Ok, so obviously the first chapter was to just setup a bit of the main character and the situation that led him to go out and get into the trouble I have planned for him. This chapter I'm starting to bring the two together.

Also, I should point out that I'm going to be taking liberties with Elite: Dangerous' world with some of the tech. Just going to be adding in things that I think a thousand years from now will have in my mind. So if you run into something that isn't in Elite then you can probably assume it is me filling in that gap in a way I like.

Criticisms are welcome, I got this idea a while ago and wrote a few chapters then sat on them, reading through them a few times and buttoning them up. I'm hoping to get out a chapter a week if not two but this is the first time I'll be trying to keep to a schedule or anything so we'll see. I'll really try to not let this story end up dead like a lot of the good stories I've seen on this site. Time will tell.

"Commander, thank you for breaking from your usually reclusive lifestyle to take the time for this interview. I'm honored that you chose to share your story with us today."

"No problem at all Ms Allers, although I don't consider myself reclusive, just...hard to reach."

"Of course Commander,"

"-Please, call me Marcus, I get Commander enough from traffic control."

"Well Marcus, then you may call me Diana and I will say, you certainly are hard to reach! No surprise though, considering the galaxy is a big place."

"Big is just a word Diana, the reality of it is a much more….intense experience…."

"..."

"..."

"Marcus?"

"Ah, sorry. *ahem* One of the reasons I've put off speaking in any public place. I'm awfully used to silence and silence makes terrible entertainment."

"No need to apologize Marcus, I'm sure everyone has heard the phrase 'explorers are a strange breed'."

Ha! Yes, of course, I've heard the phrase a few times in my life. Never thought much of what that meant, it never really warranted much though. I didn't think about it the entire time working to get off-planet or saving money for the pilot's academy. Didn't cross my mind right up to when I finally got my first Sidewinder and found myself staring at the galaxy with nothing but the canopy between me and hard vacuum. I knew then, not a coherent thought, no. It crystallized into that for me staring at Sag A.

No, at the beginning of my career it was a sudden feeling like everything I was doing was just the in-between time before going out. That nagging feeling like you're not doing what you SHOULD be doing."

"..."

"Ah, sorry, didn't mean to rant. As you can tell, I'm not so good at this sort of thing."

"No problem at all and I think the galaxy is better off for you having followed that feeling Marcus. Can you explain what drove you to exploration so fervently? By official counts, even before meeting these Council races you had a significant amount of discoveries to your name. There's an entire constellation that was first discovered by you! When did you realize that exploration was who you were?

"The first time I dropped out of hyperspace and found myself staring at an undiscovered star...ah, well, it was like my personal ambrosia, my raison d'etre, my…..ah, it was amazing Diana. Seeing some of the celestial vistas for the first time, very possibly the first sapient since these stars and planets formed billions of years ago. For me that was, and still is, where I belong."

"..."

"Well, and the paycheck when I return is pretty damn nice too. I will say, despite how personally profound it was for me though, it's hard to put into words."

"I don't know any I've met who can although we can see it in any other explorers we meet. Even if they themselves don't really know it yet. I've actually introduced a few people to exploration. I sometimes, when running passenger missions in the bubble, meet the people I was flying around. Led to some interesting conversations."

"That leads me to my next question Marcus, even amongst your discovering you have also logged a not-insignificant amount of time as a trader, passenger shuttle, security missions, bounty hunting, mining, and if the accounts are to be believed, you even had a hand in ending a civil war in one system and a few famines for a few stations. This is an impressive list of achievements even not including your discoveries and role in first contact."

"Oddly enough, a lot, most of in fact, other Commanders have similar lists of achievements, I just got lucky to be bigger news because I met some new life that could talk back."

"True, but I think a lot of people are curious about this and you specifically because usually, the more systems a Commander has discovered, the less they work in the bubble. Colonia and Beagle Point maybe, but not in the bubble like you continue to do."

"I think some of it is me, personally, I don't have the same issue dealing with other people like a lot of explorers I know. I'm awkward and poorly spoken at times but I don't shy away from it. That's the main reason I ended up in the situation I was in. I enjoy my time out there but there are still unknowns in our space as well."

"I'd like to think that most everything has been discovered in the bubble Marcus, at least of note."

"It's not just planets and stars for me though. It's new things in general. I still run passengers because I keep meeting interesting people. Most people hear 'explorer' and think of this reclusive individual who only holds conversations with their ships."

"Do you have conversations with your ships, I've also heard of a trend among Commanders to name their ships, do you have a name for your each of your ships?"

"Heh, well, yes and yeah, the famous ship I was in is Lucy and she's a hell of a ship. So maybe THAT stereotype isn't off the mark."

"But as I was saying, the stereotyped explorer would have just left. I know three explorers whom I have no doubt would have just scanned the ships, the wreckage, the system and continued on. If you believe one of them, she's done exactly that on one occasion."

"I'm sure it makes a good story though"

"You've got to be three beers into the night before she'll bring it up though so take that for what it is. Besides, meeting the aliens makes for a better one."

"True, as we see here, now, you were saying?"

"Right, well, I'm alive in the void, that's true. I don't just stare into the abyss, I greet it like an old friend and invite it in for lunch, ask about it's kids and compliment it's shoes. But like I said, there's more than just star systems to explore in this galaxy. I was lucky to find others out there"

"...You would describe it as luck then? Not inevitable like some have said since the announcement?"

"Well, we're all just stardust right? I think there's no other way I can put it that won't sound insufferable. There's a lot of stardust out there and I'm lucky to have found some of the more interesting bits of it…."

Excerpt from the Galnet interview with Commander Rein, First Contactee with the Council races.

His attention focused on the audible buildup while he felt the drive charge through his chair. The timer dropped to zero and there was a flash and the strangeness of witch-space slid by around him. Faint whispers and patterns outside the ship that a person could fool themselves into believing were reaching out to them. Lights slid past and he wondered, not for the first time, if those were the stars he was passing by in real-space. That thought was pushed to the side for a moment as the jump started to end and time felt itchy.

He heard and felt the small lurch that came before the ship dropped out at the destination star. The visual of what was going on outside the ship automatically dimmed as his Anaconda dropped back into normal space. Adjusting the throttle and moving around the star he heard the fuel scoop activate and dropped down to minimum throttle while his scanner charged.

The deep throng of the scanner called his attention to the navigation window.

'Huh, only seven things on the scanner this time.' Mumbling to himself he finished his thought and throttled up, "This'll be quick at least, won't it Lucy?" He adjusted in his seat slightly as his ship accelerated in supercruise, keeping the usual zero-gee in the ship.

"Now, since we scanned from the star on out in the last system, I think it's time to mix it up a bit and start from the farthest item on this list and move in. Don't you agree?" He listened to the sound of the drive rise in pitch as his HUD showed increasing multiples of the speed of light.

'Only 35,000Ls away…', he adjusted his course and throttled down until the timer read roughly an hour. Then he let go of the controls and hit the command for his seat, stretching his arms out as it swiveled around before his suit uncoupled from it. With a well-practiced push he floated out of his chair and stretched, shaking a bit as he got the full-body stretch he had wanted to do since his last neutron star boost.

'32 light years a jump always gets some laugh with the other explorers but it works just fine for us doesn't it Lucy?'

He bumped against the ceiling and with an affectionate pat on the bulkhead, he pushed off again, 'besides, why be in such a rush if you're exploring? Always defeated the point for me, more jumps not less.'

Gripping the handles placed in the ship for zero-gee, he made his way to the back of the bridge and opened the small drawer with the nondescript cartridges of food. Having been out exploring the galaxy for the better part of a month he was in the 'just need food' stage still. He figured in a week he'd hit the "let's see what new food pattern I got from the last station" stage and try something new but he wanted to hold off until he was really tired of the bland, basic food.

Since this was his fourth trip out amongst the galaxy he had begun a tradition after the second time out. He wouldn't do anything fancy with his food until he was on his way back to the bubble, or a settled system. He still hadn't decided if he was going to go to Colonia or just bounce around scanning for a while before going back for a while. Remembering the last time he plotted the course and that he had mulled it over before heading galactic north east, well, he'd been to Colonia before and he could always take the roundabout way if he hit the galactic rim.

He finished the meal and pushed off the wall to idly drift towards his chair as he watched the system go by almost serenely. The small streaks that were rendered on the canopy to help give the Commander a better sense of motion went by almost unnoticed. His gaze unfocused for a while before he bumped into the back of the char and shook himself off.

Glancing around at the interior of his ship he smirked, "Alright Lucy, I get it, don't space out while flying at dozens of times the speed of light." he grabbed the back of his chair and glanced at the bobble-station sitting on the dashboard as his suit coupled back onto his chair. Thinking briefly back on the souvenir of his chosen base of operations. It was the only personalized item on his ship besides it's name, Lucy. The small inscription on the base of it that his friend at Vacauson Station had put on it, "For our Ally, CMDR Rein"

As he reminisced he almost missed the two notifications "New Contact found" and moments later, "Contact Lost" that flashed on his hud. The ship's display showing distant object he had selected, or the closest approximation of an unknown object changed now as he approached it. At first it had been a generic asteroid cluster but now it had changed to only a question mark. 'Well that's new...something wrong with sensors, they're d-rated but still...'

Pulling himself out of his daydreams he focused on the timer as he throttled back and changed course to let his sensors actually go through the process of scanning whatever it was. Excitement built alongside a sense of nostalgia, something new out in the void and it was still just like the first time.

Usually he had to wait until he was out of supercruise and much closer to actually find something genuinely new but this was looking to be the exception to that rule. After ten seconds of scanning he didn't think anything of it, scanning always seemed to take longer than he'd liked when he was focusing on it. After twenty seconds he frowned at the orange question mark as it changed to the generic planet, then an asteroid cluster, back to a planet before settling back into a question mark. As the distance count dropped from light-seconds to Megameters he noticed it seemed to be fluctuating.

'What in the hell?' A smile broke out on his face as he checked his other systems, "Well Lucy, we've got somethin this time, you're looking good at 98% on all systems, fuel's good, and we've got room in the cargo hold."

He reached forward and patted the dash, "Let's go see what the galaxy has for us today, shall we?"

Looking back at the brackets around the point he was going towards, now within between ten or 29Mm, it still hadn't figured out what it was, the way the holo changed between things was new and he could feel the suspense building. He had to throttle back as the distance dropped and the scanning was still going. After nearly forty seconds of scanning, finally the speed and distance markers popped up. He was 14Mm out from whatever it was and he was beginning to get worried something was just wrong with his scanner. The distance to safe disengage started out at 1.00Mm and he was approaching it with 14 seconds on the estimate so he still had some time for this to turn out to be something real. His hud, which had up to now read "Unidentified Signal Source" suddenly seemed to make a decision, the safe disengage distance jumped to 1.5Mm and read "Weapons Fire Detected [Threat ?]"

As the moment of disbelief that he would find two other Commanders in the process of fighting clicked in his mind, his hands seemed to work on their own. His hardpoint selection flipped to his weapons and as his mind caught up to muscle memory, he flipped to the next selection to make sure his chaff and heat sinks were loaded before quickly flipping back just as the safe disengage jumped to 4.3Mm and the notice popped up earlier than he expected. His usual smooth, practiced motion to safe disengage from supercruise looked more like a twitch this time as he reacted to the notification nearly instantly.

With a familiar shudder, the ship dropped from supercruise and his ship readjusted itself for it. His sensors swept the local space and information started feeding in. Throughout the local space he was reading three different ships, one small, fighter-sized ship, one about the size and shape of a Type-7 without the canopy, and one large, blocky one in the distance.

What surprised him was that the distance one didn't show up on radar but rather was visually distinct in that he didn't recognize the shape or size at all. Considering he could see it and it was outside his radar range, he assumed it was roughly the size of a Corvette but could be wrong if it was further than just outside the 7km it would register on his HUD.

Looking at the closer, blocky ship, the six engines at the rear, two rows of three, were badly damaged. A hole punched through three of them and from where Marcus' ship was he could see the hole punched out by whatever had shot the ship just in front of where the engines connected to the ship on the opposite side. One engine was left weakly sputtering, looking more like a dying ethereal blue bowl of plasma than a proper starship engine. Something had punched through the engine assembly diagonally behind the actual thrusters.

His eyes were drawn up the length of the ship, taking in the details of what were very obviously holes from a mass driver weapon, none of the glowing, exploded, melted wax look that laser weapons produced. Thankfully he was relieved to quickly realized there were none of the sickly green clouds of corrosive material or pocked marked armor that was the calling card of a Thargoid attack.

'At least there's no bugs.' His relief was short lived however when the smaller ship took notice of him. In a rush he realized he should be ready and redistributed power, three pips in systems, three in weapons. He decided to keep his hardpoints withdrawn however as he took in the sight of the ship turning towards him. Glancing back at the damaged ship and then the larger ship in the distance, his mind began putting the pieces together. Disabled engines, battle damage, didn't seem to have shields, small ship flying directly towards it without firing. It was a boarding action after having disabled what appeared to be a trader's custom T7 ship.

He kept his ship where it was, he didn't recognize anything about this situation and a quick check for the system he was in confirmed he was indeed very much outside the bubble. That's when it happened, an alarm flashed on his hud as his computer detected his ship being scanned. Nothing new, he'd been scanned before.

"Except nearly time I've been scanned that wasn't going in or out of a station was immediately followed by some stupid one-liner and getting shot at, fun times...still, this far out?" That's when his eyes focused on the damaged ship again, noticing what appeared to be the ship name written across the bow. Only issue was it was entirely unfamiliar to him and that was saying something considering how well-travelled he was through the bubble.

His hud flashed the notification of a ship scan as it all ran around in his head, odd signals, middle of nowhere in the galaxy, strange writing. He concentrated for the moment needed to target one of the smaller ships. Almost as soon as he did another notice for a ship scan flashed up. As his hud displayed the ladar silhouette of the ship he selected, the image not matching anything he could think of, his eyes slid over the damaged ship again. Taking in the lines of the ship he with everything else in mind he nearly jumped out of his seat if not for the coupling as his radio suddenly began blaring sound.

Static at first flooded over his speakers a sharp crackle and he could suddenly hear panicked breathing with what he swore was screaming. Memories of evacuating stations after Thargoid attacks came to mind. Then he heard it, the voice that spoke over the radio is something he knew he wouldn't forget. A musical, almost breathy, and distinctly female voice sounded to be pleading in a language he had never heard before flooded his bridge. He could almost see the image of a panicked crew member huddled over the transmit button speaking hastily into a mic as someone screamed in pain from an injury. His eyes widened as he tried to figure out what the desperate woman was saying before she cut off mid-sentence and sounded as if she was speaking to someone else in the ship in a reassuring way. He heard the scream lessen for a moment as the woman spoke before a burst of static, a thump, and a renewed scream came across the channel for a brief second before cutting off abruptly. He saw the stern of the damaged ship begin to drift, an expanding cloud of debri expanding from a new hole near where the last functioning engine had been sputtering.

Something had blown in the ship but before he could process that another alarm sounded before he could do anything, the ship scan detected warning changing to a 'surge detected' for the ship he had selected before his ship lurched, the smaller ship having opened fire on him. The small representation of his ship showing the kinetic rounds pinging against his shields.

"Shit shit shit!" He mashed four pips into his engines, turned off flight assist, and cranked the controls to the right and up, turning and spinning his ship to present the smallest side profile to the ship in front of him as he deployed his hardpoints and boosted up.

He felt the ship thrum with power as it responded just as quickly as it always had, he moved up, hopefully out of the unknown ship's firing arc and spun in an attempt to bring the smaller ship in line with the space in front of his ship where his weapons would converge.

"Shit shit SHIT! " He yelled as he moved his ship up and around, the ship he was facing darted around much faster than he had expected, quickly out of his ideal firing arc of his weapons. He felt the ship shudder and saw the impacts on his shield near his engines on his holo readout. Setting the throttle in the ideal spot for maneuverability, he dropped speed as he jammed the controls up to change his spin in the other direction. The 470 tons of ship stopping almost immediately and moving how he wanted, he boosted forward and got the smaller ship in front of him.

Ignoring the distant ship that started to shakily read on radar, he moved his ship behind the smaller one as it moved into a turn to track where he would have been a moment ago. With a thought he targeted it and spared a split second to notice that for all the strangeness he had dropped into, it was still registering shields although the image displayed was half-formed. The computer hadn't had enough time to scan and build a good image of it with ladar since the silhouette wasn't in the database..

With a grim expression, his reticles swung up in line with the small ship and he mashed the trigger. To his surprise when pulse and beam lasers crossed the ship, there was no normal shimmer of shielding like he had expected. Instead one angry, red line was burned into the ship as the pulse lasers seemed to be rapidly punching out red-hot divets in the small craft's hull. Puffs of flash boiled metal blasted off where the lasers hit. His multi cannons finished spinning up and began spitting out hundreds of rounds only for them to spash against a shield to his confusion.

"Shit." He was nearly blinded for a moment as his pulse and beam lasers converged over the engine on the smaller ship and it detonated. Quickly pulling up and past it, he boosted again, this time he began tracking the larger ship which had targeted him as well.

Whoever or whatever was piloting that ship must have been smarter because they seemed determine to get him in front of a large-bore, fixed weapon on the bow of the ship. Something that Marcus had no intention of letting them doing.

"Ok Lucy, shit, I don't recognize any of these ships, and neither do you, do you?" The boost and thrum of the ship at battle was the only answer.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." He put four pips into shield and two into engines as swung his ship around the large ship approaching him.

'Holy tap-dancing-nutballs, that thing is ugly.' The large ship, which was easily visible now that it was within six kilometers and closing, stuck him as an especially strange ship.

His mind and eyes wandered over it and the only thing that came to mind was that two people designed what they thought were the ugliest ships and then cut them in half and welded two ends together, painted it badly and threw some sharp, thick writing on the outside.

As a warning blared on his HUD as his shields dropped to nearly zero his eyes widened to nearly the size of dinner plates as he realized what just happened. He had been slow for a second and the ship hit him with a glancing blow with that large cannon.

He shook his head and boosted down and below the ship, not realizing he was doing exactly what the "Dangerous" pilots he'd been interdicted by always did. As he hit the boost again and got close to passing the ship, his radio squaked on again, the same panicked, feminine voice burst out of it.

He got within a kilometer of the larger ship and he realized it was half again the size of the Corvette but didn't seem to have any hardpoints on the bottom of the ship.

'Is it the bottom though? I have no damn clue.'

His train of thought was broken when he heard a very child-like scream and the voice stopped abruptly before begging in the strange, musical notes again.

He scowled as he made a decision, targeting the larger ship just as he passed it, he turned flight assist off and swung the ship around to face his laser weapons to the larger ship. The sight caused him to pause however as the two engines were much brighter than any he'd seen. His heat spiked as he passed behind the ship, using his vertical thrusters to circle around the rear of the ship.

He popped a heat sink as the temperature hit 73% and opened fire with his lasers on the engines of the larger ship. With the sound of the woman and child crying still coming over the radio channel he sneered as the lasers cut into the ship, small explosions firing off across the arc his lasers cut on the ship, both engines dimming suddenly as the beam laser cut one engine assembly in half and partly into another before they stopped. He glanced down to see that he hadn't put any pips back into weapons.

Dropping two in weapons and keeping four in system, he cut the other engine in half, pieces spinning off as smaller explosions flashed for a moment before cutting off. The engines dimmed to a smoldering orange colour and the larger ship drifted forward, listing slightly before correcting itself after the uneven thrust of the engines.

He could hear his heartbeat thumping in his ear and the faint sound of the previously desperate sounding woman now replaced with heavy breathing and labored crying. Suddenly that too cut out as the larger ship fired again on the disabled ship, hitting a protrusion near the front and cutting off the signal that he had picked up.

Keeping behind the ship and seemingly out of any firing arc of the weapons it may have, everything settled on him suddenly as he just stared at the two ships.

"God dammit Lucy, who's ship is that? Can you tell me?" He glanced over at the contacts tab and saw two, unknowns listed before snapping back to glare at the ship he had disabled.

"I think we might have just met some new friends Lucy….and they shot at us. Yay." With a shake of his head to clear the shakier feeling of the adrenaline in his system, he hit his thrusters, drifting up and with FA off to keep his weapons pointed at the larger profile of the ship while presenting the smallest profile of Lucy.

He looked very closely at the hull, more and more recognizing the alien nature of the ship. Muttering "shit" under his breath the entire time when suddenly his shields registered an impact again and he snapped up to see a dome-shape with a flat, glass-like panel on it tracking him. He didn't see any visual indication like was usually displayed for him with normal lasers but with a thought he targeted that dome and burned it off the hull of the larger ship. With a thought he set the profile of the domes as a target although it would take more work to setup the firing detection to project a visual of a laser like the computer did for every other laser he knew of.

Without another word he drifted around the outside of the ship melting the domes. "So Lucy, they've got turreted lasers but where's their RCS thrusters? Not a single one but I did see it adjust itself after we blew the engines. Though the ship doesn't seem to be moving much either so maybe I just missed it?"

He tilted his head as a thought popped in his mind and hit the trigger for his multi-cannons again and just watched as the blue shielding rippled.

"Well...that seems kind of useless as a shield. Seems good for kinetics though." Looking over the ship again, "Just who the hell are you assholes?"