Night Cruisin'

Mission Summary

An auspicious return to night missions with exquisite conditions for space travel. However, disaster struck in the form of a spacetime rift that whisked away debut navigator Spud and his stellar maps, but brought longtime pilots Samurai, Nosepicker, and notably old skool pilot RockStar to Fort Antwerp. RockStar’s last mission was stardate 2007.08.11! With little time left before launch, emergency volunteer navigator Dogfood was selected to route a new mission of low technical rating to achieve cruising speeds and knock some cosmic dust off the ol' thrusters with some practice flying in formation for his own navigatorial debut. Babymaggots Big Mac and Philadelphia Collins joined up and were situated with ships Swamp Thing and Bieber Fever respectively. While not the first cadet to start on a HARV, it made sense given his civi mono thruster ship and notable height.

Briefed and boosters engaged, Samurai and Goose saw us off the launchpad with high fives to kickstart the posi vibes. Some difficulty arose shortly after launch as the battalion was split while crossing the Anderson Memorial hyperspace byway over the Charles asteroid belt; Dogfood learned that predicting the timing of pulsars as navi can be difficult. Once rejoined, the flight continued to the Kendall constellation. At a particularly long red pulsar, several pilots entered orbit of the Galaxy Earth Sphere at Point Park to kill time. Several bogies appeared near the Inman constellation, but they were merely curious, and subspace coordinates for SCUL were exchanged by the ambassadors.

Shortly after, mechanical was called for Swamp Thing’s navigational thruster. Sweet JP and Meownderthal swapped out the internal casing just in case, despite seeming to be structurally sound. Fully charged with plasma, travel continued smoothly through Porter and Davis Constellations, arriving at a regular 7/11 refueling station on the Mass Ave starpath, where Sweet JP and Happenstance swapped Trigemony and Compliance for test flights and further ambassador activity was logged.

Continuing on, a speeding transport narrowly avoided colliding with well-lit Dr. Claw navigating a spacelane obstruction, eliciting a horrified response from several rearward pilots. All clear though! Fuel was dumped at a tardis outside Davis Station and the ambassador was called for once again. Travel continued to the Community Wormhole at Davis and went eastward, where pilots exceeded what could be considered cruising speeds at many points – eliciting an oft-not-heard plasma casing hum from some ships – and several long stretches of flip flopping g-wells all the way to the wormhole's terminus.

The wide empty paths at Cambridge Crossing made great training ground for formations including Redcoat and Flying-V. Dogfood continued on a narrow path that wended below bridges and around the Vellucci fountain by CambridgeSide Galleria and back along the Charles belt for a picturesque but quite turbulent route full of flying salad and dangling stabbers that rankled the HARV pilots. After a decidedly technical port turn across the Charles belt back to the Allston system over the River St hyperspace byway, RockStar’s rear plasma casing lost pressure, but was close enough to limp along the final approach back to base and avoid a crash landing. Big Mac and Philadelphia Collins were brutally hazed back on the landing pad, but were permitted entry to our ranks anyway. Dr. Claw recognized the excellent emergency navigation by Dogfood and declared the mission a fantastic failure on account of exceeding the technicality threshold on the back half, but we had a great time doing so!