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Spent the night on an ice ball. View was pretty nice - delta of little canyons feeding into one larger one. Whole planet looked like one of those Hostess Snoballs from space. Pink. Took on that hue from the brown dwarf it orbited.

Thought about riding out in my SRV, but many, many, MANY previous bad experiences on icy planets made me think better of the prospect. Seriously. We can colonize planets in every arm of the Milky Way, but we can't get hover tech on a damn SRV?

If I can, I'll always park my ship on a planet instead of just letting it float out in space. Granted, if things go bad in either environment, the cascade of clusterfuck can kill you in a matter of minutes. But gravity has a way of calming the nerves. Zero-G, on the other hand, makes me feel helpless. Get trapped in the middle of a cargo space with no hand holds for 20 feet in any direction? You're fucked.

Or you remember your flight training and do that stupid burpy crunch up into a ball and fling yourself until your muscles are crying for the sweet release of death manuever. Our class laughed at that when we were showed it. Until the instructor left us, one by one, stranded in the middle of the training deck in just that situation.

Elise Masza - advanced survival instructor. You won't find a pissier bitch anywhere in the 'Verse. But I remember everything she taught us. Everything. And I've survived more times than I can count by remembering what she showed in her class.

I won't say they were the best credits I've ever spent, but certainly the wisest.

Best credits award goes to that elegant minx on Cubeo. You know who you are. Imperials, man. Classy in the streets. All manner of fucked up in the sheets.

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I guess I'm leaving these breadcrumbs across the galaxy in case I bite it flying too close to a neutron star. Or get eaten by Thargoids. Or crash into some random rock with alphabet soup for a name.

You know what I wouldn't mind though? Just finding an earth-like, landing, and then letting nature crawl across the hull of my ship as the years pass. Whole planet to myself. No shopping plazas. No space stations. Just me and my own blue and green speck of marble out in the cosmos.

Found me an earth-like once. Was on my second trip out in the black. Should've bookmarked it. I was a stupid fucking kid. More interested in arriving instead of travelling. She's lost to me now. My jump log's big. I'll never find her in that mess.

She was beautiful. Ocean as blue as any you've seen. An archipelago ran from north pole to south. The other side of the planet was an angry torrent of hurricanes. Like all the hate was confined to one side so the other could thrive in peace. I saw a web of lightning careen from one hemisphere to the next from the safety of orbit. I'll never forget it.

Whoever finds that angry blue marble with Cynic slapped to its exploration record, mark her down. Even if you don't cherish her, remember her. Don't repeat the mistakes of an old privateer.

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Started making my way from Colonia to the Orion-Cygnus Arm. First time deep exploring the black. The plan is to just... keep going? Dunno.

Maybe I just got tired of the rat race. Got my Elites. Killed some 'Goids. Have enough pirate skull tallies on my hull for a full paint job. Mined enough Painite to last me 'til Rapture. Got enough ships for a secondary fleet out at Jaques Station.

I remember the first time I went exploring. Completely by accident. Had an Orca and a luxury cabin and two people who wanted to go sightseeing for 200 mil a pop. Saw the credits on the line, didn't think to look at the destinations.

Wasn't until after I accepted that I saw the distances involved and the time allowed. Assholes wanted to go to the center of the damn galaxy, stop at a black hole, see Colonia, then back to home sweet home at Leonard Nimoy.

Had a fuel scoop and a G4 FSD. Said fuck it. Went for it. The only engineer I had unlocked was Felicity. Christ. Never told her about this. SHE knows what's involved in deep space travel and exploration. I sure as hell didn't.

Ship was still heavy as sin. FSD didn't have thermal spread. This was the time before Surface Scanners and Guardian tech hit the market, and I didn't even have an advanced system scanner to honk every place I stopped. And to top it off, didn't even have an AFM module.

I am not a smart man.

But off into the black I went. Two silver-spooned brats in tow. They proved to be pretty easy-going. No demands mid-flight. Just pop here and there and don't blow up.

Made it to Colonia with all modules between 20-30%. FSD was at 8%. The flight crews jaws dropped when the last of the ship's paint flaked off on landing.

Did I mention that journey was my first introduction to jet cone boosts?

Good times.

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