I've recently chatted with a number of commanders from the Lonely explorers thread, along with a few on streams and such, and a lot of them have suggested that I document my travels around the rim a bit. Unfortunately when I set out almost 4 months ago, I didnt really have a set direction or destination in mind, and just planned to wander around looking at the shinies till I got bored. As a result, I didnt record much, and didnt take many pictures.
Since folks are interested though, I though since a picture is supposedly worth 1000 words, I could write a wall of text and make up the difference
Hope you enjoy, and apologies to anyone who finds themselves slumped across their console bored into unconciousness
The Rim.
January 1st, 3301.
Where the new year saw many people across the known worlds, putting asides their differences for a few moments, to celebrate the fact that one of the many, many inhabited worlds, had completed another orbit around a fairly average star, there was one who had no interest in the festivities and worked alone, away from the laughter and the drinks, and the steady thump thump thump of the music.
Society held no interest for him. Communities of people more a burden, a malign side effect of existence that he had no choice to put up with from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. Life in human space was hard for someone like him. Too bright, too fast, too loud... a constant assault upon the senses. He was born different, some ages old thing affected the way he processed the world, with some medical name he'd long ago forgotten, he had refused all talk of a cure - it was part of who he was, and to remove that part of himself felt like some kind of obscene, twisted psychic murder.
Instead, he felt the call of deep space, the stars and nebulae singing to him across the cosmos, luring him out into more peaceful skies. He needed to escape, free himself of the chaos and find a place deep amongst the unchanging stars.
His ship had no mast to lash himself to, but like Ulysses before him, he desired to hear the song of deep space, to sail out and visit those places, away from the others, where perhaps he could at last find some peace.
Whilst the rest of humanity was unified in celebration, Dr Noesis was in the hangar, pulling at wires and components, stripping some, replacing others, like some technological tornado, a whirlwind of superconductors and silicon......
He was working on his ship, a corroded, twisted and micrometeor pitted mess of an asp, which had measured the lifetimes of more than one pilot before him, and attempting to make it spaceworthy once more......
Two weeks later.
The deck of the hangar bay shook, and glowed white hot, first appearing to twist mysteriously in heat haze, then bathed in fire as it became hot enough to ignite particulate matter in the air above it. Then slowly, the heat began to dissipate, the rolling waterfall of exhaust plasma that had been heating it, lifting away from the deck. Beyond that the engines roared and spat flame, like some dread, hellish armada of cosmic dragons, spitting not flame, but star stuff, at all before them.
The vessel raised it's gear, and the low steady roar of the engines began to change in pitch and tone, grinding its way through the octaves to a raw scream of power, and the Asp moved off, leaving Irkutsk station behind. Dr Noesis was away.
Over the next few weeks, the Dr meandered his way around the stars. The ebb and flow of gravity and light were the current and wind upon which his vessel was bourne forth, as very quickly he learned that it was more interesting simply to enjoy the journey than to seek to reach any given location. He visited nebulae that others had never recorded, drank and ate foods he had found on the myriad habital worlds he had passed on his journey, whilst his vessel gorged itself upon the stars, tearing at them with magnetic teeth whilst the solar winds howled as if in pain around the hull.
Limited to being able to plot any more than 100ly in advance at any rate meant he often found himself plotting each jump as he took it, with the calculations taking hours at times, it was pointless trying even to pretend he had any real control over his journey.
As a result, like all the other objects in this galaxy, the core tugged at him, gently at first, and then more powerfully as he drew nearer, and like a moth to a flame, he found himself drawn there, to the bright heart at the center of all that he knew.
Perhaps here, he thought, he might find peace. Few expeditions had made it out this far, surely the risk of encountering people here, was remote, those few who did make it preferring to avoid the hazards posed by the galaxies most massive and powerful blackhole.
PEACE! he thought as he lined up his approach and made what he hoped would be his final jump.
Witchspace held him a moment, eldritch voices sang to him as they always did during a jump, and then with a jolt, his ship re-entered normal space and the engines began screaming as they sought to retain control and decellerate the vessel.
Here, he thought, looking out the canopy.... then "No!" as he spotted a pair of anaconda's in the distance.
He waited them out, his ship masked against their sensors by the intense heat and radiation at the core. If they were pirates, they'd destroy him, he thought. Minutes turned to hours, then one ship left, followed a while later by the other... scans complete, most likely heading home. He relaxed, and angled his ship towards Source 2, the lonely blue wanderer, permanently trapped in the cores deadly embrace. He gunned the engines, and began to cruise over, hoping to hide out in the stars upper corona, hidden by the emmissions of the brilliant star, able to draw in fuel steadily at a slow enough pace to keep things charged without running the risk of damaging or over stressing the ship.
Boom. The speakers on the consoles vibrated so hard they looked rigid, a vast pulse of energy causing them all to react, to attempt to turn the raw power that had passed through the vessel into sound. The sound was over as quickly as it had begun, the speakers lay slack again, and then..
"Sounding pulse detected"
The Dr was incensed. Another ship. A sounding pulse, a wall of raw energy designed to locate the positions of all the bodies in a given system.
Another ship, so soon after the pair of anaconda's had left him alone.
Another ship, more people. More noise, more speed, lights, chaos, madness.
Another ship.
It was then he knew there was no hiding from humanity in the core. People would seek him out, even there, drawn like moths to a flame. If they were here, they were everywhere, they would either be there, or arrive there behind him. It was inevitable.
He tried to resign himself to the situation, decided to head home and give up an attempt at a solitary life. He instructed the autopilot accordingly, and watched as it slowly compiled a route for itself in 100 ly chunks. Once laid in and set, he frustratedly crawled inside his sleeping pod, activated the cryogenics systems, and waited to be awoken back in Irkutsk.
Back in the bubble.
Having returned without incident from the core, Dr Noesis decided he should look into earning some cash again, in order to maintain a modest lifestyle, and before long founded himself drafted in to assist in defending traders in the Ngaiawang system from attacks by the Falisci Purple Gang.
Somewhere in the two week conflict, the endless combat sorties and escort runs stopped being about the money. Instead he found himself throwing the Cobra he had been assigned against ships, not to pull in bounties and combat bonds, but instead simply to shut them up. The purple gang were over confident, their pilots too desperate to make a name for themselves, and they'd announce their presence over the comm's as soon as they entered an area, and wouldn't stop broadcasting till their ships were burnt out metallic husks.
It was no good, he couldn't drown out the noise with the steady thump of his multicannons or the scream of his afterburners. Lasers picked out strobing patterns in the dark, like some deadly abstract work of art whilst the sensors beeped and an endless ballet of jousting vessels tore at each other in the dark.
He had to head out, get away, find the place where he could rest and exist as and by himself.
The sheer expense of the conflict around Nagaiawang meant that before long the politicians were involved, the relevant noises made, compensation paid, and paperwork signed and sealed. His cobra's multicannons were still cooling, the powerplant still winding down in the hangar as he blasted out of the station in his Asp, his accounts innundated with credits already ear marked for a series of upgrades and enhancements for the vessel, to be installed quickly at Jameson Memorial before he headed back out into the black.
The life support was improved, hull reinforced, navigation computer stripped out and replaced with a top of the range, brand new one, capable of plotting 10 times the distance of his old one, and in a mere fraction of the time. The old ship painted black, seemed to loom over the flight deck, a hulking monster, a compromise between combat efficiacy and long distance travel. If he found a place out there, he was ready to defend it, ready to encourage any interloper to leave and never come back.
All he need do was pick a path, and keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The relative ease of plotting a long distance route that came with the new navigation systems meant that more and more pilots left the bubble of inhabited space aiming for the core. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, and some enterprising companies had even begun offering tours, flying out Orca's loaded with tourists, who could travel to the core in relative luxury, compared to the early explorers who had struggled every step of the way. There was even talk of people racing each other there.
The core, and any path in that direction, now, was likely to be too busy, too full of people for the Dr to find solace for long.
Instead, he would fly the opposite way. Away from human space, and away from their route of pilgrimage, towards the rim.
With the modifications he had made to his vessel, it only took a week to cover the first 10,000 light years or so, and reach the rift... a vast area of space between the outermost arms of the galaxy, where the stars were so sparse only the most advanced ships had any hope of traversing without becoming trapped beyond all help and unable to collect enough fuel to jump anywhere else. Few came this far. Many came, looked out into the black and went mad, never heard from again, residing only im memory and tall stories of ghostly derelicts. No one who had come out this far and continued on had been heard from again.
A place like that, like the Formidine Rift... that seemed like a perfect place to start looking for some peace.
Cosmic Pizza.
Crossing the rift took two weeks. Because his Asp was so heavily armed, it lacked the jump range of a typical explorers ship, and it was necessary from him to skirt the edge of the rift for some 10,000 light years looking for a crossing point. Anyone following him at that point would have found his trail confusing and labyrinthine, changing direction, turning back on itself like a writhing serpent, following the only path he could find around the edge. He didnt want the journey to end here, on the near side of the rift, not where others might still come. He needed to get further, and so pushed on and found a way. At times it felt like for every 1000ly headway he had made, he had travelled a further 2,000 in following dead ends, twists and turns and course corrections along the way.
Eventually he found a path, just dense enough to traverse the rift, and he began moving outward again. At times the corridor of stars he followed narrowed to single jumps, systems only just close enough to the ones before and after to bridge the gap, and all around was darkness. Other times he found small clusters, pockets of a dozen or so systems bunched together as if for warmth or comfort in the black. Each system he passed, scanned and catalogued, resources noted, potential new homes ear marked for use in future. He wanted to be alone, but that didn't mean he wanted to live out his time as a complete hermit. Taking stock of what resources he could find and bend to his purposes was a vital step, even if it did mean he spent more time surveying than travelling.
Better to be prepared. Better to avoid this planet than be buried under rock or magma because of tectonic instability. Better the world with water and iron in rings around it, than the one with nothing to drink and none of the minerals or nutrients needed to permit life.
On and on he travelled outward, until at last he reached the very edge. In an unremarkable system, no different to the multitude of others he had passed through, he looked out and realised there was nothing to see, no stars to see by, only distant galaxies, who's distance was inconceivable, even to someone who had travelled so far. Tantalising, but forever out of reach.
Behind him, his own galaxy, vast and bright, hanging in the dark like some vast cosmic pizza, with a topping made from starlight, nebulae and glowing interstellar dust.
With no suitable place found to establish himself, the Dr continued on, heading further up the outer arm, wondering how far he would need to travel before he could cease his travels. He was tired. Constant jumping was getting to him, and lately the ethereal choir in witchspace were singing differently, slightly more forcefully almost as if they were desperate to tell him something. How many jumps was enough? 20? 30? Would he ever find a place to rest, or would he one day realise he had accidentally travelled the 220,000 ly circumference of the galaxy and still not found a system to call home?
Interlopers...
One morning, perhaps 8 weeks into his journey, Dr Noesis was awakened by his ships AI. Since leaving the bubble, he, like many other long distance explorers, had set his ships AI to passively monitor the GalNet. Any news or information that had been broadcast and recieved by the ship was filtered and catagorised, only to be brought to the pilots attention when it had news that directly affected the pilot.
A fleet of vessels had been dispatched from the bubble, to investigate the disappearance of some vessel or other and the emergence of some unusual and apparently dangerous artifacts of unknown origin and design. Daedalus Wing, deep space recon and recovery. Some of the most resourceful and patient pilots humanity had to offer. And latest reports suggested they were heading right for him.
Outwardly, Dr Noesis barely seemed to react, a slight flicker of the eyes and the expression remained cold, cool, composed. On the inside however, he was screaming, lost somewhere between primitive rage and despair.
He turned away from the monitor, poured himself a mug of coffee and stared out of a viewing port across the hull of his vessel, deep in thought. He stood that way for nearly an hour, sipping his coffee, appearing as if he was studying in detail each individual dent, scorch mark and scratch in the paintwork of his ships hull and he composed himself. Coffee complete, he set the mug aside, made his way into the cockpit and strapped himself in.
Then, with a flurry of speed that belied his earlier measured behaviour, he sighed, and began rapidly entering coordinates into the ships navigation computer.
After several minutes, he sat back in the chair and gripped the flight controls. Staring out into the dark for a moment he paused. He had felt so close to finding his place here. It was unfair, but if Daedelus Wing found him, they'd either shoot him down or board him and hound him with questions. They'd tear his ship from stem to stern if they thought it had even the remotest chance of holding information about what they were looking for, and the fact that he wasnt carrying anything would only make them more determined to try and find it.
His eyes flared, he gritted his teeth and roared a deep primal roar of anger and pain at the situation. Damnit, it had felt so close.
He gunned the engines, and as the roar of the frame shift drive became loud enough to drown out his shouting, the Dr settled down, and as a tear began to roll down his cheek, he engaged the jump.
Mistakes were made.
All thoughts of finding a home were gone, he needed to put distance between himself and Daedelus wing. The ship blinked in and out of existence from system to system far faster than it had been designed for. He was jumping directly into the corona's of stars, scooping as he lept from witchspace, the scoops fields set to full power, tearing away lumps of star as the ship quickly aligned with its next jump and blinked away again, leaving no trace but a burning tower of star stuff hanging above the stars surface.
He was running without cooldowns. The ships vents were permanently open, radiating what heat they were able into space, but he had disabled the safety features of his drives, preventing them from requiring a cool down before engaging again, and the cabin temperature soared.
To improve heat distribution, he sealed off the main deck from the rest of the ship, and increased the internal pressure as far as it was safe to do so. The slightest impact would make the ship explode like a balloon jabbed with a pin, but the increased pressure meant that the ship was far better able to convect heat into the exchangers.
He continued that way non-stop for 12 hours, a burning evil hell ride. Proximity and heat alarms blaring red in his peripheral vision, he was half asleep in the chair, kept awake only by the constant rhythm of jumps, holding himself upright more by sheer effort of will than any physical strength. He was exhausted.
Jump, bright, heat, jump, bright, heat, jump...
Then suddenly the rhythm was disrupted, a panel in front of him exploded in a show of sparks, and he let go of the controls for the first time in hours in order to hold his hands before his face in a desperate attempt to protect himself.
It was bright. Too bright. And it was too hot. The ship hadnt jumped. The rhythm was wrong. He was dazed, confused.
"Re-engage security interlocks, get us the hell out of here" he yelled. The ships AI beeped in compliance, and he was thrown back in his chair as the ship boosted away at full power. The gauge measuring the ships fuel reserves plummetted, it wasnt just using the main drives, it was using the burners and the maneuvering thrusters as well for every possible extra ounce of velocity. The force drove him deep into the back of his chair, chest burning, held down by sheer g-force, unable to expand out and take in air. He couldnt even scream.
And then it was over. The pressure was gone, and the ship gently arced its way around the system, bleeding away excess velocity with the kind of finesse beyond the talents of any human pilot.
Dr Noesis fumbled at the chair restraints and freed himself, falling to the floor with a cry as he raggedly tried to draw in breath, and then a yell as the heat of the hull metal beneath his hands started to burn him. Pulled himself back onto the chair, hit a series of keys on the main console, shutting down systems with each button pushed, stopping them from generating heat, allowing the ship to cool back down.
As he knocked off the final system, the cabin lights, he sighed. Safe. The alarm lights flickered and went out, and all around him was black.
There was a feeling of pressure at the back of his head, the blackness in front of his eyes began to seem blacker, and then he slumped, barely breathing, across the console and slept.
Damage report.
When he awoke the ship was cold, cabin windows covered in ice, and his breath came from his lips like smoke. In front of him the starscape rolled, the ship had been drifting since he disabled the attitude control thrusters. It was beautiful.
Before him the galaxy scrolled past, bright, cold and vast. He held up his hand to the view. Almost all of humanity, every colonised planet, almost every ship, every station, every new born child, every dead ancestor. All the wars, all the politics, all the things, all fit in a patch of sky smaller than the nail on my little finger, he mused to himself.
How vast and overwhelming it seemed inside the bubble, yet so small this far beyond it.
He sat there, humbled by the thought for several minutes, before remembering himself, and re-activating the ships systems.
As the ship whirred and sparked and hissed as it reawakened itself, he began working through the damage report generated by the ship. As he reached the end of the list, he began to laugh, a deep, honest belly laugh.
Asides from a few cosmetic things, such as console panels, and a large gap in his hull where the plates that were meant to protect his ship had evaporated away, there was no significant damage to worry about, except for one thing.
Amidst the list of "ok" and "online" messages, there was a single, solitary red warning.
"AFR module offline. Critical Damage" Of all the things to cook.... he'd lost the automatic repair module.
What to do....
"Wow" he said to himself as he vectored the ship around to look at whatever it was that had damaged it so badly.
A binary system, the stars were so tightly locked, the navicomputer had failed to recognise them as anything other than a single star. He'd been lucky. Better pilots had lost their lives to mistakes like that. He should have expected it, or something like it, to happen after a hell ride like that through witchspace.
He pulled up his location on the flight map. 33,000ly from Sol... a good half way around the arm itself. He'd probably burned through around 40,000 light years following the arm around, trying to put in some distance between himself and Daedelus wing.
Unable to conduct any significant repairs to the ship, Dr Noesis was in a bit of a quandry. He could continue flying on, possibly without any concern for some time. Then again, his safety net was now a burned out molten wreck in the aft of his ship, so it was either continue on at risk, or head back to the bubble for much needed repairs, and then return to looking for a new home.
Unable to decide, he set the ships auto pilot to make the 2,000ly journey across to the inside of the outer arm. If there was an emergency, he was a little closer to home, if he decided to continue, it didnt really make much difference. As the ship jumped on, he pulled up the galnet feed to see if there was any further news.
Nothing from Daedelus wing, and no news about the weird artifacts that they, and a number of others had been tracking.
There was news, however, that Sirius Corp were offering big money to people with system data to sell. Dr Noesis had a lot of data to sell, thousands of pristine systems, he could pay for the repairs... maybe even a better ship. Hell he might have enough to buy himself a world.
What to do? He couldnt decide. He needed time, to hide, to think, to figure out what to do next. He trawled through his charts for inspiration, and found it only a handful of jumps away. An unstable trinary system. He could sit between the three stars, masked by the interaction of their various magnetic fields and energy output. It could buy him some time, at least, till he figured out what next....
- - - Updated - - -
Forgot to add this above, here's my travel route so far...
Since folks are interested though, I though since a picture is supposedly worth 1000 words, I could write a wall of text and make up the difference
Hope you enjoy, and apologies to anyone who finds themselves slumped across their console bored into unconciousness
The Rim.
January 1st, 3301.
Where the new year saw many people across the known worlds, putting asides their differences for a few moments, to celebrate the fact that one of the many, many inhabited worlds, had completed another orbit around a fairly average star, there was one who had no interest in the festivities and worked alone, away from the laughter and the drinks, and the steady thump thump thump of the music.
Society held no interest for him. Communities of people more a burden, a malign side effect of existence that he had no choice to put up with from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. Life in human space was hard for someone like him. Too bright, too fast, too loud... a constant assault upon the senses. He was born different, some ages old thing affected the way he processed the world, with some medical name he'd long ago forgotten, he had refused all talk of a cure - it was part of who he was, and to remove that part of himself felt like some kind of obscene, twisted psychic murder.
Instead, he felt the call of deep space, the stars and nebulae singing to him across the cosmos, luring him out into more peaceful skies. He needed to escape, free himself of the chaos and find a place deep amongst the unchanging stars.
His ship had no mast to lash himself to, but like Ulysses before him, he desired to hear the song of deep space, to sail out and visit those places, away from the others, where perhaps he could at last find some peace.
Whilst the rest of humanity was unified in celebration, Dr Noesis was in the hangar, pulling at wires and components, stripping some, replacing others, like some technological tornado, a whirlwind of superconductors and silicon......
He was working on his ship, a corroded, twisted and micrometeor pitted mess of an asp, which had measured the lifetimes of more than one pilot before him, and attempting to make it spaceworthy once more......
Two weeks later.
The deck of the hangar bay shook, and glowed white hot, first appearing to twist mysteriously in heat haze, then bathed in fire as it became hot enough to ignite particulate matter in the air above it. Then slowly, the heat began to dissipate, the rolling waterfall of exhaust plasma that had been heating it, lifting away from the deck. Beyond that the engines roared and spat flame, like some dread, hellish armada of cosmic dragons, spitting not flame, but star stuff, at all before them.
The vessel raised it's gear, and the low steady roar of the engines began to change in pitch and tone, grinding its way through the octaves to a raw scream of power, and the Asp moved off, leaving Irkutsk station behind. Dr Noesis was away.
Over the next few weeks, the Dr meandered his way around the stars. The ebb and flow of gravity and light were the current and wind upon which his vessel was bourne forth, as very quickly he learned that it was more interesting simply to enjoy the journey than to seek to reach any given location. He visited nebulae that others had never recorded, drank and ate foods he had found on the myriad habital worlds he had passed on his journey, whilst his vessel gorged itself upon the stars, tearing at them with magnetic teeth whilst the solar winds howled as if in pain around the hull.
Limited to being able to plot any more than 100ly in advance at any rate meant he often found himself plotting each jump as he took it, with the calculations taking hours at times, it was pointless trying even to pretend he had any real control over his journey.
As a result, like all the other objects in this galaxy, the core tugged at him, gently at first, and then more powerfully as he drew nearer, and like a moth to a flame, he found himself drawn there, to the bright heart at the center of all that he knew.
Perhaps here, he thought, he might find peace. Few expeditions had made it out this far, surely the risk of encountering people here, was remote, those few who did make it preferring to avoid the hazards posed by the galaxies most massive and powerful blackhole.
PEACE! he thought as he lined up his approach and made what he hoped would be his final jump.
Witchspace held him a moment, eldritch voices sang to him as they always did during a jump, and then with a jolt, his ship re-entered normal space and the engines began screaming as they sought to retain control and decellerate the vessel.
Here, he thought, looking out the canopy.... then "No!" as he spotted a pair of anaconda's in the distance.
He waited them out, his ship masked against their sensors by the intense heat and radiation at the core. If they were pirates, they'd destroy him, he thought. Minutes turned to hours, then one ship left, followed a while later by the other... scans complete, most likely heading home. He relaxed, and angled his ship towards Source 2, the lonely blue wanderer, permanently trapped in the cores deadly embrace. He gunned the engines, and began to cruise over, hoping to hide out in the stars upper corona, hidden by the emmissions of the brilliant star, able to draw in fuel steadily at a slow enough pace to keep things charged without running the risk of damaging or over stressing the ship.
Boom. The speakers on the consoles vibrated so hard they looked rigid, a vast pulse of energy causing them all to react, to attempt to turn the raw power that had passed through the vessel into sound. The sound was over as quickly as it had begun, the speakers lay slack again, and then..
"Sounding pulse detected"
The Dr was incensed. Another ship. A sounding pulse, a wall of raw energy designed to locate the positions of all the bodies in a given system.
Another ship, so soon after the pair of anaconda's had left him alone.
Another ship, more people. More noise, more speed, lights, chaos, madness.
Another ship.
It was then he knew there was no hiding from humanity in the core. People would seek him out, even there, drawn like moths to a flame. If they were here, they were everywhere, they would either be there, or arrive there behind him. It was inevitable.
He tried to resign himself to the situation, decided to head home and give up an attempt at a solitary life. He instructed the autopilot accordingly, and watched as it slowly compiled a route for itself in 100 ly chunks. Once laid in and set, he frustratedly crawled inside his sleeping pod, activated the cryogenics systems, and waited to be awoken back in Irkutsk.
Back in the bubble.
Having returned without incident from the core, Dr Noesis decided he should look into earning some cash again, in order to maintain a modest lifestyle, and before long founded himself drafted in to assist in defending traders in the Ngaiawang system from attacks by the Falisci Purple Gang.
Somewhere in the two week conflict, the endless combat sorties and escort runs stopped being about the money. Instead he found himself throwing the Cobra he had been assigned against ships, not to pull in bounties and combat bonds, but instead simply to shut them up. The purple gang were over confident, their pilots too desperate to make a name for themselves, and they'd announce their presence over the comm's as soon as they entered an area, and wouldn't stop broadcasting till their ships were burnt out metallic husks.
It was no good, he couldn't drown out the noise with the steady thump of his multicannons or the scream of his afterburners. Lasers picked out strobing patterns in the dark, like some deadly abstract work of art whilst the sensors beeped and an endless ballet of jousting vessels tore at each other in the dark.
He had to head out, get away, find the place where he could rest and exist as and by himself.
The sheer expense of the conflict around Nagaiawang meant that before long the politicians were involved, the relevant noises made, compensation paid, and paperwork signed and sealed. His cobra's multicannons were still cooling, the powerplant still winding down in the hangar as he blasted out of the station in his Asp, his accounts innundated with credits already ear marked for a series of upgrades and enhancements for the vessel, to be installed quickly at Jameson Memorial before he headed back out into the black.
The life support was improved, hull reinforced, navigation computer stripped out and replaced with a top of the range, brand new one, capable of plotting 10 times the distance of his old one, and in a mere fraction of the time. The old ship painted black, seemed to loom over the flight deck, a hulking monster, a compromise between combat efficiacy and long distance travel. If he found a place out there, he was ready to defend it, ready to encourage any interloper to leave and never come back.
All he need do was pick a path, and keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The relative ease of plotting a long distance route that came with the new navigation systems meant that more and more pilots left the bubble of inhabited space aiming for the core. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, and some enterprising companies had even begun offering tours, flying out Orca's loaded with tourists, who could travel to the core in relative luxury, compared to the early explorers who had struggled every step of the way. There was even talk of people racing each other there.
The core, and any path in that direction, now, was likely to be too busy, too full of people for the Dr to find solace for long.
Instead, he would fly the opposite way. Away from human space, and away from their route of pilgrimage, towards the rim.
With the modifications he had made to his vessel, it only took a week to cover the first 10,000 light years or so, and reach the rift... a vast area of space between the outermost arms of the galaxy, where the stars were so sparse only the most advanced ships had any hope of traversing without becoming trapped beyond all help and unable to collect enough fuel to jump anywhere else. Few came this far. Many came, looked out into the black and went mad, never heard from again, residing only im memory and tall stories of ghostly derelicts. No one who had come out this far and continued on had been heard from again.
A place like that, like the Formidine Rift... that seemed like a perfect place to start looking for some peace.
Cosmic Pizza.
Crossing the rift took two weeks. Because his Asp was so heavily armed, it lacked the jump range of a typical explorers ship, and it was necessary from him to skirt the edge of the rift for some 10,000 light years looking for a crossing point. Anyone following him at that point would have found his trail confusing and labyrinthine, changing direction, turning back on itself like a writhing serpent, following the only path he could find around the edge. He didnt want the journey to end here, on the near side of the rift, not where others might still come. He needed to get further, and so pushed on and found a way. At times it felt like for every 1000ly headway he had made, he had travelled a further 2,000 in following dead ends, twists and turns and course corrections along the way.
Eventually he found a path, just dense enough to traverse the rift, and he began moving outward again. At times the corridor of stars he followed narrowed to single jumps, systems only just close enough to the ones before and after to bridge the gap, and all around was darkness. Other times he found small clusters, pockets of a dozen or so systems bunched together as if for warmth or comfort in the black. Each system he passed, scanned and catalogued, resources noted, potential new homes ear marked for use in future. He wanted to be alone, but that didn't mean he wanted to live out his time as a complete hermit. Taking stock of what resources he could find and bend to his purposes was a vital step, even if it did mean he spent more time surveying than travelling.
Better to be prepared. Better to avoid this planet than be buried under rock or magma because of tectonic instability. Better the world with water and iron in rings around it, than the one with nothing to drink and none of the minerals or nutrients needed to permit life.
On and on he travelled outward, until at last he reached the very edge. In an unremarkable system, no different to the multitude of others he had passed through, he looked out and realised there was nothing to see, no stars to see by, only distant galaxies, who's distance was inconceivable, even to someone who had travelled so far. Tantalising, but forever out of reach.
Behind him, his own galaxy, vast and bright, hanging in the dark like some vast cosmic pizza, with a topping made from starlight, nebulae and glowing interstellar dust.
With no suitable place found to establish himself, the Dr continued on, heading further up the outer arm, wondering how far he would need to travel before he could cease his travels. He was tired. Constant jumping was getting to him, and lately the ethereal choir in witchspace were singing differently, slightly more forcefully almost as if they were desperate to tell him something. How many jumps was enough? 20? 30? Would he ever find a place to rest, or would he one day realise he had accidentally travelled the 220,000 ly circumference of the galaxy and still not found a system to call home?
Interlopers...
One morning, perhaps 8 weeks into his journey, Dr Noesis was awakened by his ships AI. Since leaving the bubble, he, like many other long distance explorers, had set his ships AI to passively monitor the GalNet. Any news or information that had been broadcast and recieved by the ship was filtered and catagorised, only to be brought to the pilots attention when it had news that directly affected the pilot.
A fleet of vessels had been dispatched from the bubble, to investigate the disappearance of some vessel or other and the emergence of some unusual and apparently dangerous artifacts of unknown origin and design. Daedalus Wing, deep space recon and recovery. Some of the most resourceful and patient pilots humanity had to offer. And latest reports suggested they were heading right for him.
Outwardly, Dr Noesis barely seemed to react, a slight flicker of the eyes and the expression remained cold, cool, composed. On the inside however, he was screaming, lost somewhere between primitive rage and despair.
He turned away from the monitor, poured himself a mug of coffee and stared out of a viewing port across the hull of his vessel, deep in thought. He stood that way for nearly an hour, sipping his coffee, appearing as if he was studying in detail each individual dent, scorch mark and scratch in the paintwork of his ships hull and he composed himself. Coffee complete, he set the mug aside, made his way into the cockpit and strapped himself in.
Then, with a flurry of speed that belied his earlier measured behaviour, he sighed, and began rapidly entering coordinates into the ships navigation computer.
After several minutes, he sat back in the chair and gripped the flight controls. Staring out into the dark for a moment he paused. He had felt so close to finding his place here. It was unfair, but if Daedelus Wing found him, they'd either shoot him down or board him and hound him with questions. They'd tear his ship from stem to stern if they thought it had even the remotest chance of holding information about what they were looking for, and the fact that he wasnt carrying anything would only make them more determined to try and find it.
His eyes flared, he gritted his teeth and roared a deep primal roar of anger and pain at the situation. Damnit, it had felt so close.
He gunned the engines, and as the roar of the frame shift drive became loud enough to drown out his shouting, the Dr settled down, and as a tear began to roll down his cheek, he engaged the jump.
Mistakes were made.
All thoughts of finding a home were gone, he needed to put distance between himself and Daedelus wing. The ship blinked in and out of existence from system to system far faster than it had been designed for. He was jumping directly into the corona's of stars, scooping as he lept from witchspace, the scoops fields set to full power, tearing away lumps of star as the ship quickly aligned with its next jump and blinked away again, leaving no trace but a burning tower of star stuff hanging above the stars surface.
He was running without cooldowns. The ships vents were permanently open, radiating what heat they were able into space, but he had disabled the safety features of his drives, preventing them from requiring a cool down before engaging again, and the cabin temperature soared.
To improve heat distribution, he sealed off the main deck from the rest of the ship, and increased the internal pressure as far as it was safe to do so. The slightest impact would make the ship explode like a balloon jabbed with a pin, but the increased pressure meant that the ship was far better able to convect heat into the exchangers.
He continued that way non-stop for 12 hours, a burning evil hell ride. Proximity and heat alarms blaring red in his peripheral vision, he was half asleep in the chair, kept awake only by the constant rhythm of jumps, holding himself upright more by sheer effort of will than any physical strength. He was exhausted.
Jump, bright, heat, jump, bright, heat, jump...
Then suddenly the rhythm was disrupted, a panel in front of him exploded in a show of sparks, and he let go of the controls for the first time in hours in order to hold his hands before his face in a desperate attempt to protect himself.
It was bright. Too bright. And it was too hot. The ship hadnt jumped. The rhythm was wrong. He was dazed, confused.
"Re-engage security interlocks, get us the hell out of here" he yelled. The ships AI beeped in compliance, and he was thrown back in his chair as the ship boosted away at full power. The gauge measuring the ships fuel reserves plummetted, it wasnt just using the main drives, it was using the burners and the maneuvering thrusters as well for every possible extra ounce of velocity. The force drove him deep into the back of his chair, chest burning, held down by sheer g-force, unable to expand out and take in air. He couldnt even scream.
And then it was over. The pressure was gone, and the ship gently arced its way around the system, bleeding away excess velocity with the kind of finesse beyond the talents of any human pilot.
Dr Noesis fumbled at the chair restraints and freed himself, falling to the floor with a cry as he raggedly tried to draw in breath, and then a yell as the heat of the hull metal beneath his hands started to burn him. Pulled himself back onto the chair, hit a series of keys on the main console, shutting down systems with each button pushed, stopping them from generating heat, allowing the ship to cool back down.
As he knocked off the final system, the cabin lights, he sighed. Safe. The alarm lights flickered and went out, and all around him was black.
There was a feeling of pressure at the back of his head, the blackness in front of his eyes began to seem blacker, and then he slumped, barely breathing, across the console and slept.
Damage report.
When he awoke the ship was cold, cabin windows covered in ice, and his breath came from his lips like smoke. In front of him the starscape rolled, the ship had been drifting since he disabled the attitude control thrusters. It was beautiful.
Before him the galaxy scrolled past, bright, cold and vast. He held up his hand to the view. Almost all of humanity, every colonised planet, almost every ship, every station, every new born child, every dead ancestor. All the wars, all the politics, all the things, all fit in a patch of sky smaller than the nail on my little finger, he mused to himself.
How vast and overwhelming it seemed inside the bubble, yet so small this far beyond it.
He sat there, humbled by the thought for several minutes, before remembering himself, and re-activating the ships systems.
As the ship whirred and sparked and hissed as it reawakened itself, he began working through the damage report generated by the ship. As he reached the end of the list, he began to laugh, a deep, honest belly laugh.
Asides from a few cosmetic things, such as console panels, and a large gap in his hull where the plates that were meant to protect his ship had evaporated away, there was no significant damage to worry about, except for one thing.
Amidst the list of "ok" and "online" messages, there was a single, solitary red warning.
"AFR module offline. Critical Damage" Of all the things to cook.... he'd lost the automatic repair module.
What to do....
"Wow" he said to himself as he vectored the ship around to look at whatever it was that had damaged it so badly.
A binary system, the stars were so tightly locked, the navicomputer had failed to recognise them as anything other than a single star. He'd been lucky. Better pilots had lost their lives to mistakes like that. He should have expected it, or something like it, to happen after a hell ride like that through witchspace.
He pulled up his location on the flight map. 33,000ly from Sol... a good half way around the arm itself. He'd probably burned through around 40,000 light years following the arm around, trying to put in some distance between himself and Daedelus wing.
Unable to conduct any significant repairs to the ship, Dr Noesis was in a bit of a quandry. He could continue flying on, possibly without any concern for some time. Then again, his safety net was now a burned out molten wreck in the aft of his ship, so it was either continue on at risk, or head back to the bubble for much needed repairs, and then return to looking for a new home.
Unable to decide, he set the ships auto pilot to make the 2,000ly journey across to the inside of the outer arm. If there was an emergency, he was a little closer to home, if he decided to continue, it didnt really make much difference. As the ship jumped on, he pulled up the galnet feed to see if there was any further news.
Nothing from Daedelus wing, and no news about the weird artifacts that they, and a number of others had been tracking.
There was news, however, that Sirius Corp were offering big money to people with system data to sell. Dr Noesis had a lot of data to sell, thousands of pristine systems, he could pay for the repairs... maybe even a better ship. Hell he might have enough to buy himself a world.
What to do? He couldnt decide. He needed time, to hide, to think, to figure out what to do next. He trawled through his charts for inspiration, and found it only a handful of jumps away. An unstable trinary system. He could sit between the three stars, masked by the interaction of their various magnetic fields and energy output. It could buy him some time, at least, till he figured out what next....
- - - Updated - - -
Forgot to add this above, here's my travel route so far...
Last edited:
