Colonia Bridge, part 18 - hiatus
12 Jun 2022Sarashina
22 months away. Way back when in the bubble, waking up in a military hospital having been pulled out of a somewhat non-standard escape pod (read: made from parts of several other escape pods with the serial numbers filed off), the medics and psychs treating me for amnesia did give me some dire warnings about how whatever had happened - beyond potentially long-term cryo - might rise up from my subconscious to bite me at some point down the line. Cryo doesn't normally cause psychosis, but then it doesn't normally cause amnesia either, and the medics were concerned that I'd been given something - had my own serial number filed off, as it were - before being put in a pod and dumped. (There was something of an official side-eye, but in the end, having no biometrics for me on record, they gave me the benefit of the doubt. I'd been found in Empire space, so it was considered I might have been an Imperial slave, or perhaps this was some kind of honour crime.)
I'm not sure what kicked off the meltdown in Rohini; I think it had been coming on for some time. No violence, just a slide into strangeness. I have vague recollections of being taken off on a carrier to a med facility - presumably back in the bubble. An interesting side-effect of all galactic installations being "made to spec" as it were, is that - presuming you never actually go outside if you're planetside, or look through an actual porthole - it's almost impossible to tell where in the galaxy you are. So I know I was in a facility, and I think it was in space rather than planetside, and it was probably in the bubble, and I'm sure I don't know why they allowed me back into space once I was rated mentally sound again. It may be that I'm now part of a long-term study in the effects of prolonged cryo. They didn't share that information with me if so. Pretty sure I came back to Rohini in a military vessel but I wasn't even sure it was a vessel until it docked and I left it. Back in the hanger, MoG didn't even smell dusty.
One of the first things that happened when I got back on comms was I had notice that Felicity Farseer had passed my details to Juri Ishmaak - explosive weaponry and scanner enhancements. Sounds interesting. Weird how the rest of the galaxy goes on.
Glad I planned my route in advance before I dropped out, it makes it easier to drop back in again. Still fighting a sense of disconnect - not bad, just like going down a flight of stairs and misjudging the bottom step.
Short hops to the first port of call.
Mats very low: arsenic (18), mercury (18), technetium (4), tellurium (36), zirconium (9);
low: polonium (33), selenium (38), yttrium (48), zinc (42)
So, first stop - some mat farming, in a newly kitted-out SRV. on Nyeajaae OI-L B14-23 3 A; mainly simple elements but decent amounts of tellurium and niobium.
FO-T C6-41 - planets 1 and 2 had water-based life
OI-L B14-25 - planet 1 with ammonia-based life
AW-W A28-0 - brown dwarf, little icy jobs
NI-L B14-16 - couple of metal-rich but methane so can't land
Got bored at this point so ignored the next half-dozen hops and did an FSD boost to the first official plot:
Nyeajaae VU-H b16-3 - a couple of gas giants and 1 hmcw, plus a lot of LIJs that I need to get over my sense of completeness for, because they don't pay the time it costs to scan them.
Nyeajaae EC-E b18-4 - this was originally plotted but, despite it being well within boosted jump range, the system refused to plot. sent me instead to Nyeajaae AW-F B17-3, full of little icy jobs.
Nyeajaae RB-0 C9-62 - can now no longer even be found! Time to abandon the rest of the route and re-plot from scratch.
All the following in Nyeajaae:
LD-A B20-0 - binary
SA-X B21-21 - binary
YN-K C11-24 - trinary, gj, 3 hmcw; all discovered but no footfall yet
KP-P B25-12 - 5 gj, one with wbl
WH-K B28-1 - bunch of lijs
PH-D C15-37 - binary
MB-D B32-10 - more lijs
Nyeajaae SC-B b33-7 - CB-24 Colonia Bridge!
112cr structural, 25cr heatsink, refuel 423cr, total 560cr. cf 1.5M cartographic data! Two thirds of that from Rohini, including 540k for a dss of a hmcw and 267k for an ordinary scan of an earthlike. One of the stars pulled in 157k.
Best of the rest was OI-L B14-23, with 63k dss of the hmcw (the other hmcw ordinary scans being about 11k each). The lijs fetch 500cr a pop and really aren't worth it.
NI-L B14-16, 67k for dss of a hmcw; an ordinary scan was only 15k. These were the ones that weren't accessible, so it shows it doesn't matter that much (although there's 8-fold increase in value if you can).
Next major system (CB-25) will be Nyeajaae NB-Q b52-14.
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