More hypotheses abound.. I'm likely to be far off base, but hey.. I need to make myself feel like I'm doing something to prevent succumbing to space madness this far from the bubble. Despite the beautiful views out here.. there is something special about having a snifter of Lavian Brandy overlooking the capital city. Alas, the taste for the unknown pulls at me and I ventured forth.
I'm trying to not overthink this thing. My wife would probably concur that I shouldn't think too much, or smoke may start to come out of my ears, but that is another matter.
I'd suggest that I install a cerebrally mounted heatsync launcher, but she'd probably give me a weird look and have no idea what I was talking about. You see, she's from a small primarily agricultural world in Alliance space which I often visited on trade runs in my early days. She now spends a lot of time in the horticultural bay, a customized section I built just for her not far from the atmospheric processors. She insisted that she come along on this voyage despite my reservations due to the potential dangers, so I had to accomodate her needs. I wish I thought ahead, as the extra insurance premiums are taking a toll. This isn't such a profitable enterprise searching for barnacles and all.
Now on to matters at hand:
Despite how strange this may sound.. I'd be highly suspect that these barnacles would be found on relatively barren/featureless, less exciting worlds. How drab! If I wanted to crash(?)-land my alien craft somewhere and spread my spores... I'd absolutely want to have beautiful vistas to enjoy while I spread my tendrils into the rocky/metallic soil.
After days of scouring moons covered in relatively drab scenery and repetitive impact craters, I turned my sights to more flavorful views.. but I didn't want to go at this completely without direction. I'd rather develop what I could from what 'potential' sparse clues I had on hand. Whip up a likely very BAD hypothesis.. and pull the veritable trigger and hope for the best.
I then sterted on this whole PR5 Row 2 Seats 5&6 dead center thing... it may be something, it may be absolutely nothing. Some dolt may be enjoying a show somewhere in a stadium, while I scour the unknown attempting to derive logic from a mere ticket stub like the fool I am. But I have tried to decipher what the heck it could mean.
PR5. Yeah. Pleiades. Rocky planet #5. Sounds good enough.
Row2. Hmm. Second moon? I'll go with that. It could also mean a second star, indicating the second row in the system map... but one thing at a time.
Seats 5&6. Potentially some surface coord? Maybe a suggested search altitude? Yeah i'm reaching far for something to grasp here... it could mean moon 5&6.
Dead center. Hmm. Tidally locked planet? I'm thinking equator facing the planet tidally locked to.. OR dead center in some notable surface feature? Or if moons 5&6 were in orbit, it could be the center point between them if they happened to be tidally locked to one another. I'll stick to the first assumption.
I then took the list of the seven major systems which compose the Pleiades. I'm omitting the outliers, and stars that are not components of the original 'seven sisters'. I scanned through the systems and their structure. This list I narrowed down to Merope, Pleione, Taygeta .. roughly on the less than logical criteria mentioned. Looking at these three... Pleione seemed to stand out. I also remembered my old-time Frontier lore. The Pleione system was rumored to once have had a secret military installation. Surely if there once was, there is no trace of it now. But I'd figure they wouldn't want to be easily spotted, so no holo-signs or beacons.
Thus ... I am now parked on Pleione 5B as of last night. Planning a search later today. I have to say. This is a gorgeous system. Pleione 5 hangs above. I'm dead center on the equator facing Pleione 5. The ring makes a perfect line across the planet in the sky due my position. The surface features here are fantastic. Chaotic almost. No drab surface with repetetive craters. The blue star shines brightly placing an eery glow over the rather dark surface material. Hills, mountains, crevasses, all sorts of surface features abound. Most likely I won't find anything.. but at least I'll enjoy my time.
