"Rutter has been uploaded. We are green to go."
"Engines checkup complete. All readings nominal."
"Initiating setup."
"Systems now at full output."
"Jump is authorized. Launch."
=}+{=
The people outside had waited with held breath for hours, their eyes drawn to the utilitarian and some may even say rough contours of the corvette – but who would want to miss such a moment if they could watch it in person? Under the eyes of millions your ship started to come to live, the whir of the engines filling the air and the interference of the spiked drive was starting to effect sensors and cameras as the ship's atmospheric landing gear pulled back into the hull – and just a small gesture of the grey skinned pilot made it stop its contact with the ground. All across the globes billions were cheering as you took off, posters and light boards sending greetings and good wishing up to you as the spaceport became smaller and smaller beneath you.
Under the watchful eyes of Lt. Mirganiss and according to the smallest movements of her slender hands, the most advanced spaceship built in the last 500 years left its spaceport on the planet and tore through the sky, leaving atmosphere and gravity behind as it tore past the few small space stations and the three STL vessels that had made up the navy so far. All around you the stars beckoned and all throughout the ship, cheering could be heard as you made your way to the transit zone: the engineering department was calling through each new speed that was accomplished and which seemed to go even faster than anyone would have expected before, communication was trying their best to keep up with the congratulations and praise from the various nations, the navy and even important enough family members that could get a message send to their progenies on this ship.
The first few hours after the start were euphoric, everyone was doing their duty, but the sheer cheer could be felt by anyone – it took the better rest of the day for it to slowly calm down to normal professionalism once more, partly helped by the nervousness most people felt at the prospect of being the first to test the new spike drive installed in the ship. Thankfully these worries lessened when the ship continued with good, one might even say unbelievably good speed: the communication department had to explain multiple times to the HQ back home that your positions weren't an error and that you were simply going that fast. Of course, this did little to hide the smugness of the astrogating department, who would proudly point at their Department head and main pilot for this achievement.
=}- Gravitic Transition Zone-{=
=}-14.9.3202-{=
With some last greetings from the two asteroid mining stations that were the cutting edge of Esrilan space-cooperation till your launch, you steadily left the gravitational field of your sun behind, space clearing up and your spike drive reacting smoother and smoother as it became able to interfere easier with the metadimensional space that was lying over your own. A warning light flashed through the whole ship as you entered the transitional zone fully, ready and primed to move up for your FTL travel. All over the ship people were sitting down and strapping themselves in, pulling belts tight and readying whatever emergency measures they were responsible for: from laying out the first aid in the medbay to readying the patch-up tool should something happen to the engine room.
When the clear professional voice of their pilot cut through the general nervousness, everyone braced themselves for their shot into an early death and glory – or the start of an adventure for glory and planet. It does at least have something if you know that you are going to be and stay famous no matter the outcome of your experiment. Everyone braced, hands digging into padding and teeth biting down on the protection for the tongue – half an hour was the more optimistic judging for the time it would take to drill into the metadimensional space…
…15 minutes later and with barely something felt, the light returned to normal and the warning lightly dimmed down. For a few minutes everyone was surprised – but then the affirmation came from astrogating and another cheer went through the ship! The grey skinned Lieutenant had been able to not only drill safely through the metadimensions and push the ship upwards – but had also been able to do so in record time and higher than anyone would have thought possible with their first prototype engine!
As everyone gets out of their harnesses and frantic work begins once more: measuring everything from the sensor readings to the stress on the instruments and machines, the true travel goes underway and at least in the eyes of the crew the presence – and to some degree her personality- of Lt. Allayi Mirganiss had been validated without a doubt: someone who could make a prototype drive fly like a finished and refined product belonged nowhere else but at the helm of the ship.
…unsurprisingly the Astrogation Department was more than eager to Lord this over everyone else in the following days – thankfully good natured only.
=}+{=
Sector 387-AZ
Gontoya System 0204
17.9.3202 – Standard Terran Mandate Calendar
Gravitic Transition Zone
=}+{=
It's hard to describe the way a successful spikedrive drill looks like from the outside – it only took your ship three days to approach the Gravitic Transition Zone of the Gontoya System and as soon as you hit it, your ship began the process of drilling down, back into our normal kind of space as opposed to the higher-order continuum you had just used to travel a distance that might have taken one of the STL ships centuries to undertake. Of course, a spike drive equipped ship never really stayed "here" so to speak, as long as the drive was going the ship could dip in and out of the phases its drive could access, for intra-system travel and for combat purposes.
In the short term the spike drive was also the best ECM you could wish for and your arrival in the system shouldn't have been noticed by anyone if there weren't any stations securing the approach from your system – thankfully there weren't. As you returned back into the material universe and into the Gontoya system this time, you were greeted by quite a bit of…well immediately nothing.
Before you the system was laid out to see, your sensors being used as quickly and carefully as possible in an attempt to get a picture as complete as possible without giving your position away for anyone looking out for visitors. Right now, the results were…promising?
=}-Alciphe-{=
The first thing that was immediately flagged for the staff's eyes, was a message from the coms department, together with a memo from your Naval Intelligence attaché. It was an emergency transponder, hidden to some degree and working in Terran Mandate format and protocol, getting transmitted from the Surface of Alciphe, somewhere underneath a mountain range on the northern continent. Flandry had affirmed the call being a general warning and a call for help from nearby Mandate forces – in the event of an enemy (human) Invasion. She couldn't point down the correct number in our archives, but it wasn't one of the more urgent ones, so it could be safely presumed that whatever had attacked either left the sensor going for a few centuries – or that someone down there had set the sensor up to warn new arrivals about constant attacks against the planet: raids had been popular in the periphery even back then.
Aside from the emergency response, there were images of cities and roads on the planet, but many of them were pock-marked with craters and similar signs that made one think of orbital bombardment more than of a natural catastrophe. That no one had bothered to even repair a fraction of the various damages down on the planet was a bad sign if one hoped to meet survivors.
More interesting to you, with your fuel spend and everything, might be an old mine that was still circling around a nearby gas giant in the vicinity of the planet – while a simplistic refuelling station was in orbit of the planet itself. Both seemed to be still working to some degree or another if the heat images could be believed.
=}-Thos-{=
More lively was the situation on Thos if your first glances were an indication: compared to the vibrant images you had been shown in your initial briefing, the surface of the planet seemed terribly dull and kilometres of the long life giving tunnels and hubs had broken and spilled their contents onto the nearly airless surface over centuries, while others still seemed to work with just a tiny amount of light, life and energy. It was hard to say what was going on down there, without getting into the region and taking a closer look.
Firmer energy readings could be gotten on the two moons that were doing their rounds around the cold planet: Coulgakat, had two seemingly still functioning stations – one having been a refuelling Station in the Mandate Era and the other being the gutted remnants of the planets lunar city if the few working habitats clinging to the edges of a crater in the middle of the former city were truly still inhabited. At least you had quite a few refuelling stations to visit if you were so inclined, the third in this system had belonged to private investors as well and was dubbed Madler 4.
Now you are here…what do look at first?
=}+{=
