graf of grafmanitou

I’ve gone through Traveler’s manual, sold the obsolete celestial scan unit, and made my first foray into deep space beyond my home system.

The intermediate discovery scanner works like a charm. I visited five nearby systems: one with only a stellar body, three with plenty of low value frozen or rocky planets, but one with four mineral rich planets and an Earth-like world!

But not without cost. There are plenty of vagabonds out here, and while I managed to elude several interdiction attempts, one bastard in another Cobra yanked me from supercruise and proceeded to take down my shields! He messed with the wrong pilot. It’s not for nothing I operated split-miners in Coratha system, dodging and chasing down fast-moving ore-rich ‘roids in erratic and chaotic orbits. I opened his cockpit to the cold of space before he could do the same to me, and I left him and his wreck to drift in emptiness forever. A cold satisfaction, there. And five thousand creds for the pleasure, too. Bugger was wanted.

I also found abandoned trade data near a wreck I discovered in the system with the Earth-like world. Scooped it up, then hauled ass to the nearest port of call, a high-tech manufacturing system that promptly identified the stuff as stolen and slapped me with a 17 thousand cred fine! All my arguments and yelling came to nothing. I don’t think they like me much there anymore – I didn’t pay the fine, kept the load and I’ll sell the stuff where it’ll be appreciated.

Meantime, I visited Universal Cartographics (UC) there and left their office 40K richer. Now that I could, had the hangar chief bolt a point defence system to Traveler. That Cobra I met used missiles, and I don’t want to experience those again at close range!

I’ll crash here for a while, and then see if I can offload my hot cargo…