Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh

After getting back to Barnard's Star having witnessed the majesty of a White Dwarf, I had new and renewed focus to see everything the galaxy has to offer. I want to explore beyond the realms of the bubble. I want to visit black holes and hypergiants and supernova remnants and nebulae. To use an ancient cliché - I want to go where noone has gone before.

Just one of the many places in the galaxy I want to go.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My original goal was to see the Sol system, and by Jove I'm going to see it. As luck would have it, when I arrived at Levi Strauss station in Barnard's Star I noticed that there was a Navy recruitment officer! So they DO exist! He offered me a job - take out some pirates in Ross 154 and if I do well enough there will be a place in the navy for me.

This was it. My ticket to Sol. I signed up there and then, and headed for Ross 154.

The contract was to kill 16 members of the Ross 154 boys. There was no intel on where they were hanging out so I just set to hunting. supercruising the spacelanes and interdicting where I could find them. Progress was slow going; my interdiction attempts failed time and again. These buys were just too slippery! Eventually I got my first chance at the prize - when I was interdicted by THEM!

I swear it used to be easier to interdict - maybe I'm losing my touch.

I dropped to normal space, spinning wildly, but I was on the ball. I got my hardpoints deployed and hit the throttle before my hunter even knew where I was. He was in a Sidewinder - more manoeuvrable than my Cobra, but I swear it was made of tinfoil. My beam lasers stripped the shields in seconds and my multicannon tore him to pieces. I checked my mission transactions for the kill confirmation and smiled. Buit that smile wasn't to last - two Vipers had just dropped in and were heading straight for me.

That sidewinder pilot must have gotten off a distress call to his buddies. I needed to take these guys out fast otherwise I would be swamped. And where were the feds? Shouldn't they be monitoring the system for signs of violence? One viper went down, and then the other. I was holding my own, but I'd lost shields. I diverted power to my systems in order to raise them again, but then I heard the telltale "pop" of someone dropping out of supercruise. I thought it was the feds. I couldn't be more wrong.

Seems that people still name their kids after the heroes of legend.

Storming up behind me was one of the Ross 154 boys in a vulture. The speed he was travelling, I knew it couldn't have been a standard fitting. He was guns blazing as he came, and even though I had military grade composite armour on I was still taking a pounding. Then things went bad to worse.

I was frantically trying to spin up my FSD so I could hit supercruise and limp to a station, but as I went to hit the boost the Vulture came at me from above, shooting out my canopy. I panicked as the cabin depressurised, the sound of my own breathing now deafening in my ears. I checked my hull status: 23%. this was bad. I saw no way out.

"Pop!"

"Pop!"

"Pop!"

Oh not more, surely? I was going to die. I knew it. I closed my eyes and waited. But nothing happened.

When I opened my eyes I checked my radar. One red blip and 4 green blips - the feds were here at last! I didn't stick around to watch that party. I gunned my throttle, hit supercruise and limped back to the starport. Trying to land with no HUD is a scary experience. You forget how reliant you are on all of your instruments. Eventually I touched down, ripped off my helmet and breathed a sigh of relief.

I've never been happier to see this sight (this was taken before the pirates blew my canopy)

After repairing my ship I got back into the action. It took me a long time, but eventually I managed to polish off the rest of my quota - most of the biys were flkying Vipers or Cobras and I made reasonably short work of them. When I got back to Levi Strauss I was greeted by a familiar craggy old man in a Navy officer's uniform.

"I'm proud of you Son, you're going to go far. Sit down, I have a mission for you, if you're interested. Covert ops. You interested?"

I was in the navy, finally. If I played my cards right I could be in Sol sooner than I realised. But I needed to gain ranks. I was ready to take on any mission they could throw at me.

"Yeah I'm interested."

"Good. So tell me, you ever tried your hand at smuggling?"