Meeting A Legend – The Day I Met Up With Cmdr Commander Picard.

I was just pottering about in the Bubble, ratting here, fighting a CZ for the Hosemen there when the message came through that Mission Farsight would be celebrating it’s 2000th day in the black on 06/25/3308 – just over a month’s time. The most exciting thing, though, was that there were to be celebrations. They were to be held somewhere in the vicinity of the Rykers Hope region just the other side of the centre of the galaxy. I was very eager to join in, but I had never travelled more than around 8000 light years from home. It would be a long journey, and, due to there being a Buckyball event happening only the week before, I wouldn’t have all that much time to get there. I put out the message to some of my Commander friends if it was feasible to be able to get to that area within a week. The message came back, unanimously – “Easy!”. So I sent one to Cmdr Picard asking if he minded if I attended. The response was immediate! Of course he’d like to see me. Expect a message detailing the exact system closer to the time.

Surely enough, two weeks before the special day I received a message from the Hermes‘ communications officer. The system was to be DRYOEA BLAO YA-O e6-5399, near the border between Ryker’s Hope and the Epyrean Straits, and a little over 30,000 light years away! I would need to plan my trip.

I would also need to keep the system secret. There are many trigger happy commanders out there who would love to add the Hermes to their trophy list. And when I finally got there I would expect Picard to be cautious. We had never met before, and the esteemed mission reputedly had billions of credits worth of exploration data yet to be handed in. That’s a lot to loose!

The quickest way would be to use a neutron star plotter. And I wanted to have a break halfway just to be sure of repairs, Travelling almost exclusively using neutron boosts would take a serious toll on my Frame Shift Drive. I decided to take my newly named and freshly painted anaconda the Brenda Zephyr, Her jump range was nothing to shout about – somewhere in the region of sixty two light years with a half load of limpets – but she had a full compliment of SRVs on board, including a scorpion. I also took a fighter bay, repair limpets, a larger fuel scoop, a small shield generator, a good AFMU and a large extra fuel tank. This meant I could boost off a lot more neutron jet cones before needing to scoop fuel. I found a DSSA fleet carrier almost exactly halfway and decided I would stop there for the three Rs of long range interstellar travel. – Repair, Rest and Restock. It only took a day and a half to complete a run on the latest Buckyball race and send in my evidence. Then, at 22.30 on 06/19/3308 I set off from my home station of Oleskiw City in the Valtys system.

Starting with Jackson’s lighthouse, I made my first cone boost, then it took several main sequence stars before the next neutron. Before long, great big strings in excess of twenty neutrons at a time were in order. I expected travelling mainly via neutrons to become tedious very quickly. Arrive, honk, carefully skim the jet cone heading away from the star until supercharged, manually enter the system name of the next neutron, plot course, initiate next jump, aim at next neutron, wait for spooling to accumulate, jump. But the process of being meticulous and careful enough not to stay too long in the cone, or to stray too near to the star itself overcame all that. A neutron star is tiny, and the slightest slip of the throttle when arriving can throw you straight into its deadly emissions without warning, from which only the luckiest of pilots escape.

Of course you also have to keep an eye on your fuel and when it begins to get low you have to make a short detour to a fuel star in order to scoop it. Then it’s back to the neutron highway. If I was lucky, there would be a fuel star in a binary orbit with the neutron star. This happened a lot more than I was expecting, too. Coincidently, my tanks needed refilling at more or less the same time that my FSD needed to be repaired. And so I would double up fuel stops with repair stops in the same system. Whilst refuelling I would also use the FSS scanner to see what was in the system I was at and would investigate anything I found interesting. I couldn’t do too much in the way of exploring, however. There just wasn’t the time.

After a couple of days I arrived at the system Greae Phio VK-O e6-4343, where the DSSA Carrier Void Crusader awaited the needy traveller. I had heard that the wonderfully generous owners of the DSSA carriers had parked them at some of the most stunning locations in the galaxy and the Void Crusader is no exception! The star-field begins to become really dense here as one nears the core, and the system itself boasts an impressive array of stellar bodies. But there was no time to investigate. There’s no exaggerating the sense of relief I felt, after two whole days of travel, at finally jumping to the enormous blue supergiant, then scanning the system to find a lone, human vessel offering repairs and a comfortable bed for the night.

The DSSA is a wonderful organisation. An array of deep space fleet carriers that explorers can visit to refresh themselves and their ships, sell exploration data, or just to use as waypoints on arduous journeys. There are usually two carriers in each region of the Milky Way, and each carrier (including their upkeep) is donated by wonderfully generous commanders, eager to see the knowledge of the cosmos exponentially expand. The crew of the Void Crusader were very accommodating and friendly. I expect, even though this vessel is here for this very purpose, they still don’t get to see new faces very often. The food was good, and my cabin was spacious, comfortable and a pleasant change from my quarters on the Brenda Zephyr. After a few hours sleep, and a quick breakfast, it was time to leave.

I was travelling through several main sequence stars on my way to the next neutron that I made my first major discovery. Checking the FSS revealed a water world signal, and once I had located and scanned it I found that it had a ring system! I couldn’t pass this opportunity up, and I was ahead of schedule too so – why not? Once I reached it I was presented with the most perfect blue ball I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing, and when viewed from within the ring system it was doubly exhilarating. Great Braben it was beautiful!

From then on, tired with having to manually enter the system for each neutron star, I decided to trust Brenda’s route plotter. I checked the option to cone boost, made sure I filtered out any dreaded white dwarfs from my route, entered the target system where I hoped I would finally meet Picard and let Brenda work out the rest. Surely enough, because of the density of stars now that I was so close to the core, almost every jump would be a neutron boost, and all I had to do was supercharge the FSD and line up for the next jump. All while still keeping an eye on fuel and drive damage of course!

Now every single neutron was a newly discovered star! And I scanned for every body orbiting each one. I made such good progress that I made my second carrier stop, the Destiny Ascension at Scheau Blao TB-A c28-274, within a day and a half. It was a little beyond my final destination, but I wanted to drop off all the exploration data I’d accumulated since the last stop before the rendezvous with the Hermes. And besides, I had discovered yet another ringed water world! I really wanted my name next to it, just in case.

Now it was just a matter of nineteen jumps back to the rendezvous system. This didn’t take long, and I also had the lovely surprise of an Earth Like World on the way.

The main star of DRYOEA BLAO YA-O e6-5399 is a neutron with no orbiting bodies, the secondary system consisted of a white star with an orbital plane of seventeen bodies. Only one of these had a tenuous atmosphere and bio signals so, on the evening of July 23rd 3308 I decided to land the Brenda Zephyr there and wait for a message from the Hermes to announce they had arrived.

It wasn’t until the evening of 06/25/3308 that the message came through from Cmdr Picard himself that he was wating for me on DRYOEA BLAO YA-O e6-5399 B2a. Full of excitement, I hurried to the cockpit and started up Brenda’s systems. I had thought that the moon of the second planet out from the huge white star would have been a little too hot to meet on foot but, as I approached and detected Cmdr Picard’s team beacon I realised that he was on the night side of the moon and it would be just cool enough for us to safely leave our ships and meet face to face on the surface!

I descended to the moon’s surface keeping the beacon centred and it wasn’t long before I could see a small figure watching and waving from the top of a hill. I manoeuvred Brenda and attempted to land on the hill but due to her being so big there was no suitable terrain. Picard’s voice then crackled into my headset.

“Nice” he said. admiring the ship.

“How are you doing?” I replied, “I’m just going down to the valley, nowhere to put down up here.”

I flew down into the valley. As I slowly let Brenda down I noticed the amount of volcanic activity that was going on all over the place. Hardly surprising as this moon was orbiting so close to its planet. I also noticed that there was no sign of the Hermes, and, in the distance, a lone SRV was hurtling toward my ship down the hillside. I touched down and hurried from the cockpit to sit in one of my own SRVs. It descended out of its hanger and gently dropped to the moon’s surface, then I turned it toward the other one, now getting much closer and sped off to meet it.

As our two SRV’s met Picard’s skidded to a halt, he jumped out and aimed a rifle right at the cabin. I got out, slowly, remembering that from his perspective I was yet to earn his trust, and assuming he must have run into trouble before. I realised then that he had sent the Hermes away to protect her and her crew. The bravery of the man hit me like a sledgehammer!

I slowly emerged from my vehicle, smiling, not in the least bit concerned. I knew Picard wasn’t a killer. He grinned at me, noticing I wore the same style retro spacesuit. He shouldered his rifle, walked up and shook my hand.

“Cmdr Picard, I must say it is an absolute honour finally meeting you!” I declared. I could barely believe this was happening.

“No,” he replied, “It is an honour to meet you Homborger, it is always humbling to meet my fans. C’mon, you want to take some shots don’t you? I know I do!”

“Of course!”

We posed for the remote camera, trying to salute and take a picture all at the same time. It took a few attempts. And this made us both laugh, and if there had been any ice left after our initial contact it was all water now.

We chatted for a while, him asking me how far I’d come and me asking things like why he’d chose this place and congratulating him on his 2000th day. There were supposed to be others arriving later on but, for now, it was just Picard and I. It was a stunning valley, fumaroles, gas vents and lava spouts dotted all over the place. We went to see a nearby lava spout and got as close as our suit’s AIs would allow us. It was such an amazing thing to see on foot, and all the while chatting to one of my heroes!

“Why don’t we go for a drive?” he suggested, heading back to his Scarab.

“Love to!” I announced, hurrying back to my own.

“Race ya to the top of the hill!” came his voice over my vehicles speakers.

I threw the throttle forward and spun my SRV around to join the race. Just ahead was Picard in his. I heard him laughing over the comms. I don’t think he had seen anyone but his own crew for months. It wasn’t too long before I caught up and managed to use my Scarab’s boosters to get ahead.

“Oh! You’re good!” came the joyful response.

I had almost reached the summit when I heard the sound of SRV boosters getting louder from behind and, sure enough, over my head soared Picard, beating me to the top of the hill by a whisker.

“That was close!”

We parked up and gazed at the night sky from the ridge, continuing our chat from the valley. We discussed about all sorts of things, how long we had had our Pilot’s Federation licenses, near misses, landing on high G worlds, the commanders who come out every few months to resupply and repair the Hermes and some of the amazing things he’d seen on his ridiculously long journey out in the black. I also asked him if there was anything he wanted to see but hadn’t seen yet. His reply surprised me. A ringed Earth-like world. He had never discovered one of those yet. Even after two thousand days!

“I’d love to discover one of those!” I replied, “That, for me, is the Holy Grail of exploration!”

“No.” he came back, “Not for me.” I looked at him. “For me the Holy Grail would be a moon in close orbit to an Earth-like, rings or no rings. The beauty of seeing the planet, huge, rising over the horizon. That would be my Holy Grail.”

Now I have always yearned to get out there, into the black. And when the Buckyball season ends that’s just what I’ll do. But nothing has ever ignited the desire to get out there quite like that statement just did. He looked at me and grinned.

“Want me to call in the Hermes?”

Of course I did! We took our Scarabs back down into the valley and waited for the familiar thump of a spaceship dropping out of supercruise. It wasn’t long before the noise echoed in our suits’ helmets and the Hermes materialised in the sky with a flash of light. She gracefully lowered herself down and settled in front of Brenda.

The Hermes is such a beautiful ship. And she bears the scars of her immense voyage with grace. Not one scrap of the original Beluga paintjob remains, and even a fair amount of the primer has been worn away by relentless and intense interstellar travel. But even so, the patina just adds to the romance of her voyage. Once we had finished admiring her, Picard invited me inside to meet the crew.

We jetpacked down to the ground as the Hermes‘ boarding ramp descended from underneath. A lone female officer made her way down to greet us as we reached the stairway up into the hull.

“May I introduce Lieutenant Commander Politano, my excellent First Officer!” boomed Picard with pride. She smiled from within her helmet as I shook her hand.

“A pleasure!” she returned, and gestured back up the boarding ramp, “After you Commander Homborger.”

I ascended into the ship, Picard and Politano following behind. The ramp led to the airlock and we all waited the few seconds needed for the air pressure to match that of the ship. Once we emerged, I was greeted by another member of the crew, this one was armed with a plasma rifle, although it was hanging loosely over his shoulder.

“May I introduce Lieutenant Edwards, the Hermes’ security officer.”

Edwards smiled and shook my hand, “We rarely get visitors on Mission Farsight commander! It is a pleasure to make your company!”

“The pleasure is all mine I assure you!” I gasped. I was not expecting to actually get to go aboard the Hermes at all.

“Lieutenant Edwards will show you around the ship Homborger,” announced Picard, “he…” but Edwards interrupted him.

“I think that honour belongs to you, Sir” he said, almost mischievously, “Politano and I have something to attend to. Don’t worry!” he continued, seeing Picard frown, “It’s nothing to concern you at the moment, I’ll give you a full report later. Why don’t you show Homborger around? We all know how much you love showing off the Hermes.”

Picard relented, chuckled to himself and gestured me through the sliding door that led to the rest of the ship.

If meeting Cmdr. Picard was the cake, being shown around the interior of the Hermes was the enormous cherry on top. The Beluga had originally been designed as a luxury deep space liner, but all the luxury cabins, spas and entertainment venues had been ripped out to make way for laboratories, observatories, extensive analytical and diagnostic equipment and cabins for the crew. There was even a small arboretum where, Picard informed me, they took samples from the various biological specimens they found and simulated their ideal environments in small, sealed off greenhouses (even though the majority of the plant specimens were anything but green) hoping they would grow. The laboratories were many and varied, analysing anything from planetary surface volcanic samples to small chunks of asteroids. There was an awful lot of science being done. The mission would be finished in another year and a half and the amount of new knowledge the mission would be bringing back to civilisation was unimaginable! As Picard was showing me around the feeling that he was immensely proud of what he and his crew had achieved was palpable. Speaking of the crew the thing that struck me most about the tour was that there was barely any sign of them! I asked Picard if most of them had disembarked somewhere to celebrate and he shook his head.

“No, I have a feeling I know where they are. And I’m sure we’ll run into them all soon.” he replied with a wry smile.

The last place I was shown, just after the bridge (the only part of the ship that remained largely similar to the luxury model) we visited the galley. The galley had once been the observation area of the liner and now housed kitchens and a dining area for the crew. As soon as the sliding doors opened and we walked though we were startled by a huge roar of, “SURPRISE!” and, surely enough, the entire crew were wating for their captain, cheering and applauding, led by Edwards and Politano.

Even though I suspected Picard had been expecting something like this, he looked visibly moved. He embraced his officers, and gave a brief speech, giving the majority of the plaudits for the mission’s success so far to his crew.

I felt that this was a moment between a Commander and his crew that I should not be intruding on. I caught the attention of the Captain and he immediately came over. I told him that it was really time that I must go. Picard’s face fell a little, and he placed his hand on my back.

“Of course! Of course. But, before you go – there’s something we must do. It’s a little…game…that the crew play sometimes to help stave off space madness. It would be nice if I we could have a little bit more fun while you’re here.”

He took me outside the ship again and suggested I go and get my SRV, but I hadn’t taken my scorpion out this trip so I decided to get that instead. It took me a little while to swap vehicles and while I did Picard’s voice crackled into my helmet once more.

“You see those rocks over there to your left?”

“Yes.”

“Go park your SRV just the other side a little way and wait.”

“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“You’ll see.”

I parked the other side of the rocks. They sloped upwards toward me slightly. I left and ran to the side before noticing Picard’s Scarab hurtling towards me. He hit the rocks, engaged his vehicle’s thrusters and flew right over my Scorpion, landing in a cloud of dust on the other side.

“Your turn.”

I hurried back to my vehicle and had a go. The gravity was quite low and it was easy. I just sailed over his SRV and landed, bounced twice and spun a little out of control before skidding to a halt.

“That’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be!” I laughed.

We carried on like this, leapfrogging each other until the fuel in my Scorpion was running low. I was just about to synthesise some more when I heard Picard’s voice one final time.

“Well, I really must be getting back to the party. It was really nice meeting you Cmdr Homborger!”

My heart fell. I really was leaving this time. “Thank you so much for inviting me Cmdr Picard, it’s been amazing!”

“If you’re ever out in the black and we’re in the same region, you really must come and visit again.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I will. See you around! Oh seven commander!”

“Oh seven!”

I drove back to Brenda and stopped under the vehicle hanger. I felt the arms grab the Scorpion and pull it up into the ship, then I left the vehicle and made my way to the cockpit. I took one final look at the Hermes, then launched back into space.

Now I had planned to go back home via Sagittarius A*, but, now that it came to it, I really didn’t want to make a detour. I just wanted to fly straight back, hopefully discovering some nice systems along the way. No neutron highway this time. I would just trust Brenda’s own route plotter. As I punched the co-ordinates of the Void Crusader’s system into the galmap, it returned a distance that would take over two hundred and fifty jumps, and then probably another two hundred and fifty from there back to Valtys. I pointed Brenda’s nose toward the first system and jumped to witch space.

It was a long journey, at least twice as long back as it took to get out. I scanned everything I could and discovered some wonderful places.

But the most fantastic find was when I scanned what seemed like a rather uninteresting system, only to have the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when the words “Notable Stellar Phenomena Discovered” flashed up on my FSS scanner. My very first! I targeted it and hurried over, only a few hundred light seconds away from the main star. As I dropped out of supercruise I was presented with a beautiful, serene, crimson Lagrange cloud. Just hanging in space. As I cautiously approached and entered the cloud I noticed geographical shapes, slowly spinning in the red mist. I had discovered, for the very first time, a space born lifeform!

Prasnium and Pupureum metallic crystals! I was awestruck, and spend a good hour just gently drifting though these incredible constructs.

About 8 days after I had left the meeting place, I finally jumped into the Valtys system. I made my way to Oleskiw City tired, but feeling very, very happy and fulfilled. Something Picard had said will stay with me forever.

“Some people filter the galmap in order to make it easier to find certain discoveries, K class stars for Earth like worlds and so on. But don’t. I’ve found Earths around brown dwarfs, and if you miss out these lesser systems, you will miss out on some spectacular discoveries!”

So visit everywhere. Scan everything. You never know what you are going to miss.

You know, they say you should never meet your heroes. But that is not true of Cmdr Picard. He is an inspiration to all of us! And if I’m ever in the same region as him when next I’m out in the Black – I’m definitely going to pay the Hermes another visit!