[Commencing audio log transcript]

[Entry 144, 12-11-2955]
[Username: Starlit Drifter]
[Affiliation: USC/Unknown]
[Location: Unknown]
[Transmission to Citizen Compass servers. Priority note: Publish when ready]

If there’s one thing weeks of working shifts at the Shallow Frontier MIC Legrange Station has taught me, it’s that true freedom lies in the stars, getting to travel where you want, how you want, and making your own way into an uncaring, cold universe. Days come and go as one toils in the intense heat of the refinery deck, swapped with hours spent into the empty void watching the screen as scanner pulses spread out into nothingness, bringing both the prospect of mineral riches in asteroids and the threat of being spotted by a rather trigger happy denizen of the Stanton system.

That’s bad enough, imagine doing this job in Pyro. No thank you. There’s only one kind of work that Pyro thrives in, and that’s the kind of work I don’t really like doing anymore, unless I have to. Anyway, moving on.

The point of this log is to talk about an unexpected, but much welcome milestone in my life, and that is managing to finally earn my ticket out of the mining gig and into the lifestyle befitting my callsign. That milestone was managing to get my hands on enough profit to buy myself outright a Drake Interplanetary Corsair.

Those of you who know Drake ships, you know what to expect. Those of you curious about it, I’m here to tell you all about it. I’ll be doing a little ship tour of my newest acquisition and I’ll walk you through it from one end to the other. And one of the ends is the first sight you’ll see as you call up your ship from storage, and let me tell you. That end is plentiful.

[Uploading AR contact lens images through MobiGlass]

A very wide cargo hold framed by deployable wings, accompanied by those iconic Drake Interplanetary engines. I’ve been around ship engines all my life and I’ll tell you, while some others may be more efficient, or aesthetic, or fancy, none convey raw power like a Drake.

The ramp opens to a roomy cargo bay that’s big enough to class the ship as truly multirole. Boasting a safe 76 SCU cargo grid – but come on, who are we kidding, there’s plenty of room for more, right haulers? – the cargo bay is roomy and tall enough to even allow for the deployment of ground vehicles as large as an Ursa, giving the crew the capacity to adapt their ship for any type of endeavor they want to tackle.

As impressive as that is, the best part – in my opinion – of the ship lies just beyond the cargo bay. Past the door at the far end of the cargo bay lies one of the best thought out ship interiors that I’ve had the pleasure to walk through. I haven’t been on many ships, but out of those I’ve owned or been on, this one has been a delight.

We start off in the engineering section, the beating heart of the ship both literally and figuratively. A central pillar with radiation shielding, industrial cooling and servers houses the engineering terminal, with most of the ship’s components housed in the octagonal room, shielded and protected by the ship’s structure and armour. This is where the ship’s engineer makes sure everything runs properly, and the ease of access for component repair and maintenance makes it a dream compared to other ships, where one might run the risk of bumping into others while trying to do their job.

To the right of the engineering room lies the armory and the airlock, for quick and easy egress of the ship’s crew in case they need to rapidly evacuate in a combat situation in space. There’s enough suit lockers and weapon racks to keep the entire four-man crew happy and well equipped for most situations, allowing them to have a decent amount of personal firepower and tools ready at a moment’s notice. It may not hold a candle to dedicated armory decks such as those on dropships and capital ships, but for a ship the size of the Corsair, it fulfills its purpose.

Moving back in the engineering hub and then going further into the ship, there’s the mess hall and crew area. I don’t need to go into too much detail about this, do I? We’re all out there in ships, we know what to expect. Table, benches, plenty of room for the four man crew to get together for a snack and a chat. Kitchen’s decent, this coming from someone who actually loves to cook past shoving something into a microwave, and while I’d like to have more space to actually express my culinary art, I’m quite happy with what’s on offer.

In the same area we have three crew cabins, all decently sized and they come with a suit locker, storage locker under the bed and surprising amount of room for a shipboard cabin on a non-passenger ship. We also have the iconic Drake Interplanetary Shower/Toilet and I’ll go ahead and nip all the naysayers in the bud. It works. It’s efficient. Get over it.

Moving past the crew area we get into the final two parts of the ship. First a corridor running perpendicular which leads, on either side, to one of the two side turrets of the Corsair, and finally past that corridor we reach the bridge, which features the captain’s cabin – I don’t care if it’s the smallest, I claimed it – and the cockpit, with the copilot’s chair actually sliding in the cabin underneath the cockpit to man the bottom turret as well as providing the pilot with operations support.

The flight panel itself is just pure Drake, a nightmare for cable-management purists and a modular beauty for those who like to jury rig their way into any situation. Say what you want, but I like the freedom of unplugging unnecessary systems quickly in an emergency than having to remove sixteen panels in the middle of a battle just because I can’t stand the sight of a cable on the cockpit.

Ah but, that’s just an argument for argument’s sake, can’t acount for taste and surely there’s no better taste than a Drake ship for those who appreciate function over form.

All jokes aside, the Corsair is a decent ship. It’s thoughtfully laid out, packs a mean punch, can fulfill a number of roles based on what you need it to do. Yeah, there’s better ships out there. Bigger ones. More manouverable ones. The Corsair may not be top of the line in any one aspect, but it is above average in most for a ship of her size. The exterior ship is a neat experiment in asymmetry and the potential advantages that can be gained from weapon placement and target profile. And even with my liking of the classic Drake interior aesthetic, I’m sure I can be impartial enough when it comes to other manufacturers to appreciate beauty and function where it’s found.

Still, to end, I’d like to point out the one, undisputed fact about the Corsair that makes it, without a doubt, superior to all other ships. It is a feature so absolutely crucial that it puts to shame even the mighty Polaris with all its dozen of crew and guns. Something that makes other manufacturers pale in comparison for missing out on capitalizing on this one, all important, flawless feature.

Our elevator can reach the ship’s roof.

This is Drifter, signing off.

[Transmission ended]
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[User: Starlit Drifter – Connection terminated. Location: Unknown]