Something at last from Crowley, though he himself likely doesn't realise I haven't received it till now.
I took several trips into the Copernicus system, seeing as there was little information anywhere about the contents. So far mostly what I’ve found is wrecks, deadly gas pockets and ultra high radiation. On my last foray, within one of the nebulae, there was a beacon. The signal was faint and the radiation was pretty harsh on the ships systems, but she pulled through well enough at first. A location, almost. Two Co-ordinates. Looked to be quite a ways off the normal travel for vessels. "Engine 1, Malfunction. Maintenance Required." Great. Navigation controls were still functioning, but they were barely hanging on. One of my two engines were fried and thrusters kept cutting out. I needed repairs, and there's no way I was gonna push my luck. Back to Sigma 13, to the Freeport.
I anticipated the repairs to take awhile, but what I didn't expect was for it to take three months. Three bloody months of being station-bound and unable to leave. There might have even been one engineer who even knew what they were doing, too! Woulda done it myself had I got the know-how to rebuild the entire ship from scratch, y'know? Its been quite some time since I've brushed up on the kinda heavy duty ship maintenance that was needed. No matter, what's done is done. Not like re-learnin' now is gonna get back that time I spent waiting for these guys to do it.
Another Echo relay logged along our private line. More coordinates, this time in Omega 5. And a message with the ending "...hic sunt dracones." First opportunity I get to go out there, I'm taking it. There ain't no way I'm waiting on this hunk of metal any longer. You just can't solve anything where everyone is about as braindead as the nebula that houses it! Breathe, don't let it get to you. It's almost time to get back to the stars. Just some more medical checks, a few flight tests and then that's as little a green light as they'll give for me to go my own way. Shouldn't take more than a week or so to do so. Well, that depends on these "Highly Competent" engineers, don't it? I have about as much confidence that a pirate I meet won't cut my throat if he could make an extra credit as I have in these guys to do a job that wont need fixing in two weeks time.....
