The Hard Road (Sagittarius A* to Colonia)
28 Oct 2017Nightsta1ker
It was startling seeing contacts pop up on my scanner after jumping into the Colonia system. It had been so long since I had seen other ships. No friendly commanders though. Just system authority vessels, tons of cruise ships, and a few traders flitting about their business. They all ignored my friendly hails as I carefully made my way to Jaques station. No sense in making a mistake on the last leg of this journey. Not after what I've been through. I carefully link coms with the station and request docking. They assign me to pad 18. I shuffle into the queue of cruise ships. A battered looking Asp among the glitzy white hulls of the Beluga's. One captain sends me a rather snooty message that I am looking a little worse for wear. I reply with a friendly " o7 ".
Looking up into the command center, I see decidedly feminine faces with bald heads looking back at me. Their expressions are passive. I carefully bring the Asp into a 3 meter hover over the pad and gently let it settle. A soft thump, and notification that the docking clamps have secured the ship. Still got it!
For a moment I don't think the ramp will lower. It's almost fused to the hull, but with a protesting chirp of metal, the seal breaks and it lowers smoothly to the ramp. I am met outside by a decontamination crew. Half an hour of pokes, prods, and scans later, and I am cleared into the station. I pause on the walkway overlooking pad 18. An old battered Asp Explorer squats there, with white suited techs crawling all over with scanners and diagnostic equipment. They will have a repair estimate for me in a few hours. The hull is faded and mottled grey paint worn down to shiny duralium. Elite Combateer logos barely recognizable for what they are. The dark nameplate "Dulcinea" stands out relatively intact, though. Dulcinea del Toboso. The unattainable love interest of the Knight Errant Don Quixote De La Mancha. He who tilts at windmills thinking them dragons. What can I say? I am an old school romantic at heart. And I have a sense of humor at my own expense.
Along the corridors, there are lots of bald heads with smooth faces. Decidedly plain clothing. Simple. Functional. Limited style. They either completely ignore me, or give me unashamed looks of mild curiosity mixed with what might be pity. I ignore the looks. I'm on a mission to find a good single malt and a hot meal. I find it at a little pub called the Jasmine Elephant. It smells of curry, and they appear to have the good stuff stocking the bar. I take my seat in the nearly empty pub and the barkeep brings me my order. It's in a bulb, of course. We are close to the docks, so the gravity is not that strong. The food would normally be "O.K." but after eating rations for so long, it tastes amazing. I ignore my drink while I gobble noodles in peanut sauce, with what appear to be strips of tofu, or something LIKE tofu... Close enough. The sauce is flavorful enough to mask the hints of algea.
Without invitation, I began to talk to the barkeep. He polished glasses and listened the way barkeeps do. Attentively inattentive. Nodding in the right places but not really interested. I know the drill. He's heard this same story a thousand times before. But I don't care. I haven't interacted with another person in a long time, and I need to tell my story. I get to vent, and he gets a tip if he keeps the whiskey coming.
The trip to The Center was a long one, but relatively uneventful. There was a sense of accomplishment upon reaching Sagittarius A*, but it was time to head in for some repairs, refit, and a little R&R. I plotted a course for Colonia. With my modest jump range I was getting about 40Ly jumps with the occassional 157Ly jet cone boosts from neutron stars. Little did I know that would nearly be my undoing. Things started out well enough, settling in quickly to the tedious routine of Jumps, scans, cataloguing and fuel scooping. It was when I decided to go off route to check out a small blue-green nebula that things started to go pear-shaped. I knew something was wrong the moment I entered witch-space; there was no star at the far end of the tunnel. Was this a dark system? I didn't recall seeing anything unusual on my galaxy map when I plotted the course. Suddenly, and without warning, I violently exited witch-space and was also jerked out of supercruise. In front of me, I could see the unmistakable gravitational lensing of a black hole. Bending the blue green light of stellar gas around it. For a moment, everything was silent, and I don't think I so much as took a breath.
Then all hell broke loose. Alarms blared, my holoscreen lit up with warnings. Temperature critical. System malfunctions. I instinctively ejected a heat sink to get my temperature under control, and then began running diagnostics. I was too close to the black hole. I needed to get away from it. I could see my distance ticking down too quickly as I was pulled towards the event horizon. But my FSD was not working. I quickly found a work-around and popped another heat sink as my FSD charged for supercruise. Once I was a safe distance away, I shut down my FSD and started diagnostics. While the computer ran through its repair sequence, I looked the Dulcinea over with a drone. She appeared intact, if a little scarred. Once repairs were completed, and I was confident that I was not going to get any more nasty surprises from my navigation computer, I replotted for Colonia and jumped.
100 jumps later... I'm exhausted. Pushing the limits of the ship. Letting my FSD integrity drop. Riding the Neutron Star Highway and riding it hard. I had get-there-itis, and I had it bad. More mistakes. More damage. Stupid, rookie mistakes, like getting distracted in witch-space and not pulling the throttle to idle. Charging full steam into the star on the other side. I watched as my hull integrity continued to drop. As my systems started acting up. My AFM now empty, and completely out of synthesis material. If I could only just get to Colonia...
I had to force myself to stop. I found a nice quiet spot near another black hole, parked it a safe distance away, and forced myself to get some rest.
A chime on my hand terminal interrupts my reverie. The barkeep seems relieved, and moves off with a filthy rag to wipe down some equally filthy tables. A glance at my terminal reveals a hefty repair bill. But it's all a drop in the bucket weighed against all that exploration data I have yet to turn in to Universal Cartographics. I OK the repairs, and head off to find a bunk.