Do you believe in past lives? I don’t consider myself a very spiritual person, but I know with total certainty that I’ve lived this life before. A life of exploration, of discovery, of the shared bond of a ship’s crew on the high seas. I’ve experienced all of this before, and I’ll experience it again. If you’re reading these logs and you’re not Sarah Morgan or Walter Stroud, I suppose that’s a sign that I’ve already moved past this universe and started a new adventure. This time I decided that it’s not enough for me to remember my past lives; I want the time and place I left behind to remember me. And so I’m keeping a record of… how things go this time.
My name is Grace Varley. It’s June 23rd, 2330, and I’m at the Stroud-Eklund star yards in the Narion system. After months of work, my ship, the CS Intrepid, is going through her final checks before we start her maiden voyage. Just like this voyage will start something of a rebirth for me, it’s also a rebirth for this ship.
When Walter Stroud suggested that we tear down my ship, I was taken aback. Guardian was a priceless – and practically one of a kind – ship, and Walter knew that. Still, as he laid out his plan, I had to admit I started coming around to his vision. Walter didn’t just want to take her apart, he wanted to reverse engineer the Guardian. To figure out what made her tick and to build something bigger and better from that knowledge.
And that ‘bigger and better’ is Intrepid. She’s a state of the art explorer, with long enough legs to push all the way out into the deep frontier… and tough enough to survive it. And unlike Constellation’s other ships like Frontier, we can bring the full team on her missions. The whole team and then some, actually, because I did a little recruiting of my own over the last few weeks.
If you know the original gang, it’ll be no surprise to you that Sarah, Sam, Andreja, and Barrett came on the expedition while Matteo, Walter, Noel, and Vladimir stayed at the Lodge. The five of us already handle most of the field work, but for our mission to Enlil – and for the voyages to come after that – we needed more support. I’m sure you already guessed the first extra member of our crew.
As much as Sam’s ex wanted her to enroll in college (“the only thing I’ll ever admit the United Colonies got right is its education system,” she said), Cora Coe is just as inseparable from him as ever, and at 18 now she’s entitled to a lot more say than on some of our past adventures. Considering that she’s been apprenticing in all but name for the last couple years, it was an easy decision to assign her a berth. She won’t be a passenger this time, however; Cora is officially on the crew list – albeit as a trainee – and I’m interested to see how she grows into the job.
Lin and Heller are old friends of mine from my days working with Argos Extractors. They’ll be taking the lead on any ground support operations; at a minimum, I expect we’ll need to set up a helium-3 extractor for refueling. If we’re lucky, we’ll need to set up a small outpost on Enlil, and they’ll be crucial for that effort.
Moara Otero’s another old colleague – he and I served together in the UC Vanguard. A few months ago I bailed him out of a tough situation, and he confided in me that he was thinking about finding a new line of work. We talked it out, and I ended up bringing him on as the first mate for Intrepid. That ruffled a few features with Sarah and Barrett, but after working with him through the fitting-out process, I think they’ve come around to seeing why I chose him.
Jasmine Durand was another controversial recruit. I already owed more than a few favors to UC SYSDEF for all their financial and technical support of the Intrepid project, and Walter took a lot of convincing to back me in petitioning SYSDEF to let Jasmine out of prison. But ex-pirate or not, she’s one of the best engineers I’ve ever met, and she has some very specific expertise with Intrepid and her systems… though that’s definitely a story for another time. I’ve got her signed with us as chief engineer, though it puts me in the odd role of being both her captain and her parole officer.
When I recruited Rosie Tannehill back on Akila, I wasn’t sure she’d be temperamentally compatible with my motley crew of adventurers and old space hands. Imagine my surprise when demure little Doctor Tannehill revealed her rather wild streak. We absolutely needed a qualified doctor for this mission, but I’ll be watching carefully to see how she integrates with the rest of the team.
Last but not least is the one member of the team that I didn’t get to choose: Major Hadrian Sanon, UC Marines. It turns out that when you build a starship with a Class M fusion plant, the UC gets a little antsy about having what amounts to a small capital ship flitting around their spacelanes. Never mind that UC SYSDEF funded a significant part of the costs and is getting under-the-table access to her unique technology, they still wanted to keep an eye on us. Hence, our “liaison office.” Fortunately, I know Sanon from my time with the Vanguard, and I trust her. So I don’t think we’ll be having any problems here.
So the ship’s fitted out, the team’s assembled, and we’ve got the green light from the authorities to launch her – officially, this time, unlike her little “shakedown cruise” for SYSDEF. That just leaves a reason to cast off – and that reason is Vytinium.
Vytinium is an extremely rare exotic metal that’s critical for manufacturing high capacity fusion power plants. As of the time I write this log, there’s only one reliable source of it in the settled systems: the Decaran system. But recently Constellation came across a pretty credible sounding report of a large deposit identified in the Enlil system.
Enlil is way out on the edge of the frontier; very little human presences out there and very few ships that can make the round trip. Indeed, that round trip is going to be pushing the edge of what Intrepid can handle, which is where the ground support team factors in with the planned fueling station. But if we can secure a second reliable source of Vytinium it’ll absolutely be worth the effort, especially for the Dauntless project.
Ah, yes, the Dauntless. Intrepid‘s larger and very much less cobbled together sister ship. As much as I love Intrepid, she still has some significant technical limitations that prevent us from fully accomplishing Constellation’s long-term goals. Dauntless, if we can get her built, will solve those problems. And the ability to manufacture our own supply of Vytinium-clad reactor parts might be the solution to our first big hurdle: commissioning her power plant.
Between the components we removed from Guardian and some very expensive engineering support from Matilija Aerospace, we just barely got Intrepid running with a conventional power supply. But Dauntless is going to need a custom-built large reactor, more like the power supply for a space station than a starship. We can do it with enough money – you’d be amazed at what a pile of credsticks can accomplish – but we can do it a lot better if we’re not also purchasing a small mountain of Vytinium at market rates.
We’ll be visiting four star systems on this voyage. Because of technical limits on how far Intrepid (and any other ship) can travel at FTL speeds, we’ll need to pass through the Lunara and Jaffa systems before we make a long grav jump to Delta Vulpes. Before we move on to Enlil, we’ll survey Delta Vulpes for helium-3 reserves and set up a fuel extractor. That way, we should have a good stockpile of fuel waiting for us when we return from Enlil.
I wouldn’t characterize this as an especially high risk mission, but any voyage this far out into unexplored space is inherently dangerous. There are some reports of pirate activity in Lunara, as well, but with the Crimson Fleet in disarray after the loss of their base at Kryx, I’m not anticipating any issues. The bigger question is what we’ll find in Delta Vuples and in Enlil. Explorers have been out that way before – it’s how we got the lead on the Vytinium deposit – but we don’t have any comprehensive charts or survey data.
But as I write this, Moara’s just informed me that we have launch clearance from the staryard. We’re fueled and provisioned, and I don’t see any reason to delay our departure. So it’s ‘once more, into the Starfield,’ and full speed ahead. Sam has the course laid in, and we’ll jump to FTL as soon as we’ve reached minimum safe distance from the yards.
Next stop, Petria, 3rd planet in the Lunara system. We’ll check in with the science outpost there while we calibrate the grav drive for the jump to Jaffa; I don’t have any pressing business there, but it’s always good practice to check in at the local port of call. If nothing else, they can give us an update on the piracy situation that UC SYSDEF has been warning about.
to be continued…