For a little while now, Commander Altsain has been thinking about getting away from it all – she has been confined, more or less, to the same patch of space, running errands for Shadow President Winters. Even her Fuel Ratting has not really been taking her great distances and, aside from a recent run to Guardian space, she has not been too far away from the ‘top’ of the Bubble.

So, she decided to take a holiday.

Initially, she thought to make a ‘tour’ of the Bubble, visiting each of the great powers and basking in their respective cultures. This proved problematic to begin with, as her Federation papers, clearly stating that she was an Admiral in the service of Felicia Winters, simply would not be accepted in Imperial space.

So, Commander Altsain temporarily set aside her service records and applied for membership to the followers of Aisling Duval, so she could traverse the Empire without fear of harassment. She also renamed her Cutter, the I Iz A Duval, to something more appropriate:

Her first stop was the centre of Aisling territory, Cubeo. Nice place, the commander thought, but a bit shabby compared to Rhea. Not to mind though, roughing it in the Empire was all part of her holiday plans, so she decided to make the best of things.

Then a call came in from Colonia – scientists there had begun to sound the alarm about the area’s rapid expansion. Without proper preparation, even that virgin area of space might become rapidly over-populated and depleted of resources. Said scientists were looking for commanders to help gather the materials required to build monitoring systems that would ameliorate the negative effects of expansion.

Moving her holiday destination to Colonia? That sounded just the ticket to the commander – after all, while she had visited Colonia twice before, it was always while carrying secretive passengers, so she had never really had enough time to just relax, chill out, and soak in life on the frontier.

Furthermore, she reasoned, they probably did not have many large ships in Colonia (an assertion that would soon prove quite false), so what they really needed up there was a ship capable of hauling large amounts of cargo. Even Commander Altsain was not mad enough to fly a Type-9 the 22,000 light years to Colonia, so she plumped for her Cutter instead.

Only moderately refitting it for the long voyage (removing some cargo space for a Detailed Surface Scanner and Guardian FSD Booster, figuring even backwards Colonia would be able to replace the cargo racks when she got there), the commander was soon on her way.

So, she started jumping…

And jumping…

And jumping… until the nebula atop which Colonia sits began to appear and then grow in size…

Commander Altsain has to be honest, it was a very long trip, her Cutter racking up something around 500 jumps. She feels she was developing a touch of space madness as she arrived at the Bolden’s Enterprise station in Tir, her final destination.

Once she had had a good meal and decent shower, the commander was feeling a bit more human again, and started looking around the nearby systems for the Lithium, Semiconductors and Computer Components the scientists had requested. It was at this point she realised that Colonia was really not all that well developed, and actually finding enough of these goods to fill her 512 ton cargo bay was not going to be the simplest of tasks. On the other hand, the Colonia expansion was small enough that two jumps would get her to just about anywhere useful.

There were about 250 other commanders in the area, all working to the same community goal, and the commander was a little disappointed to see the traffic reports at each station that indicated a handful of others had also brought Cutters, and a few had even brought Type-9 heavies.

Still, she diligently hunted down small quantities of goods on round trips, gradually filling her cargo bay before returning to Tir to unload them. In the end, she amassed nearly 10,000 tons worth of items for the scientists, which served to place her in the top quarter of all commanders who had pledged their help.

However, she certainly did not want to have travelled 22,000 light years for a simple working holiday, so the commander took time to visit the sights of the area. Perhaps her favourite was the megaship Dove Enigma, a tourist attraction she had flown past twice now, but never stopped at. This time would be different…

However, as quiet and spectacular as Colonia and its surrounding systems were, the commander soon felt the call to return to civilisation. There was, of course, plenty of holidaying to do in the Bubble, and she felt a bit guilty at having left her Fuel Ratting duties for so long. So, bidding fair well to the Dove Engima, she plotted a new course for the War Rocket Ajax.

Only another 500 jumps to go…