Space Truck'n Episode 13: A New Home

[SPOILER WARNING: Uh... another plot... I promise to take a break from them after this.]

I wanted to get back and start doing some jobs for various faction. I was no fan of the pirates, but being on good terms with them, might mean that I can lower my cost of replacing the satellites that they keep destroying.

But before I could do that I got a message. I had been reviving a request from a Jeff Marxon, for a bit, but I had ignored it. I finally decided to see what he wanted, and it seems that a Xenon CPU ship was flying through Danna's Chance. I jumped in to check it out.

I flew in and saw the ship, but then it jumped away. I was notified that it was now in Freedom's Reach, attacking a station there. The jumpgates were no good, as it had them covered. I would need to use my Unfocused Jumpdrive to get into the sector. Before that, I needed to get a TM ship so I can get the people off the station and out of there. I bought an Argon Magnetar and maxed out it's upgrades.

A ship, that can dock ships!

 After several unfocused jumps to unknown sectors, I finally arrived in Freedom's Reach. I was far outside the area. I transferred to one of my fighters, and had a second follow and protect me. Something destroyed this ship as I drew close. Somehow the CPU ship seemed to be able to initiate a self-destruct. I kept my Magnetar away and flew in close.

Above it all.

 I got close to the station, and picked off a few of the Xenon ships that were attacking it. There were to many for me to take on, so I had to get back to the Magnetar and get those folks out of there.

The Station, Swarm, and CPU.

I got all the survivors on board and jumped out, but I also revived some sort of encrypted message... from the CPU ship. I took the survivors to a safe location. Then, I started to looking into the message. There is a Boron that has made a life study of the Xenon, so I was off to find him and see if he could decrypt the message.

Huh?

 He was last seen in a Boron sector that I hadn't been to before, so it was time to do some travelling. I bought a Pegasus to scout ahead and have the Magnatar jump in when I had found the sector.

It's fast and... well that's enough.

 I found the station, but only learned that he had gone to Aldrin. I jumped in there and started checking with the stations. When I found him, he took a look at the message and said that he would get back to me soon.

Cool shipyard, too bad he wasn't here.

 When he got back to me, he has more info that I had expected. He told me that this CPU ship was trying to contact another. One that had become sentient! This CPU ship had been given a sector away from the known universe in order to live in peace. I would need to jump there and see if this CPU ship could help us.

I hope this is a good idea.

When I found the ship, it did say it would help. It needed me to help get past the firewall of the other CPU ship then it could help it.

Trustworthy?

We jumped to the sector, and then I moved just inside of the max distance in order to make contact and begin breaking down the firewall.

Arg, numbers!

. . . Sudoku?

Once the firewall was down the ship "recovered". It seemed that this ship was on its way to becoming self aware, but that some human had introduced code, the same code that had created the initial Xenon war.

I took him to the Military Outpost in Elena's Fortune. Then a Teladi told me that they would like to thank me for saving them and the station. I was told that I could get my very own sector. I dropped him off, and he was to look into getting the paperwork drawn up.
 

Good luck.