End of the Road

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Macedonica said:
Commander’s Log - Felix Macedonica (Updated)

November 15, 3302

Deep in the Abyss

I am not sure what more I can do.

The Lakon is locked down tight on the moon’s surface. I have enough fuel scooped to make a 29ly jump. Materials are bursting at the seams. All save one. That elusive Germanium. Who would ever imagine that but for 1 unit of Germanium, a pilot and his Lakon Type 6E must remain forever stranded at the far end of the galaxy. 1 lousy unit.

I have piloted through hundreds of systems and barely glanced at them - scooped a little fuel, honked the scanner, glanced at the system map - and moved on, ever on. This was supposed to be one of those systems. No, really, it was. It was a stepping stone on my way out of The Abyss and back towards the Roncevaux Crossing. A smear across the cockpit view. Nothing more.

Until I made that fatal error.

Now I have spent three days here in this place and despite the despair and the helplessness, I have found beauty and awe. It has reminded me a little why I drove for so long across the surface of Beagle Point 2. I have ‘lived’ a little now in this system. I know its vagaries - the odd orbit lines, the ring fields, the four suns revolving in ever complicated arcs. I am intimate with it now. It feels like home. As Beagle Point 2 did - well, for a while, at least. I have driven the SRVs - both the ‘Dudley Docker’ and the ‘James Caird’ here on this icy moon in search of Vanadium and I have grown again into that odd skin which is rooted in gravity. I look up at the galaxy and feel its weight upon me, over me, like a magnificent shawl resplendent with jewels and pearls.

And I find myself smiling a little again at the irony that here, on the ground, in an SRV, I seem to find more peace than up there among the stars and the endless cold glamour of witchspace.

Does that mean then I am the opposite of Commander Chiggy? He soars across the galaxy, almost a ghost, a wraith of speed and purpose, whereas I am nothing but a statue looking up, my feet encased in ice, my visor frosted over inside and out. A thousand stars tumble past his cockpit. I am enamoured of the motes of dust swirling about my feet. What opposites we are! He fills time with movement; I am slowing down like an automaton gradually unwinding. That is an illusion, of course. A deeper part of me knows this is nothing but the survival instinct kicking in. He will arrive soon and this illusion of peace and solitude and stillness will be shattered.

And then the real battle begins - not against men, nor even against errant machinery, but instead against the uncaring universe itself. For either that Germanium will be here in one of the rings or the asteroids up by the main star - or it won’t. And no amount of railing or swearing will change that. My salvation lies in the genetics of space itself. It is that simple.

And that terrifying.

I look up into that magnificent shawl of the galaxy above and wonder if one of those lights is where Chiggy is now. Once or twice, we wing-locked and his position was projected onto the cockpit and I took comfort from that. But now I think I prefer to wonder on it - to guess and smile, thinking he is nearer than he really is. For soon, one of those lights will give birth to another light and that light will flow across my vision even as the comms crackles into life - and all this solitude and all this reverie will end.

Soon . . .

http://i.imgur.com/qtHrdot.jpg
Click to expand...

I'm out of rep' but that sir is absolutely beautiful writing! o7

P.S. doing the maths it's looking like 8pm for that comms crackle.
 

Hell Razor5543

H
Macedonica said:
Commander’s Log - Felix Macedonica (Updated)

November 15, 3302

Deep in the Abyss

I am not sure what more I can do.

The Lakon is locked down tight on the moon’s surface. I have enough fuel scooped to make a 29ly jump. Materials are bursting at the seams. All save one. That elusive Germanium. Who would ever imagine that but for 1 unit of Germanium, a pilot and his Lakon Type 6E must remain forever stranded at the far end of the galaxy. 1 lousy unit.

I have piloted through hundreds of systems and barely glanced at them - scooped a little fuel, honked the scanner, glanced at the system map - and moved on, ever on. This was supposed to be one of those systems. No, really, it was. It was a stepping stone on my way out of The Abyss and back towards the Roncevaux Crossing. A smear across the cockpit view. Nothing more.

Until I made that fatal error.

Now I have spent three days here in this place and despite the despair and the helplessness, I have found beauty and awe. It has reminded me a little why I drove for so long across the surface of Beagle Point 2. I have ‘lived’ a little now in this system. I know its vagaries - the odd orbit lines, the ring fields, the four suns revolving in ever complicated arcs. I am intimate with it now. It feels like home. As Beagle Point 2 did - well, for a while, at least. I have driven the SRVs - both the ‘Dudley Docker’ and the ‘James Caird’ here on this icy moon in search of Vanadium and I have grown again into that odd skin which is rooted in gravity. I look up at the galaxy and feel its weight upon me, over me, like a magnificent shawl resplendent with jewels and pearls.

And I find myself smiling a little again at the irony that here, on the ground, in an SRV, I seem to find more peace than up there among the stars and the endless cold glamour of witchspace.

Does that mean then I am the opposite of Commander Chiggy? He soars across the galaxy, almost a ghost, a wraith of speed and purpose, whereas I am nothing but a statue looking up, my feet encased in ice, my visor frosted over inside and out. A thousand stars tumble past his cockpit. I am enamoured of the motes of dust swirling about my feet. What opposites we are! He fills time with movement; I am slowing down like an automaton gradually unwinding. That is an illusion, of course. A deeper part of me knows this is nothing but the survival instinct kicking in. He will arrive soon and this illusion of peace and solitude and stillness will be shattered.

And then the real battle begins - not against men, nor even against errant machinery, but instead against the uncaring universe itself. For either that Germanium will be here in one of the rings or the asteroids up by the main star - or it won’t. And no amount of railing or swearing will change that. My salvation lies in the genetics of space itself. It is that simple.

And that terrifying.

I look up into that magnificent shawl of the galaxy above and wonder if one of those lights is where Chiggy is now. Once or twice, we wing-locked and his position was projected onto the cockpit and I took comfort from that. But now I think I prefer to wonder on it - to guess and smile, thinking he is nearer than he really is. For soon, one of those lights will give birth to another light and that light will flow across my vision even as the comms crackles into life - and all this solitude and all this reverie will end.

Soon . . .

http://i.imgur.com/qtHrdot.jpg
Click to expand...

Beautifully written. I would rep you, but I already have. You are BOTH pioneers in your own right, and have added to the game by this adventure. As I have already said, good luck to both of you.
 

CMDR CHIGGY VONRICTOFEN

CMDR CHIGGY VONRICTOFEN
Less than 7k now...about to hit the Abyss..hopefully I will ship across like a flat stone on water *crosses fingers* For those watching...1900 game time is the absolute earliest I could possibly make it, if everything goes perfect...and I feel the pains of hunger gnawing at me...so might wanna add a few more minutes to that...
 

Macedonica

Macedonica
Alec Turner said:
I'm out of rep' but that sir is absolutely beautiful writing! o7

P.S. doing the maths it's looking like 8pm for that comms crackle.
Click to expand...

Hell Razor5543 said:
Beautifully written. I would rep you, but I already have. You are BOTH pioneers in your own right, and have added to the game by this adventure. As I have already said, good luck to both of you.
Click to expand...

Thanks to you both - I am actually getting nervous for real here as Chiggy approaches. That's a bit mad, isn't it?
 
Last edited:

TrapperQ

TrapperQ
killerofstars said:
Actually you can't supercruise from one star to another, but you CAN close the distant and change the fuel requirement. You have to "jump" to enter the next star's instance, but the game still takes the distance traveled into account.
Click to expand...
No it doesn't. I've tried twice. The distance of the jump is taken from the distance of the system you are currently in. I had a Conda wit a range of 29.9ly and a star 30.1ly away. I flew until the range read 29.8ly and tried to jump. No joy.

(I was doing an experiment to see if a Conda could get back from the suicide run that is Distant Stars. The idea was to turn the Conda into a giant fuel tank and fly through space until I reached jump distance. Turns out even if you do that, it only has the fuel to go 14ish days through space, which would have been half the distance required. And it doesn't matter, since it doesn't work in the first place.)

Frontier need to add in an interstellar space region beyond systems. Call the border the Oort cloud.
 

Edelgard von Rhein

E
Good luck this evening with finding Germanium!
Don't be disheartened if it doesn't drop right away. It can take a while for the common materials in a ring to show up (one hour is probably insufficient to see everything, two hours is more likely but see how it goes). I would suggest starting in a metal-rich or rocky ring and mining until you've seen all the common materials in that ring drop, then move on to the next. I'm not sure exactly how many common materials can be found in each ring but I think it's at least 3 in pristine metallic rings, based on my own experience.
 

Col Frost

Col Frost
Beautiful reflections Macedonia. Your time in your SRV's has obviously given you a unique perspective.
Can't wait to get home from work, get out the popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show :)
Fingers crossed Chiggy blasts some Germanium into your possession.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom