Modly folks, if I'm doing something wrong please let me know.
(Note: This quest is loosely...
(Note: This quest is loosely...
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Part 1-Introduction
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
Modly folks, if I'm doing something wrong please let me know.
(Note: This quest is loosely based on the universe of From the Ashes, an SD played elsewhere. To improve my personal writing capability and to further refine the setting, I'm going to run this on SV to get fresh and different input from different people. Reading A Sword Without a Hilt here for two years has inspired me to run this, if we're going to be honest. For those of you familiar with FTA, this is in a fairly close parallel universe.)
In Into the Night, players will take control of a multi-mission Expeditionary Cruiser, a powerful and capable ship that's frankly overbuilt compared to more conventional warships. That utility is needed as these ships are assigned to special missions far more intricate than simple planetary defense or customs patrols. Play will involve players guiding their captain and ship through missions, making decisions to advance the cause of the Commonwealth as best they can. Missions can range from survey work to tracking particularly annoying pirates to diplomatic meetings with other states, human or alien, and as a trusted captain of Expeditionary Command you'll have some choice over which missions your ship is assigned to.
The year is 2452.
Humanity escaped the bounds of first Earth, and later the Solar System, exploring the neighborhood around Sol. One system became half a dozen became approximately a hundred, centered on half a dozen or so so-called "Jewel Worlds" that were easily adapted to human settlement. Earth and her colonies were in a golden age.
So of course when the wheels came off, they really came off. To this day nobody is sure if Cablefall-the separation of the Quito Space Elevator cable from its base asteroid-was the actual result of terrorism or some sort of horrific freak accident. What we do know was that the result was what's now known as The Collapse. The economic and ecological damage of Cablefall ripped the band-aid off of a century or more of grudges, resentments, and inequalities and resulted in a nine-way nuclear exchange between most of the major powers.
Humanity survived...granted, a population of some twenty billion in 2237 was counted at a little under nine some twenty years later-but we were resilient and, now, far too spread out to really wipe out. Marginal colonies perished, certainly, but major settlements-especially those on the Jewel worlds, places like Terranova and Prospect and Elysium-quickly transformed themselves from dependent colonies to independent nations. There was no other choice, as Cablefall and the Collapse created a Kessler Cascade in Earth orbit that cut off the homeworld from the rest of humanity. It would be cleared eventually, and most of the damage from the Collapse repaired, but Earth would never again be the undisputed center of human civilization.
That was nearly two hundred years ago, and nations old and new have continued the dance of the ages. The successor states in the colonies, later joined by the rebuilding Earth states-some had maintained political continuity, others picked themselves up from the ashes-rebuilt and soon began to explore. After not too long, we discovered we weren't alone-and that we were far from unique with our self-destructive tendencies. Humanity has come into contact with a number of non-human races, ranging from the godlike zani-zigulur to several pre-technological races, scattered across the Orion Arm. About two dozen are roughly equivalent to the Human Grid, the network of colonies humanity inhabits that are mostly connected by jumpgate scattered over a few hundred light years of space. Relations range from warm and friendly to implacably hostile and many of those species are no more politically unified than humanity. The whole Orion Arm, and indeed several adjoining regions of the Milky Way, are connected by what humans call the Hypergrid, the legacy of the last galactic scale civilization to inhabit this region of the galaxy. The Open Palm Federation was in many ways a laudable utopia. Unfortunately it fell forty thousand years ago and nobody's managed to make galactic civilization stick since then.
Among the Human Grid, the Golden Commonwealth is one of the leading states, one of a handful of so-called "Great Powers". It is somewhat unique in that it is not explicitly a human only state. The Commonwealth has been more successful than most in recovering the lost technology of the Open Palm Federation, and in the process has made friends along the way. Humans do still make up a plurality of the Commonwealth's total population and are heavily represented in the Navy especially. They are joined by sondrak, apectids, caiveh, chelonians, iase, and a few others, hailing from small independent asteroid settlements that joined the Commonwealth for protection to the natives of Apex, an industrial age world contacted by the Commonwealth a few decades ago and carefully bootstrapped into the 25th century.
You are a captain in the Golden Commonwealth's Expeditionary Command. The elite of the elite, the Expeditionary Command are the Commonwealth's first-in exploration experts, the firemen, the diplomats, and the scientists. They are, to crib from another universe, Starfleet. And you're one of the best of that elite crew, with a Soyuz class Expeditionary Cruiser that just completed a refit cycle and has now been re-equipped with the cutting edge of available technology. Which just means you get the hardest, most difficult jobs in the universe. But which Captain are you, exactly?
[] Captain Nasir al-Kurabi of the Challenger
The "old man" of the Expeditionary Corps, Captain al-Kurabi was one of the first pure expeditionary captains in Commonwealth service and after nearly three decades they haven't managed to pry him out of the command chair. Given he's skippered the Challenger that entire time and the list of missions he's accomplished, Command is willing to let things slide.
Special Trait: Veteran (gives a saving reroll in dangerous situations)
[] Captain Valerie Morris of the Trailblazer
The Trailblazer seems to find its fair share of scraps, ranging from sondrak pirates on the Hypergrid to freebooters out of Golgotha to both the Tau Ceti and New Gettysburg anomalies. Captain Morris is, as a result, a more experienced combat commander than most line captains, and knows how to get the most out of her ship and crew.
Special Trait: Combat Commander (Gives a bonus to combat dilemmas)
[] Captain Michael Holland of the Voyager
Years of leading survey work in wrecked OPF depots and pushing charting new systems has left Captain Holland even more of an expert on planetary science and alien technology than his counterparts, and has also allowed the good Captain to pick up a PhD in astrophysics from Gotham University and another PhD in computer programming from the Hellas Sea Institute of Technology via distance learning.
Special Trait: Scientist (Gives a bonus to science and technology based dilemmas)
[] Captain Mila Hargrave of the Discovery
By far the youngest skipper to command a Soyuz class ship, Captain Hargrave has acted as a Commonwealth Navy liaison to several diplomatic missions in the Caiveh Extents and to a number of independent worlds on the Hypergrid. This experience in diplomatic matters gives her a base of expertise that allows her to feel confident as she learns the finer points of being an Expeditionary Command skipper.
Special Trait: Diplomat (Gives a bonus to diplomacy related dilemmas)
Once you've selected a captain, we'll have a few votes rounding out your bridge crew and customizing your ship and be off on our first mission. I hope this generates some interest!
(Note: This quest is loosely based on the universe of From the Ashes, an SD played elsewhere. To improve my personal writing capability and to further refine the setting, I'm going to run this on SV to get fresh and different input from different people. Reading A Sword Without a Hilt here for two years has inspired me to run this, if we're going to be honest. For those of you familiar with FTA, this is in a fairly close parallel universe.)
In Into the Night, players will take control of a multi-mission Expeditionary Cruiser, a powerful and capable ship that's frankly overbuilt compared to more conventional warships. That utility is needed as these ships are assigned to special missions far more intricate than simple planetary defense or customs patrols. Play will involve players guiding their captain and ship through missions, making decisions to advance the cause of the Commonwealth as best they can. Missions can range from survey work to tracking particularly annoying pirates to diplomatic meetings with other states, human or alien, and as a trusted captain of Expeditionary Command you'll have some choice over which missions your ship is assigned to.
The year is 2452.
Humanity escaped the bounds of first Earth, and later the Solar System, exploring the neighborhood around Sol. One system became half a dozen became approximately a hundred, centered on half a dozen or so so-called "Jewel Worlds" that were easily adapted to human settlement. Earth and her colonies were in a golden age.
So of course when the wheels came off, they really came off. To this day nobody is sure if Cablefall-the separation of the Quito Space Elevator cable from its base asteroid-was the actual result of terrorism or some sort of horrific freak accident. What we do know was that the result was what's now known as The Collapse. The economic and ecological damage of Cablefall ripped the band-aid off of a century or more of grudges, resentments, and inequalities and resulted in a nine-way nuclear exchange between most of the major powers.
Humanity survived...granted, a population of some twenty billion in 2237 was counted at a little under nine some twenty years later-but we were resilient and, now, far too spread out to really wipe out. Marginal colonies perished, certainly, but major settlements-especially those on the Jewel worlds, places like Terranova and Prospect and Elysium-quickly transformed themselves from dependent colonies to independent nations. There was no other choice, as Cablefall and the Collapse created a Kessler Cascade in Earth orbit that cut off the homeworld from the rest of humanity. It would be cleared eventually, and most of the damage from the Collapse repaired, but Earth would never again be the undisputed center of human civilization.
That was nearly two hundred years ago, and nations old and new have continued the dance of the ages. The successor states in the colonies, later joined by the rebuilding Earth states-some had maintained political continuity, others picked themselves up from the ashes-rebuilt and soon began to explore. After not too long, we discovered we weren't alone-and that we were far from unique with our self-destructive tendencies. Humanity has come into contact with a number of non-human races, ranging from the godlike zani-zigulur to several pre-technological races, scattered across the Orion Arm. About two dozen are roughly equivalent to the Human Grid, the network of colonies humanity inhabits that are mostly connected by jumpgate scattered over a few hundred light years of space. Relations range from warm and friendly to implacably hostile and many of those species are no more politically unified than humanity. The whole Orion Arm, and indeed several adjoining regions of the Milky Way, are connected by what humans call the Hypergrid, the legacy of the last galactic scale civilization to inhabit this region of the galaxy. The Open Palm Federation was in many ways a laudable utopia. Unfortunately it fell forty thousand years ago and nobody's managed to make galactic civilization stick since then.
Among the Human Grid, the Golden Commonwealth is one of the leading states, one of a handful of so-called "Great Powers". It is somewhat unique in that it is not explicitly a human only state. The Commonwealth has been more successful than most in recovering the lost technology of the Open Palm Federation, and in the process has made friends along the way. Humans do still make up a plurality of the Commonwealth's total population and are heavily represented in the Navy especially. They are joined by sondrak, apectids, caiveh, chelonians, iase, and a few others, hailing from small independent asteroid settlements that joined the Commonwealth for protection to the natives of Apex, an industrial age world contacted by the Commonwealth a few decades ago and carefully bootstrapped into the 25th century.
You are a captain in the Golden Commonwealth's Expeditionary Command. The elite of the elite, the Expeditionary Command are the Commonwealth's first-in exploration experts, the firemen, the diplomats, and the scientists. They are, to crib from another universe, Starfleet. And you're one of the best of that elite crew, with a Soyuz class Expeditionary Cruiser that just completed a refit cycle and has now been re-equipped with the cutting edge of available technology. Which just means you get the hardest, most difficult jobs in the universe. But which Captain are you, exactly?
[] Captain Nasir al-Kurabi of the Challenger
The "old man" of the Expeditionary Corps, Captain al-Kurabi was one of the first pure expeditionary captains in Commonwealth service and after nearly three decades they haven't managed to pry him out of the command chair. Given he's skippered the Challenger that entire time and the list of missions he's accomplished, Command is willing to let things slide.
Special Trait: Veteran (gives a saving reroll in dangerous situations)
[] Captain Valerie Morris of the Trailblazer
The Trailblazer seems to find its fair share of scraps, ranging from sondrak pirates on the Hypergrid to freebooters out of Golgotha to both the Tau Ceti and New Gettysburg anomalies. Captain Morris is, as a result, a more experienced combat commander than most line captains, and knows how to get the most out of her ship and crew.
Special Trait: Combat Commander (Gives a bonus to combat dilemmas)
[] Captain Michael Holland of the Voyager
Years of leading survey work in wrecked OPF depots and pushing charting new systems has left Captain Holland even more of an expert on planetary science and alien technology than his counterparts, and has also allowed the good Captain to pick up a PhD in astrophysics from Gotham University and another PhD in computer programming from the Hellas Sea Institute of Technology via distance learning.
Special Trait: Scientist (Gives a bonus to science and technology based dilemmas)
[] Captain Mila Hargrave of the Discovery
By far the youngest skipper to command a Soyuz class ship, Captain Hargrave has acted as a Commonwealth Navy liaison to several diplomatic missions in the Caiveh Extents and to a number of independent worlds on the Hypergrid. This experience in diplomatic matters gives her a base of expertise that allows her to feel confident as she learns the finer points of being an Expeditionary Command skipper.
Special Trait: Diplomat (Gives a bonus to diplomacy related dilemmas)
Once you've selected a captain, we'll have a few votes rounding out your bridge crew and customizing your ship and be off on our first mission. I hope this generates some interest!
Captain Nasir al-Kurabi
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
The voters have chosen and selected Senior Captain Nasir al-Kurabi of the GCS Challenger.
Captain Nasir al-Kurabi:
Personal Information:
Born March 17th, 2387, New Kirkuk, Armstrong Federation, Terranova
Family: Parents (both alive), 1 sibling (see MSgt Ibrahim al-Kurabi); Single, no children
Assigned Captain of GCS Challenger: June 19th 2426
Awards, Medals & Citations: Distinguished Service Cross, Lifeguard Medal w/2 Bars, First Contact Medal w/3 Bars, Gold Star for actions in the Galacteon War, Purple Heart; National Defense Service Medal, Anti-Piracy Service Medal ('The Wilberforce') w/Bar, Hypergrid Operations Medal, Exploration Command Service Medal, Longevity Service Ribbon w/40 Year Stripe; Deep Operations Campaign Medal, Battle of Prospect Medal, Silk Road Operations Medal, Apex Operations Medal, Galacteon War Operations Medal w/Tau Ceti & La Jain Stripes, Dahaki War Operations Medal
Challenger Unit Awards Under Command: Commonwealth Citation, Award for Merit w/2 Bars, Expeditionary Command Superior Unit Award w/Five Bars, Expeditionary Ribbon, Platinum Bar
Bio: No captain in Commonwealth service has logged more hours in command of an exploration vessel than Nasir al-Kurabi. With forty five years of service under his belt, over half of them in command of the Challenger, al-Kurabi is arguably the most experienced explorer on the Grid.
al-Kurabi is a man with a fairly easy smile and a dry wit, well-tempered and patient, traits that serve him equally well on delicate missions of diplomacy, in the heat of combat, or when training new crew. He keeps his salt and pepper hair trimmed short, keeping a neat beard most of the time. In his time in command of the Challenger, the ship has gone through two major refits, engaged in three of humanity's First Contacts, surveyed twenty two star systems and conducted dozens of diplomatic, patrol, and show-the-flag missions, as well as participating in rescue operations after the Elysian Holocaust and during the Galacteon and Dahaki War. Off-duty, al-Kurabi enjoys brain teasers and puzzle boxes and keeps tropical fish in his wardroom. One of his prized possessions is a collection of physical brain-teaser puzzles collected from the civilizations he's encountered across the Orion Arm, including two recovered from the ruins of the Open Palm Federation.
===================================================
Now, the vote. In order to keep things moving briskly, we've got two distinct votes going on here. The first is selecting which of your veteran crew (which will confer bonuses) you've managed to keep and the second is the race of your new XO. The XOs all have some hidden effects you won't know off the bat but will have mostly narrative value. We'll let this vote go for a day or so and then move onto the final fitting out of the Challenger.
Your time in refit has significantly upgraded your ship's systems, including improvements to its FTL, sensors, and secondary systems. However, Command has made sure your crew weren't idle, and the needs of the service have forced you to give up a number of senior officers for other commands. You were, however, able to prevent other captains from poaching two of your senior officers. They are (select two):
[] Commander Gessica Hoedemaeker: Engineering & Second Officer. One of the most experienced hands in the care and feeding of a Soyuz class cruiser, the Commander knows the inside of the reactor room like the back of her hand and is a steady interface between the engineering and science teams to boot.
Effect: Additional tactical FTL options available, Ship speed increased by 1
[] Lieutenant Commander Thomas Naismith: Weapons Systems officer and command track material, Naismith is a bit of a stick in the mud but an excellent weapons systems officer, synergizing science division systems that are not normally meant for combat operations into his targeting suite to give the ship an extra edge.
Effect: Bonus to ship weapons checks
[] Lieutenant Commander Monika "Gameshow" DaCosta: A woman whose temper doesn't match her slight stature, Gameshow is one of the better fighter pilots you've seen in your career and the commander of your ship's squadron of F/A-92 Warhawk multi-role fighters. Her tattoos and frequently dyed hair aren't the hallmark of traditional military discipline, but not only is she a fighter jock but Expeditionary Command cares more about results than appearance.
Effect: Significant bonus to your ship's fighter squadron
[] Lieutenant Kidan Benyam: Benyam is as cool and confident at the helm as she is in a bar fight. A native of Kumari Kandam who doesn't take her homeland's pacifistic stance too seriously, she controls an expeditionary cruiser with the precision of a surgeon.
Effect: Bonus to ship piloting checks
[] Lieutenant Jyn'Tsk: Ginny to her friends, one of the growing number of chelonians have have emigrated from the Protectorate and its long confrontation with the TKK Imperium. Young for a chelonian, friendly, and open minded, Ginny has settled in as your ship's Operations officer, responsible for overseeing damage control, communications, and secondary ship systems.
Effect: Bonus to ship damage checks & bonus to diplomatic rolls when dealing with Protectorate forces.
[] Master Sergeant Andrej Roland: Your ship has what's termed a "First In" team of marine specialists trained to assist civilians in the rough and tumble of ruined alien city or in delicate diplomatic negotiations. A somewhat reinforced platoon, it is in fact normally headed up by a Marine Lieutentant who isn't completely wet behind the ears. In practice, it's Master Sergeant Roland's unit and the man's four decades of service has led him to see all sorts of things.
Effect: Bonus to any checks involving the marines or groundside operations.
[] Science Team Head Dr. Gina Torres: An expert in xenoarcheology and adapting OPF tech to modern human needs, Dr. Torres also has an easy time interfacing between the military men and women who crew your ship and the mostly civilian science teams that give it its primary mission.
Effect: Bonus when working with OPF relics and technology
[] State Department Attache Madhava Parsamyan: One of the Commonwealth's most experienced diplomats, Parsamyan was assigned to your ship a few years ago to handle negotiations with Trimson Trys and somehow stuck around. Over a century old, and with a resume stretching back to the Hemisphere War on Elysium, he is as adept negotiating a trade treaty with an iase caravan as navigating the still-troubled waters between the Earth states.
Effect: Bonus on all diplomacy related dilemmas.
===============================
As part of this turnover, you're also in a position where you have to select a new First Officer, your previous one now the skipper of the Aurora. Various government elements are pushing hard for greater non-human representation in the upper ranks of Expeditionary Command and Admiral Grant is being pretty insistent. On the other hand, the candidates all have the chops to cut it on your ship-further integrating the non-human citizens of the Commonwealth is important, yes, but nobody wants to put a ship like yours in pointless jeopardy either. She is, at least, letting you pick which one out of the options you want.
[] Commander Trr'gilag: Chelonian. Actually an exchange officer and not a citizen like Ginny, Trr'gilag is a veteran officer of the Long War between the Protectorate and the Imperium. With peace finally broken out after the Christmas Miracle, the Protectorate has begun to step back from simply surviving and wants to restore the long defunct Protectorate Exploration Service. It needs experienced captains and officers to make that happen, and the Commonwealth has offered a number of exchange slots in order to help.
[] Commander Liah Bin-Tran: Apectid. One of the first generation of apectids who came to adulthood in the post-Contact era, she was one of the first of her people offered a slot at the Academy once she'd demonstrated the natural technical expertise. Fifteen years later, she's matured into a model officer and a symbol for all citizens of the Coordinate as they join the greater Commonwealth. Her time among humans has made her a little more independent and less conforming than the Matriarchs back home would like, though.
[] Commander Turanj Pho: Sondrak. Normally most sondrak who enter the Commonwealth Armed Forces join the Marines or Army, their size, strength, and natural regenerative abilities are a tremendous asset. Pho always went against the grain, and has risen fairly quickly through the ranks after graduating from the Academy with honors. His unconventional view of the universe makes him a good potential fit for an exploration vessel, but he may be destined to eventually return to the regular navy and take command of a battlecruiser.
[] Commander Stalks-With-Cunning: Caiveh. She's the spitting image of a caiveh warrior, fierce claws and predator instincts, the caiveh thought themselves masters of all they survey. Unfortunately, they ran into the Imperium and lost their homeworld, with the Commonwealth's caiveh population descended from formerly nomadic clans who've taken the offer to settle down on the colony world of Penzance. A member of the Void Hunter Clan, Stalks-With-Cunning is a rare caiveh who didn't find herself jumping at the chance to become a fighter pilot. Unlike many of her fellows, she recognizes that the image of the caiveh in glorious hand-to-hand combat is undermined both by the misfortunes her species has suffered over the last few thousand years and by the fact that the average caiveh warrior stands barely a meter and a half tall and doesn't break fifty kilos, and is more than willing to use her wit and cunning without resorting to screaming and leaping.
To summarize, vote for two crew and one XO. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves and I'll answer what questions I can without giving away the gig.
Captain Nasir al-Kurabi:
Personal Information:
Born March 17th, 2387, New Kirkuk, Armstrong Federation, Terranova
Family: Parents (both alive), 1 sibling (see MSgt Ibrahim al-Kurabi); Single, no children
Assigned Captain of GCS Challenger: June 19th 2426
Awards, Medals & Citations: Distinguished Service Cross, Lifeguard Medal w/2 Bars, First Contact Medal w/3 Bars, Gold Star for actions in the Galacteon War, Purple Heart; National Defense Service Medal, Anti-Piracy Service Medal ('The Wilberforce') w/Bar, Hypergrid Operations Medal, Exploration Command Service Medal, Longevity Service Ribbon w/40 Year Stripe; Deep Operations Campaign Medal, Battle of Prospect Medal, Silk Road Operations Medal, Apex Operations Medal, Galacteon War Operations Medal w/Tau Ceti & La Jain Stripes, Dahaki War Operations Medal
Challenger Unit Awards Under Command: Commonwealth Citation, Award for Merit w/2 Bars, Expeditionary Command Superior Unit Award w/Five Bars, Expeditionary Ribbon, Platinum Bar
Bio: No captain in Commonwealth service has logged more hours in command of an exploration vessel than Nasir al-Kurabi. With forty five years of service under his belt, over half of them in command of the Challenger, al-Kurabi is arguably the most experienced explorer on the Grid.
al-Kurabi is a man with a fairly easy smile and a dry wit, well-tempered and patient, traits that serve him equally well on delicate missions of diplomacy, in the heat of combat, or when training new crew. He keeps his salt and pepper hair trimmed short, keeping a neat beard most of the time. In his time in command of the Challenger, the ship has gone through two major refits, engaged in three of humanity's First Contacts, surveyed twenty two star systems and conducted dozens of diplomatic, patrol, and show-the-flag missions, as well as participating in rescue operations after the Elysian Holocaust and during the Galacteon and Dahaki War. Off-duty, al-Kurabi enjoys brain teasers and puzzle boxes and keeps tropical fish in his wardroom. One of his prized possessions is a collection of physical brain-teaser puzzles collected from the civilizations he's encountered across the Orion Arm, including two recovered from the ruins of the Open Palm Federation.
===================================================
Now, the vote. In order to keep things moving briskly, we've got two distinct votes going on here. The first is selecting which of your veteran crew (which will confer bonuses) you've managed to keep and the second is the race of your new XO. The XOs all have some hidden effects you won't know off the bat but will have mostly narrative value. We'll let this vote go for a day or so and then move onto the final fitting out of the Challenger.
Your time in refit has significantly upgraded your ship's systems, including improvements to its FTL, sensors, and secondary systems. However, Command has made sure your crew weren't idle, and the needs of the service have forced you to give up a number of senior officers for other commands. You were, however, able to prevent other captains from poaching two of your senior officers. They are (select two):
[] Commander Gessica Hoedemaeker: Engineering & Second Officer. One of the most experienced hands in the care and feeding of a Soyuz class cruiser, the Commander knows the inside of the reactor room like the back of her hand and is a steady interface between the engineering and science teams to boot.
Effect: Additional tactical FTL options available, Ship speed increased by 1
[] Lieutenant Commander Thomas Naismith: Weapons Systems officer and command track material, Naismith is a bit of a stick in the mud but an excellent weapons systems officer, synergizing science division systems that are not normally meant for combat operations into his targeting suite to give the ship an extra edge.
Effect: Bonus to ship weapons checks
[] Lieutenant Commander Monika "Gameshow" DaCosta: A woman whose temper doesn't match her slight stature, Gameshow is one of the better fighter pilots you've seen in your career and the commander of your ship's squadron of F/A-92 Warhawk multi-role fighters. Her tattoos and frequently dyed hair aren't the hallmark of traditional military discipline, but not only is she a fighter jock but Expeditionary Command cares more about results than appearance.
Effect: Significant bonus to your ship's fighter squadron
[] Lieutenant Kidan Benyam: Benyam is as cool and confident at the helm as she is in a bar fight. A native of Kumari Kandam who doesn't take her homeland's pacifistic stance too seriously, she controls an expeditionary cruiser with the precision of a surgeon.
Effect: Bonus to ship piloting checks
[] Lieutenant Jyn'Tsk: Ginny to her friends, one of the growing number of chelonians have have emigrated from the Protectorate and its long confrontation with the TKK Imperium. Young for a chelonian, friendly, and open minded, Ginny has settled in as your ship's Operations officer, responsible for overseeing damage control, communications, and secondary ship systems.
Effect: Bonus to ship damage checks & bonus to diplomatic rolls when dealing with Protectorate forces.
[] Master Sergeant Andrej Roland: Your ship has what's termed a "First In" team of marine specialists trained to assist civilians in the rough and tumble of ruined alien city or in delicate diplomatic negotiations. A somewhat reinforced platoon, it is in fact normally headed up by a Marine Lieutentant who isn't completely wet behind the ears. In practice, it's Master Sergeant Roland's unit and the man's four decades of service has led him to see all sorts of things.
Effect: Bonus to any checks involving the marines or groundside operations.
[] Science Team Head Dr. Gina Torres: An expert in xenoarcheology and adapting OPF tech to modern human needs, Dr. Torres also has an easy time interfacing between the military men and women who crew your ship and the mostly civilian science teams that give it its primary mission.
Effect: Bonus when working with OPF relics and technology
[] State Department Attache Madhava Parsamyan: One of the Commonwealth's most experienced diplomats, Parsamyan was assigned to your ship a few years ago to handle negotiations with Trimson Trys and somehow stuck around. Over a century old, and with a resume stretching back to the Hemisphere War on Elysium, he is as adept negotiating a trade treaty with an iase caravan as navigating the still-troubled waters between the Earth states.
Effect: Bonus on all diplomacy related dilemmas.
===============================
As part of this turnover, you're also in a position where you have to select a new First Officer, your previous one now the skipper of the Aurora. Various government elements are pushing hard for greater non-human representation in the upper ranks of Expeditionary Command and Admiral Grant is being pretty insistent. On the other hand, the candidates all have the chops to cut it on your ship-further integrating the non-human citizens of the Commonwealth is important, yes, but nobody wants to put a ship like yours in pointless jeopardy either. She is, at least, letting you pick which one out of the options you want.
[] Commander Trr'gilag: Chelonian. Actually an exchange officer and not a citizen like Ginny, Trr'gilag is a veteran officer of the Long War between the Protectorate and the Imperium. With peace finally broken out after the Christmas Miracle, the Protectorate has begun to step back from simply surviving and wants to restore the long defunct Protectorate Exploration Service. It needs experienced captains and officers to make that happen, and the Commonwealth has offered a number of exchange slots in order to help.
[] Commander Liah Bin-Tran: Apectid. One of the first generation of apectids who came to adulthood in the post-Contact era, she was one of the first of her people offered a slot at the Academy once she'd demonstrated the natural technical expertise. Fifteen years later, she's matured into a model officer and a symbol for all citizens of the Coordinate as they join the greater Commonwealth. Her time among humans has made her a little more independent and less conforming than the Matriarchs back home would like, though.
[] Commander Turanj Pho: Sondrak. Normally most sondrak who enter the Commonwealth Armed Forces join the Marines or Army, their size, strength, and natural regenerative abilities are a tremendous asset. Pho always went against the grain, and has risen fairly quickly through the ranks after graduating from the Academy with honors. His unconventional view of the universe makes him a good potential fit for an exploration vessel, but he may be destined to eventually return to the regular navy and take command of a battlecruiser.
[] Commander Stalks-With-Cunning: Caiveh. She's the spitting image of a caiveh warrior, fierce claws and predator instincts, the caiveh thought themselves masters of all they survey. Unfortunately, they ran into the Imperium and lost their homeworld, with the Commonwealth's caiveh population descended from formerly nomadic clans who've taken the offer to settle down on the colony world of Penzance. A member of the Void Hunter Clan, Stalks-With-Cunning is a rare caiveh who didn't find herself jumping at the chance to become a fighter pilot. Unlike many of her fellows, she recognizes that the image of the caiveh in glorious hand-to-hand combat is undermined both by the misfortunes her species has suffered over the last few thousand years and by the fact that the average caiveh warrior stands barely a meter and a half tall and doesn't break fifty kilos, and is more than willing to use her wit and cunning without resorting to screaming and leaping.
To summarize, vote for two crew and one XO. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves and I'll answer what questions I can without giving away the gig.
Last edited:
Alien Races 1
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
Someone asked me to describe the races of the potential XOs in some more detail for those of you not familiar with the universe.
Chelonian: Three meters tall and dense for their size, chelonians are descended from a species of cooperative large herders on their high-gravity homeworld. Their size and natural protection meant they had few natural predators and cooperative instincts and tool use developed as a response to climatic shifts on their homeworld meant that even prior to the development of technology they were long lived, but also generally conservative and careful. The Protectorate actually was extant during towards the tail end of the Open Palm Federation, the chelonians very young probationary members at the time. The OPF's long wars against the Swords of Cutting Truth missed what was by any real measure a backwater and, with the fall of the OPF the Protectorate returned to minding their own business and carefully developing their worlds. After a few thousand years, they ran into a surviving colony of TKK who'd also survived the OPF's fall. Unfortunately the normally amiable bioengineering experts didn't take things nearly as calmly as the unflappable turtles, and this touched off the Long War-an alternating series of hot and cold running conflicts that gradually saw the Protectorate ground down to a handful of systems at the time of First Contact with humanity. Human military intervention brought the Protectorate a respite, coupled with the Christmas Miracle-the intervention of one of the more-than-slightly-mad Zani-Zigulu-that brought the chance of a more lasting peace. Since contact with humanity, some chelonians have taken the opportunity to get as far away from the TKK Imperium as possible, while the Protectorate has also rebuilt and begun to engage in the dance of politics with the mostly human polities of the Grid.
Caiveh: The Germanic tribes to the Imperium's Rome, the original caiveh homeworld was overrun by the Clicks long ago, at some point during the Long War. The surviving non-conquered caiveh survive on the fringes of the Imperium, sometimes allying with the Protectorate and othertimes raiding both it and the Imperium. Contact with humanity opened up new fields of opportunity for the caiveh, from opportunities for mercenary contracts to targets for raiding for, in some cases, a chance to break the cycle. Some tribes have accepted offers from human states like the Commonwealth and settled down on worlds suited for their preferences on the Grid, looking to rebuild the shattered cultural legacy of their people.
The caiveh body plan screams apex predator...but a small one. Upright a caiveh averages 1.5 meters tall and masses between 40 and 60 kilograms. Keen ears matched with good binocular vision give the caiveh senses better than a human, and dark fur and a strong leap enable them to be great ambush hunters. Caiveh endurance is nothing like a human's however, a key difference noted by the more educated among the Clans. Pack hunters by nature, ecological pressures forced pre-technology caiveh to adopt to ranching in order to preserve food stores. This led to all of the eventual follow on technologies, and prior to their conquest by the Imperium, the caiveh had a fairly functional multisystem government not all that different from any average Grid state. Thousands of years of being refugees and fighting on the edges of the civilization have made the caiveh what they are, not any kind of biological or cultural impulse.
Sondrak: In contrast to the caiveh, the sondrak do have a natural impulse to hierarchy that is responsible for their political behavior. Large predators from the dry, hot world of Cyrx, the sondrak are blessed with a natural regenerative ability that have trivialized physical combat and injury between them. This resulted in a very aggressive, hegemonic culture in which the ruling Imperial family eventually tried to direct against fueglan, daedalian, and Bond colonies on the Hypergrid, building a decent sized empire prior to the intervention of the American Majestic Expedition on the eve of the Collapse. The Majestic discovery of a cache of functioning OPF warships enabled the Expedition to intervene in the defense of a major fueglan core world and trigger an internal revolt as the Ruling family had been deemed unworthy. The action wasn't undertaken out of some kind of altruism-Majestic had news from home, knew humanity was blowing itself to pieces, and knew the lizards would roll over the Grid in that condition.
The civil war burned itself out in a couple of decades, with several independent pocket empires setting themselves outside of Imperial authority. The Americans of Majestic engaged in their favorite recreational activity, occupation and nation building, and after recontact with the Grid were joined by the Commonwealth, Isabella, Japan, and other members of the Crossroads Alliance Treaty Organization. After a century of social engineering, most sondrak are beginning to admit the fucking thinskins might be onto something.
Apectids: The apectids were among the first species contacted by the Grid, and prior to Contact had attained a level of technology roughly equivalent to 1960s Earth, with nuclear weapons (only used once in anger, like on Earth at the time), basic orbital rockets, and the beginning of a global telecommunications network. Best described physically as six-limbed omnivores hyena-snakes, the apectids are most notable for having functional psyker abilities that give them, if not a hive mind, a strong cultural impulse towards conformity and social consensus. Indeed, the single use of nuclear weapons in their history was against a polity that had been infected with the equivalent of mad-cow, which drove their decision making to destructive and horrible ends. Thirty years of contact with the Marian Hegemony and the Commonwealth have given them a functional understanding of modern technology and after the Galacteon War they drifted into CATO political orbit. This lead to a closer and closer relationship with the GolCom until a few years ago when the Coordinate decided to join as full members, shifting the Commonwealth from a human majority to a human plurality and spurring on some of the very social pressures you're addressing by making a non-human the XO of such a prominent and well known ship.
Chelonian: Three meters tall and dense for their size, chelonians are descended from a species of cooperative large herders on their high-gravity homeworld. Their size and natural protection meant they had few natural predators and cooperative instincts and tool use developed as a response to climatic shifts on their homeworld meant that even prior to the development of technology they were long lived, but also generally conservative and careful. The Protectorate actually was extant during towards the tail end of the Open Palm Federation, the chelonians very young probationary members at the time. The OPF's long wars against the Swords of Cutting Truth missed what was by any real measure a backwater and, with the fall of the OPF the Protectorate returned to minding their own business and carefully developing their worlds. After a few thousand years, they ran into a surviving colony of TKK who'd also survived the OPF's fall. Unfortunately the normally amiable bioengineering experts didn't take things nearly as calmly as the unflappable turtles, and this touched off the Long War-an alternating series of hot and cold running conflicts that gradually saw the Protectorate ground down to a handful of systems at the time of First Contact with humanity. Human military intervention brought the Protectorate a respite, coupled with the Christmas Miracle-the intervention of one of the more-than-slightly-mad Zani-Zigulu-that brought the chance of a more lasting peace. Since contact with humanity, some chelonians have taken the opportunity to get as far away from the TKK Imperium as possible, while the Protectorate has also rebuilt and begun to engage in the dance of politics with the mostly human polities of the Grid.
Caiveh: The Germanic tribes to the Imperium's Rome, the original caiveh homeworld was overrun by the Clicks long ago, at some point during the Long War. The surviving non-conquered caiveh survive on the fringes of the Imperium, sometimes allying with the Protectorate and othertimes raiding both it and the Imperium. Contact with humanity opened up new fields of opportunity for the caiveh, from opportunities for mercenary contracts to targets for raiding for, in some cases, a chance to break the cycle. Some tribes have accepted offers from human states like the Commonwealth and settled down on worlds suited for their preferences on the Grid, looking to rebuild the shattered cultural legacy of their people.
The caiveh body plan screams apex predator...but a small one. Upright a caiveh averages 1.5 meters tall and masses between 40 and 60 kilograms. Keen ears matched with good binocular vision give the caiveh senses better than a human, and dark fur and a strong leap enable them to be great ambush hunters. Caiveh endurance is nothing like a human's however, a key difference noted by the more educated among the Clans. Pack hunters by nature, ecological pressures forced pre-technology caiveh to adopt to ranching in order to preserve food stores. This led to all of the eventual follow on technologies, and prior to their conquest by the Imperium, the caiveh had a fairly functional multisystem government not all that different from any average Grid state. Thousands of years of being refugees and fighting on the edges of the civilization have made the caiveh what they are, not any kind of biological or cultural impulse.
Sondrak: In contrast to the caiveh, the sondrak do have a natural impulse to hierarchy that is responsible for their political behavior. Large predators from the dry, hot world of Cyrx, the sondrak are blessed with a natural regenerative ability that have trivialized physical combat and injury between them. This resulted in a very aggressive, hegemonic culture in which the ruling Imperial family eventually tried to direct against fueglan, daedalian, and Bond colonies on the Hypergrid, building a decent sized empire prior to the intervention of the American Majestic Expedition on the eve of the Collapse. The Majestic discovery of a cache of functioning OPF warships enabled the Expedition to intervene in the defense of a major fueglan core world and trigger an internal revolt as the Ruling family had been deemed unworthy. The action wasn't undertaken out of some kind of altruism-Majestic had news from home, knew humanity was blowing itself to pieces, and knew the lizards would roll over the Grid in that condition.
The civil war burned itself out in a couple of decades, with several independent pocket empires setting themselves outside of Imperial authority. The Americans of Majestic engaged in their favorite recreational activity, occupation and nation building, and after recontact with the Grid were joined by the Commonwealth, Isabella, Japan, and other members of the Crossroads Alliance Treaty Organization. After a century of social engineering, most sondrak are beginning to admit the fucking thinskins might be onto something.
Apectids: The apectids were among the first species contacted by the Grid, and prior to Contact had attained a level of technology roughly equivalent to 1960s Earth, with nuclear weapons (only used once in anger, like on Earth at the time), basic orbital rockets, and the beginning of a global telecommunications network. Best described physically as six-limbed omnivores hyena-snakes, the apectids are most notable for having functional psyker abilities that give them, if not a hive mind, a strong cultural impulse towards conformity and social consensus. Indeed, the single use of nuclear weapons in their history was against a polity that had been infected with the equivalent of mad-cow, which drove their decision making to destructive and horrible ends. Thirty years of contact with the Marian Hegemony and the Commonwealth have given them a functional understanding of modern technology and after the Galacteon War they drifted into CATO political orbit. This lead to a closer and closer relationship with the GolCom until a few years ago when the Coordinate decided to join as full members, shifting the Commonwealth from a human majority to a human plurality and spurring on some of the very social pressures you're addressing by making a non-human the XO of such a prominent and well known ship.
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Contacts & Multi-Mission module
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
So we have a three-way tie for XO. I've rolled off and Trr'gilag won. Hoedemaeker and Parsamyan are your two returning senior staff. For the final vote we now have two final selections to make before we're off on our first mission.
Contacts:
Your career has been long and taken you over a good chunk of the Orion Arm, and in that time you've accumulated favors and friendships with humans and aliens alike. But, your most useful contact is probably...
[] First Captain Goronomois of the Bond 76th Patrol Squadron.
The Bond would be ideal friend with humanity-a multispecies democratic society dedicated to scientific pursuits and ensuring a generally safe galaxy for all. Except for the part where they venerate the Zani-Zigulur entity known as the "Guardian" as a goddess and knock over smaller powers to spread that worship wherever they can. Humanity is a bit too big a bite for the Bond to swallow, so they've treated us as equals and been cordial. Their five decade long war with the semi-avian hyfi over a fair chunk of the Perseus Arm of the Hypergrid demonstrates that's not always the case. Still, there are areas of mutual interest between the Bond and the Commonwealth, and your relationship with the First Captain grew out of that. The canny tirlani recognizes that the Commonwealth's more a friend than an enemy even if we don't venerate his goddess, and when you're dealing with a sondrak buccaneer squadron or an awakened tharngolst reaper, it's really valuable to have the High Captain's ships on your side.
Effect: Bonus to available assets during Hypergrid Missions
[] Special Agent Atticus Lee of the Office of Special Projects.
The OSP is the Commonwealth's "wet works" intelligence service, serving as the largest department within the larger Intelligent Department. In the old days that job involved hunting Golgothan raiders and busting down slaver strongholds, and to be fair that's still to a degree the case, although Lee bitches he's been on diplomatic protection duty entirely too often for his itchy trigger finger. As OSP's primary troubleshooter, Lee can call on any number of assets depending on the situation and has personal authority over the operations ship Boldheart.
Effect: Bonus to available assets during missions that can seriously impact Commonwealth national security
[] Special Representative Andrea van Amstel of Duval Diversified Interstellar.
One of the largest of the multinational transstellars, although Grumman Terranova is the Commonwealth's primary shipbuilder, DDI has its fingers in all sorts of interesting technical developments and new innovations. Andrea is someone you met during the Challenger's last refit, trying to sell Expeditionary Command on some sort of outstanding new widget. The widget was actually really damn useful, and Andrea appreciated the ridiculous bonus she got in part due to your genuinely glowing recommendation. Since then, she's slipped you various prototypes to "field test", given DDI was generally risk adverse and hates stepping outside their comfortable chain of asteroid settlements near Elysium.
Effect: Chance to gain random new gizmo that will enhance your mission capabilities prior to each mission.
[] Free Captain Linda Durant
Golgotha was the biggest problem for the nascent Successor States after the Collapse, acting as a haven for pirates and freebooters across human space. To be fair they had their own code of conduct, and the egregious ones-those who trafficked in kids, who randomly spaced merchant crews, and the like-were finished off just as harshly by the Durant family as if they'd been caught by state crews-but it's conservatively estimated that Golgotha set back the reconstruction of the Grid by about twenty years. Still, that was in the past and over the last few decades it's slowly shed its outright criminal past to become a place that acts as an interface between the legal and illegal. Contacts there come in handy given some of the more...esoteric missions that your ship has been assigned to.
Linda Durant is a peripheral member of the extended Durant clan who have ruled Golgotha since the Collapse. A Free Captain in her own right, with her own corsair, she lives by Golgotha's Free State ethics...but at the same time, sees no value in pointless brutality or simply burning down civilization for the hell of it, unlike some others of that fraternity. It's one thing to smuggle recreational drugs to some far off asteroid outpost or engage in a little light piracy of an ore freighter, but slavery or smart-matter smuggling is beyond a line Durant won't cross. You can respect that, and sometimes you need the information she can provide. In return, you'll overlook that shipment of glittersticks next time the Challenger pulls a routine patrol.
Effect: You gain underworld contacts which can be extremely useful in various circumstances.
===================
Finally, the Challenger, and for that matter all other Expeditionary Cruisers, have a multi-mission module that can be fitted with various special equipment. The changeover process has to be completed before deployment but can be switched between missions. The benefits of these options are pretty obvious, so.
What do you load in the bays?
[] Additional science gear: Sensor pallets, drones, and various gear that is an asset on scientific and survey missions. Also occasionally useful for solving Weird Problems of the Week (why is that all capitalized?)
[] An additional fighter squadron. Soyuz class ships normally carry a single squadron of Warhawks, but the multi-mission space can also be simply configured to act as a second hanger. Also comes with a few more disposable orbit-to-ground short range shuttles.
[] A Starspear platform. A complicated, somewhat fragile energy weapon of dubious heritage, starspears disrupt the bonds linking smart-matter constructs on a molecular level. Given smart-matter is used by rogue tharngolst reapers, the Dahaki, and also heavily by the mad Admiral Etienne Darlan's Ars Goetias, a weapon that can mess it up good is a valuable tool for any Commonwealth captain.
[] (Special unlock due to Captain selection) A Hoplite team. Hoplites are elite special forces assigned to trouble spots as needed. Equipped with gear made by relic OPF autofacs, they're quite literally beyond the cutting edge-each fireteam costs approximately as much to equip and fit out as a Robert the Bruce class light cruiser. Still, when you need a five man fireteam to...do pretty much anything you need a fireteam can do, these are your guys. In this case, the connection is al-Kurabi's brother, who is assigned to the Hoplite Gamma team. You won't get Gamma, families are never deployed together, but the family connection plus your reputation means they're willing to deploy a team to your ship...in case something comes up.
Contacts:
Your career has been long and taken you over a good chunk of the Orion Arm, and in that time you've accumulated favors and friendships with humans and aliens alike. But, your most useful contact is probably...
[] First Captain Goronomois of the Bond 76th Patrol Squadron.
The Bond would be ideal friend with humanity-a multispecies democratic society dedicated to scientific pursuits and ensuring a generally safe galaxy for all. Except for the part where they venerate the Zani-Zigulur entity known as the "Guardian" as a goddess and knock over smaller powers to spread that worship wherever they can. Humanity is a bit too big a bite for the Bond to swallow, so they've treated us as equals and been cordial. Their five decade long war with the semi-avian hyfi over a fair chunk of the Perseus Arm of the Hypergrid demonstrates that's not always the case. Still, there are areas of mutual interest between the Bond and the Commonwealth, and your relationship with the First Captain grew out of that. The canny tirlani recognizes that the Commonwealth's more a friend than an enemy even if we don't venerate his goddess, and when you're dealing with a sondrak buccaneer squadron or an awakened tharngolst reaper, it's really valuable to have the High Captain's ships on your side.
Effect: Bonus to available assets during Hypergrid Missions
[] Special Agent Atticus Lee of the Office of Special Projects.
The OSP is the Commonwealth's "wet works" intelligence service, serving as the largest department within the larger Intelligent Department. In the old days that job involved hunting Golgothan raiders and busting down slaver strongholds, and to be fair that's still to a degree the case, although Lee bitches he's been on diplomatic protection duty entirely too often for his itchy trigger finger. As OSP's primary troubleshooter, Lee can call on any number of assets depending on the situation and has personal authority over the operations ship Boldheart.
Effect: Bonus to available assets during missions that can seriously impact Commonwealth national security
[] Special Representative Andrea van Amstel of Duval Diversified Interstellar.
One of the largest of the multinational transstellars, although Grumman Terranova is the Commonwealth's primary shipbuilder, DDI has its fingers in all sorts of interesting technical developments and new innovations. Andrea is someone you met during the Challenger's last refit, trying to sell Expeditionary Command on some sort of outstanding new widget. The widget was actually really damn useful, and Andrea appreciated the ridiculous bonus she got in part due to your genuinely glowing recommendation. Since then, she's slipped you various prototypes to "field test", given DDI was generally risk adverse and hates stepping outside their comfortable chain of asteroid settlements near Elysium.
Effect: Chance to gain random new gizmo that will enhance your mission capabilities prior to each mission.
[] Free Captain Linda Durant
Golgotha was the biggest problem for the nascent Successor States after the Collapse, acting as a haven for pirates and freebooters across human space. To be fair they had their own code of conduct, and the egregious ones-those who trafficked in kids, who randomly spaced merchant crews, and the like-were finished off just as harshly by the Durant family as if they'd been caught by state crews-but it's conservatively estimated that Golgotha set back the reconstruction of the Grid by about twenty years. Still, that was in the past and over the last few decades it's slowly shed its outright criminal past to become a place that acts as an interface between the legal and illegal. Contacts there come in handy given some of the more...esoteric missions that your ship has been assigned to.
Linda Durant is a peripheral member of the extended Durant clan who have ruled Golgotha since the Collapse. A Free Captain in her own right, with her own corsair, she lives by Golgotha's Free State ethics...but at the same time, sees no value in pointless brutality or simply burning down civilization for the hell of it, unlike some others of that fraternity. It's one thing to smuggle recreational drugs to some far off asteroid outpost or engage in a little light piracy of an ore freighter, but slavery or smart-matter smuggling is beyond a line Durant won't cross. You can respect that, and sometimes you need the information she can provide. In return, you'll overlook that shipment of glittersticks next time the Challenger pulls a routine patrol.
Effect: You gain underworld contacts which can be extremely useful in various circumstances.
===================
Finally, the Challenger, and for that matter all other Expeditionary Cruisers, have a multi-mission module that can be fitted with various special equipment. The changeover process has to be completed before deployment but can be switched between missions. The benefits of these options are pretty obvious, so.
What do you load in the bays?
[] Additional science gear: Sensor pallets, drones, and various gear that is an asset on scientific and survey missions. Also occasionally useful for solving Weird Problems of the Week (why is that all capitalized?)
[] An additional fighter squadron. Soyuz class ships normally carry a single squadron of Warhawks, but the multi-mission space can also be simply configured to act as a second hanger. Also comes with a few more disposable orbit-to-ground short range shuttles.
[] A Starspear platform. A complicated, somewhat fragile energy weapon of dubious heritage, starspears disrupt the bonds linking smart-matter constructs on a molecular level. Given smart-matter is used by rogue tharngolst reapers, the Dahaki, and also heavily by the mad Admiral Etienne Darlan's Ars Goetias, a weapon that can mess it up good is a valuable tool for any Commonwealth captain.
[] (Special unlock due to Captain selection) A Hoplite team. Hoplites are elite special forces assigned to trouble spots as needed. Equipped with gear made by relic OPF autofacs, they're quite literally beyond the cutting edge-each fireteam costs approximately as much to equip and fit out as a Robert the Bruce class light cruiser. Still, when you need a five man fireteam to...do pretty much anything you need a fireteam can do, these are your guys. In this case, the connection is al-Kurabi's brother, who is assigned to the Hoplite Gamma team. You won't get Gamma, families are never deployed together, but the family connection plus your reputation means they're willing to deploy a team to your ship...in case something comes up.
Deployment
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
So the final decision is what operational squadron Challenger is assigned to. Normally captains don't have remotely this kind of authority but I want to give you guys some choice and al-Kurabi has more lattitude than most.
[] Deep Space Operations Squadron: Focused on operations around the Grid, pushing the boundaries of explored space around Sol. Missions tend to involve pirates, charting systems (although generally fairly humdrum systems), diplomatic contact with Demimonde colonies, and the like. Of course there could be all sorts of things out there-several species have been contacted simply by poking around the neighborhood and seeing what's out there. This also generally includes survey and exploration of known deep-space objects like the on-going Orion Nebula Mapping Mission and missions to conduct scientific studies on things like pulsars. The most dangerous (known) issue is Galacteon Revanant ships out there from the war. Of course there can also be diplomatic consquences if a particularly juicy garden world is discovered and other nations have ships in the area.
[] Hypergrid Operations Squadron: Focused on operations on the Hypergrid itself, these missions tend to be higher risk but also higher reward. Survey and salvage of Open Palm derelicts and colony worlds is a fairly big part of the mission, along with diplomatic missions with non-human colonies and showing the flag type missions. Not much of a chance for a 'pure science' type mission, as most Hypergrid-connected systems were by intent put around average ordinary stars with economically valuable planets.
[] Grid Operations Squadron: Expeditionary cruisers are sometimes assigned to assist in "domestic" operations, ranging from heavy anti-piracy patrols to disaster relief to hostage rescue and various other missions other than war. There's also the chance your ship's sensors may assist in some sort of intelligence gathering mission. Almost no chance of science here, but also probably not a huge chance of shooting at anything too dangerous because that would mean a war has broken out and something's gone pear-shaped.
[] Deep Space Operations Squadron: Focused on operations around the Grid, pushing the boundaries of explored space around Sol. Missions tend to involve pirates, charting systems (although generally fairly humdrum systems), diplomatic contact with Demimonde colonies, and the like. Of course there could be all sorts of things out there-several species have been contacted simply by poking around the neighborhood and seeing what's out there. This also generally includes survey and exploration of known deep-space objects like the on-going Orion Nebula Mapping Mission and missions to conduct scientific studies on things like pulsars. The most dangerous (known) issue is Galacteon Revanant ships out there from the war. Of course there can also be diplomatic consquences if a particularly juicy garden world is discovered and other nations have ships in the area.
[] Hypergrid Operations Squadron: Focused on operations on the Hypergrid itself, these missions tend to be higher risk but also higher reward. Survey and salvage of Open Palm derelicts and colony worlds is a fairly big part of the mission, along with diplomatic missions with non-human colonies and showing the flag type missions. Not much of a chance for a 'pure science' type mission, as most Hypergrid-connected systems were by intent put around average ordinary stars with economically valuable planets.
[] Grid Operations Squadron: Expeditionary cruisers are sometimes assigned to assist in "domestic" operations, ranging from heavy anti-piracy patrols to disaster relief to hostage rescue and various other missions other than war. There's also the chance your ship's sensors may assist in some sort of intelligence gathering mission. Almost no chance of science here, but also probably not a huge chance of shooting at anything too dangerous because that would mean a war has broken out and something's gone pear-shaped.
Mission 1.1
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
Winner: Deep Space Operations by a landslide. We still have a tie on Contact, so I'm going to just flip a coin and let people know during the next update.
Naval Station Yi Sun-Sin
Equatorial Orbit, Crossroads, Golden Commonwealth
January 22nd, 2452
The browns and greens of the world of Crossroads spin below you as you wait for the elevator car. The world had been barren five or six decades ago, the hand of man transforming a world that had once resembled Mars into one that baseline humans could walk on unaided. It was still a bit raw-it'd be another few decades before the environment was perfectly settled-but that hadn't stopped millions from moving to the compromise capital of the new Commonwealth once it had been founded.
The Challenger was ready for space. The nine month overhaul had been unpleasant but needed, your ship in serious need of some upgrades and also the opportunity to properly replace equipment damaged in the field and repaired there. Of course, they'd jumped on the opportunity to raid her for experienced crew-the service was constantly expanding. You'd expected to lose Commander McEcheran-you'd written the recommendation that Natalia be promoted to captain yourself, after all-but losing so much of the senior staff had hurt. You'd managed to hang onto Gessica-it was hard to argue that you didn't your experienced engineering officer during the middle of a major refit, after all-and Madhava had somehow stuck around. Then again, Expeditionary Command had only so much authority over the Kumari Kandam native, so you weren't too surprised.
Your new XO was settling in, at least. You'd expected an apectid to be at least a little unfamiliar with human cultural expectations, but Liah had been doing well so far in settling the new crew aboard Challenger while you attended to a thousand and one other things, including using your contacts to secure the deployment of a Hoplite team aboard. Their equipment was heinously expensive, and you'd been told in no uncertain terms that if you broke them you'd probably not be getting any more. Ibrahim had explained why the last time the two of you both had leave and had been home for the holidays-the enhancements to the organic and non-organic members of the team were well within the realms of normal Grid science and considered fairly ordinary applications of genetic engineering and computer science, after all. The battle armor they wore was another story. The Commonwealth only had access to a single old OPF minifac that produced each suit individually tailored to an operator, and attempts to duplicate the incredibly complicated pieces of gear had thus far all failed miserably. For all that humanity had managed to duplicate many of the ordinary technological achievements of the old OPF, the Federation's cutting edge remained well beyond what human science could duplicate.
With the ship about ready for space, you were about to get your brief from Admiral Grant. The Challenger would be deployed at first to Deep Space operations-the thought was to give your ship some time to work out the new gear before throwing it into the Deep Hypergrid, for which you were thankful. A nice system survey or two would be a good way to let a new command crew gel before dealing with the headaches the Hypergrid had provided you over the years.
The lift arrived and quickly whisked you the few flights to Flag country. The view of the planet below was still spectacular, with a cruiser-it looked like the Angela Merkel-coming in for resupply on one of the docking ports further down the Beanstalk station. Of course it was durasteel with a smart-screen, and not a window, but to most eyes there wasn't a big difference. The lift arrived at its destination, and you went deeper into the station, returning a few salutes from junior staff before coming to the office of Marina Grant. The two marines on sentry duty salute sharply, the one on the left palming the outer officer door open after you return the gesture. Inside the outer office, you make small talk with Grant's administrative assistant for a moment about mutual friends before Grant pings him that she was done with the call that had held her up in the first place. He informs you and turns back to his work as you step into the inner office of your superior officer.
Grant had, like you, come up through Expeditionary Command, as captain of the first Discovery for a few years before accepting a promotion out of the big chair. She frequently observed that by any rights you should be her boss, but your relative informality, born of decades of mutual friendship and service, didn't prevent her from issuing the orders and you following them when the situation warranted. Like today.
Marina gestured towards the chair opposite to her desk and the cup of coffee already sitting, steaming, in a holder attached to the arm. You supposed there were some advantages to being as senior as you were, after all-your boss made sure her assistant made your coffee the way you liked it, with synthmilk and two sugars.
"Admiral." You say, sipping from the steaming mug with your ship's logo emblazoned on the side. Grant had a mug for each of the ships under her command and when her captains were in for briefing, they got their beverage of choice in their ship's mug. Rumor has it that was how both Rochelle in Ariane and Mila with the new Discovery had found out they'd been promoted. It was a nice touch.
"Nasir." She replied, sipping from a mug she'd salvaged from the ruins of her own command after it'd been towed back, broken, during the Galacteon War.
"Oh, it's first names? So much for a quiet first cruise to work up the newbies." you observe with a small smile. To her credit, Grant only quirks an eyebrow at your comment before sliding over a datapad.
"We had a plan to do just that, unfortunately we have a problem." She sighed, throwing data up on the wall for the two of you to review.
"What kind of problem?" you ask as the datapad digests your thumbprint and load whatever files it contained to your internal systems.
"The antimatter kind." She replies with a deadly seriousness to her voice.
The datafiles upload to your system and you skim them rapidly before looking over at the wall display. It's a map of a section of the Grid to Trailing, what more or less amounts to the 'frontier' for the Commonwealth and several other human states. The Commonwealth colony at Ctesiphon is lit in brilliant blue, Phoenix Empire settlements at Neu Adenaurberg and Chi Cancri in orange. A dusting of other settlements, mostly independent, sprinkle across a region some fifty or sixty light years across. Disrupting the view was a half dozen blossoms of red.
"The red indicates confirmed hits on long-range freighters in the past two months. At first, we didn't think there was anything of real concern-you know as well as I do that unfortunately it's an issue on the fringes still, and it's better than it's been. What pinged our attention is the fact that the crews were spaced."
"Well that eliminates Golgotha." You observe, a cool chill settling in your gut. Golgotha may be a haven for pirates and outright scum, but they had rules they followed that had so-far kept the various coalitions of the Grid from judging it worth it to remove them from their perch around Sirius. Rule number one was no excessive civilian deaths. Oxygen and food printers weren't expensive. Pirates were after what was in the cargo hold of a ship, generally, not the people aboard it. Sure, there might be the occasional ransom or hostage situation, but by the by as long as things stayed below a certain level of escalation, the big shipping companies were prepared to accept losing half a percent of their revenues. Sometimes the cost of doing business was a shipment of durasteel getting jacked out in the black. A body count turned it from an insurance problem to a problem that got a cruiser involved.
"That, as bad as it is, isn't the worst part." Grant replied grimly. "We got sensor data from the fifth raid, off of Ascalon, from a PMC destroyer on patrol there. They didn't have the chops to deal with whoever carried out the hit, as you'll see."
Footage and sensor data took over the wall, and your eyes quickly made sense of what you were seeing. And widened. Whoever was driving the modified Black Bart, they were using antimatter munitions to do it.
"We've asked our contacts in Golgotha. The Durant family are not supplying freebooters with antimatter. We're reasonably sure they're on the level, our intel estimates of their own production capability match what they're claiming." Grant said, pointing to a long list of numbers and confirmed intelligence. "Plus the spacing issue."
Antimatter was expensive to produce. It required infrastructure, solar panels and particle accelerators and the workforce to keep them up. Manufacturing it in quantities that could be useful in combat was both expensive and obvious. It was the sort of thing nation-states needed to do, or the very largest of megacorps. Given its destructive potential it was also something that was monitored. Golgotha certainly had the capability to produce it in quantity, but they reserved it for the use of the Free Navy and not just any random freebooter that called Sirius a homeport.
"So what's the mission?" you ask, sitting up in the chair and setting aside the mug.
"Find the source of supply for this band of pirates and set a beacon so we can bring in a task force and blow it up or seize it." Grant says, turning to look at you. "Challenger can take half a dozen of those Barts, antimatter munitions or not. Don't be afraid to break some heads. You've got a Hoplite team and we'll see about shaking loose some intelligence assets to help you hunt down some leads. I'd suggest starting at one of the wildcat colonies. These bastards are bound to have some people on the ground somewhere feeding them information. Shake some tree branches and see what falls out."
"Yes ma'am." you answer, standing and snapping a salute. "We'll get it done."
~~~~~
At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if the vote shifts suddenly in favor of Lee as your contact option and if that happens that happens given the vote's still tied and still open. Regardless, how do you begin the investigation?
[] Travel to the independent world of Ascalon.
[] Travel to the independent colony of Leahy's Lament.
[] Travel to the independent colony of Baker II.
[] We have a colony in the area too. Let's make sure there's no trouble at home, first. Set course for Ctesiphon.
[] Write-In
I'll have a bit of a lore post explaining FTL in the setting at some point, as there's important differences between Alcubierre (which most ships, including most warships, use) and Fold drives (which are much more advanced and, also, obviously, expensive) like what's on the Challenger.
Naval Station Yi Sun-Sin
Equatorial Orbit, Crossroads, Golden Commonwealth
January 22nd, 2452
The browns and greens of the world of Crossroads spin below you as you wait for the elevator car. The world had been barren five or six decades ago, the hand of man transforming a world that had once resembled Mars into one that baseline humans could walk on unaided. It was still a bit raw-it'd be another few decades before the environment was perfectly settled-but that hadn't stopped millions from moving to the compromise capital of the new Commonwealth once it had been founded.
The Challenger was ready for space. The nine month overhaul had been unpleasant but needed, your ship in serious need of some upgrades and also the opportunity to properly replace equipment damaged in the field and repaired there. Of course, they'd jumped on the opportunity to raid her for experienced crew-the service was constantly expanding. You'd expected to lose Commander McEcheran-you'd written the recommendation that Natalia be promoted to captain yourself, after all-but losing so much of the senior staff had hurt. You'd managed to hang onto Gessica-it was hard to argue that you didn't your experienced engineering officer during the middle of a major refit, after all-and Madhava had somehow stuck around. Then again, Expeditionary Command had only so much authority over the Kumari Kandam native, so you weren't too surprised.
Your new XO was settling in, at least. You'd expected an apectid to be at least a little unfamiliar with human cultural expectations, but Liah had been doing well so far in settling the new crew aboard Challenger while you attended to a thousand and one other things, including using your contacts to secure the deployment of a Hoplite team aboard. Their equipment was heinously expensive, and you'd been told in no uncertain terms that if you broke them you'd probably not be getting any more. Ibrahim had explained why the last time the two of you both had leave and had been home for the holidays-the enhancements to the organic and non-organic members of the team were well within the realms of normal Grid science and considered fairly ordinary applications of genetic engineering and computer science, after all. The battle armor they wore was another story. The Commonwealth only had access to a single old OPF minifac that produced each suit individually tailored to an operator, and attempts to duplicate the incredibly complicated pieces of gear had thus far all failed miserably. For all that humanity had managed to duplicate many of the ordinary technological achievements of the old OPF, the Federation's cutting edge remained well beyond what human science could duplicate.
With the ship about ready for space, you were about to get your brief from Admiral Grant. The Challenger would be deployed at first to Deep Space operations-the thought was to give your ship some time to work out the new gear before throwing it into the Deep Hypergrid, for which you were thankful. A nice system survey or two would be a good way to let a new command crew gel before dealing with the headaches the Hypergrid had provided you over the years.
The lift arrived and quickly whisked you the few flights to Flag country. The view of the planet below was still spectacular, with a cruiser-it looked like the Angela Merkel-coming in for resupply on one of the docking ports further down the Beanstalk station. Of course it was durasteel with a smart-screen, and not a window, but to most eyes there wasn't a big difference. The lift arrived at its destination, and you went deeper into the station, returning a few salutes from junior staff before coming to the office of Marina Grant. The two marines on sentry duty salute sharply, the one on the left palming the outer officer door open after you return the gesture. Inside the outer office, you make small talk with Grant's administrative assistant for a moment about mutual friends before Grant pings him that she was done with the call that had held her up in the first place. He informs you and turns back to his work as you step into the inner office of your superior officer.
Grant had, like you, come up through Expeditionary Command, as captain of the first Discovery for a few years before accepting a promotion out of the big chair. She frequently observed that by any rights you should be her boss, but your relative informality, born of decades of mutual friendship and service, didn't prevent her from issuing the orders and you following them when the situation warranted. Like today.
Marina gestured towards the chair opposite to her desk and the cup of coffee already sitting, steaming, in a holder attached to the arm. You supposed there were some advantages to being as senior as you were, after all-your boss made sure her assistant made your coffee the way you liked it, with synthmilk and two sugars.
"Admiral." You say, sipping from the steaming mug with your ship's logo emblazoned on the side. Grant had a mug for each of the ships under her command and when her captains were in for briefing, they got their beverage of choice in their ship's mug. Rumor has it that was how both Rochelle in Ariane and Mila with the new Discovery had found out they'd been promoted. It was a nice touch.
"Nasir." She replied, sipping from a mug she'd salvaged from the ruins of her own command after it'd been towed back, broken, during the Galacteon War.
"Oh, it's first names? So much for a quiet first cruise to work up the newbies." you observe with a small smile. To her credit, Grant only quirks an eyebrow at your comment before sliding over a datapad.
"We had a plan to do just that, unfortunately we have a problem." She sighed, throwing data up on the wall for the two of you to review.
"What kind of problem?" you ask as the datapad digests your thumbprint and load whatever files it contained to your internal systems.
"The antimatter kind." She replies with a deadly seriousness to her voice.
The datafiles upload to your system and you skim them rapidly before looking over at the wall display. It's a map of a section of the Grid to Trailing, what more or less amounts to the 'frontier' for the Commonwealth and several other human states. The Commonwealth colony at Ctesiphon is lit in brilliant blue, Phoenix Empire settlements at Neu Adenaurberg and Chi Cancri in orange. A dusting of other settlements, mostly independent, sprinkle across a region some fifty or sixty light years across. Disrupting the view was a half dozen blossoms of red.
"The red indicates confirmed hits on long-range freighters in the past two months. At first, we didn't think there was anything of real concern-you know as well as I do that unfortunately it's an issue on the fringes still, and it's better than it's been. What pinged our attention is the fact that the crews were spaced."
"Well that eliminates Golgotha." You observe, a cool chill settling in your gut. Golgotha may be a haven for pirates and outright scum, but they had rules they followed that had so-far kept the various coalitions of the Grid from judging it worth it to remove them from their perch around Sirius. Rule number one was no excessive civilian deaths. Oxygen and food printers weren't expensive. Pirates were after what was in the cargo hold of a ship, generally, not the people aboard it. Sure, there might be the occasional ransom or hostage situation, but by the by as long as things stayed below a certain level of escalation, the big shipping companies were prepared to accept losing half a percent of their revenues. Sometimes the cost of doing business was a shipment of durasteel getting jacked out in the black. A body count turned it from an insurance problem to a problem that got a cruiser involved.
"That, as bad as it is, isn't the worst part." Grant replied grimly. "We got sensor data from the fifth raid, off of Ascalon, from a PMC destroyer on patrol there. They didn't have the chops to deal with whoever carried out the hit, as you'll see."
Footage and sensor data took over the wall, and your eyes quickly made sense of what you were seeing. And widened. Whoever was driving the modified Black Bart, they were using antimatter munitions to do it.
"We've asked our contacts in Golgotha. The Durant family are not supplying freebooters with antimatter. We're reasonably sure they're on the level, our intel estimates of their own production capability match what they're claiming." Grant said, pointing to a long list of numbers and confirmed intelligence. "Plus the spacing issue."
Antimatter was expensive to produce. It required infrastructure, solar panels and particle accelerators and the workforce to keep them up. Manufacturing it in quantities that could be useful in combat was both expensive and obvious. It was the sort of thing nation-states needed to do, or the very largest of megacorps. Given its destructive potential it was also something that was monitored. Golgotha certainly had the capability to produce it in quantity, but they reserved it for the use of the Free Navy and not just any random freebooter that called Sirius a homeport.
"So what's the mission?" you ask, sitting up in the chair and setting aside the mug.
"Find the source of supply for this band of pirates and set a beacon so we can bring in a task force and blow it up or seize it." Grant says, turning to look at you. "Challenger can take half a dozen of those Barts, antimatter munitions or not. Don't be afraid to break some heads. You've got a Hoplite team and we'll see about shaking loose some intelligence assets to help you hunt down some leads. I'd suggest starting at one of the wildcat colonies. These bastards are bound to have some people on the ground somewhere feeding them information. Shake some tree branches and see what falls out."
"Yes ma'am." you answer, standing and snapping a salute. "We'll get it done."
~~~~~
At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if the vote shifts suddenly in favor of Lee as your contact option and if that happens that happens given the vote's still tied and still open. Regardless, how do you begin the investigation?
[] Travel to the independent world of Ascalon.
[] Travel to the independent colony of Leahy's Lament.
[] Travel to the independent colony of Baker II.
[] We have a colony in the area too. Let's make sure there's no trouble at home, first. Set course for Ctesiphon.
[] Write-In
I'll have a bit of a lore post explaining FTL in the setting at some point, as there's important differences between Alcubierre (which most ships, including most warships, use) and Fold drives (which are much more advanced and, also, obviously, expensive) like what's on the Challenger.
Mission 1.2
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
Main Bridge, GCS Challenger
Leaving Crossroads System
January 24th, 2452
"We're going to check in at Ctesiphon first." you say to your XO and the others gathered around the large plotting table that dominates the center of the Challenger's bridge. They'd all been briefed on what Admiral Grant had given you and all recognized the utter seriousness of the problem that lay before you. "We have authorization to brief the system defense forces there, and I've been told that OSP may have some data for us that we'll find useful in our investigation."
"The unknowns haven't hit any traffic bound for Ctesiphon yet, sir." Liah responds, carefully feeling out her bounds as your new XO. It was her job to make those sorts of observations, after all.
"No they haven't, and frankly I don't suspect they'll try anything in the system without a lot more hardware than they've already displayed. Let's examine the system defense force, shall we?" you reply, with a slight reassuring smile. You have entirely too many new officers in their spots and most of them still trying to feel their roles out. "Lieutenant Sheehy, what's normally the garrison at Ctesiphon?"
Your new tactical officer, a slim, slight woman from the colony of Granuaile in the Chara system, swallowed as she tossed a datafile from her pad to the holotable. A neat, but short, order of battle floated into view. "Typically, a single squadron of Ain Jaluts. The 9th Patrol squadron has Ctesiphon as a home base, but normally only a small portion of the squadron will be in the system at any one time, as we're still surveying and rebuilding the beacon network this far out after the Dahaki War."
You nod thoughtfully. The Battle at New Gettysburg, the final one of the campaign against invading posthumans from the Perseus Arm, had seen the disruption of a forming wormhole by a desperate coalition trying to stop the Dahaki from gaining reinforcement. Unfortunately, shutting the wormhole down had also scrambled higher levels of space-time like an egg, and the network of Alcubierre that had allowed FTL-equipped ships to travel independent of the gate system was still undergoing repair several years later. It wouldn't affect your ship-the Challenger, like her sisters, was equipped with a very expensive OPF-derived fold drive, which didn't really go through space-time so much as around it-but the vast majority of ships that had their own FTL drives were stuck with Alcubierre. And this far out the network wasn't reliable, which meant patrol ships re-surveying space-time tensors and installing new beacons.
"Any independent ships on patrol? A battlecruiser would put paid these bastards quick." you ask as a follow up.
"Unfortunately not, sir." Sheehy replied. "The Aegis is on the far end of her plotted patrol route, down around the Aurigean colonies, and the only other independent ship in the area is the San Salazar. Unfortunately she's reported a major engineering casualty and is being towed back to dock."
You nod. "Up to us, then. Thank you, Lieutenant." You look at your navigator. "Plot us a jump to Ctesiphon, then, and let's be on with it." A beat, to the wider group. "Dismissed, and thank you."
You head to your wardroom, just off the bridge, to handle the mountain of paperwork that comes with being a commander of a starship.
~~~~~
January 25th
The Challenger crashes back to real space with a tear of light, her fold drives brushing aside Einstein's universe with a laugh. The ship secures from jump stations and begins to make her way in system, getting routine updates from the surface as her grav drives push her in system.
Ctesiphon is a garden world, for a sufficiently broad definition of that term. She's no human definition of pleasant, with several large, low-lying continents constantly drenched by rainfall, the world's axial tilt and somewhat energetic F9 primary keeping the weather both warm and wet. Indeed, the single human colony on the surface had been something of a punishment assignment for the corporate workers collected rare and valuable organics from the local ecosystem.
That had changed about ten years ago, when Grunts first started moving to the colony. Ctesiphon might suck for a human, but for the grunts it was virtually Eden. Corporate incentives had lured thousands of the short, hexapod body planned aliens to the world, and they'd settled in and before anyone had known it were establishing roots. Only a handful had been around long enough to even ask about citizenship, but it wasn't like anyone else wanted to live there-as bad as it was for humans, both sondrak and chelonians thought it was a metaphor for Hell.
You consider this while you go over shipping records for the area for the past several months, looking to see if any smaller freighters had also been hit and simply been missed. A message from the local system defense force is sitting in the queue already read, thanking you for the information and also pinging you about an overdue Helium-3 tanker. The Jovian Sunrise is an older ship, and routinely has mechanical failures, but given the information you've given the locals anything is possible. Your sensor teams are detecting something metallic out beyond the Alcubierre limit in the deep reaches of the system. It could be nothing, it could be the housing from an old probe, or it could be a cloaked ship that the sensors of your ship were just powerful enough to get a sniff of. Finally, your contacts in OSP have come through, with Atticus sending you a datafile of intelligence on known bandits operating in the region. What is your next course of action?
[] Investigate the last known location of the Jovian Sunrise
[] Prosecute the sensor contact in the outer system. It's probably nothing, but.
[] Follow up on the intelligence you've gotten from OSP.
Leaving Crossroads System
January 24th, 2452
"We're going to check in at Ctesiphon first." you say to your XO and the others gathered around the large plotting table that dominates the center of the Challenger's bridge. They'd all been briefed on what Admiral Grant had given you and all recognized the utter seriousness of the problem that lay before you. "We have authorization to brief the system defense forces there, and I've been told that OSP may have some data for us that we'll find useful in our investigation."
"The unknowns haven't hit any traffic bound for Ctesiphon yet, sir." Liah responds, carefully feeling out her bounds as your new XO. It was her job to make those sorts of observations, after all.
"No they haven't, and frankly I don't suspect they'll try anything in the system without a lot more hardware than they've already displayed. Let's examine the system defense force, shall we?" you reply, with a slight reassuring smile. You have entirely too many new officers in their spots and most of them still trying to feel their roles out. "Lieutenant Sheehy, what's normally the garrison at Ctesiphon?"
Your new tactical officer, a slim, slight woman from the colony of Granuaile in the Chara system, swallowed as she tossed a datafile from her pad to the holotable. A neat, but short, order of battle floated into view. "Typically, a single squadron of Ain Jaluts. The 9th Patrol squadron has Ctesiphon as a home base, but normally only a small portion of the squadron will be in the system at any one time, as we're still surveying and rebuilding the beacon network this far out after the Dahaki War."
You nod thoughtfully. The Battle at New Gettysburg, the final one of the campaign against invading posthumans from the Perseus Arm, had seen the disruption of a forming wormhole by a desperate coalition trying to stop the Dahaki from gaining reinforcement. Unfortunately, shutting the wormhole down had also scrambled higher levels of space-time like an egg, and the network of Alcubierre that had allowed FTL-equipped ships to travel independent of the gate system was still undergoing repair several years later. It wouldn't affect your ship-the Challenger, like her sisters, was equipped with a very expensive OPF-derived fold drive, which didn't really go through space-time so much as around it-but the vast majority of ships that had their own FTL drives were stuck with Alcubierre. And this far out the network wasn't reliable, which meant patrol ships re-surveying space-time tensors and installing new beacons.
"Any independent ships on patrol? A battlecruiser would put paid these bastards quick." you ask as a follow up.
"Unfortunately not, sir." Sheehy replied. "The Aegis is on the far end of her plotted patrol route, down around the Aurigean colonies, and the only other independent ship in the area is the San Salazar. Unfortunately she's reported a major engineering casualty and is being towed back to dock."
You nod. "Up to us, then. Thank you, Lieutenant." You look at your navigator. "Plot us a jump to Ctesiphon, then, and let's be on with it." A beat, to the wider group. "Dismissed, and thank you."
You head to your wardroom, just off the bridge, to handle the mountain of paperwork that comes with being a commander of a starship.
~~~~~
January 25th
The Challenger crashes back to real space with a tear of light, her fold drives brushing aside Einstein's universe with a laugh. The ship secures from jump stations and begins to make her way in system, getting routine updates from the surface as her grav drives push her in system.
Ctesiphon is a garden world, for a sufficiently broad definition of that term. She's no human definition of pleasant, with several large, low-lying continents constantly drenched by rainfall, the world's axial tilt and somewhat energetic F9 primary keeping the weather both warm and wet. Indeed, the single human colony on the surface had been something of a punishment assignment for the corporate workers collected rare and valuable organics from the local ecosystem.
That had changed about ten years ago, when Grunts first started moving to the colony. Ctesiphon might suck for a human, but for the grunts it was virtually Eden. Corporate incentives had lured thousands of the short, hexapod body planned aliens to the world, and they'd settled in and before anyone had known it were establishing roots. Only a handful had been around long enough to even ask about citizenship, but it wasn't like anyone else wanted to live there-as bad as it was for humans, both sondrak and chelonians thought it was a metaphor for Hell.
You consider this while you go over shipping records for the area for the past several months, looking to see if any smaller freighters had also been hit and simply been missed. A message from the local system defense force is sitting in the queue already read, thanking you for the information and also pinging you about an overdue Helium-3 tanker. The Jovian Sunrise is an older ship, and routinely has mechanical failures, but given the information you've given the locals anything is possible. Your sensor teams are detecting something metallic out beyond the Alcubierre limit in the deep reaches of the system. It could be nothing, it could be the housing from an old probe, or it could be a cloaked ship that the sensors of your ship were just powerful enough to get a sniff of. Finally, your contacts in OSP have come through, with Atticus sending you a datafile of intelligence on known bandits operating in the region. What is your next course of action?
[] Investigate the last known location of the Jovian Sunrise
[] Prosecute the sensor contact in the outer system. It's probably nothing, but.
[] Follow up on the intelligence you've gotten from OSP.
Mission 1.3
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
Main Bridge, GCS Challenger
Outer Reaches of Ctesiphon System
February 2nd, 2452
You idly drum the armest of the command chair with your fingers as the Challenger finally closes in with her quarry. It had taken over a day to boost out this far, deep in the outer reaches of the system, and then a couple more just to locate your quarry. That there was some kind of refined materials signature out there, but it was small, and a star system, contrary to popular imagination, was not. The Challenger had searched a volume roughly an AU on a side to locate what they were now closing in on.
"Science team, anything?" You ask as you stare at the holotank. The Jovian Sunrise had, in fact, transitioned yesterday into the system, well behind schedule. The system defense CO had passed along their report-a blown Alcubierre tensor that should have been replaced six months ago. You're glad you trusted your gut instinct on that one, because there was no way your ship would have been able to track down the sensor signature again a week later if they hadn't run it down immediately.
"We're getting some spectroscopic returns now, sir." the civilian who was manning the science station replied. A multipurpose station with a few seats on it, it could be configured to assist in whatever specialty was needed at the moment. It could act to assist a diplomat handle a tricky First Contact or a planetologist scanning a world to map out tectonic plates. Right now, it was configured for deep space telemetry, as two remote probes closed in ahead of the ship in case the damn thing blew up.
"Throw it up on the main holotank, window two." you order, turning to look as the analysis on the sensor return came in. Chromium, titanium, iron, pretty standard in principle but the mix was strange. The mass return was small, less than five hundred kilograms. Either some kind of probe or some form of tech that allowed it to fool grav-mass sensors. You'd know in a minute.
"Twenty seconds until a visual, sir."
You nod, eyeballing the ship status screen in the top corner of the holotank. You had ordered the ship to Condition Two when you'd locked in on the return's location, just in case. Damage control crews were standing by and the shields were warmed up, but you weren't expecting combat.
"Feeding it through...now."
The feed from the probe was real-time, you were close enough that light-lag wasn't a real serious issue for what you were doing, and the image cleared up as the ship's AI, *Weiss, cleared away distortions and allocated additional bandwidth to the take. It was, in fact, a probe, of the sort built in a hundred places by everyone in order to keep an eye on someone else. You recognized it by the broad strokes for all you can't pin down the model or maker. "*Weiss, can you run that thing through the warbook, tell us who made it?"
"Negative, Captain." the ship's AI replied smoothly, his face incarnating on a secondary screen. Some ship AI preferred a physical body, but *Weiss had always considered himself an infomorph and disdained the physical unless it was needed. He did understand the value humans placed in having someone to look at when conversing, however, and had long adopted a vaguely human-looking avatar to use for the purpose.
"Really now? Not even a partial match?"
"The closest is a 24th century Hemisphere War vintage recon probe used by Cheongju. Even still, it's only a 52% match. There are also emissions inconsistent with human technology at work here. Not Open Palm or its derivations, nor does it match any known smart-matter templates."
Your eyebrows raise at that. This just got interesting. "Well if we can't figure out who it belongs to, nobody can object to us collecting the litter." you say, a couple of the bridge crew smiling at your early-shift humor. "Operations, send out a few more work drones, let's bring this thing aboard into the isolation bay. I don't want it near our fighters in case there is smart matter onboard." you press a button your command chair. "Bridge to Engineering."
"Engineering here." the relaxed tone of Gessica Hoedemaeker comes back a moment later. You are, again, thankful you managed to at least keep her from getting poached by other ships.
"Gess, we've got something that looks like a sensor drone we're going to bring onboard, of an unknown make, possibly with non-human tech. Would you be so kind as to get a team together at the secure quarantine hanger in..." you check the clock briefly. "Half an hour and work your magic on it?"
"My pleasure sir. Engineering out."
You turn back to the holotank to watch the drones do their work, considering your next option. Do you...
[] Wait until Commander Hoedemaeker completes her breakdown of the probe (Significantly faster option than default due to character selection)
[] Immediately follow up on the intel package that OSP provided you
Outer Reaches of Ctesiphon System
February 2nd, 2452
You idly drum the armest of the command chair with your fingers as the Challenger finally closes in with her quarry. It had taken over a day to boost out this far, deep in the outer reaches of the system, and then a couple more just to locate your quarry. That there was some kind of refined materials signature out there, but it was small, and a star system, contrary to popular imagination, was not. The Challenger had searched a volume roughly an AU on a side to locate what they were now closing in on.
"Science team, anything?" You ask as you stare at the holotank. The Jovian Sunrise had, in fact, transitioned yesterday into the system, well behind schedule. The system defense CO had passed along their report-a blown Alcubierre tensor that should have been replaced six months ago. You're glad you trusted your gut instinct on that one, because there was no way your ship would have been able to track down the sensor signature again a week later if they hadn't run it down immediately.
"We're getting some spectroscopic returns now, sir." the civilian who was manning the science station replied. A multipurpose station with a few seats on it, it could be configured to assist in whatever specialty was needed at the moment. It could act to assist a diplomat handle a tricky First Contact or a planetologist scanning a world to map out tectonic plates. Right now, it was configured for deep space telemetry, as two remote probes closed in ahead of the ship in case the damn thing blew up.
"Throw it up on the main holotank, window two." you order, turning to look as the analysis on the sensor return came in. Chromium, titanium, iron, pretty standard in principle but the mix was strange. The mass return was small, less than five hundred kilograms. Either some kind of probe or some form of tech that allowed it to fool grav-mass sensors. You'd know in a minute.
"Twenty seconds until a visual, sir."
You nod, eyeballing the ship status screen in the top corner of the holotank. You had ordered the ship to Condition Two when you'd locked in on the return's location, just in case. Damage control crews were standing by and the shields were warmed up, but you weren't expecting combat.
"Feeding it through...now."
The feed from the probe was real-time, you were close enough that light-lag wasn't a real serious issue for what you were doing, and the image cleared up as the ship's AI, *Weiss, cleared away distortions and allocated additional bandwidth to the take. It was, in fact, a probe, of the sort built in a hundred places by everyone in order to keep an eye on someone else. You recognized it by the broad strokes for all you can't pin down the model or maker. "*Weiss, can you run that thing through the warbook, tell us who made it?"
"Negative, Captain." the ship's AI replied smoothly, his face incarnating on a secondary screen. Some ship AI preferred a physical body, but *Weiss had always considered himself an infomorph and disdained the physical unless it was needed. He did understand the value humans placed in having someone to look at when conversing, however, and had long adopted a vaguely human-looking avatar to use for the purpose.
"Really now? Not even a partial match?"
"The closest is a 24th century Hemisphere War vintage recon probe used by Cheongju. Even still, it's only a 52% match. There are also emissions inconsistent with human technology at work here. Not Open Palm or its derivations, nor does it match any known smart-matter templates."
Your eyebrows raise at that. This just got interesting. "Well if we can't figure out who it belongs to, nobody can object to us collecting the litter." you say, a couple of the bridge crew smiling at your early-shift humor. "Operations, send out a few more work drones, let's bring this thing aboard into the isolation bay. I don't want it near our fighters in case there is smart matter onboard." you press a button your command chair. "Bridge to Engineering."
"Engineering here." the relaxed tone of Gessica Hoedemaeker comes back a moment later. You are, again, thankful you managed to at least keep her from getting poached by other ships.
"Gess, we've got something that looks like a sensor drone we're going to bring onboard, of an unknown make, possibly with non-human tech. Would you be so kind as to get a team together at the secure quarantine hanger in..." you check the clock briefly. "Half an hour and work your magic on it?"
"My pleasure sir. Engineering out."
You turn back to the holotank to watch the drones do their work, considering your next option. Do you...
[] Wait until Commander Hoedemaeker completes her breakdown of the probe (Significantly faster option than default due to character selection)
[] Immediately follow up on the intel package that OSP provided you
Mission 1.4
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
Briefing Room, GCS Challenger
Outer Reaches of Ctesiphon System
February 4th, 2452
The exploded diagram of the recovered probe floated above the conference table elements of human and non-human technology bodged together with an impressive degree of ingenuity. You pace around the table as Commander Hoedemaeker and her team finish prepping for the briefing, examining the portions of the sensor probe you can recognize and where they mesh with very unfamiliar technology.
It had only taken the Commander and her team about a day and a half to break down the probe and figure out what made it tick, and the Challenger needed most of that time to work her way back in-system anyway. Yes, you could fold out from the deep reaches of the system if you had to, but you weren't sure you were even done at Ctesiphon, so nothing had really been lost giving her the time she'd needed.
"So we've got two very distinct bits of kit here." Gessica said as you stopped your pacing to scratch at your chin. "The first is, in fact, Hemisphere War-era military surplus, from Cheongju."
A large section of the probe, mostly the recognizable parts, lit up on the holotable.
"The serial numbers were all filed off, of course, but we had root level codes to the computer core of the damn thing and just pulled them off of that. The probe was part of a batch lot sold decades ago as surplus, to Johnson Dynamics. They used them for mining operations, but stopped after a while and our records show the remaining stock ended up in a warehouse somewhere. The stocks were eventually sold as scrap to some third party breakers with, shall we say, connections. One of them went down a decade ago for some shady shit, but, you know, airlock door after atmo's been vented." Gessica sighed, tossing a datapad onto the table.
"The other part's more interesting. Definitely non-human, equally definitely not OPF spec or smart-matter. Old, too, radiocarbon dating is tricky given we're talking refined materials that live in a vacuum but definitely at least ten thousand years old. Not contemporary, the metallurgy doesn't match anything we've got on file for extant species. Science team's digging in the archives for any clues on the archaeology side, but who knows. This sort of thing is tricky."
"So which parts of the probe were doing what?" you ask, squinting and trying to make sense of the hash on the screen. Engineering was not your gig.
"Looks like human for the sensors and recording, xenotech for the powerplant and the stealth features. Really solid sensor baffling built in, on spec with our top-end gear. Real luck of the draw that we could even pick it up, sir." Gessica answers, highlighting some segments of the diagram with a wave of her hand. "The power core was completely undetectable until we were within a hundred klicks of the thing, the only reason we picked it up on the first place was optical reflection off of the sensor boom."
You nod. There was plenty of junk in any inhabited system, but most of that junk was tracked by sensor networks in case it proved to be a navigational hazard. Humanity had learned the importance of that before they'd even left Earth's orbit regularly, and cleaning up the Kessler Cascade post-Collapse had been a nightmare. If something wasn't tagged in a system's orbital tracking network and was picked up by a ship sensor, it tended to get a lot of attention.
"What was it recording, exactly?"
"Routine traffic patterns, military patrols, that kind of thing. Pretty standard surveillance mission set. The AI on this thing is dumb as a brick so neither *Weiss or I could get much from it, but we literally were able to pull some of the unfiltered take out of the data storage."
You grunt in thought. This was definitely getting weird.
What investigation route do you take next?
[] The sensor probe is unrelated to the antimatter problem. Leave it for now. Follow up on the OSP dossier
[] Follow the data trail on the lot of probes from Cheongju to the breakers to see if you can determine where they may have been sold onto.
[] Consult with Expeditionary Command's science divisions to see if you can get any leads on the origins of the alien part of the sensor probe.
Outer Reaches of Ctesiphon System
February 4th, 2452
The exploded diagram of the recovered probe floated above the conference table elements of human and non-human technology bodged together with an impressive degree of ingenuity. You pace around the table as Commander Hoedemaeker and her team finish prepping for the briefing, examining the portions of the sensor probe you can recognize and where they mesh with very unfamiliar technology.
It had only taken the Commander and her team about a day and a half to break down the probe and figure out what made it tick, and the Challenger needed most of that time to work her way back in-system anyway. Yes, you could fold out from the deep reaches of the system if you had to, but you weren't sure you were even done at Ctesiphon, so nothing had really been lost giving her the time she'd needed.
"So we've got two very distinct bits of kit here." Gessica said as you stopped your pacing to scratch at your chin. "The first is, in fact, Hemisphere War-era military surplus, from Cheongju."
A large section of the probe, mostly the recognizable parts, lit up on the holotable.
"The serial numbers were all filed off, of course, but we had root level codes to the computer core of the damn thing and just pulled them off of that. The probe was part of a batch lot sold decades ago as surplus, to Johnson Dynamics. They used them for mining operations, but stopped after a while and our records show the remaining stock ended up in a warehouse somewhere. The stocks were eventually sold as scrap to some third party breakers with, shall we say, connections. One of them went down a decade ago for some shady shit, but, you know, airlock door after atmo's been vented." Gessica sighed, tossing a datapad onto the table.
"The other part's more interesting. Definitely non-human, equally definitely not OPF spec or smart-matter. Old, too, radiocarbon dating is tricky given we're talking refined materials that live in a vacuum but definitely at least ten thousand years old. Not contemporary, the metallurgy doesn't match anything we've got on file for extant species. Science team's digging in the archives for any clues on the archaeology side, but who knows. This sort of thing is tricky."
"So which parts of the probe were doing what?" you ask, squinting and trying to make sense of the hash on the screen. Engineering was not your gig.
"Looks like human for the sensors and recording, xenotech for the powerplant and the stealth features. Really solid sensor baffling built in, on spec with our top-end gear. Real luck of the draw that we could even pick it up, sir." Gessica answers, highlighting some segments of the diagram with a wave of her hand. "The power core was completely undetectable until we were within a hundred klicks of the thing, the only reason we picked it up on the first place was optical reflection off of the sensor boom."
You nod. There was plenty of junk in any inhabited system, but most of that junk was tracked by sensor networks in case it proved to be a navigational hazard. Humanity had learned the importance of that before they'd even left Earth's orbit regularly, and cleaning up the Kessler Cascade post-Collapse had been a nightmare. If something wasn't tagged in a system's orbital tracking network and was picked up by a ship sensor, it tended to get a lot of attention.
"What was it recording, exactly?"
"Routine traffic patterns, military patrols, that kind of thing. Pretty standard surveillance mission set. The AI on this thing is dumb as a brick so neither *Weiss or I could get much from it, but we literally were able to pull some of the unfiltered take out of the data storage."
You grunt in thought. This was definitely getting weird.
What investigation route do you take next?
[] The sensor probe is unrelated to the antimatter problem. Leave it for now. Follow up on the OSP dossier
[] Follow the data trail on the lot of probes from Cheongju to the breakers to see if you can determine where they may have been sold onto.
[] Consult with Expeditionary Command's science divisions to see if you can get any leads on the origins of the alien part of the sensor probe.
Mission 1.5
- Location
- Humanity's Capital - New York
Main Bridge, GCS Challenger
Outer Reaches of Ctesiphon System
February 4th, 2452
In the end, you're not sure the probe, while interesting and potentially a problem, isn't connected to your current mission. You file a contact report with both the locals and Expeditionary Command, and Gessica's got the probe in the secure hold if you need it, but it's time you moved on. You've reviewed the datafiles from your OSP contact, Special Agent Atticus Lee. There are a number of branches in the Commonwealth's Intelligence Department, from the Office of Electronic Intelligence and ONI to more esoteric branches like the Office of Future Threats, which attempts to categorize long-term threats to the Grid at large based on trends and grapevine intelligence on the Hypergrid. OSP is the Intelligence Departments "wetworks" branch, a title that blandly covers the Commonwealth's elite special forces and best field agents. OSP operates on the sharp edge, with a long leash, but they're expected to provide results. Lee is one of the best, an ordinary enough looking fellow of East African and Chinese extraction who'd been dealing with threats to civilization longer than you'd been alive. He was obviously enhanced to a significant degree, although the specifics were obviously extremely classified. Unlike most post-humans, he still looked human, which you suppose is the point. A secret agent who looks like an exotic transhuman likely gets a lot of attention.
You'd first run into him soon after getting command of Challenger, before the Hypergrid had opened up and when Expeditionary Command's survey missions were still fairly close to home. You were as likely to find a terraformable world as you were a freeport or pirate's nest and OSP had deployed teams to several places you and your comrades had found in the old days. Lee had help you clean out a nest of slavers who'd survived the Sack of Ross 148 and you two had been in semi-regular contact ever since.
Unfortunately, it seems like OSP didn't have a ton of information about the area. The gradual decline of organized piracy out of Golgotha and Epsilon Eridani, in favor of frankly easier targets out on the Hypergrid, had dried up a number of his contacts. Still he had some potential leads for you to follow.
There were three potential leads for you to follow. The first was an arms smuggler out at the independent world of Leahy's Lament. The Lament was lightly settled, but found itself as a sort of hiring point for many of the independent operators who stayed in the grayer areas of the law. The world as a result was home to some shipyards and production facilities. Nothing that could make antimatter in practical quantities, of course, but your quarry could well be buying arms to equip ships that suddenly had a much higher energy budget to play with.
The second was much more speculative, and based on long-range ARGUS Array data. A red dwarf about thirty light years towards the rim, lacking anything more than a catalog name, had entirely too much traffic coming and going. The frontier was always pushing out beyond the bounds of official exploration, of course, and even systems officially uncharted may well have free traders and prospectors visiting it, but a red dwarf not near anything valuable? Not so much.
Finally, and even Lee wasn't sure this was related, was the disappearance of one Doctor Andrew Wu. Dr. Wu was something of a polymath, not entirely uncommon in a time when people could easily live to be 200. A couple of PhDs in engineering and computer science had segued into a boutique electronics company that was sold after the Hypergrid opened up. Wu sold his business off and took to adventuring, touring several OPF tomb worlds and making a name for himself in the early days cracking OPF encryption. Once that became less of a Tomb Raider type job and more the work of entire universities, he was off chasing the next big thing. He'd last been seen on Ctesiphon about four months ago looking to hire a ship for some sort of mission before he'd fallen off of everyone's radar. Still, given the area, he figured it was something to include in the report.
Which lead will you follow?
[] Leahy's Lament and the arms trail
[] The uncharted red dwarf
[] Ctesiphon and this Dr. Wu.
Outer Reaches of Ctesiphon System
February 4th, 2452
In the end, you're not sure the probe, while interesting and potentially a problem, isn't connected to your current mission. You file a contact report with both the locals and Expeditionary Command, and Gessica's got the probe in the secure hold if you need it, but it's time you moved on. You've reviewed the datafiles from your OSP contact, Special Agent Atticus Lee. There are a number of branches in the Commonwealth's Intelligence Department, from the Office of Electronic Intelligence and ONI to more esoteric branches like the Office of Future Threats, which attempts to categorize long-term threats to the Grid at large based on trends and grapevine intelligence on the Hypergrid. OSP is the Intelligence Departments "wetworks" branch, a title that blandly covers the Commonwealth's elite special forces and best field agents. OSP operates on the sharp edge, with a long leash, but they're expected to provide results. Lee is one of the best, an ordinary enough looking fellow of East African and Chinese extraction who'd been dealing with threats to civilization longer than you'd been alive. He was obviously enhanced to a significant degree, although the specifics were obviously extremely classified. Unlike most post-humans, he still looked human, which you suppose is the point. A secret agent who looks like an exotic transhuman likely gets a lot of attention.
You'd first run into him soon after getting command of Challenger, before the Hypergrid had opened up and when Expeditionary Command's survey missions were still fairly close to home. You were as likely to find a terraformable world as you were a freeport or pirate's nest and OSP had deployed teams to several places you and your comrades had found in the old days. Lee had help you clean out a nest of slavers who'd survived the Sack of Ross 148 and you two had been in semi-regular contact ever since.
Unfortunately, it seems like OSP didn't have a ton of information about the area. The gradual decline of organized piracy out of Golgotha and Epsilon Eridani, in favor of frankly easier targets out on the Hypergrid, had dried up a number of his contacts. Still he had some potential leads for you to follow.
There were three potential leads for you to follow. The first was an arms smuggler out at the independent world of Leahy's Lament. The Lament was lightly settled, but found itself as a sort of hiring point for many of the independent operators who stayed in the grayer areas of the law. The world as a result was home to some shipyards and production facilities. Nothing that could make antimatter in practical quantities, of course, but your quarry could well be buying arms to equip ships that suddenly had a much higher energy budget to play with.
The second was much more speculative, and based on long-range ARGUS Array data. A red dwarf about thirty light years towards the rim, lacking anything more than a catalog name, had entirely too much traffic coming and going. The frontier was always pushing out beyond the bounds of official exploration, of course, and even systems officially uncharted may well have free traders and prospectors visiting it, but a red dwarf not near anything valuable? Not so much.
Finally, and even Lee wasn't sure this was related, was the disappearance of one Doctor Andrew Wu. Dr. Wu was something of a polymath, not entirely uncommon in a time when people could easily live to be 200. A couple of PhDs in engineering and computer science had segued into a boutique electronics company that was sold after the Hypergrid opened up. Wu sold his business off and took to adventuring, touring several OPF tomb worlds and making a name for himself in the early days cracking OPF encryption. Once that became less of a Tomb Raider type job and more the work of entire universities, he was off chasing the next big thing. He'd last been seen on Ctesiphon about four months ago looking to hire a ship for some sort of mission before he'd fallen off of everyone's radar. Still, given the area, he figured it was something to include in the report.
Which lead will you follow?
[] Leahy's Lament and the arms trail
[] The uncharted red dwarf
[] Ctesiphon and this Dr. Wu.