot, just to remind me of how unique and vulnerable we humans are. We bop around the galaxy, doing our thing, mostly oblivious to the fact the universe is cold, unforgiving will snuff you out in a heartbeat.
Well, enough of that. Time to get home. And, damn, am I ready to be home.