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Personal Log, Lt.Jr. Adele Mundy, TSN Hawk, 2nd Flt. 4LD
16116-2237There are giants in the sky! Well, there were. Great big technological giants in the sky… I don’t see how I’m supposed to be able to think of anything else. I can’t even get my thoughts straight.
Notes. I think I took some notes. Computer, find my notes. No, not those notes, the… All right, let’s see if these make any sense. Yes, yes, simulation exercises on Lancer, everyone noticing how strange it is to have no ordnance and no shields to speak of. Then the asteroid survey mission: Lt. Cmdr. Allard in command, Kennon Far in Engineering, Cadet Tuttle on Helm, Chuck Finley on weapons, Roshin Das sharing SciComms with me – we settled on Science for me and Comms for him. So we did the chasing and scanning and firing beams at asteroids until some Unukalhai turned up. We picked up their life pods after we dealt with them… No, he wasn’t on board. Or listed as crew.
Computer, my speech is not slurred, I’m just rushing because I want to get to the exciting bit, that’s no reason to get the words wrong. Editing is a drag, and correcting your mistakes by hand doubly so.
The XO (Leonard Hall? Computer, double check that, would you?) secured the Unukalhai captives in the brig.
And let’s hope we don’t have a repeat of what happened on Hydra last mission, when they recovered some Unuks, who were then found dead under suspicious circumstances. There really ought to be a way of compiling a list of Hydra crew members who would have had access to those prisoners…
Anyway, the exciting bit: that D20 image I got last mission, that was an alien artefact the crew of Lancer, deployed on a different ship, found while they were lurking in nebulas. And they dragged it into a nebula with them to hide it. So our mission was to escort a science ship, TSN Schroedinger, to Cronus Sector 2 to go and investigate this alien artefact, secure it, and potentially tractor it back to TSN space for further research.
So I was being all quiet and professional, and in my head I was going “Squeeee! Alien artefact!” which sounds silly, which is why I wasn’t saying it out loud… But really, I mean, not Kralien or Torgoth or even Caltron, a whole new and unknown and different kind of alien, and we are going to bring it back!
So we set out, with Allard in command, Hall as XO on Helm, Finley on Weapons, Das in Engineering and me back with both Science and Comms consoles, looking for the frequencies emitted by the artefact, formation flying in a search pattern around the artefact’s last known location. Because, surprise surprise, the D20 wasn’t where Lancer‘s crew had left it. Someone else had found it and dragged it off for their own undoubtedly nefarious purposes. Well, if I was in charge of a ship that found something that interesting, I’d drag it away to play with it at leisure, so you can’t really blame them. Except that we did. Because we’re the heroes. Everyone’s a hero in their own way…
Look, Computer, I’m in a hurry and I can’t be bothered to put in the citation notes to the obscure 20th century works I’m referencing. You’re a computer. You’re supposed to be good at looking up and collating things. Do your job. If you were in my Library, you’d be scheduled for some serious upgrades, let me tell you.
Allard, by some combination of sheer luck and, I don’t know, the Force maybe, found one trace after another as we raced after the artefact, fending off attacks all the way – because if we could follow the breadcrumbs, so could the Torgoths and the Caltrons. And then we hung about in space around this thing – it really does look like a D20, I’m so tempted to call it the Cosmic Icosahedron – while the senior officers went off into a private conference to debate what to do.
Only it wasn’t so private, which is a puzzle to me. I mean, Matsiyan wasn’t present, so I wasn’t overhearing through him, but I was overhearing through someone. Del Pino was arguing in favour of destroying the artefact so it wouldn’t attract enemies, let alone fall into their hands! The universe does not contain enough exclamation points to emphasize what my reaction to this suggestion was! Destroy this thing! Scientists on TSN Schroedinger claimed, after a brief examination, that it might be older than our sun! You don’t destroy things that are older than the Terran solar system!
The argument went on for a while, people saying it would not be safe to take it into TSN space, it would not be safe taking it through a gate, it might blow up and destroy trillions of civilians, yet we can’t risk it falling into enemy hands… I was there thinking, am I the only one whose reaction is, so don’t take it to the scientists, bring the scientists to it. I can’t imagine any archaeologist, physicist, engineer not jumping at the chance to come and examine something that was created by an advanced civilization before Sol was even coalescing!
In the end, they agreed to hide it again, in a nebula in Sector 2, and I think more science vessels will be arriving. Meanwhile, the Division will be staying nearby, patrolling for any more attempts to remove the artefact, and ready to go into action.
There was another exercise, and we got round to electing the Division Security Manager – I don’t envy Finley one bit. Just to underline that, a report came in about MRE shipments that have disappeared from the loading docks. One might wonder if it was just a desperate attempt to avoid eating the stuff, since that’s what we’re currently getting as we continue on standby, or if it was an example of smuggling (the pirates as possible customers?), or sabotage…
Who needs to eat, anyway. There’s an Alien Artefact of Unimaginable Age in the sky!
[end log]
As I’m off duty right now, ignore my seniority for the time being.
Sorry if I disapointed you there. I know you’re serving with distinction, and your opinions so far earned my respect. Back in the day I was a scientist too, before I switched to military theory. Of course it’s sad to destroy something that’s so intriguing, but energy doesn’t have a notion of good or evil as most social individuals do. The only thing energy does is to release itself in some way, and the fact itself that it is so unknown and powerful means that we can’t hope to control it. No matter its intended use, if there’s a source of energy there’s a way to weaponize it, and it is normally easier to do than to use it as intended.
We almost lost the artifact this time. The alarming thing, come to think of it, it couldn’t just have been the escaped transport we picked up. Two different factions were aware of its location, as they were engaging in a fight. Of course it could have been a random encounter, but we can’t rely on that. Thus, even asuming the pirate handed over information to a faction, it means that the other (good luck figuring out if those are Arvonians or Caltrons, although I’d bet for the later) has a way to locate it.
In short, there’s a surprising ammount of aliens who seem to have a deeper knowledge than us on what this thing is.
Leaving aside the issue of whether to destroy it or research it in secret, there’s still some scientist left in me. So let’s get on with the interesting opinions, shall we? There’s one thing I’d like to hear your opinion on. This Artifact, even though we know was ancient, would you say that it’s a recent discovery when it comes to the galaxy at large, or one of the factions already had it and the other stole it?
@del Pino:
I have no way of knowing whether the other factions just stumbled on the Cosmic Icosahedron (henceforth referred to as CI) or if they had intelligence. Space is big, and random chance is seldom as random as we think. Even so, all they needed was a rumour, and they would likely have gone searching, and just as we were able to detect the radiation signature of the CI, so would they. If I were a pirate, I’d be right out there too, looking for the fabled treasure.The question about whether the CI has only just been found or whether somebody was already in possession of it, and it was recently stolen, is interesting, though I have no data to answer it at present. I would postulate that if somebody had found it long ago, they would have done something with it, and whether that means advance their civilization by means of its tech, or destroy it by careless meddling, we would probably be aware of the results. Either way, the CI would not be left unprotected in the middle of a nebula, I think.
How the CI could have stayed hidden so long is another interesting question. I don’t know precisely where Lancer’s crew found it, but since they were scouting covertly I assume there were other ships in the vicinity. Again, I don’t like to leave the answer to random chance. Perhaps the CI had some cloaking field that kept it hidden all this time, and it only recently failed, due to its age. Perhaps there was some peculiarity in that sector of space that interfered with sensors, and that recently changed – it ought to be possible to determine if that’s the case. It’s something our scientists and engineers would love to investigate, I’m sure.
//I was just reading in the discussion on time periods that we are still in year 2237, and I wanted to edit my logs to reflect that, but there is no Edit button on older posts, at least not visible to me. Can that correction be made? //
//Not just the mobile browser. I can’t access it on a desktop either. There might be a cutoff after posting where you can no longer edit?
//OOC game: spot the Earth cultural references in Mundy’s log.
Winner, before I even declared this game was a thing, is Remmick, who spotted both the Into the Woods and the Doctor Horrible’s Singalong Blog references.
There is one more really obvious reference; and one less obvious one in the reply to del Pino.
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