First solo flight - shakedown cruise in the "Serendipity"
07 Nov 2015Myshka
I picked up my shiny new (well, to me) Sidewinder today at Trevithick dock. As I had won the ship through a series of odd little coincidences, I've decided to call her "Serendipity".After familiarising myself with the controls, I thumbed through the local Bulletin Board and found a quick mission to Wholer Terminal, Kermainn system, paying quite handsomely for shipping 1T of Bertrandite. Figuring that this was quite an acceptable shake-down cruise, I accepted the mission, and loaded out the remaining hold with Uraninite to trade enroute.
Things went quite smoothly until I entered the Potriti system. For some reason the ships computers did not recognise the system, so I tried scanning it in, but the scanner was giving problems as well. While fiddling with that, the ship drifted dangerously close to the star, and quickly started overheating. Spinning the ship around and thumbing the thrusters, I avoided worse damage, but she did get cooked slightly! Talk about trial by fire!
So I made an unscheduled stop at a local station, I forget which, to repair the damage and then headed on to my destination.
This also proved to be not the smoothest of runs - shortly before Wohler Terminal a lousy scumbag of a pirate in an even more beat-up Sidewinder than my precious Serendipity dared to interdict me and demand my cargo! I had scored quite highly in Combat Training previously so despite the fact that this was my first ever combat, I only trembled slightly as I engaged him - naturally I wasn't going to give up my cargo this easily! After showing him the hot ends of my twin pulse lasers he soon realised that I wasn't quite the easy prey he had anticipated! Hah, girls can fight too mate! . Soon he was running, but enraged I pursued him against my better judgement. Luckily for me his skills were even worse than my own and I netted myself a handsome bounty as his ship disintegrated into a cloud of rapidly-cooling molten debris.
Finally arriving at Wholer Terminal.I cashed in the bounty as well as my contract. Wow, just a quick trip and I'm already clear 10KCr! And that's after refitting! I think space agrees with me!
As it was, my luck held - there was a return contract for Medicines back to Trevithick Dock. Perfect! Again, I filled the rest of my Hold with miscellanea, which I traded on my way back.
This time nobody dared interfere with me, however back in the LHS 3447 system, the Frame Shift Drive malfunctioned and I ended up over 100,000LS out of the system! I will have to get the mechanics to take a look at it, even though it did end up getting me safely back to the Dock. Seems there are a few loose bolts in my shiny new ship after all..
Just before the dock I dropped out of FSD - a couple of fleabag pirates were attacking an honest merchant. Still feeling cocky from my earlier fight, I decided to engage and assist until more experienced help arrived. Unfortunately my help was too late; the trader's ship was unable to fend off the blasts from the pirates even though I had managed to lure one of them away with some well-placed shots. However, with the assistance of the System Force, the pirates were destroyed, and I got a nice little reward. It's not much, but in a way I feel I avenged the trader.
With the profit from the Mineral Extractors I brought back with me, the bounties, and the contract reward, I'm now quite nicely in profit! And that's just from a quick shake-down cruise, never intended as a trade run!
Serendipity certainly is living up to her name!