I had come a long, long way. Les Voyages had, so far, been one of the most fun and fulfilling experiences I had had in the Milky Way. Now came the push to the edge, to the farthest point from civilisation anyone had ever reached. I was experienced enough. I had been exploring for years.
It was all going to be a blast.
Or so I thought.
The last push for Beagle Point began stupendously! Yet another undiscovered binary Wolf Rayet system. It took a lot of relentless toing and froing in the galmap, and a dozen or so already discovered systems before I stumbled upon this absolute gem!
However, the star field was beginning to thin out, and interesting things to aim for were becoming scarce. The jumps began to merge together and the systems seemed to just repeat themselves, jump after jump after jump. The last twenty thousand light years to the far edge was threatening to be an uneventful slog.
There was a highlight I was looking forward too along the way, though. A certain group of Notable Stellar Phenomena in the Ploea Brou sector.
The tiny, beguiling squid molluscs.
Squid molluscs are comparatively tiny, much smaller than your ship and about the size of a legless rhino. This makes them tricky to spot but, as with most other molluscs, the usual tight grouping of signals on the scanner in an NSP area is the usual giveaway.
Whereas many mollusc species appear inquisitive or even slightly aggressive. Squid molluscs are rather timid.
You can get pretty close and they don’t react at all, but flash on your external lights and they release a jet of propulsion in your direction, sending them away, tumbling over and over back into the darkness.
They really are the most adorable NSPs I’ve ever encountered.
Ok, now this was it. The final push. There was a problem though.
I had a deadline.
It was only a week from the release of the Panther Clipper Mk II (I know – this was well over a year ago) and I wanted to be the first to fly a “Plipper” around Beagle Point. Plus there were lots of things I wanted to do with my other accounts so I swallowed my pride, docked with the Weatherwax and travelled the entire rest of the way purely by carrier.
A couple of days before the PC Mk II was due to be released for early access the carrier arrived at Beagle Point. The following morning I launched my mandalay, the Starlifter, and took her, only needing the one FSD injection, all the way out to Oevasy SG-Y d0, or as it is more often known “Ishum’s Reach” (sometimes Semotus Beacon or Salome’s Reach but I much prefer Ishum’s).
Now, some commanders think that the outermost body in this system is, by default, the furthest body from Sol but this isn’t always true. When I was there the furthest orbiting body was between the star and the milky way and was closer to Sol than any other body in the system. So I found the body orbiting furthest out on the opposite side of the star from the Milky Way and landed there.
I gazed out into the Abyss. And froze, utterly hypnotised by its nothingness.
Some writers may quip something along the lines of “and the Abyss stared back”. I don’t know why. It’s such a cliched, meaningless term.
The emptiness doesn’t stare back.
It beckons. It tempts. It lures.
It reassures.
It seduces with the warm invitation of a blessed, restful, eternal peace. For a stretch of time, I could not tell how long, I sat in my cockpit, longing for its embrace. And I came to. Full of terror. And flew as fast as the Starlifter could carry me back to the Weatherwax berthed at Beagle Point.
The following morning I bought a Panther Clipper Mk II
Introducing the latest addition to the fleet! Thunderbird II!
I bought the stellar model so I could immediately have those Mk II sizes 7 and 8 cargo racks giving her a cargo capacity of over a thousand tonnes! This meant my Imperial Cutter, the Delanderby, would now be unemployed. I felt a little sad about this, she is a lovely ship, but the PC MK II beats her in almost every category.
I love flying this ship. It really feels like flying a giant warehouse with the defensive capabilities of an enormous psychotic porcupine. Properly equipped with banks of shield boosters and fully engineered weapons it feels almost impregnable. And nothing can mass lock it either. A terrific ship! I threw her around one of the planets of the Beagle Point system and had loads of fun before taking her back to the Weatherwax and plotting my next move.
Was she the first Plipper to grace Beagle Point? Well, I’m not sure how to tell but she may well have been!
Now it was time to leave. There were a few time trials on offer here (visit edcopilot to find out all about those) and I partook of one of them, managing, after a few attempts, to land the quickest time. Although, since Distant Worlds 3 I expect I’m wayyyy down the leaderboard by now. Honestly, I’d need to be a cyborg or something to even come close to some of those nutters.
I decided to go back home by a rather circuitous route, taking in various Notable Stellar Phenomena I had yet to encounter, the first of these being the Aster Trees out in the desperately remote Pyrooe Dryiae and Cliewoae sectors way out in the sparse starfield (circled to the left here) a little southwest of Beagle Point.
I wasn’t sure I’d have the FSD injections needed to fully traverse this area so I took to using the carrier instead, only using the Starlifter for brief sojourns around the area every so often. I kept these sojourns to a minimum, however and the Abyss was ever present and she threatened to engulf me everywhere I flew.
It did prove to be well worth the effort, however, as the Aster Trees are some of the weirdest and most astonishing life forms to be found in the galaxy.
They hang there in the lagrange clouds, appearing to spin with an aggressive, singular purpose. They are harmless, of course, yet still they exude a air of dark, malign, eldritch menace! Yet also a complex, eternal beauty, difficult from which to avert one’s gaze.
I flew amongst them, sometimes within just a few yards of being pummelled by one of their terrifyingly fascinating arms, totally enraptured.
Yet soon it was time to move on. I set a course for the Weatherwax to reach a refuelling carrier in the far northwest of the galaxy, and meandered along beside her. Just finding what I could find, desperately trying to discover beautiful, breath-taking vistas where I could create EdCopilot SRV time trials of my own. Maybe I’d find an atmospheric, close orbiting moon to a gas giant with huge rings, maybe even with an inclined orbit. Maybe I would find my first oxygen atmosphere with two bios, meaning one would be the king of all bio scans, Fonticulua Fluctus! Maybe another close orbiting body to a white dwarf or even a neutron giving spectacular views! Or even one orbiting stupidly close to a black hole. Or a body with an enormous brown dwarf on the horizon, with rings!
System after system after system passed. Every single one of them containing no interesting biology, nor geography, nor rare celestial alignments. I began stopping at places that were pretty, sure, but nothing I hadn’t encountered dozens of times before. I tried ditching the Starlifter and swapping back into the Lovely Jubbly again. And, for a time at least this made the journey moderately less mundane.
Yet no matter where I went, or how far or how thoroughly I explored. I could not find any of the criteria I was looking for.
And slowly, gradually, increasingly, I became aware of The Abyss.
She had been followed me, ever tempting me with the peacefulness of her embrace. Terror slowly gave way to longing. And, when system after system began to all look the same. I stopped. And gave myself up to her completely…
…A city in the middle of the desert. A city riddled with crime and poverty. I am a Nomad, bereft of family and clan. My best friend has been killed, and inside my head a deceased terrorist and musical legend is trying to take over my cyber-enhanced body. My prospects are terrifying, but I must do everything I can to purge the personality threatening to wipe my brain. I become adept at silence, and slipping by the most meticulous of surveillance to steal, sabotage and assassinate, without anyone knowing I’m there.
I have amassed tremendous wealth. And own several properties around the city. I also have quite the collection of vehicles. I’ve fallen in love with the most amazing woman in the world and plot to leave the city with her once I am rid of this man in my head.
Apparently I must “meet Nanako at Embers”, but I dare not. Not yet. Not ever! My surroundings are anything but beautiful. Even the surrounding countryside is filled with wreckage and trash. But I feel powerful here. My services are in high demand.
And the pay is good!
I came to. Shaking my head I found myself on the Lovely Jubbly on some random tenuous sulphur dioxide world. There was a beeping from the inventory manifest. Curious and bewildered, I checked to see what in the galaxy could be in there.
Cracked ice, (low quality stuff at that), boxes and boxes of carpet style floor tiles. and some old tube televisions. I had no idea how it all got there. I headed straight back to the Weatherwax, only a few jumps, and unloaded the lot. I became aware for the first time of the soft noise of the carrier’s reactor – a soft, workmanlike “ushbushbushbushbush” emanating from all around as I carried the boxes and left them just inside the lift lobby of the hanger. I was very confused. Someone, it seemed, must have been out there playing silly-buggers.
Only a few jumps to go, now before I reached the DSSA carrier stationed deep within Hieronymous Delta, the Emerald Tablet. and I could restock my carrier’s tritium reserves. Then it was many many jumps south westwards and into the northern part of The Conduit to see Stolon trees.
Now, seriously, anyone making thievery jokes here can get to the back of the class, There’s nothing worse than someone pointing out the Obvious Pun and thinking it’s amusing. Father in laws are notorious for it. They do it deliberately and it drives their daughters in law nuts. Stop it. It ought to be a criminal offense!
This time there were a few more slightly interesting systems.. Nothing I hadn’t seen before, of course, but well worth visiting nonetheless.
I had also switched to my cobra mk V, the Aching Tiffany and was scooping up any reasonably priced bios I stumbled across..
But the majority of the trip descended into mundanity once more. None of the types of places I wanted to find, no matter haw hard I looked. Not even a tenuous water atmosphere to go and have a fly around in. Just dull systems, jump after jump after jump after jump. Getting up in the morning and sitting myself in the cockpit was becoming a major chore. Yet I kept going, hoping that the Stolon Trees would be worth it.
And after what seemed like an age later, I dropped in upon Flyoo Groa SO-Z e0, flew to the most oppressive lagrange cloud I’ve ever seen and was horrifyingly mesmerised by what awaited me there.
Stolon Trees are, by far, the freakiest, strangest, most abominable biologicals I have ever witnessed.
Yet, even more so than the Asters, they draw you in despite, or possibly because, of your revulsion.
I went from tree to tree, drawn in by their awfulness. Spurred on by my disgust. They don’t spin so much as just hang there. Looking like the discarded bowels of some eviscerated giant space creature. Wholly unpleasant entities!
I tarried amongst them far too long, however, and, before I could do anything about it, The Abyss was seeping into my cockpit and I had not the strength to resist her allure.
Another city. Ancient. Sprawling. Labyrinthine. Illuminated by primitive electric lamps and flaming torches. The City Watch patrol the streets and are as corrupt as they are cruel. I have returned after years of exile to see an old accomplice, but he merely wants to use me, forcing me into a cycle of high stakes thievery.
As the jobs come and go, the dangers increase exponentially, wizards, monsters, the undead, unspeakable horrors! I must hide from them all if I am to survive. Fighting is not an option for me.
I grasp snippets, rumours, whispers of a talented young thief named Garret running rings around the rich and powerful of the city, stealing at will. But it is not his time just yet. And if I fail just one job, his time will never come.
I opened my eyes, blinked., looked around the cockpit. The dreadful Stolon Trees were nowhere to be seen. I didn’t recognise the system either. I must have jumped away and completely forgotten all about it.
The Weatherwax was only a few hops away so I plotted a course and took the Aching Tiffany back there. As soon as I alighted I noticed a ping from the cargo hold of the Lovely Jubbly. It looked like she had picked up more stuff. Or someone on the carrier had taken it there. It was very suspicious! Leaving the Tiffany, I went up to the shipyard control room and ordered the carrier to ready the Jubbly. I popped down, walked past the boxes of stuff I had already unloaded, alighted on the ship and popped into her cargo hold once again. I was astonished to find some toy cricket and tennis sets, a large box of ancient vinyl records by some artist called David Bowie and a large chest freezer. I removed them all and put them with the first collection of strange things I had found earlier and stared at them, scratching my head in abject bewilderment. The chest freezer had been a bit of problem but nowhere near as heavy as I thought it might be. I became aware of the Weatherwax’s reactor thrumming away again, that soft “bushbushbsuhbush” noise badgering away at my consciousness. It irked me for some reason. Thankfully, it faded away and a I ceased to notice it once I had ascended back up to the flight deck.
I asked my trading officer, Misty Peters, if she knew anything about it and she gave me the strangest of looks, so I thought I’d try and forget it and get back out into the Black as soon as possible.
Where next? Well, there was the farthest system east from the Bubble (Cyuefoo LC-D d12-0) although it was quite some distance away. The plan was, then, to make my way toward there and then pick my way back though the Formidine Rift to get back home.
Ambitious? Absolutely!
Too ambitious?
Abso-flippin’-lutely!!
Hindsight eh? I went back out in the Aching Tiffany still hoping desperately for something like a highly eliptical, close orbit atmospheric, or even a non atmospheric moon I could set a time trial on. Again, a hundred systems went by and nothing even remotely interesting came up. Until, that is, I found a beautiful water atmospheric moon orbiting a stunning ringed planet!
Unfortunately, as I have stated in a previous Les Voyages exploration blog tenuous water atmospheric bodies are too small to set an SRV time trial. Their gravity is way too low. You would end up in orbit by the time you’d built up a decent speed.
And so I decided to clear up on all the flora here. Water atmospherics (really steam atmospherics as they always have surface temperatures above its boiling point as well as pressure differences) usually bring in an excellent haul of bio samples and I was not disappointed here at all!
From there, however, came another long and seemingly endless stream of inescapable dullness. Nothing interesting to head toward on the galmap, no planetary nebulae or notable stellar remnants, nothing. I decided to once more switch back to the Lovely Jubbly. Hopefully she would bring me some luck!
Well, no such luck, for hundreds of systems more. I could feel the Abyss creeping after me. And with each jump her seductive whisperings became louder. I was about to give in once more, fearing it would be the last time and I would never see the Galaxy ever again when I found some bios clustered on a few non atmospheric moons.
I took the Jubbly to investigate and scanned the first body. Crystalline Shards! It had been ages since I’d seen any of these this far out. I flew down to the surface and, parking my ship, (yes, for some reason I now had a handbrake in my cockpit) got out to have a closer look.
You can’t really appreciate the enormity of these lifeforms until you actually get out onto your feet and walk around. Great, jagged, monolithic spires reaching toward the stars. They reminded me a little of the great pine trees of North America, especially when there are a lot of them bunched close together. A bit like the great forests of the pacific north west back on Earth. Walking back to the Jubbly I discovered that she had sprouted some wheels and so I thought it would be great fun to give her a spin around the place.
Turns out she can spin on a sixpence! What a fantastic ship a hauler is, eh? Can’t do this in any other vessel!
But the Abyss began to descend yet again. I gunned down the accelerator, pulled back on the steering wheel and plotted a course straight back to the Weatherwax.
Something was very wrong, Very very wrong. But I couldn’t for the life of me put my finger on what.
No time to think about it. The Abyss was on my tail. No time to use the FSS. No time to honk. The stars passed by, one by one in an endless blur. Time lost its meaning. I could have been travelling for hours or even days. Like an endless montage of rapidly expanding balls of gas. Eventually, though, I jumped in on the carrier and settled down on a landing pad.
That beeping again. Yet more stuff appearing in the cargo hold of the Jubbly. I got out of the driver’s door, went around to the back and opened up the boot. More boxes of stuff! Gold chain necklaces, a few tracksuit sets with the name “Trevor Francis” embroidered on the back and some things I just can’t remember the name of. I noticed the sender had been stamped on a sticker on some of the boxes.
Mr A. Mush, Loftus Road, London W12, England, Sol.
Extremely confused, I took them back to all the other stuff in the hanger lift lobby and took stock of everything I’d found…
Well, I’d got some half price cracked ice, Miles and miles of carpet tiles, TV’s, deep freeze, Them David Bowie LPs, Ball Games, Gold chains, What’s-er-names, and at a push, Some Trevor Francis tracksuits from a mush in Shepherds Bush
BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH BUSH
NOOOOO! ARRRRRRRGH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here. But then again, time has no meaning in Washington state’s Olympic National Park these days. Neither does place. I’m not sure what experiments they had been doing here before the place had sucked me in.
Hardly anywhere here is stable. An area forms and will stay as long as the stability anchors keep it, but I need those orbs and once I start collecting them I need to get out quick before an instability storm comes and tears it apart. Then it’s on to the next area of stability.
I can travel anywhere out here, now. And it’s all down to my trusty Buick station wagon. I love this car. She protects me from all the anomalies out there. And most of them are terrifying and deadly. She wasn’t much when I found her. But I’ve taken her to a large garage in the middle of nowhere that seems to be permanently stable. I’ve been working on her for months now, and she can do anything.
I had the chance to escape this place, but I chose to stay. This garage is quite comfy and, when places are stable, I’m entranced by their beauty. The pacific northwest has always been a magical place. Besides, I’m totally in love with this car. I could never leave her. When I sit in her, her warm, gentle embrace protects me from all the dangers we face.
I awoke in the medical bay. This must have sent an alarm to my Vista Genomics officer, Jazmine Bernard as she came hurrying in to see me a minute later.
Apparently, I’d been running around the flight deck screaming something about “no V.A.T.” “no guarantees” and “C’est magnifique, Hookey Street!”. I then had to be held down by several crew members before being forcibly sedated. The Weatherwax was now hurrying back to the Bubble. There had been a brief stop off in Colonia where the top phycologists there had recommended I be taken straight home to the Valtys system and cared for professionally there.
Jazmine held my gaze for a while before speaking again.
“You ran from the Abyss, didn’t you?”
I nodded, intrigued. She smiled wryly and stared wistfully out the window.
“He pursued me everywhere, for a while. I learned that you must never run from Him. Always heed His call as soon as you hear it. The more you run, the longer you stay away. And if you keep running….when He inevitably gets you, you may never come back at all.”
I understood, then. Understood exactly what I had been running from.
So, then. What now? Exploring, at least regarding deep, deep space exploration is off the cards indefinitely. And the racing nutters from the Distant Worlds 3 expedition have dotted exciting time trails throughout the galaxy. There are lots of new things to try, My phycologist has recommended I go back to the Fuel Rats for a bit. Looking forward to meeting the gang again! There’s also lots of new mining opportunities and the new Operations missions. But there’s also colonisation. The long range colonisation efforts need some help and it would be really nice to carve out a little place of my own in a distant nebula somewhere.
But right now I’ve a mystery to solve. Some mischievous crew member who seems to think this is all a joke has renamed the carrier and I’m determined to find out who it is and make them clean it off and paint it back the way it was!
Elite Dangerous RUSH FLEET 