Looks like we hit another good system for the Tritium highway.

In addition to all the injection materials and Tritium, it has a good mix of ores spread over multiple gas giant ring systems and oh so many geological sites to explore. Edsm also rates this as a green class system. I am tempted to land and fill up on materials in this system.

Just as valuable as earlier systems too, so stop a fleet carrier here to top off your tritium and start shoveling Serendibrite, Rhodplumsite, Monazite, Platinum, Painite, Low temperature diamonds, Alexandrite, Void Opals, Benitoite, Bromellite, Grandidierite, Musgravite, and even more Tritium into your cargo bays.

According to all our scans, and cartographic data - there is nothing in this system but a neutron star and a small ringed gas giant.. but over near Dryio Flyuae ER-V d2-350 1 we all saw it.. something moving in space between the rings and the neutron star..

It was moving really fast i tried to follow it but I overtook it and lost track. I couldn't get a scan lock or even a ping in my radar contacts. It didn't look like it was in frame shift yet it was trailing some sort of material about the length you would expect from wake luminosity, and going almost as fast as me - but the wrong colour.

Ghost ship? Cloaked ship? Space Monster?

Whatever it is we lost track of it.. and frankly are too superstitious to stick around and find out what it is.. or was.

Get us out of here Madelynn..

This system definitely qualifies as the Tritium highway. Hell it could be called the Tritium depot.

Fleet carrier? There is 8 Tritium hotspots in this system!

Explorer? It also has every single frame shift injection material you could want. Edsm classes this as a "green system"

Mining? It has Musgravite, Serendibrite, Alexandrite, Void Opals, Low temperature Diamonds, Platinum, Bromellite, Painite, Platinum, Rhodplumsite, and three asteroid belts for casual mining.

This system is even better than the last 3 we found... and I will never hear the last of it from Lindsay.

Looks like I have another entry for the Tritium highway..

But Gah!,

Lindsay Hinton is all in my face at the moment. The greedy little pain in our butts noticed a super massive deposit of Low temperature diamonds on the far gas giant inner ring. Not exactly unusual but we also found Tritium so he is all over the coms console trying to convince Archon Delaine to send out a Fleet Carrier to mine it all. Has some fool idea he can cut himself in for a percentage of the profits as a finder fee. What an idiot. Finder fee? This is my ship and I found that deposit, not to mention as he would so often remind me in Colonia, he is on my crew payroll.. and I pay him a wage - that means he works for me, Ha!

Besides, Delaine is already sending his carrier to DRYOOE FLYOU IC-C D13-628 after I happened to mention to him in my last report it had Tritium, Diamonds, Opals and a half dozen other exotic elements. I will be the one getting a cut of the action not Lindsay!

Not a lot going for this place, but has a few high metal worlds, one of which wouldn't require much effort to terraform, a scoop-able star and an asteroid belt located a short distance away. The ring of the Gas giant also has Tritium, Alexandrite. Grandidierite and Void Opals. Making it a useful place to stop by in a fleet carrier as part of the Tritium highway...

The rest of the system is pretty much useless beyond science research due to the distances.

Wow. 5 Stars,
One Star has two sets of rings containing Serendibite, Monazite, and Alexandrite. Rings... on a star? Nearly 500 LY from Colonia.. and has tritium.. I guess we can add this to the Tritium highway?

8 Gas Giants, with 7 more rings to explore. 28 landable planets, and asteroids. All not far from Colonia too. How was this place missed?

Even Lindsay Hinton was speechless. He just stood there wide eyed with his mouth open staring out the window. Oddly enough in a departure from her usual hard assed self Madelynn started dropping hints about hoping she gets two rings one day too. Right then, ill just pretend that didn't happen.

"Dryooe Flyou IC-C d13-628 D 2 a" was a particularly aesthetic looking planet of blue veins.

Down to brass tacks. What is in this system.. as i started reading, the smile on Lindsay's face kept getting bigger. I think he is finally starting to get it. This system is getting added to my must stop spot next time I come past i think.. the sheer number of injection materials alone are worth the visit.

Other Resources: Platinum, Benitoite, Painite, Musgravite, Grandidierite, Low Temperature diamonds, Void Opals, TRITIUM, Bromellite.

Materials: Iron, Sulphur, Carbon, Nickel, Phosphorus, Chromium, Manganese, Germanium, Ruthenium, Tungsten, Mercury, Zinc, Cadmium, Antimony, Selenium, Tin, Niobium, Yttrium, Technetium, Tellurium, Vanadium, Molybdenum, Arsenic, Zirconium.

Well I just jumped in through the middle of a star.. Not exactly the best way to start a trip to chart out a chain of systems containing Tritium for Fleet carrier transport missions.

Lucky I installed shield upgrades in Colonia.. the only damage was to the crews pants. Was worth it, we made near 300 million while we were in Colonia, it was a profitable trip. But really the place is pretty rough even by my standards, it will be good to get back home.

Still a long way to go until we return to my Solomon System.

Lindsay Hinton is complaining about taking so long to check each system along the way. The guy just spent a year in Colonia bribing people to become powerplay agents for Archon Delaine.. you would think he had some patience.

Apparently not. He is also annoyed we left the Beluga Liner with its luxury cabins in Colonia.. I tried to explain to him again that if we took that ship it would take years to return to Arverda; if he thinks spending a few minutes scanning each system is too slow.. just imagine if he had to jump 1000 times more than we already are over the same distance. The guy just doesn't get it. Next time Delaine asks me to drag another payroll pencil pusher to Colonia, he can do it himself.

On the upside Madelynn Haas has been plotting a course through relatively uncharted space, chances are good we might find something worth a lot of money.

Shut up Lindsay. I don't want to hear it. I will lock you in the crew cabin for the rest of the trip if you say one more word. Finally. Silence.

Now lets see what this system has for us..

(#meanwhileincolonia Part 5)

Lets go find out about that site on Dubbuennel 3B..

On arriving in the Dubbuennel System, I am met with a compromised navigation beacon, several battles going on, and numerous high danger resource extraction sites. After avoiding an encounter with one of the hostiles, I scan the system and discover a mysterious unregistered navigation beacon. Mysterious, because compromised or not there should not be a second navigation beacon here. This beacon is likely from another star system. But what system? There are no obvious anomalies in the area, unless it was dropped here by a ship - I cannot account for its existence. I drop out of superluminal flight and examine the beacon more closely. The memory has been entirely erased. Other than a trickle of power to run the antenna, there is nothing. Perplexing.

Returning to my original mission, I locate Dubbuennel 3b, and do a surface scan. I locate a crash site at 41.52 / -72.47 and approach. There are 4 wrecks here. Maybe even 5, since they are buried partially into the ground. The medium wreck (a cobra or sidewinder?) contains an escape pod and a canister of algae. A large ship is flipped on its roof, and contains a black box and a data core indicating regretfully someone will miss "Gracies" birthday, and given the love comment at the end, the owner did not expect to survive.

The smallest ship appears to be an eagle and contained narcotics and grain. Another wreck is unidentifiable, and an even larger and older wreck contains many broken containers, but still contains an intact beer and food container. Why are they all here? They clearly crashed here at different times, but why all in the same place? Scanning all the wrecks I discover contact information which connects me to an unknown person. They inform me they have some information that needs transporting, and insist I grab it. They direct me to someone called "Arrow" in the Pytheas system who has the data which the anonymous person requests I take to "HOTCOL"on Giles Station in the Deriso system. Strange.

First however I need to get rid of these items, I suspect they are illicit where i need to travel. I pull in at Dunkers Rest, and offload the narcotics on the black market. I hand in the pod and black box, but they offer no new answers to the mystery. the person inside is as confused as I am how they got there.

I jump to Pytheas and am immediately met by "Arrow" who insists I follow his wake, and then he vanishes, I lose track of him when i drop into the wrong wake interrupting a confused cartography department official in a hauler. Returning to wake I spot Arrow again and follow him into normal space.

Scanning him, he apparently flies a Cobera MK III is an expert pilot and works for Likedeeler of Colonia. Never heard of them. Apparently they are active in Dubbuennel system. He has an interdicter installed.. worrying. He connects me via his insys coms to an encrypted relay and our mysterious hidden contact sends me an encrypted signal with a hidden contract to deliver secret information marked expansion data to Deriso.

I transport the data as requested, however what it has to do with the wrecks or the abandoned freighter I have no idea. There appears to be some sort of outbreak or epidemic in Deriso? Could it be related? No idea.

Madelynn who is currently acting as co-pilot, since this ship has no fighters; thinks I am mad following all these bread crumbs. At least Lindsay remained on the other ship.. no doubt he would have had something annoying to say too.

Having met a dead end at this point, I sit back in my pilots seat and consider my next move. I could return to running passenger missions, or leave the ship in Colonia, and take my range upgraded AspX back to the bubble. On the other hand if I can source some modified consumer firmware and analyze some abnormal compact emissions; I could probably upgrade my thrusters even more if I remained here or find some alloys and harden my shields.

The question is where would I find thermic and military alloys or modified firmware and emission data. Nobody here seems to have that available. Perhaps it is time to go hunting for it. Bigger shields and faster engines would be nice...

That is all from the adventures today.. looks like i need to find some engineering supplies!

(ulitmately i spent a few days gathering supplies and engineering then decided to return to the bubble and try to chart a "highway" of tritium systems.)

(#meanwhileincolonia Part 4)

In my last log I had just arrived in Colonia, and discovered much to my annoyance i cant draw my wage from Archane Delaine. i had one of his Stooges on my ship trying to arrange local power contacts, and frankly I was about ready to shoot the guy into the nearest star. I needed to make money firstly because I want to get rich, and secondly I apparently had to help fund the idiot on my ship working for Delaine too.

Anyway, apparently there is a shortage of decent transport and tourist operators. The ones they do have look all flashy on the outside, but no corner was spared from cost cutting inside. Ugh.

You know what, I agree with Lindsay, as annoying as he is the accomodations in this sector are sh*tholes - no wonder he opted to stay on my ship. Thinking to get two birds with one stone, that of getting Lindsay out of my sight, and finding him a source of funds for his nefarious activities - At great personal expense I might add; I... er.. suggest in the strongest possible terms that one of these flying slumlords sell me his Balooga. It's run down, the gear is crap, and it has the jump range of a legless grasshopper - but it is now mine.

Next problem - the cabins in this junker are worse quality than a poorly maintained horse stable and worse smelling. But at this exact point in time, nobody here has any luxury cabins available to install. Ugh. I pull up my manifest of my hangar in Arverda; a smile soon plays across my face. I have a dozen of the damn things sitting in storage - and Arverda has an import/export contract with Colonia.

Since I am allied with new horizons corporation, I send out a dispatch to call in a favour - for them to ship all the cabins to me in Colonia. I have Jaque put my ASPx in mothballs, and move Lindsay and Madelynn over to the Balooga. Lindsay I put in a cabin, at the far end of the ship; where I dont have to deal with his crap, in a particularly smelly room. It is still better however than the accomodations on the station. Ahh peace on the bridge finally.

Damn this thing has big windows.

I register the ship as "Colonia Bus Lines" heh. It is a cheap shot, but it means my passengers are more likely to board my ship if it sounds official. Jaque who now considers me one of his best friends is unlikely to point out otherwise and turns a blind eye to the name, acting like it is sanctioned.. As long as passengers have lots of money and they pay me who cares.

While I wait for the cabins to arrive I ask around and find that on a repurposed prison planet nearby in the Luchtaine system there is a sour faced fellow who claims to be an engineer. Say what you will about the er.. frontier accomodations Colonia certainly does not lack for guns. So I install a bunch of turrets on the stupid ship. They can't shoot straight because the front sticks out too much, but they give almost 360 degree firesupport turret coverage around the rest of the ship. I toss the rest of the junk in the ship to the scrap yard, earning a few extra credits in the process, and find someone selling a slightly better frame shift drive and power plant. Ok now I can jump further than a guy with two broken legs at least.

I pay the so called engineer a visit. Apparently the guy works like a fricken phone scammer, he only accepts payment in bonds and gift certificates. The tax evading sneak. How the heck am I supposed to get bonds in this flying wreck.

A drunk guy I meet in a bar there however mentions noticing something odd on Randgnid 3, near -18.63, 67.24. Maybe I'll check it out later. Departing the planet I explore Luchtaine having little else to do while I wait for my cabins to arrive. Noticing a distress call; which apparently everybody is ignoring, or their ships are just such poor quality they cant even detect it, I fly out to investigate. It appears to be an abandoned freighter. I hack the thing as best I can, and help myself to some of the cargo floating around outside. Apparently it was the target of a hit man. The ships log indicates a bunch of black ops guys pretending to be pirates as near as I can tell came in and murdered everyone on the ship. They must have known something.

The fact there was half a million in cargo just sitting there spilled out in space clinches it. This looks like a Dark Wheel hit job. What the hell would the Dark wheel be doing operating in the ass end of nowhere? Surely some half drunk freighter captain would know nothing about Raxxla, which seems to be the one thing those black ops type get a hard on for. Wierd. The ships log contains no further clues. As I depart, I notice one of the escape pods is missing. Examining it closer it seems to suggest it went off in the direction of Canonnia. I'll make a note to investigate it further later too. Right now I need.. well want more money.

I drop into a couple of ore extraction sites on the way back to jaques station and test out the turrets on some fool trying to shakedown miners. Well I wouldn't go so far as to say its a killer whale, but it didn't go so well for the guy bothering miners. Then again I did have a shield 6 times more powerful than his, and turrets that shot at him no matter which direction he came at me from. Might have helped. That aside he still managed to crack the front window. These big windows are a liability.

Returning to fix the windows, I find a few people desperate enough to take passage in what passes for passenger cabins that came with my ship. The pay isn't anything to get excited with but more than I expected, Jaque must have talked up "Colonia Bus Lines" with them. They apparently rated me well enough once I dropped them off at their destination so I was able to grab a few people for the trip back. Still kind of boring tho, but the pay was ok.. it was more than it cost me to fly the mission. The new cabins still have not arrived. Frustrating. I grab myself an SRV bay, and buy an srv. Time to check out what is over at Randgnid 3 I think.

I fly over to the planet and eventually find the location. Nothing too exciting just some junk and old data. The cordoned off area nearby was more interesting. So i shot up some defence drones and helped myself to some cargo pods. Hey I am a pirate technically. Even found a mission that wanted this junk. Suits me.

Finally the cabins have arrived, so I return to Jaques to install them. Now we are talking. Bunch of rich twots want to go visit tourist beacons and visit strip clubs on nearby stations. At a million a drop off who am I to complain. Lindsay also stopped complaining. I had replaced his cabin too. This actually worked out well for Linday - I went around picking up and dropping off passengers at stations or to visit various tourist spots around Jaques.. so he would wander off and make enquries. Mostly fruitless. However a few of my passengers it seems were .. of the criminal variety.

When i found out I was furious (yes i understand the irony here of a Space Pirate being annoyed at shady passengers, but considering to all appearences "Colonia Bus Lines" was a legitimate operation - they did tend to cause some unwanted interest from the authorities.) I threatened to toss the lot of them out the nearest airlock when the security computer red flagged them as I jumped into Colonia system. In an award winning game of good cop bad cop, Lindsay took me aside and hatched a hair brained scheme to exploit the situation.

You see these were exactly the sort of people Lindsay needed to start cultivating in Colonia... because really the entire situation of Kumo operatives not being able to collect their payments was really unacceptable. So making a great show of mollyfying me, Lindsay took the shady fellows to his now, rather impressive looking cabin, and had a word with them. Considering the lavish quality of the decor, compared to the often.. terrible conditions on the local stations and the threat of being tossed into space being the only alternative; they were unsurprisingly agreeable to the proposal when he suggested they act as middlemen for Archane Delaine in Colonia.. after all it would pay well, and they too could afford such comfortable accomodations as these if they took the job.

Having met with such success at the strategy we employed it several times when criminal elements were uncovered on our ship to great effect.

By now Colonia Bus Lines was enjoying quite the reputation between all the passenger routes in the area, and very quickly earnt nearly 100 million credits in the process. Colonia itself was experiencing another boom at this point, and I discovered much to my delight, thanks to Lindsay that there now existed power contacts on several stations from which I could draw my wage from Archane Delaine now. Excellent. Archane was apparently pleased with the arrangement too, and finally satisfied left me to my own devices again.

Now at this point a famine hit some areas of Colonia. Possibly not helped by Kumo operatives activities which may have removed certain supplies from circulation. My reputation from transporting passengers now became useful, as several stations were offering very lucrative trasnport contracts to supply food to the famine areas - so much so I was motivated enough to replace several of my cabins with cargo space. Having now earned several dozen more millions in the process - I decided it was time to resolve my little issue with firepower.

I returned to Jaques station, and pulled the AspX out of months of mothballs. Using my extra funds, I upgrade the shields and other systems to bring it up to combat readiness. Now we are cooking. Taking the upgraded ship out I finally investigate Cannonia. I discover some beacons which tipped me off that the escape pod from the derelict had been picked up by a ship in a wing of 3. The three ships however had crashed mysteriously on Cannonia B4A, near -4.26, -68.51. I took my AspX down to investigate the crash site and found further logs, not really revealing anything; some very valuable cargo and the Escape pod. Still Occupied. I scanned what i could of the three wrecks and collected the escape pod.

In space having little else to do, I sold the cargo from the wrecks, then dropped the escape pod to search and rescue before the mystery attackers went after me too. Shortly after I was contacted by some shady fellow (possible even the man in the pod?) who said he knew something about the crash. But first he wanted me to supply 140 tons of grain to one of the famine effected stations.

I agreed.

Having little else to do I returned to Jaques to switch back to Colonia Bus Lines again, and after checking with some of the shady fellows that no doubt caused the famine in the first place located a station with stock of grain, which I transported along with a few passengers paying amounts so large I could not refuse.

Having completed the mission I was contacted anonymously again and told to go investigate a site on Dubbuennel 3B. At a location I will not disclose until I have investigated it.

I returned once again to Jacques and switched back to the AspX and went hunting in an extraction site. After what felt like hours, and very much satisfied with the performance of my ship given the great big pile of unclaimed bounty bonds sitting on my computer, I returned to Luchtaine to have another word with the annoying engineer. Considering the several million in bonds I was carrying, he was surprisingly conservative in the monetary value of the ones he took, a modest 100,000 credits before taking me into his workshop.

There I discovered much to my surprise he was in fact a very well equipped engineer - and on top of that most of the materials I had accumulated during my various battles, salvages and explorations were exactly the ones I needed to upgrade shield defence, reduce weight and increase jump range. Significantly.

Leaving very much impressed with the upgrades, and my supply of materials very much lighter, I then retired for the day to rest and consider what I might need to investigate the site on Dubbuennel 3B.

It has been a long month. Hell its been a long year... Booms, Famines, Epidemics.

Annoyingly news from back home suggests very interesting events are going on back in the main bubble, some possibly very profitable ones. Yet here I am 25 thousand light years away, watching figurative tumbleweeds roll past my window in Colonia.

I sigh once again, as I put out the cabin light. I've been out here too long.

Authors note: FYI, the recent update added power contacts in colonia, or rather I seem to have a lot less trouble finding ones now anyway, and i think luxury cabins are buyable in Colonia if you shop around.. but hey it is more a fan fiction than actual Fdev plot. Or is it? Hope you enjoyed these latest two chapters..

(#meanwhileincolonia Part 3)(at this point I gave up streaming at all)

Ships log. AspX, "Dirty Deeds" So our previous adventure starting from Arverda ended after locating escape pods way in the black on the way to wredguia AB-T C18-0. After that I passed through Bleia EOHN TV-C A12-O then swung around through M25 Sector KL-W A18-2 (Or the "Bob" system as I call it) to hunt for materials. There I found some Alliance Intelligence crashed on a moon. Sigh. Well it might make for some interesting reading. I traveled back to the bubble and hit Hauck Platform for supplies, "borrowed" a decoder tool then went out again. As it turned out it wasn't interesting at all.

Considering I technically work for Archon Delaine (even if my ship is registered under New Horizons in Arverda as the NHPX squadron) I mostly run the "Dirty Deeds" AspX for Kumo activities now- so to avoid the Archon thinking I had gone soft, I made sure to /eventually/ pass by an alliance station to drop the survivors and the Alliance intelligence off after making them pay a small fortune for both. (Pretty useless intelligence really; something about federal signals in the middle of nowhere.. stupid alliance - sticking their nose in some random miners business no doubt. Not that they know I decoded it... or they might not have paid as much!)

I made a note to plot the signal location on my nav system and swing by if I head that way.

Still not sure the money was worth it.. the Alliance survivors in the escape pod saved me the need to do the dishes in mess. Should have kept them as slaves! But my head pilot Madelynn Haas, who I recruited from the Alliance had been giving me dirty looks for days. Damn it woman, i've paid you over 46 million credits - let me have a damn dish washer. sigh Really tho they were dead weight. It was just lowering our jump range; let her do the dishes HA

Right so out I go again.. there's treasure in them there stars. Ye-Argh!

So getting my pirate back on, I followed some crazy old koots napkin scrawlings to Wredguia TB-K B39-0 and explored around DT-H B40-0 and VA-F B41-0 until i picked up some random chatter about something located on Bakulcan 1A at lat -76.04 Lon -153.13. Why someone would go this far out for a little chat I don't know.

It would have to be entirely the opposite side of the galaxy from where I currently was, and when I checked in with Kumo, Delaine himself insisted I go check it out. Once again sighing as I plotted a course back to the bubble. You know once upon a time space pirates actually used to do pirating. This feels more like the coffee boy for Delaine but whatev's fetching "coffee" has earnt me several hundred million credits and my own small fleet of ships. I can get coffee. Better than having the Archon take a hit out on me.

As it turned out it was nothing. Just some old crashed ship with a few bits of junk. Not that Delaine believed me. To "prove my loyalty" he insisted I travel to Colonia. Apparently, they don't have anyone from Kumo over there to pay wages and bribes, and his contacts out there are rioting and refusing to shake down miners. Never get between the Archon and money. He wants his cut of Colonia action.

Oh great, so now I am expected to run some damn payroll clerk into the ass end of nowhere? Thanks a lot Delaine. Maybe I'll stay there just to piss you off! Which of course I didn't say to his face... a pirate has to have some secrets right.. yeah maybe I just don't want him shooting at me.

So now I have to fly with more dead weight. My poor jump range. To get to Colonia in my own lifetime I have to run a stripped down ship with no fighter bays, and shields slightly better than a wet newspaper. facepalm well at least it will be interesting. In a you could explode in flaming death at any moment sort of way.

Lindsay Hinton, the Kumo "accountant" in my crew now passing himself off as a rookie pilot - who going by his 2% pilots rating is a gross exaggeration tells me there is a station over in the Omega Nebula with a bunch of lonely wenches looking for male company. He found out about the place during that time he "once did convoy protection on a long range exploration mission." Finally! now there's the sort of pirate bootaay I can get behind.. er.. figuratively. cough I think i've been cooped up in this ship too long.

So out we all set, packing our finest dive nightclub outfits to find the place. Talk about the most boring trip in history. They make those nebulas look all nice and scenic like on the tourist brochures but the closer you get the less you see, because you are inside the damn thing. Ugh.

Still found some interesting things on the way. In BLEAE THUA MY-H C23-2 I found some crazy looking blue canyons, and some other slightly interesting sulphor dioxide and iron magma features.

Wooh.. paydirt. BLEAE THUA GE-G C24-21 has a bunch of high metal moons, a water world, asteroid belts and a crapload of Bromelite and Void Opals. As I go to grab my mining equipment.. I realize, we didn't pack any. It was too heavy and limited our jump range. Goddamnit Delaine.... you and your damn payroll. I managed to grab some materials tho. So not a total loss.

Moving on past DROJU GX-Q A4-1 a barren ice moon system, wooh some jump injection materials things are looking up. Ok we are finally coming up to the Omega Nebula. Well my nav says I am, I cant see crap, since I am .. well IN the nebula. Right then where is this station of lonely women Lindsay..

The blithering idiot. He doesn't know exactly where the station is. Goddamnit. I spent a few hours circling around the nebula looking for the place but it was nowhere to be found. Madelynn just sat there laughing, then reminded me her pay was due. Damn woman you cost me a fortune and we just wasted a day not earning any money. My mood definitely sour at this point I swear I was tempted to throw the fool Lindsay out an airlock when he too reminded me that technically as a crew member I owe him wages too.

I resumed the trip to Colonia in silence, after threatening to pull a gun on them both if they didn't shut up. I found a few systems that returned promising spectrum data about the composition of their moons, geology and rings, and noted them for further investigation later.

GRIA DRYE WJ-X D2-67, GRIA DRYE ZX-U B22-15, GRIA DRYE XX-H B43-1, GRIA DRYE LW-A B47-13, GRIA DRYE B48-7.

NYEAJEAY ER-C D76 was particularly interesting, it had many many planets and rings, but had been previously discovered by someone called Brickam. A few jumps later I found myself low on fuel. My nav had screwed up and skipped jumping us to scoopable stars. Either that or Lindsay had been screwing with the computer again. Annoyed, I took the unusual step of looking out the window for the nearest promising looking star i could see with my own eyes, and manually plotted to it.

Nyeajeau BS-E b17-9. Entering the system I immediately found a scoopable star. Crisis averted. But there was something off about this system. The spectra was returning all sorts of crazy composition readings, but this system was only recorded in the astrogation computer by pilots "Mudd" and "Bustdatposey" as having two orbitting yellow stars, and a Class L dwarf. I took some deeper scans and found an entire hidden planetary system 176,000 light Seconds out. Packed with injection materials on them. Sweet.

A few injections later and I note with interest I am getting near to the system I intercepted from the intelligence earlier. Still a few systems to go, but I redirected my plot to pass by the system in a few jumps. At FLYIEDGIAE TA-I c12-10 I scored a few more injection materials, the place was packed with moons. That let me skip a few systems.

Finally I arrived at the system the Alliance had apparently been so interested in under their intelligence report. FLYIEDGIAE TZ-Z B32-6. On arrival it appeared to be nothing more than a solitary Class M star, discovered by some pilot called "Dognosh" but the spectra and mass of the system was totally out of wack from what Dognosh had reported. Suspicious. I started do deep scans of the system and dicovered it was actually three systems. BINGO! Eureka, or whatever all the cool pirates yell these days.

There was actually three stars, Class M, Class L dwarf, and way out in the dark a class T dwarf. Each with their own retinue of planets and asteroid belts. All (except for the Class T) a convenient travel distance from the main frame shift jump in point. On top of that it had a bunch of craziness going on.

First my computer pinged me that there was some Notable Stellar Phenomenon.. explorer paydirt. Also there was a couple of crazy planets orbiting one another, with overlapping gravity wells. What the hell? Probably make a great tourist beacon spot. On top of all that, i discovered likely the real reason the Alliance had been so interested in this system. Maybe they plan to colonize it - or secretly strip mine it - which would make sense, the place was packed with Void Opals, Bromelite, Alexite, Diamonds, and the cherry on top of it all. Tritium. A pile of it. this place is ripe for someone to move in and take over.

I shall call the system.. er.. the "Solomon System" after king Solomons lost mines. Hensforth I dub thee FLYIEDGIAE TZ-Z B32-6 as "The Solomon system" suck on that Alliance, you snooze you lose.

Too bad I can't exploit this system myself. Even with all my millions I can't afford a fleet carrier or jump in my own mining station. Ah well. I can pretend. Lets pretend the system was exploited/colonised by New Horizons Privateers X (NHPX). Lindsay and Madelynn just laughed, and bowed at me in mock reverence as the supreme leader of the Solomon System. They do realize that if they ever told anyone about the system I would probably have to kill them..?

Well the system is useless unless I record it somewhere. Reluctantly I returned to our trip to Colonia. As it turns out, it would be a good place for a mining outpost. The nearby systems are packed with metals, diamonds and opals too. Ah to be a superpower.

Next stop was FLYIEDGIAE VF-Y B33-9 more diamonds and opals, had a nice water gyser too which I cleaned the outside of the ship hull with. FLYIEDGIAE SM-V c18-34 was next, lots of valuable rings to mine, FLYIEDGIAE VR-L B40-4 AB had even more. Why O why didnt I bring mining equipment. I glared at Linday at that thought who just stared back and asked what did he do wrong this time. Rolling my eyes I plotted the next jump.

FLYIEDGIAE JR-M c23-39 lots of metal and stars. Meh. FLYIEDGIAE QO-O B52-7 ahh more metal and some injection materials.. FLYIEDGIAE FN-H b56-1 5e, more of the same. Getting boring now. FLYIEDGIAE YA-L B54-6 full of stars.. woo.. Dozens more uninteresting systems pass by.

FLYIEDGIAE FN-H B56-1 wow, I could spend a lifetime here scanning geolocial features, and mining the rings.. but that wont get me to Colonia any quicker. SKAUDE TY-P d6-410. High metal world and a couple of water worlds. Hmm have to remember to stop by on the return trip to surface scan a few of those. I spend the rest of the shift jumping towards Colonia.

Finally, when I feel like this trip will never end, and start daydreaming of ways to murder my crew in their sleep, I come across a small neutron highway around BLUA EAEC GA-Y D1-172 which also has a few sundry resoures to mine. Things are looking up. In a few short jumps I finally arrive at the Colonia system. Ugh.. Finally!

I explore around and discover Delaine was right. At this stage of the story - there is nobody here who I can draw my payments from Delaine through. Well that sucks.. considering the funds that built up on the trip out of here.. considering Delaine takes back any money you dont collect I would probably riot too. Lindsay made a few calls, and got shot at a few times. Idiot. He insists he doesn't like the quality of the residential units here. So he decides to stay onboard my ship. Oh hell no. Apparently he needs more money to pay some fools and bribe some officials too.. really? He expects me to pay for it all. Screw this.. fighting the urge once again to throw him out an airlock I look around Colonia for ways to make money.

Well there are lots of shooty shooty things happening, the place seems to go from Boom, to famine and war at the drop of a hat. But since my ship has the staying power of a plastic bag in a hurricane owing to having to strip it down, and perhaps motivated by the constant complaining of Lindsay without any way to avoid him I look for other ways to make some extra money for his stupid payroll and bribes task.

Aha.

Inspiration hits. Jaque, who was very interested in my navigation data now considers me his best mate.. I share my explore story, and nav logs with him over diner at the best food joint on Jaques Station. Which is about as good as the worst fast food place on Earth. Laughing as I relate my tale of woe he informs me the station I was looking for in the Omega Nebula is located in Omega Sector VE-Q B5-15. Apparently he visited it a few times in his past explorations, and confirmed that yes indeed the girls there are fond of /wealthy/ male company with a wink.

For Jaque it seems, a map showing the way to trillions of credits of exploitable resources will put him in a good mood every time. Gratitude here pays well it seems, he pays me 90 million credits for the data, and pays for the meal. As he sends the credits to me he swears me to silence about my "Solomon System" at FLYIEDGIAE TZ-Z B32-6. He has a lot of very wealthy friends and business.. aquaintences who would like to explore the place without.. complications. This guy would give Delaine a run for his money. More like organised crime than business. Considering Tritium has only been found in a few dozen systems at this point - Jaque likely got very rich from that data.

I bet I see a fleet carrier there before the month is done.
What to do next? Lindsay is annoying me about the whole Delaine mission, so I give him a 6 million credit cut out of Jaques payment. That will only shut him up for a while tho. I need him out of my face....

(Author note: The events of this leg of the trip span a period of several months a while back. Fleet carriers were only just out, back when tritium was hard to find - and none of the stations I landed at had power contacts in Colonia yet, so my "payment" email was a cruel mockery of the money I couldn't claim. This all appears to have changed a few updates later. Or i just had bad luck.)