Today I thought I made a discovery. Further lab analysis prooved however disappointing.
Let me start from the top.
After all checks have been completed launched from Dagger Outpost setting course for Dresden jumphole, it being the relatively safest route back to Omicron Rho. However, as soon as I lost visual with the base, the Aquarius got ambushed by two Coalition interceptors. Station Control dispatched a wing of fighters, but those commie bastards were hammering me pretty hard, forcing to take a detour through Omega-41.
Yet I still wasn't in the clear, since this part of the Borderworlds is almost completly under Corsair and Hessian thumb. Soon enough my Coalition pursuers were on my tail again, chasing me all the way to Omega-47, were (I assumed) I would get trapped.
In a desperate attempt to shake those booldy wankers, I ran straight for the dreaded Omega-58 system. whitch is largely uncharted due to alien and collaborate infestation. My maneuver worked out surprisingly well - the attackers broke off just before the jumphole. However, I was stuck with yet another, perhaps even greater problem...
The oher side was rather quiet - from the sort of that gives one the creeps. Without any orientation whatsoever I flew the Aquarius into what appered to be a dense cloud covering an asteroid field, hoping this would mask the engine trail signature. Now I had time to think.
Scaners were clear so far as I moved slowly forward, but the geigermeter went through the roof. Telemetric astimations would suggest a pulsar nearby, at least from my experience. There was however something else. A faint but consistent energy reading, like nothing I had ever seen before - it was... strange. After a hard time pinpointing the source of the signal I sumbled across a Rheinland freighter werck.
No life signs, no transponder identification, nothing - the bloody thing was dead and from the looks of it, for quite a while. Markings on the side were corroded, but the shipname could be read as "Westerwald", propably of Daumann or Kruger make.
I decided to take a walk, see up close what did I actually find in this god forsaken place. The systems were all fried, most likely due to long term radiation exposure. No bodies inside. Some refined niobium could be found in the hold, but that was not where the signature came from. One lonesome crate stood there in the middle of the hold, it was the size of a portable hazmat container. Its inside seemed to be... some active atrifact, definetly alien, but different than what I've been briefed about. That thing, so i thought, was most likety not a trinket. After carefully loading it up on the Aquarius and still being stuck with almos not intel on the area, I decided to make a run for it, straight back through Omega-47. The Aquarius went full burn, rughing anything there was or could be on my back behind - I didn't even look backwards. It was the mad-on for me, since staying any longer would crap out my systems.
With fuel supplies nearly depleatet, bearly holding the bucket together, I managed to bring the Aquarius home to Omicron Rho.
Back on Durban Station the discovery was taken to Sector C testlabs, where after several hours my active artifact turned out to be... an inert trinket - unique, in its own way even beautiful, a collectros wet dream if you will. But nothing more. At least I got out of this bloody hell alive and with the Aquarius in one piece. She sure is a tough hog for a mining vessel.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for having wasted your time. Mining operations in Omicron Delta will proceed as scheduled.
Thank you for your attention.
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