| Steven Jay Wright journal entry for 2018.232 | |
| Subject: | Day Twenty-Six: Battle of Emberlit |
| Location: | Euclid Galaxy, Arm of Ockaea, Sojourn System |
| Discoveries: | |
| Star system(s): | Emberlit |
Entry
The Clearview Project on Gelida Terram is right on schedule. We've built three domes with crops sown for three production runs of living glass. So far we've had five successful harvests. At roughly 1.7 million 
per harvest, we are solidly in the black for the venture. I've promoted Etise based on their superb planning and implementation to head the entire facility. Once we've finished work on the final dome, we should be able to achieve the five run per harvest goal envisioned in the planning phases.
Meanwhile, we've been negotiating with several of the other manufacturing concerns in the system. Due to these talks, we've managed to acquire rights to some interesting patents. Among these is a blueprint for a fusion device which is in extraordinarily high demand. Our market research indicates a single unit could potentially command as many as fifteen million . There is still a great deal about the process which is beyond our industrial capacity at this time. However, it is a tantalizing peak into the possibilities. The design has motivated our entire team as we work toward the goal of maximizing profitability.
On another front, we've managed to attract three additional frigate crews to our growing fleet. The 
Delphina joined the fleet first. She's a decent frigate with an excellent scientific team, albeit a slightly fussy crew. The addition of another ship must have attracted some attention. The Delphina was followed swiftly by the 
Equus, a sturdy little support vessel and the 
Simia, a sleek commercial ship. With the 
Accipiter and 
Explicans, that brings our current fleet to six including The Forge. Brigadier Lucheo has taken the full frigate fleet out on over ten expeditions thus far with excellent success. Given the fleet structure, we've avoided most losses and maximized profitability.
On the science frontier, we've not been resting on our laurels either. Giquanna was able to successfully refit Heisenberg's Jewel with a cadmium drive. I perform the first trial on a hop to Emberlit, a K6 system roughly a hundred light-years from Literia. The maiden voyage of the drive was both a stupendous success and quite nearly a disaster. The drive performed nominally. There was no issue there. Further, I was able to survey the system and its two planets, including both moons of Insula Mundum. However, it was during my survey of Mortuus Spatium that things took a turn for the worse.
Just as on Nihil Vident, upon landing I was scanned by hostile sentinel drones and immediately fired upon. Separated from the ship, I was forced to engage. The unarmored drone was no match for my rifle. But the reinforcements succeeded in cutting off my escape path back to The Jewel. Rather than facing off against a pair of armored combat drones, I thought to escape to a nearby cavern. As expected, I was able to evade their sensors. I made some scans in the caverns, biding my time, and finally emerged with a mind to make a bee line for the ship and blast off immediately. But they were having none of that. They were waiting near the mouth of the cave. After a brief but tense battle, both drones were lying in a heap of slagged pugneum. But reinforcements were not far behind. They had called in a quad. Now I had dealt with these before. Usually the best bet is to evade them. Still, they can be destroyed easily enough. But destroying them almost always escalates to a full on walker assault. Understand, I was on an exploratory expedition. I only had one jar of plasma and a few clips worth of munitions for the rifle.
I broke into a full sprint toward the ship. The quad blasted me good, knocking me down. The shield on my exosuit held, but I couldn't take too many direct hits like that. I dove over the crest of a hill and keyed the jetpack full blast. The quad took another shot, but its aim was off and it only clipped me as I arced back down under the rise of the hill. And then I could see it. The ship. The mechanical creature was bounding towards me. But I had put valuable distance between myself and it. I had just enough time to close the hatch on The Jewel before it was on me, firing at the hull. Wasting no time, I engaged the thrusters and pointed the nose at the stars. With a glorious burst of speed I was rising into the comfort of the coldest sea; devoid of water and yet teaming with promise. Just as I was congratulating myself on a successful escape, a red flash on my console pierced through my triumph. They had called in star ships. I was being engaged by sentinel star ships. Again.
Having been through a considerable number of dogfights since my last run in with sentinel ships, I pulled The Jewel into a hard inverted loop and squeezed off a few rounds. Too easily I dispatched the sole drone ship. But as expected, there were two more. As before, they would attempt to bracket me with a lead ship drawing my fire line while the wing ship lines up on my exhaust plume. But I saw that tactic coming this time. I was turning random patterns, a corkscrew right with an inside loop. I'd follow up with a rolling bank followed by a retro maneuver and a hard cross bank. So long as I kept the movements random, I could foil the enemy fire nine times out of ten. The lead drone ship went down after a few such maneuvers. The second ship was doomed at this point.
But, after dispatching the second ship, a squadron of six screamed in on my position. There were too many. Looking down, I figured my only hope was to get to atmosphere, maybe take shelter in another cave system. So I pushed the stick down and dove hard into the planet. Even given the low atmospheric pressure, the canopy was aglow with the friction of the descent. At the last possible moment, I pulled back hard. My downward thrusters kicked up a storm of dust. I could almost feel the belly scratching the dirt. Still holding maximum throttle, I checked the radar. They were still on me.
So this would be it. My last stand would be with a bunch of machines over a dead planet. So be it. The only tactic that occurred to me was to use the terrain. There were some fairly deep canyons and several tall plateaus. I used them like a slalom course to swirl and twist away from the withering fire of the sentinels. Using this tactic I was able to take one down without getting blasted out of the sky, then another and another. One by one they all melted and fell into the grey, airless surface of this unremarkable world. The cost had been heavy. I landed on the surface to inspect the damage. She would fly, but it was a close one. What's worse, drones were still hunting me on the surface. I made my way back to another cave and set up a small, makeshift camp.
Severely short on resources, I began to formulate a plan. First, I would need to get a signal out to the fleet. The antennae on the ship were far too small to break through the noise at this distance. So I began to gather what I'd need to build a signal booster. While the cavern was full of cobalt-laced formations, ferrite was in short supply. I had to make brief forays into the open. My gut wrenched with apprehension every time I ventured beyond the mouth of the cave. Once a drone alerted on my movements, but I quickly ducked back into the darkness and foiled its scanners. Finally, I had enough to scrape together the plating necessary. I had carbon to produce nanotubes. And sodium could be located on the gasbag flora common in most underground areas. When I finished my work, it wasn't a work of art. But when I keyed in the frequency and heard Vipl's voice bark through the static, I cried like I was hearing the grandest aria ever sung. The team organized a rescue party and warped the entire fleet into the system. With little hesitation, I gathered what I had on the surface and disembarked. Once in orbit, the persistent sentinels still engaged. But this time the Accipiter's deck guns and support fighters were on hand to cut them to ribbons. When I dipped The Jewel into the docking bay of The Forge, the remaining drone ships withdrew without further contest.
During my debrief with Lucheo, we discussed the strange worlds I'd encountered in the system. I had nearly forgotten that I'd managed to score a hold full of cadmium, which was the primary goal. We unloaded it into the freighter hold and I excused myself for some well-earned bunk time.
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