My Space-Travel Journal

New Life

This week was my Coming of Age ceremony, so I am now a fully recognized warrior. There was no need for the traditional meeting with the High Council, I already know what I want to do: travel the galaxies, explore, conquer! But first I'll need a ship.

After searching around for any news on a good ship, I got a welcomed surprise from the Goddess' Temple. It seems the Temple Priestesses need someone to take care of some business that they can not attend to. In exchange they will buy me a ship. Why not? How hard can it be running a few errands for a Priestess?

Well, there she is, my first ship. A light fighter, with good speed and a decent cargo bay. Time to go to work and pay my debt to the Temple, this will be the easiest paycheck in Chulta history, haha!

Wouldn't you know it, they sent me to realign and reactivate some old satellites. Maybe I should have said this will be the easiest and most boring paycheck in Chulta history. What do the Temple Priestesses need with old satellites anyway? You can't call the Goddess on the radio. Oh well, one down, two to go.

DAMN! I was ambushed by a pirate at the last satellite! He must have been waiting for some poor engineer top come along to repair it so he could kill them and salvage the wreck. Bet he was surprised to see a fighter come instead, brand new and fully armed. It was a nice dogfight, but I took some damage and I'm out of rockets. I need to resupply before I head back to the Temple, I know there's a Chulta munitions station in this sector... I just have to find it.

Finally located the munitions station, seems they are quite fond of Chulta warriors. I guess we probably are their most loyal customers. They have so much to choose from that it's difficult to decide between what I need and what I want. Maybe I better just get the rockets that I came for, since I'll need what money I have for other supplies and ship repairs. It's a shame though, I'll bet those plasma torpedoes would really come in handy. Maybe next time.

In a nice turn of convenience, there's a Chulta star base just a few hours from here. I think I'll dock there for a few days while I wait for repairs. Maybe I'll be able to a tip on any jobs to make some extra money.

All That Glitters

These Chulta Olirion star bases are so amazing, it's like a small city floating space. I don't understand why they bother catering to the wasteful pleasures of some races, but I guess it's not my concern. One feature I do enjoy though is the cantina. I spent several hours there today just relaxing and being entertained by drunken Ords fighting over who going to "conquer" the stage dancer.

I met a Human engineer. At first I assumed he was unfamiliar with Chulta warriors and had impure intentions, but it turns out he was actually very familiar and interested in my warrior status rather than my female form. He told me about an asteroid field that he attempted to mine several days ago. His scans were unable to penetrate most of the rocks, but the sample he took contained a diamond the size of something he called a "fat cow." Silly Human and their weird pets. Anyhow, he was attacked by pirates who destroyed his ship and left him drifting in an escape pod. He agreed to give me the location of the asteroid field in exchange for enough of the profit to buy himself a new ship... hopefully one with better weapons. I agreed.

keep it up mate, great reads i look forward to them.

I managed to locate the engineers mysterious asteroid field. It's no wonder his scanners failed, this entire sector is plagued with sub-space anomalies. Most of my systems are only functioning at 70 percent capacity, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I've investigated a couple of the asteroids. It seems this entire field has an unnaturally high carbon concentration. I suspect it has something to do with the anomalies. I've been having strange glitches on my radar, so I dropped a few buoy markers. Don't want to get lost out here.

One of the rocks was reflecting my running-lights a little too well, so I aimed the drilling laser at it. The beam split, so I teleported it aboard... jackpot! The rock is 4 times my height and appears to be almost entirely diamond under the crust. Looks like the engineer was telling the truth. I'll fill the cargo bay with these, about 3 more should do it. I hope nothing goes wrong, I'd really hate to have to maneuver with 2000 units solid rock slamming around in the cargo hold.

Day two in the asteroid field. These anomalies continue to cause system malfunctions and mining such large diamonds is turning out to be a bit more difficult than I anticipated. Most of the rocks are simply too big to to drill with the mining laser and I'm down to the last focus crystal. I'm tempted to use the ships weapons to blast one of the larger asteroids and then collect the pieces, but the thought of being shredded to death by a million micro-diamonds is a rather potent deterrent.

Some of these system glitches have me concerned. I'm certain the anomalies are the main source of the problems, but the radar keeps detecting ghost contacts. When I realized that the asteroids do not merely contain diamonds, but themselves are diamonds, I figured the ghost contacts must be radar reflections of my own hull bouncing off the rocks. I was satisfied with that analysis until a few hours ago. For a brief moment one of the radar ghosts seemed to appear in a section of the field where the asteroids are not large enough to give such a strong reflection. Maybe having a cargo hold filled with diamonds is just making me paranoid, but I'm getting a really bad feeling. I think it's time to get the hell out of here.

As I approached the edge of the asteroid field the radar ghosts became a little less random, just like I figured they would. I positioned the ship near a large asteroid and triggered my escape plan. The marker buoys I dropped a couple days ago were packed with sonic warheads, so I detonated them, shattering the nearby asteroids and launching thousands of "diamond missiles" in every direction. One of the "ghosts" exploded from damage, another lost control and crashed into a rock. The remaining two came after me immediately.

I maneuvered as best I could considering the weight I'm carrying. Thankfully the two pirates took a fair amount of diamond damage and were not flying so well either. With my extra weight and their damage I thought it was good odds in my favor and managed to take out one of the pirates easily, but the last one seemed to be more determined than the rest. I think he actually wanted to kill me more than he wanted to steal my cargo. I'm sure I could have gotten him eventually, but out of nowhere, the blue flash of a beam cannon disintegrated him.

A single shot, on a high-speed target, from over 7000 marks away! If someone told me they saw it, I'd shoot them for lying. I altered my course to intercept the mysterious ship, which turned out to be a Chulta Olirion war cruiser. Even though they didn't react to me flying alongside , they refused to respond to my hails. After a few moments, they jumped to hyperspace and since I was now alone in dangerous sector I thought it best if I did the same.

Lasers, Rockets and Cannons, Oh My!

I returned to the Chulta Olirion base in the Bootes star system to uphold my agreement with the Human. He was quite pleased to see me return, he said he expected that either I would abandon our deal or be killed by the pirates who preyed on anyone attempting to mine the asteroid field. Backstabbing? Weaklings in battle? Clearly he is uninformed of Chulta warriors. He did however have some unexpected information about the mysterious Chulta war cruiser that I saw.

It seems this particular cruiser is the subject of many myths and legends. He told me of a Chulta Head-Hunter, Supreme Commander Asa Akira, in command of the war cruiser Olirion Shimmer. She's a rogue captain waging some personal vendetta on the Pirate Coalition. Her war cruiser is quite feared in many star systems as much for being the most heavily armed ship ever created as for the "myth" part of her story. They say the Olirion Shimmer is so named because it has never been detected on radar until after she's fired her main cannons, which as I saw for myself can be done with extreme precision.

The Temple of Olirion has heard of my encounter in the asteroid field. They have promoted and inducted me into the Head Hunter class and authorized me to make purchases from battle depot. Looks like I will not be needing my Mantis anymore.



I went to the depot and chose a Valkyrie II Heavy Fighter. I've had them load it with as much munitions as it can carry, since I don't know how long it will be before I can restock. I have plans to travel to the Ursa Major star system and with my track record so far I doubt the voyage will be uneventful. I've also had the techs install a high-end AI system. No more manual logs, unless I want to, this ship is fully automated... or it will be when the upgrades are complete.

I should use this spare time to find out if anyone here has any information or rumors about the Olirion Shimmer. She's supposed to be the most advanced war cruiser ever built and this is a weapons dealer, somebody should know something.

After a day of searching for information it's pretty clear that sorting out facts from legend may be a task in itself. I've been told everything from the Olirion Shimmer is was forged in the heart of a star, to Supreme Commander Akira herself is the lost daughter of the Goddess. This has gotten silly and tried my patience enough for today. They should be finished with my new ship by now, I should check.

Well, this is certainly... different. So few controls, I expected it to be more complicated with all the additional new functions. Did they have to remove everything, where the hell is...

Harmonia, huh? I take it you're the reason for the lack of manual controls in here?
Nearly zero?
*sigh* Depart the station, and set a course for star system Ara. It's an unclaimed system where we can test to see what you're capable of: You cost a fortune, let's see if you're worth it.

This is supposed to be a clear path to Ara, I wonder why this hasn't been reported. Harmonia, I think I see something in there, what is it?
Keep scanning the anomaly and transmit any valuable information to the nearest Olirion star base. Humans will probably be along soon searching for their missing cargo ship, it's best if we're not here when that happens.

Come to think of it, any idea why the human ship didn't detect this thing? I mean, it's huge, and as slow as cargo ships move even someone looking out a view window would have seen it from...
What?! Shields up! Release decoy and give me manual control! I'm going to teach some humans a lesson about jumping to conclu... what the hell is that?


Harmonia, transmit message: suck my pearlescent green p...
I can't lose it, brace for impact!

They might get me, but I'm taking that battleship with me. Harmonia, prime all warheads for maximum yield impact detonation, shutdown all systems and route the power to forward shields and main thrusters.
We've got bigger problems than anomalies right now, wait, what do you mean it's moving to intercept?
It has to be more safe than here, initiate jump!

Chapter 2 starts next week
Thanks for reading

awesome, thanks for posting mate, look forward to chapter 2

looking forward to reading more too.

Awesome.

Patchwork Phantoms

Quote :

Jump completed. Sector unkown, scanning... scan failed, long-range scanners offline, short-range scanners offline, IFF radar offline, navigation AI offline, primary engine offline, shields off...

Okay, I get it, the ship is broken. Harmonia, run a diagnostics and tell me the highest priority system that has the most damage. We'll try to make repairs based on how much we need what's broken.

Quote :

Primary engine is currently on fire. Fuel-cell rupture detected, fire can not be extinguished.

Prepare to jettison the fuel-cell, I'll get suited up to install the spare.

Quote :

That plan is unacceptable: equipment disassembly routine is offline, fuel-cell can not be jettisoned. Spare fuel-cell was stored in cargo hold, cargo hold has been breached. Unable to determine cargo hold contents, internal sensors offline.

Okay, change of tactics, give me a list of functioning systems.

Quote :

Life support 66%, secondary thrusters 10%, maneuvering thrusters 40%, nano deployment ports 13%, Harmonia AI 53%, Captain Rien 71%, atmosph...

What do you mean "Captain Rien 71%?"

Quote :

Life support monitors are reporting that you have internal trauma and also you are currently exposed to radiation from the burning fuel-cell. At this rate, exposure will reach dangerous levels within 2 hours.