The mysterious Imperial Clipper of Statue of Liberty Nebula
29 Dec 2024Liquid Morkite
My friend cmdr GodzillaGuy, and myself–cmdr Liquid Morkite–we are aspired all-rounded cmdrs. We spent most of our flying time inside Sol Bubble, but we always have this thrill of going out for an expedition sometimes. As soon as we heard about this aspiring new upcoming feature of colonization, GodzillaGuy told me about the Statue of Liberty Nebula that could be a very nice spot for our future homes, so we started planning to make a trip out there.The thing is, how can we make an expedition trip into some kind of a jolly cooperation? Mass jumping wasn’t enough for us. Luckily, the Thargoid war has earned me enough credits to purchase us a fleet carrier, so a couple of weeks ago, I loaded my carrier with tritium, and with GodzillaGuy, we docked on it and I sent it out, all the way toward the Statue of Liberty Nebula.
The trip started out quite peaceful, I’d sent the carrier forward many light years at night, and during our stops, we would jump on our own ships to explore the area, taking notes of interesting systems, and alien lives. “This is so much fun on a carrier!” we said.
It took us 3 days and nights to arrive to the Nebula. We planned to explore many systems in the sector, take note of landable planets, possible mining rings, Earth-like worlds, water worlds, all that could be valuable to settle our homes in the future.
Right after we arrived, GodzillaGuy hopped on his beloved Imperial Courier which he fitted exclusively for exobiology and exploration, meanwhile I stayed on the carrier a bit more to check on her maintenance, its her first time going out of the Bubble and this far, I wanted to make sure everything was still intact.
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After 2 hours after heading out. GodzillaGuy messaged me:
- “There’s someone here.”
-“Oh really? Did you send him our salutations? Let him know that he can dock on the carrier for repair and resupply if he needs it.”
“I didn’t, he attacked me as soon as I landed on this planet, left my hull at 3%” – “But there is no populated system here!” – “Exactly!” – he replied with a terrified tone. Needless to say, I switched to my combat ship, that’s the greatest boon when you’re out here exploring on your carrier, you can bring all your ships with you, I headed out with my guns loaded, ready to engage with this Imperial Clipper. I jumped around 20 systems inside and around the nebula, but the ship was nowhere to be spotted, I looked for a fleet carrier, there was no fleet carrier around there either.
The rest of the trip was as peaceful as how we started, the mysterious entity never showed up again. We did some exploration as we planned, and headed back to the Bubble, but that Imperial Clipper stayed on our mind.
Who, or what was it?
Was he a local bandit that decided to stay and live there, preying on tourists that didn’t expect being attacked? Why was it an Imperial Clipper? I know the Empire has its history of enslavement, was it a result of the Empire’s failed attempt on colonizing and enslaving, and now it was a local sentient entity that killed the owner of the ship, and now it’s attacking everyone that appears in the system? Or maybe he was following us all the way from Sol? Or he was out there, saw our carrier and decided to dock, and he was onboard with us the whole time? All those thoughts terrify me. We still talk about the incident nowadays, but we know we would never find the answer.
The only thing we know, is even we’re far out in the black, there’s nothing considered as being “safe”.