NationStates Jolt Archive

A Minos-class long-haul ship slowly drifted away from the Civillian Barge Klytemnestra. Once it was clear, the Ion Accelerator Engine fired up, and the craft was on its way to some remote part of the solar system

Katerina floated about on the bridge, double checking the autopilot, while Yaria and Cila were zipping up their sleeping bags in the crew section.

"Cora, status."

"Initial engine burn in progress. Course locked for Samael Fortress Station."

"Life support?"

"Nominal."

Katerina locked the controls, just in case something got loose and knocked into them mid-flight, and made her way back to the crew section herself. Once she was secured in her sleeping bag, she flipped a toggle switch on the wall. "Cora, begin hibernation transition."

"Understood. Reducing ambient temperature..."

Katerina fell asleep to the sound of Cora counting down the degrees....

But no ship ever arrived at Samael.

Slowly, the Voice in the Wilderness moved through space... well, slow was a relative term, considering the 300km/s it made.

The aim was Triton, Neptuns largest moon.

Still, they wouldn´t arrive too early, considering the fact that they just left The DA outpost on Ganymede.

I wonder why they still didn´t build a space station there... The one in Jupiter orbit is a bad joke. They should move it...

Anna wasn`t in a good mood. She had been choosed to lead this project... The Explorer Class 3 vessel the Voice in the Wilderness was, should have all the equipment necessary to prepare Triton for a colony.

However, unlike what she had expected, actually reaching Triton was perhaps the most boring thing possible...

For a moment, she pondered connecting with the ship, that was currently in semi- sentient mode, without a pilot guiding it.

But she quickly dismissed the possibility. watching the stars with the ships sensors wouldn´t give her any satisfaction, she already did it way to often...

Why ain`t there a single man on the ship that is actually worth it?

She cursed herself, her life, the universe...

Space, is boring.

Location: .74 AUs, 43 degrees spinward of Earth, 0 degrees above ecliptic.
Event: Meteoroid impacts to Ion Accelerator, High Gain Antenna.
Result: Engine burn cut off prematurely, distress call impossible.

Cora immediately shut off the xenon valves, and turned off the IEC reactors. No point in wasting power.

Better just wait until we're found. Sleepy time, my biological friends.

Cora turned off the temperature regulation system, allowing the intenral temperature to frop even further, with oxygen recycling running at minimum on solar energy. Then, she turned off herself.

*RP-saving bump*

OOC: 6 months? That's a long awaited BUMP! :)

Location: .74 AU, 43 degrees spinward of Earth, 0 degrees above ecliptic
_________HSV-005 Rikard Stromberg, en route to ASCANIUS [Station-014]

Sergei awoke with a start as the klaxons began to blare into his earphones. He would have probably leaped out of his seat, were it not for the set of restraining belts keeping him in. But he was a wake now, he thought to himself as he looked over the rather odd data arranged on the screens in front of him.
“Commander!” he cried, “We’ve got… something out there. I’m not really sure what it is, though; the sensors are barely picking anything up. It’s warmer than the surrounding space, but not by much, and there isn’t any sort of activity… like it’s been turned off. No radio, no power, no nothing.
“So… why are you telling me this? It doesn’t sound too interesting.”
“Well, sir… It really shouldn’t be out here. The LIDAR paints it out to be a civilian transport or something similar, but its trajectory doesn’t match anything we know of. Plus, well, it hasn’t responded to any of our hails. Figure we should at least check it out, you know?
“Fine, then.” he replied. “It’d be a pretty good test of those new drones, anyways. Alright, let’s close to 150 kiloms and match velocity.”

A few minutes later, after quite a bit of rearranging on the part of the ship, two small craft detached themselves from their nests on the sides of the Stromberg. An untrained observer watching the ships would have probably remarked on their garish paint jobs (pink and gold) first, or maybe on the names scribbled on the sides: the Yoshimi and the Pink Robot. But a more knowledgeable observer would have surely noted the drones’ relatively large sizes (12 meters long), the large sensor nubs near the front, and their two small ventral railguns before their terrible paint-work.

Investigation reveals two things: First, the pedestal on the high-gain antenna is warped, and second, there is a hole right at the front of the ionization chamber.

The two side doors both hold thick, circular windows, making it obvious that they are just doors, not full airlocks. The upper entrance, however, does have the double doors of an airlock. The lower cargo bay doors are windowless.

*bump*

A small transport, named Bright Hope, carrying the survivors of a plague within the Trendao Colony plodded steadily through space, heading back towards quaratine aboard a space station, named Teralon, orbiting Mother Earth. The Trendao Colony was an experimental colony built within a newly discovered system in the far reaches of space, but the majority of the population was wiped out by a biological plague. Of the colonies original population of 900,000, only 203 remained... Unable to remain at the colony, the survivors were ordered to return to the Sol System to undergo examination and quaratine at the Teralon space station.

When the colonists boarded the Bright Hope, they were berefit of all hope, having witnessed countless horrors as their loved ones died. As they sought to comprehend what really occurred, the Bright Hope drew closer to their destination...

The bleak colonists had dulled senses and it wasn't until the Bright Hope was almost atop the wreck that the colonists saw it.

"Captain, we have an unidentified wreck... Looks like an asteroid hit it... Sensors indicate minimal life-support still functioning... Can there possibly be any survivors?"

"Do a thorough scan, Vincent... We cannot lose hope... Our hope for a bright future at Trendao was destroyed, but we cannot lose all hope..."

AFter a few minutes, the man called Vincent spoke up in amazement.

"Captain, we have a few life-signs aboard, but its faint, can't tell how many... Wait, sir, we have another contact, it seems to be a warship of sorts... Heavily armed..."

"Open a hailing frequency..."

"Aye sir..."

This is Interim Captain Yvegeny Eduardovich calling unidentified warship, please respond...

*boing*

The Oneth class cruiser "Eye of Empire" regards the derelict craft and the others in the safety of it's cloak, her captain, Thomas Kassidy, looks at the viewscreen on board his vessel, the floating hulk of spacecraft listing aimlessly and the other vessels investigating
"Lieutenant, can you run a covert scan on the derelict craft? So as not to be noticed by those other ships?" he asked even though his voice would not possibly carry through the cloak and the hull, he remained quiet during yellow alert cloak
"Yes sir, I believe I can, but it will take some time." he said, equally quiet, like the rest of the crew the young man was used to this little peculiarity of the ship
" Do so if you please."

The scan beam of the vessel snaked out slowly and quietly, going unoticed by the other vessels, moving from one end of the derelict craft to the other.
"Life signs?" the captain inquired
"Light sir, but there. possibly in hibernation."
"Suggestions?"
"Sir, I suggest that we hold fast here and wait to see whether or not one of the other vessels moves in to help, once we've ascertained its actions we can decide upon our own."
" Very good Lieutenant, make it so. Crew members no here this, stand down yellow alert, cloak stauts functional."

Location: .74AU from Sol, 43 degrees spinwards of Earth, 0 degrees from the ecliptic.
NSA civilian registry Empty Space, in transit from Martian Lagrange point 1 (solwards) to Venusian L5 (trailing).

The runabout is comparaitvely tiny, comprised almost entirely of solar panels and an ion engine, standard life support and most shielding being unnecessary to the digital life form within.
Certain electrical states arrange themselves in the shielded core of the vehicle, in a fashion that would trigger a connected speaker. None is, for the obvious reasons, so what would be sounds merely reverbrate in the simulated environment of the runabout: That's odd...
The lightest possible acceleration brings the craft into an arc around a portion of the void unusually dense with matter. Two ships, two drones or remotes (unlikely to be intelligences of its sort, given their relatively clumsy handling) and a ..something. Taking up a rotating course about the larger entities' common centre of mass, it settles in to wait at a safe distance.

(OOC: Well, somebody's got to do something; force entry, try to fix the antenna, whatever, but with the computer off, it ain't doin' anything till someone does something to revive it. Just a complex hunk of metal.)

As the Empty Space interposes itself between the other ships and Sol, its inhabitant gains an increasingly detailed picture of the craft that arrived before it. Another tentative contact is filed away as a dust cloud, to be avoided for the sake of its solar panels.

Allowing reflected radiation from the star to paint a rough near-side map for its telescopes, the individual within raises a (presently light blue) browridge at the trace of what might be a weapons port on the better positioned of the drones. Caution, then, but not at the expense of data. Personal exploration is out of the question now, but something must be very worthwhile to attract such attention.

The crafts' own near-side telescopes quickly rearrange into two inferometer pairs, as evinced by their new motion pattern. The caution of before prevents active sensors, even to watch the other ships, but the rest of its no longer quite civilian grade passives are up to that without difficulty.

Over the next few minutes any spyware onboard would record an odd variety of argument between the crafts owner and the vastly simpler maintenance subsystem, ending when the latter is turned off. To the best of the guiding intelligences' knowledge, no such watcher existed. No such maintenance system existed either, thought the being, slightly guilty in victory. At least it would be reborn from its last save-state when switched on again.

Several hours of rapid activity followed, with the result of a sphere seeming to grow from of the side of the crafts' hardware reserve module. Approximately half a metre across, its outermost shell would register (to someone with the appropriate sensors) as the same material as vehicles' hull, and its interior as packed with raw materials, nanomachinery, and the occasional complete device from its own maintenance supplies. It's attached to the Empty Space by a continuously thinner strand of hull material, which snaps a bare instant before the craft makes an ungainly but painstakingly calculated sidling motion to bring the sphere through the output of a forwards maneuvering jet. Trajectory changed, the package now moves inwards, where it will pass within metres of the 'complex hunk of metal'; close enough for the simple program that had been attached to the backup magnetic sensors to arrange a contact. If everything had been done correctly. If the unknown was made of the ferric alloy it appeared to be. If.

Remaining in the higher orbit to save fuel, the crafts' sole inhabitant returns its maintenance 'bot to working order, to be greeted with an official-looking form.
I, Esvaran Xanson, agree that I have voided the warranty on this system at ship time 15:43:02, on the current day cycle.
X _______________
Function will resume with recipt of your signature.
A moment later, Signature verified.


ETA of newly designated object Curiousity Sphere, 4hrs.

As the sphere approached, very little in the way of magnetism acted upon the sphere. Only a bit of 50% purity nickel in the nitinol that sealed piping and scaffold joints. Only when it passed by the base of the HG Antenna did a spike register- the iron-rich meteoride that had embedded itself in the pedestal.

*bump*

*bump*

The RDMA/SC scout craft 'Earnheart' slowed to a near stop as it exited hyperspace... The pilot cursed loudly, his voice echoing in the small confines of the cockpit...

"Where in the fuckin' hell am I?! Piece a' shit nav computer..."

His voice trailed off as he thumped a clenched fist on his control console...
The craft was a heavily modified & retro-fitted A-10 Warthog, packing sublight engines where the jet turbines should have been. The chassis had been enlarged slightly, to accomodate a small living area & nessecary life-support & navigation systems. The pilot was an angry man by the name of Alex Greyson, a former USMC Recon rifleman with a background in flight, making him perfect for space-recon work. Alex's cursing stopped as a small 'pip' registered on his SONAR screen... He keyed up the long-range magnetic resonance imaging screen... It was a ship... Greyson flipped down his HUD screen, turning everything a shade of fiery orange. Yellow brackets outlined the unknown vessel as the scout-craft moved in...