NationStates Jolt Archive


Last Contact. [Introduction]

New Pablistan
01-04-2008, 11:24
Pablistan is an industrial paradise, a Planet almost completely covered with infrastructure designed to build customized space vessels. For the past 150 years the populace had been split in two categories, those who built the vessels and those who designed the vessels. Above these groups was, of course, a Governing body. The Committee, led by The Executive governed all of Pablistan including the almost forgotten Badlands to the North. They were elected men and women, with no particular political alignment or agenda, all charged with bettering the nation of Pablistan.
About those Badlands. In the past, maybe 50 years ago, it wasn't called Badlands, the area was codenamed RD1X or Research&Design Sector 1X. A top secret group of gleaming facilities, home to 100 of the best Propulsion Engineers in the nation. Their brief was set by The Executive personally, to develop a new drive system capable of NearLightSpeed in small vessels, and for a few years they made steady progress. Many of the technologies in Pablistan's own fleet were developed at RD1X, but their true goal continued to elude them.
On July 4th of the previous year the engineers where scheduled to perform a running test of a prototype engine, the details of which are unclear now. The last contact with RD1X was on that morning speaking with Prof. Frank Yule about the schedule.
At 1:30pm the guard station positioned 20 miles from the facilities reported hearing a massively loud cracking sound, similar to a whip cracking through the air. They reported shortly after this seeing a cloud of yellow tinted smoke rising from the site, and after not hearing any alarm raised within 1 hour (indicating no survivors) Guard Station RD1X1 was evacuated.
The 20 man Guard Unit did not make it back.
An investigation found that all 20 men had died of what appeared to be natural causes, though the circumstances clearly did not suggest the deaths were natural. A further investigation stated that RDX1 had released toxins into the atmosphere during the failure that had spread quickly killing the fleeing guards quickly.
After a containment effort in September failed to stop the atmospheric changes spreading towards the inhabited areas of Pablistan a painful decision was made by The Committee. Pablistan must be evacuated

That brings us to today. The evacuation of populace was completed 2 weeks beforehand leaving behind just a final military detachment, C Wing of the Core Air Station and The Committee. Now it was time for these final inhabitants to make the move from Pablistan to New Pablistan, the Space Fleet that would be home from now on.

The Capital building in Hab1 used to be busy every day, people coming and going, busy people doing important work. Now it was eerily quite as The Committee and C Wing stood on the white stairs as the Fusion Class transport leveled off a few feet about the ground.
The vessel almost bowed forward to the awaiting party as it's tripod legs touched down for the last time and the loading door opened allowing The Committee to enter and make their final journey from this planet to the awaiting station in the sky above.