Explorer

As I watched the target star approach I started having butterflies in my belly again. It is normal, at least for me. Every star system we detect might contain life, even if we can't detect it using telescopes and deep space observatories. That's one of the lessons humanity learned with Obraxis, civilization closed in on their planet, territorial, hostile and undetectable. We lost three hundred thousand lives that day, the whole fleet got wiped out within minutes. That's why we now travel alone, with our fingers on the " Emergency slingshot drive engage" button, no one wants another war, hence why it's better to leave and mark that system as hostile so civilians cannot enter this system. Their on board computer won't allow it.
But this time, I didn't feel fear as normal, I felt sense of familiarity and hope, no matter how hard I've tried I could not point out why. I charted three hundred star system in my career so far and yet this is the first time this was happening.
SLINGSHOT DRIVE DISENGAGE IN 15 SECONDS
The cold yet nice voice of the on board computer tore me out of my thoughts and now they even started to fade away since I had to focus on my Slingshot disengage routine;
Weapon & Defense: Checked and operational,
Fuel Status: 78% - that's enough for few more weeks,
Slingshot drive: Disengaging and preparing Emergency target calculations,
Spare underwear: on hand.
SLINGSHOT DRIVE DISENGAGING - DROPPING FROM WARP
I braced myself for what I could see. I should drop into a dead space in between planetary orbits which is standard procedure to avoid possible alien detection mechanisms. I looked at the single star of this system: bright orange glow, a G-type main-sequence by the looks of it, nothing out of the ordinary. Once you got enough experience you can try to guess the star type before the on board systems start cataloging the star system and showing data down your throat.
"This star seems to be G type, has an orange glow to it" I said to my on board log. Me and couple friends from the industry have this game when we try to guess the star type, more than often we are wrong, but it's the fun game none the less. The winner of a two year long round gets a bottle of Niranian Whiskey, which costs as much as 3 weeks of our pay and it's super good.
I've hard small ring from my onboard computer which means the sensors gathered enough data to calculate and catalog this star. I glanced over the results and heard a small ping and my heart jumped because that meant I was correct in my guess, the star was cataloged as G-type main-sequence aka G2V spectral class star. I've got another point. That's honestly really good which means I'm in the lead.
"Suck it up Zoe" I said with laughter and looked the point being assigned to me on my other display that showed our scoring app that one of the guy from R&D coded for us. My score is 13 points and the next one Zoe with 12 points. I felt so good at that moment, but it was short lived because my ship's automatic alarm went off which means that it detected artificial atmospheric composition which is a clear sign of an industrial civilization.
I tapped the notification on my main display and it opened a page with more information:
NFQT-13376/2-3225 - p3
- 3rd planet from a singular star
- industrial climate change detected
- pollution scans returned high possibility of bio sphere and orbital pollution
- no active civilization detected
- no radio communications detected
Summary:
NFQT-13376/2-3225 - p3 is a 3rd planet from it's main star NFQT-13376/2-3225 (Glout Belt - 7.98 kiloparsecs from core of the Milky Way Galaxy) with unusual and artificial-like atmosphere composition and detectable orbital and bio-sphere pollution. Lack of detectable civilization seems to indicate extinct species but proceed with high precaution. Be ready for defense or Emergency Slingshot drive engage. Further scans required for further assessment.
The familiar feeling returned to me, or it never left and I've just ignored it. For some reason my mind went: "What if I found it? What if?"
"I don't think I did, it would be more probable to win a lottery than discover it." I said out loud trying to quell the unrest that my mind was in. But the choice was clear: Jump to high orbit and hope that no one is really home or mark it for further study. But if I mark it I will only get half of the bounty. So I decided to jump into high orbit, set the coordinates and pressed go. Small flash of light, a familiar tunnel of FTL jump for a second and then another flash of light.
The moment I saw that planet will be one I will never forget. It seemed so nice and welcoming. Tall white clouds were stretching over a small part of a big continent that span over the horizon to the part of the planet I couldn't see the end of from here. I saw two continents actually, the second one was, from my point of view, under the first half of the big continent I noticed first. I saw what seemed as desert spanning half of it. The first continent was green, which were probably forests. And I saw an ocean on the surface of it, couple of it actually. It was my first living planet, not a candidate for terraforming, an actual living world. But was someone intelligent living there? - that was the big question.
I began a electron-based radio sweep which showed me only background static. I let the sweep run in the background and went to checked for the bounty page. Internet connection was really slow in this part of the galaxy, there weren't any active relays nearby. I needed to know for sure. As soon as the webpage loaded I knew that I could stop the radio sweep, because I did found it.
I found Earth, our home.