With the explorer ship Cosmos fully prepped, explorer Alan Robertson aboard and the course plotted into the navicom, Commander Altsain departed Jameson Memorial in the Shinrarta Dehzra system for the longest voyage of her career.

The first leg of the expedition would take the Cosmos nearly 15,000 light years from the Bubble, towards trailing of the galactic core. This would take the ship off the ‘beaten track’ quickly, greatly increasing the chances of the commander finding previously undiscovered and unvisited systems. This happened quickly and, after just 800 light years of travel, undiscovered systems started coming in thick and fast. Along the way, the commander discovered many new and unusual sights.

1,600 light years from home: The Cosmos discovered a red metal rich moon, and the Commander decided to land the ship and explore it from the surface (also hoping to collect more materials as the engineers had been pestering her for more).

The moon had a higher gravitational force than expected, due to its density, but this made things manageable more than dangerous, keeping the SRV planted to the ground as it went over hills and down gullies.

While searching for materials, the wave scanner in the SRV reported a new contact, and the commander was pleasantly surprised to find the remains of a meteorite, presumably originating from the moon’s parent planet. It proved a good source of Tellenium and Tungsten.

However, there were many, many light years to go on the voyage, and the Cosmos had barely begun its journey to the galactic core. All too soon, it was time to depart.

1,850 light years from home: A bright yellow high metal content (HMC) world was found, though its thick atmosphere prevented the Cosmos from landing.

2,129 light years from home: Another world that was far too dangerous to land upon, one whose surface was churning with so much lava, the flows were easily visible from space.

2,817 light years from home: It was not uncommon to find planets orbiting their star as a binary pair, revolving around one another as they travelled. Commander Altsain found a pair of high metal content worlds that orbited very close to one another. She could only imagine the impact tidal forces would wreak on the surface of these planets.

3,708 light years from home: Water worlds were soon to become a regular feature of this voyage, and the first orbited with a high metal content planet as its binary twin.

5,639 light years from home: The Cosmos comes across a small and almost irregular metal rich world, yet one that supported its own system of rings.

6,133 light years from home: A truly remarkable find, a huge ammonia world. With a radius of 22,000 kilometres and weighing in at 68 Earth masses, the surface featured a punishing 5.61g. Commander Altsain had heard rumours that the Thargoids were ammonia-based life forms, and she peered down upon the clouds dubiously from orbit…

7,780 light years from home: Finally, after nearly 8,000 light years of travel, the Cosmos uncovered the holy grail of explorers – an undiscovered Earth-like world. It was made all the more fascinating as it was part of not a binary, but a trinary of worlds, the other two being high in content of metal, perfect for settlement. Commander Altsain decided to call this world Magdelene, though the Cartographic Service insists on calling it LYSOOCH W-2 D5 2.

9,389 light years from home: The binary worlds were not done with the Cosmos, and the ship next discovered a very close-orbiting pair of water worlds. Mesmerised by the shining blue worlds, Commander Altsain decided to call them Triton’s Daughters.

9,983 light years from home: The commander discovered another lava world, one sufficiently different from the first that she thought it worthy of note. She had heard the rumours that ships were going to be refitted in the future to land on more worlds, but felt ones such as this would be unwise…

15,563 light years from home: After pushing on another five and a half thousand light years, the first leg of the Eye of Fire Expedition was complete. A new course was plotted, this time veering into the galactic core and what Commander Altsain had decided to call Black Hole Country, another 12,000 light years ahead…