The Duke of Painite - Part 4 - The Sleepless BaronMy attainment of the Imperial title of Baron was the first gain of rank on my road to the Dukedom that felt like more than a mere formality. It involved an elaborate ceremony hosted and overseen by the honorable Viscount Hanlon D'Armitage VII, an important...
The Duke of Painite - Part 3 - Delivery Assassin LordFor one who had attained the status of Lord and thus the middling ranks of the lower Imperial nobility, I did not feel very noble. It was not because half of the missions I was doing involved hauling water and clothes from one station to another, or...
The Duke of Painite - Part 2 - A Knight of KutjalangaiI attained my knighthood with less fanfare than might be expected. It wasn't like the period-holos where the knighted one is down on one knee while some hoary and ancient Lord taps them on each shoulder with a sword. My knighthood ceremony came in the...
The Duke of Painite - Part 1 - How Hard Could it Be?The thing that mainly spurred me on to rush back to the Bubble from Colonia was the lure of a fortune to be made in the painite mining business. Thanks to a tip from an old-timer back in Colonia, I had a line in on a network of mining spots and good places...
Back to the Bubble - Chapter 5 - All the way HomeI reached the Bubble right around 06:00 on November 20th, 3305, less than twenty-four hours after my encounter with the monster in the galactic core, coming into Apsarre in Freelancers Alliance territory to the beautiful sight of Altuna Settlement, the...
Back to the Bubble - Chapter 4 - ...For the Abyss Gazes Back AlsoI emerged from witchspace to find myself held fast in the eye of oblivion: The Voice...
Back to the Bubble - Chapter 3 - Gaze Not Long Into the Abyss...The hundred jumps went by in a blur of scanning. I moved inexorably, thirty-eight light years at a jump, until at around fifty jumps I breached the Galactic Centre region and the Voice from Sagittarius A, which had been silent since its last assault upon...
Back to the Bubble - Chapter 2 - Deafening SilenceAs I record this log, I have one hundred jumps left until I reach Sagittarius A. My disquiet had been growing with each step closer to the Great Annihilator. Gone was the thrill of discovery as I uncovered system after system and world after world, the...
Back to the Bubble - Chapter 1 - Enter the CoreIt took the ship's computer about ten seconds to plot a route from Colonia to Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole that lies at the center of our Galaxy and the object around which all of us revolve in a cycle spanning millions of years. When the...
Leaving Colonia - Parting ThoughtsLife never ceases to amuse, does it? I've not been in Colonia for two days, and already I'm itching to get back to the Bubble. It's not mere caprice that has me ready to return to the center of human civilization; there is indeed some of that involved,...
