Clean Up the Galaxy

The chancellors of Planet Rahalito had a different request than norrmal. A pirate ship has been terrorizing the Sol System, but it's not the piratic activity that has caused them grief, but that the ship is using old Chinese technology that is leaving a toxic chemical trail wherever he goes. They want him taken out to stop the pollution. I just need the money and a Ranger Centre to cash in my collected nodes, of which Oldy will do nicely.


The trip out through Minnaver to the Sun was relatively uneventful with the usual opportunist mining and trading. I dropped off the spoils at Oldy as well as locking in the nodes. The pirate was easy to find. Follow the smoking trail. Why a pirate would use a leaking ship is beyond me, but I didn't feel the need to ask him, just relied on laser talk.


With the kill confirmed, I hunted around for another task to take me back in the direction of Hese to collect my fee. Some rare artifacts to Regulus fit the bill, but I didn't press the negotiations on price as I wanted to check out how the scientific probes had gone.

Previously I had dropped off probes in Betelgeize and Tallot systems, so I plotted an arcing course through those systems to check on their progress. Both had just turned up some minor goods, but nothing of real value. One of the probes had finished so I packed it up for a fix and relocation to somewhere in Hese. The other still needed to cover some mountainous terrain, so it may as well stay to complete the survey.

The Regulus run garnered more reputation and an injection of capital, but nothing like the reward on offer back at Hese for the removal of the toxic ship. Once that circuit had been completed I was back to a free state with no obligations.

Back Home

The tasks on offer weren't that appealing in the Tallot system. It's right next door to Dominator fighting, but I'd rather still wait for better firepower. Through a scan of the records it seems Mars has a similarly small Lezka as the one I have, so a trip home might be on the cards.

With no time-based tasks to set the pace, I took my time getting back to the Sun by picking up flotsam and intercepting asteroids. There was a welcome surprise when planet Astron in Betelgeize gave me a reward for cleaning up asteroids on a collision course with that planet. Nice!



Arriving at Sol I popped back into Oldy Ranger Centre to check up on our progress and donate the nodes that had been clogging up my hold. Mars was next to sell off minerals, refuel, and pick up the Lezka that was still available (luckily, the last trip based on looked up prices turn into a disaster).

Mars also had an oversupply of luxuries, so if I can string together a couple of runs to Earth I could make a substantial amount of money.


2 trips netted another 5k, bringing my current total to 18,539cr. With 2 Lezkas and a full bank I'm happy heading back to the front lines. Maybe I can hook up a delivery going that way?

The Golden Calf

After the explosion there were salvageable parts left drifting, a laser and a fuel cell. I nabbed both and headed to the closest port, a Business Centre called "The Golden Calf".

It turns out I have a mounting point available for another weapon, so I may as well install the salvaged one. The fuel cell is light at 10 tonnes for 15 units of fuel, but still too small for a serious jump. Might hang on to it anyway, could be handy keeping some fuel in reserve.

Since I'm at a Businesss Centre I checked out what other services they have on offer. They offer loans as well as investment opportunities. A long term loan looked Ok since 2595 days sounded a long time until they wanted their money back.


You can also organize to get a trading analysis done to see what goods are worth shipping. For 32cr it's a bargain. The analysis revealed a previous trading circuit: Medicine from Venus to Earth.


.. Wait, what? Medicines FROM Venus?

I guess the medical crisis is now over and they've realized that they now have far too many medicines (because I dumped them there) whereas Earth have none (because I took them from there). Oh well, I better get back over there and rectify the situation (and make a profit, teehee)

Astaron

Hyperjumps were a piece of cake. Point & click on the starmap and everything else is autopilot. I was expecting stars warping and my body being strecthed to infinity, but it's not that bad at all. Inside hyperspace it's like a glowing tunnel; hard to describe really.

We flew from our exit point on the edge of the solar system to Astaron with only minor diversions to fill my hold with rock. Astaron is another Human colony with an orbit close to Earth's, but the surface looks more like Mars.

Digging through the spare parts on offer I found a lightweight Trasion Scanner to further increase my default carrying capacity. The trader let me in on a little secret though, the more expensive the item the more expensive the repair bill. With this scanner being double the price I could expect to fork over double the money in repairs too. Maybe the expensive lightweight Radar wasn't best option?

The chancellor made sure I had refuelled after my first jump before giving another task to shoot down a moving target. Whoah! Space combat! Awrighty!


You're on IP-4.. err .. robot.


Nearly got ya! (and so did the Asteroid!)


And there he goes. Piece of cake!

Tagging along is another pilot called Orollin. He's a wannabe Ranger, but didn't have the credits to get started (thanks again, Dad). He was so impressed that I shot down the droid that he offered to follow me around for a year to 'learn from a real Ranger'. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was only a training mission.

Space Trip

Well that was 8 days wasted. Here's your rocks, now what?

We spent the day going through the nuances of the hyperjump drive. My engine has the ability of atmospheric flight on planets, space flight for between planets and now hyperjumps to travel between solar systems. My next task is to travel to Betelgeize, an 8 parsec jump. It all sounds good in theory, but there's been rumours floating around the mess hall about monsters in the empty space between jumps. The instructor waved away the rumours as hogwash though, and personally vouched for over 40 years of hyperjump travel without incident.

With 10 grand burning a hole in my pocket, I took a trip through Trader Alley to see if there was anything useful for my ship. The first purchase was a larger capacity fuel cell that held 24 units of fuel. That's the jump capacity of my engine, so it only made sense that I needed the same amount of fuel for the jump. The merchant agreed (don't they all?).

Next up was a lightweight Subtransfer Radar. The salesman mentioned the virtues of a sleeker design was that you got the same functionality with less hull space taken up (it's 1/2 the weight at 15 tonnes). That meant more room for trading and I'm all for that. It was expensive though at 4000cr, almost 1/2 my money.

So we're all set for a jump to Betelgeize, hope I get to write about it on the other side!