Lone Travelling To Waypoint 7
10 Mar 2019Count Iblis
Six Solar weeks ago I was in the bubble and I had made the rash decision to go on this historic endeavor.Although I did very little whimsically, this rash act could almost be deemed as such. I preferred to look at it as being spontaneous - which there seemed to be a shortage of in the known universe! The frantic rushing around the bubble followed: First to purchase my Expedition craft- the Indefatigable, and then to get it speced up and then engineered correctly. With the Gleam iridescent paint barely dry on the curvaceous hull of the Indefatigable I nevertheless took off to join the thirteen thousand or so other excursionist nomadic explorers!
The Imperial Cutter had performed flawlessly. It had become a home to me. An amazing sumptuous well appointed home that left me wanting for very little. There was a Jacuzzi style lagoon pool, and a colossal genetically engineered flowering Argent tree that was almost continually in bloom in the main veranda. There was a variable G gym too. The facilities and resources of this vessel had been designed with a large crew in mind (this ship was just shy of 200 metres long!) and for a lone soul everything seemed infinite. Sure, the Aliance collectivists and the hippocritical Federals with their 'superior morality' would utter this as being disgustingly oppullant and self indulgent very much akin to the gilded era of ancient times but I didn't care. Id heard it enough.
My private quarters were larger than anywhere I'd ever lived with a smaller private jacuzzi in the sauna room and a virtual reality chamber too.
Life here had become second nature to me now. Ample time for contemplation and reflection and simply enjoying the moment. Hardships, pains of the past, were melting away. Never forgotten, but filed away out of view.
When I wasn't scanning new systems and worlds, analysing their spectral frequencies, I would spend time in the landing just before the ship launch fighter bay, where the festively lit fountains offered a energetic aura and the sounds of rushing water offered a earthy tranquility often missing in the sterile environments of space crafts such as Lakon vessels. Here I would read books and journals from the library , undertake research or delve into the Codex. It was an enlightened existence but one that I had very much earned.
On this journey I had made many friends, folks I'd bump into at various way points, and then share bevearages with as we camped at various new worlds beholding alien vistas, or folks I'd chosen to travel in a wing with. It was these folks that often became confidants. There was Mike Redden, my long time friend, who had also come along on this voyage and brought his Type 10, Luna the rather mysterious leader of an adjacent wing, Diane Night, member of the Fuel Rats, Edward 'The Dragon' and many more. On a venture like this, you had to ask yourself WHY were these people coming? I liked to dig in to try to understand. What drove this disparate band of travellers who wanted for very little, to leave it behind and come here. Were they really here to experience the wonders of the galaxy and seek enlightenment? Or was that just a slogan? Reece was finding more often than not most folks on this expedition were running from something or someone. More often than not, they couldn't really run: The issues were within them and were destined to repeat in a eternally pursuing life trap.
But for this last leg of the journey I wanted to travel alone.
I am an extrovert but I have my limits: I had witnessed behaviour that was unpalatable and didn't align with my values.
Oxlade Joss Chamberlain, a well known protagonist and trouble maker and coward had been turning up to the various waypoints of this organised expedition with his band of thugs and bullies (otherwise known as the SDC or 'Sucking Dinkle Crew') with the sole purpose of disrupting lives and killing. Involved in procuring and pushing Onion Head and other similar heavy drugs the group was loose association of the dregs of society who had found an opportunity to stealing attention and resources.
Well known for driving less secure star systems to civil unrest followed by lock down. They were cowards because they would pick on unarmed unarmed exploration crafts or choose to terrorise when they vastly outnumbered their victims.
Oxlade and the SDC were well known and their role was understood. They would rise, and then fall, hard and vanish just like other gangs , like the Hernovacle Drug Empire. The galaxy was too well armed to tolerate such antics. Oxlades influence was puzzling to me, a weak minded person who tried to play the wolf hard. He had nevertheless garnered followers, much the same way that Alexandria Sandy Warren - of the Nu Age Essentialists had, but without the charisma.
So they didn't particularly bother me anymore than other galactic nuisances such as unscoopable L class stars or waiting to dock at an outpost that was over booked.
What did bother me was the apologists and appeasers who defended the actions of Oxlade and the SDC. Infact they would often denote him as some sort of hero- stating 'Space is Dangerous'- get over it and then go back to their daily duties. I had hoped that an epic expedition like this would attract free thinking individuals but he was wrong, and there were the weak followers here too who made excuses for the actions of these terrorists and wrote off their wake of death and destruction as inevitable facts of daily life. I was at a loss as to how anyone could rationalise this perspective. As the legendary Prime Minister Churchill once said, "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
I believe in making a stand and taking drastic measures, if necessary, to tackle a tyrannical rabble. This was ultimately how the Hernovacle Drug Empire fell. It took some doing but it fell. However now wasn't the time with this exploration focused luxury craft.