"Deliver 2520kg Platinum to Rilace in 19 days for 70kcr"

[Amah]

All began on the Coriolis above Tioranin, a democratic, average agricultural in Galaxy 1:

"Deliver 2520kg Platinum to Rilace in 19 days for 70kcr profits." Nice... I actually planned to go up to Tianve to visit the Pulsar Worlds but business is business. As a small cargo contractor I needed the cash badly for necessary upgrades. Yet enough steps to climb for an Anaconda.

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2084455:12:49:35 - logentry Rigel IV, Ophidian class freighter, Cmdr. Amah

Arexe, space, witchpoint buoy.

Arrived at Arexe. Scanner was all empty... Well, plans were to jump right on to Geisgeza, so, I engaged hyperjump.
While the countdown started, I checked the target system's information about blacklisted cargo. 5, 4, 3... No contrabands besides the usual
Slaves and Narcotics. 2, 1... suddenly a huge blast shook the ship... Aweful sounds of stressed metal and then silence. Some subtle cracking, when
the tension of the hull eased slowly...

Obvously I was still in Arexe, something must have gone very wrong when entering witchspace.

> "Computer, condition red! Full stop! Hyperspace engine shut down! Full scanner range! Full damage report!"

After a while the reports came in: witchdrive... nominal, equiment... nominal. Fuel tanks... nominal. Energy and Shields... nominal"
All other systems were also reported to be working fine. The witchpoint buoy still there, no asteroids or splinters.

> "Computer, was there a collision?"
> "Negative"

This all seemed so odd and again I requested another damage report... Something was very wrong here.
Again the computer reported no signs of damage, besides... besides a small status message appeared indicating the cargo hold was
depressurized and some cargo was missing... Cross checking the ship's manifest mostly luxuries and some furs were missing... Luckily all
containers carrying the platinum were still there. It would have been hard to get replacement for 2.5t of it on the rest of the tour.

> "Computer, status report on cargo hold"
> "All systems nominal."

Hmmh, the fuel pipes along with the internal sensors run close to the cargo hold ceiling, so I suspected there was some kind of
damage there.

Cycled through the Advanced Space compass for the next dockable.... A second Coriolis in orbit of Arexe II, a Octohedron Outpost at Arexe IV... *sigh*
No Hermit beacon codes for this system among the ones I bought on the Blackmarket. Set course to the main station.
When I engaged the torus drive I expected hell to break lose again but all stayed normal and calm. Good, you are doing great
old lady...

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2084455:16:17:35 - logentry Rigel IV, Ophidian class freighter, Cmdr. Amah

Arexe, space, inbound.

Got mass locked two times so far, a patrol of Vipers heading for the witchpoint, and a Monitor2 and its escorts. I didn't dare to use
the fuel injectors, not trusting my luck I had so far.

A short time later another mass lock... two sidewinders and a mamba appeared in scanner range.
Soon they changed course towards the Rigel IV, one even on injectors. All this looked like trouble. I put weapons online and locked
target to one of the sidewinders, just in case...

Condition changed to red, all three ships opened fire and demanded my surrender. "Bad decission, folks" I thought to myself.
My front shields quickly went down. Damn those guys were good marks man. Sent one of the hardheads after the one in the target lock,
it immediatly turned and fled. Ok, one off, two to go...
I was trying to avoid the fire, but the two ships managed to reduce both front and aft shields further and further, and
eventually their lasers started to hit the hull... First equipment that broke was the docking computer, then the witchfuel injectors
I sighed, I can do without both I thought.
Got the second ship into the target lock after some struggle and shot the second hardhead after it. Ok, only one sidewinder left.
The scanner showed the bastard was on starboard aft, sending laser burst after laser burst. While I tried to taunt him over Broadcast,
I rolled and pitched the Rigel IV until I got him into the crosshair. Getting more and more damage it was like a shoot out sending blast after blast
at each other until lasers overheated.
I turned, got him on his six, and impatiently hoping for the weapon temperature to fall. The pirate ship was a lot quicker than my Ophidian,
it turned and started firing again...
Shields went quickly down again. Time crawled but when my laser finally had cooled it flashed up in red, battering constantly on the
rolling sidewinder. The pirate sent a desperate distress message and went up in a ball of fire...
"Poor sod", I thought seeing no escape capsule appearing on scanner.


After a while which felt like eternity, a small glittering spot appeared close to Arexe prime, a dull greybrown world - the system's
Coriolis.

I didn't bother to get landing permission, sped into the docking bay, got fined but was finally safe.


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2084455:19:55:49 - logentry Rigel IV, Ophidian class freighter, Cmdr. Amah

Docked at Arexe, Ad Bitso's ship repair yard.

Bad news... No, it was devastating news. The Rigel IV looked aweful. Laser marks all over the surface and a big hole gaped just above
the port engine.

When I went for repairs I was told the Rigel IV had a severe hull blast and micro fractures and severe structural
integrety problems, all in all beyond repair. I tried to convince them, even tried to bribe them to fix my trusted ship and in the end
I even threatened to launch with without a repair to no avail.

The chief mechanic came over... The blue frog eyed me gravely and croaked: "Sorry, can't let you go flying in such a steel coffin, son.
She went through rough times lately, right!? Went through thick and thin together, don't you?!
Know how it's hard, but some well meant advice, sell all cargo, equipment and what's left of your ship. Go over to
the shipyard and ask for 'Honest Senuno' and say Ad Bitso sent you. Nevermind his nickname, Inat Senuno is a friend of mine, he'll
make you a good price for what's left of your Ophidian and if the Leestian bastard doesn't, say a word. He owes me.
Don't think he has another Ophidian but I'm sure he will you find a new crate..."


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20844536:03:56:19 - logentry 'Laenina Crowne', Yasen-N class vessel, Cmdr. Amah

> "Traffic control this is Cmdr Amah aboard the 'Laenina Crowne', Yasen-N class ship en route to Arexe Ocahedron Tradeoutpost.
Requesting permission to launch..."

"Hmmh, just hope, they have some more platinum..." I though to myself.

[Zireael]

This is brilliant!

[Amah]

Thanks Zireael! I'm no writer at all (all those typos, grammar and dodgy expressions speak for themselves).

It was a try to convert some actual ingame experiences and interpret them a bit further. The whole things was shorter than i originally planned. I'd really logged the whole trip when my engine broke and I lost some of the cargo, the pirate encounter was just the icing of the cake.
Until then it was a rather uneventful trip and I would have been written about pirate ambushes, hitching rides by Broadcast coms, planing next stops, saying hi to other ships, oddly behaving ships like a cobra3 curiously passing close by and then changing course and heading off and such.

The end was just dramatizing my already made up plan to change ships sooner or later after the contract. So, I thought "ok I'm shooting my own leg now here and losing most platinum to fulfill the cargo run, but that could have happened in reality, so why not add some spice to my game and take the chance."
To make a long story short, I bought the new ship, failed to fulfill the contract, but had some sheer luck afterwards when I was shipping some gems from Onrira to Ribilebi, when almost every docking in between presented me another Gem contract heading to the same direction. I called it "the Gem Trail" when I succeeded and delivered all those gems to Ribilebi.

The oxp/oxzs in the story were shipconfiguration, smugglers, broadcast coms, sellall, the z_groovy system stations, Povray planets, Staer9 shipsets ,Griff's Ophidian and the radical logistics ships (the ships and stations were the noshader variants because my GFX card locks up on shaders.)

At the moment I'm off to a RSS station up within the pulsar worlds. I plan to outfit the "Laenina Crowne" into a rescue ship (escape pod locator, cargo spotter, etc.) and do some missions there, with some luck I'll see some star jellies, when I recover blackboxes.