Such a convenient stop she made. Only a single jump away from a friendly base, and with an asteroid field nearby I can properly monitor the traffic while also keeping a low profile. From the looks of things, she's not planing on leaving any time soon, so I can actually take my time and rest for a while before going on a goose chase again. Maybe even on Curacao, it's not that far after all. Won't be the couple of weeks off I was planing on, but would still be better than nothing. Maybe I can finally at least get that Kusarian massage I've been looking forward to.
To my surprise, still a few people around here seem to remember me. I honestly didn't think a memory that good would be humanly possible. I haven't been around these parts for years, after all. Though, most of them can't seem to actually connect the dots and just know that they know me and that's about it, but there was this one fella on Cochrane that actually remembered me and the work I did with that whateverhisnamewas hacker. Hell, I can't even remember that guy's name, and I used to work with him for a whole year, and yet this complete randomer remembers all about me. I guess bein' away from Liberty for so long, I've lost my tolerance for freaks, which is why this remember-all guy is getting on my nerves.
One strange thing I noticed, was how I never really used that ripoff version of Jameson's remote-control system I wrote back in the day, though mine's more of a remote-autopilot of sorts since I never bothered actually finishing the thing and them bugs were crawling all over the code, so having no need for it and all, I just dropped it. Came in handy though, cause one more second on that giant pile of junk the new civilian boat is, and I would've ripped my own throat off. Mainly cause no one else is around, not that I have suicidal tendencies or anything. My Roc should finally get to Cochrane in a few hours, so I can finally ditch this sorry excuse of a ship and actually fly around a bit. Never understood people who prefer bigger birds anyways, especially the part about crews and all. I mean, like five men on the same boat cruising through the edge worlds. I'm not judging but that's some seriously sick stuff.
As good an idea dumpin that huge pile of junk was, I decided to improvise instead... being in hostile territory and all. On top of that, having two ships and having two places to be kinda calls for improvisation anyways, hostile territory or not. A long time back, I heard about this fella who used this trick once to get away from the Navy. Once being the keyword, by the way. He basically started turning off everything on his ship until it disappeared from them Navy scanners, and let it drift in badlands. As it turned out, what did the trick was switching everythin and the life support off, so needless to say, they found him floating in the cargohold of his ship a few days later, as dead as a small-time smuggler can get. Well, correction... They found some of him like that. Rest of him was splattered all over the cockpit window.
So right before selling off that useless boat for so cheap a price even that beggar sitting outside that bar on Leeds could've easily afforded it, it occurred to me, that thing the poor sod of a smuggler did that made a mess of his Bactrian was actually a brilliant move, with only a tiny flaw - There was a pilot in the ship. First I thought about paying one of these dummy robots to get the job done, but well, who can trust a tin can. So I figured if that half-arsed remote-autopilot managed to get my bird from Alpha all the way to Ontario without a scratch, it sure can get this one done too. I just need to find the right spot to park the ship and then I can finally go do what I do on Curacao.
After doing some tweaks and test runs, it was actually surprising how much core all those life support systems on a boat eat. Shutting everything down except the main console and diverting all the core to the scanners boosted that thing to nearly twice its usual range, and of course also killing any unlikely yet unlucky sneaky bastard that may have snuck on the ship while it was up for auction on Rochester. Apart from the horrible delay, which I was sure would get much worse once I hit Curacao, it was as if I was in the ship myself and reading the scanner logs on the boat, rather than on my pad reclining on a recliner on some beach or another, so who I was to complain. The only buzzkill though, is that the moment that damn Pennybrooke decides to leave, I'll have run to catch her in time, else it'll be the FP11 mess all over again.