The First Inter-Species Human-Thargoid Colony    

Tiercel:
Pilot: Commander S
Richard Feynman - weapon systems (commander himself, rated Dangerous)
Kenneth Wilson - engine systems (experience on various large ships)
Erica Jen - navigation and hyperspace sys. (otherwise working on AJN Excelsior)
Helena Wisniewski - life support and shielding sys. (was working on a civilian Panther Clipper in the past)
Paul C. Martin - engineering and repairs (one of the best ship engineers we have)

Wyvern1:
Pilot: Ralph H. Abraham (working for AJN, rated Dangerous)
Joel Lebowitz - weapon and shielding systems (working for AJN, Competent)
Debbie Schmidt - engineering and navigation (7y experience as chief navigator; Cmdr S' crew)

Wyvern2:
Pilot: Leo Kadanoff (AJN ASP pilot, Competent)
Roz Stuart - weapon and shielding systems (3y experience in combat systems operation and maintainance; Cmdr S' crew)
Albrecht Libchaber - engineering and navigation (working on AJN Imp. Courier)

Battle Wyvern:
Pilot: Yasha G. Sinai (AJN ImpCourier pilot, Deadly)
Benoit Bernstein - weapon and shielding systems (AJN ASP pilot, Deadly)
Elvira Le Guin - engineering and navigation (AJN Cobra Mk3 pilot, Dangerous)

25 Nov: Our fleet consisting of a Tiercel (callsign "King"), two Wyverns fitted for exploration ("Scout" "one" and "two") and a Wyvern designed for battle ("Knight") took off a small AJN spaceport near Widow Citadel. Our target was a remote system Faackcan. The ships are equipped with hi-end equipment and the crew are as great as they come, but everyone was nervous. A lot of things can go wrong during a 600 l.y. journey. The ships rose to 25,000 meters and disappeared into hyperspace. Our first target is Ayfaso (-1,13). There we'll scoop for fuel and conduct some quick observations.

6 Dec: We arrived to Ayfaso and successfully scooped fuel from Ayfaso 3. The Tiercel also landed on the planet and deployed an MB4 mining machine for assessment. A very low concentration of minerals was found. We did not spend time on gathering mineral samples from Ayfaso since this is not our mission's goal. Our next stop is Ayfaed (-2,22).

22 Dec: We have experienced difficulties with King's autopilot. It started deceleration procedures too late. As a result even full blast of rear thrusters could not have prevented a collision with Ayfaed 7. We made an emergency hyper jump to the nearby Ackzeay where we refuelled at the system's only small gas giant and conducted brief geological recon operation. Ackzeay 4 seems to mainly consist of ice. Next stop at Hoethex, but no landing is planned due to low temperatures on the system's gas giants' surfaces.

1 Jan: Woo-hoo! A magnificent New Year party was held on all ships. LowG disco and laser salutes brought a much welcome break in our monotonous lives. To the crew's great dissatisfaction, Commander S prohibited alcoholic beverages. Despite that, a portion of the crew acted and looked suspiciously this morning. For now, only warnings were issued. Meanwhile we covered over 200 light years in a little over a month. Not bad. Soon we will arrive to Hoethex 5, refuel and take off to Tianio (-1, 40).

13 Jan: It looks like the autopilot failures are becoming regular. Another late deceleration forced us to jump to a nearby Olaay. We scooped its yellow star from fuel and will be leaving for Vebeack (-1,49) shortly.

24 Jan: Scooped fuel from Veeback. Enliaa (-1, 58) will be our next target.

4 Feb: Refuelled and scouted by MB4 Enliaa 4. Just like on the previous gas giant it's mainly water. Grevear (-2,66) will hopefully be our last stop before Faackcan.

13 Feb: We refuelled at Grevear. Oh, what a wonderful sight this giant makes! 0.5 l.y. away it was already too big to see it as a disc. Unfortunately we will not be able to make it to Faackcan in a single jump. We decided to visit Waandti (-2, 73). We are particularly excited to see its third planet, which is an outdoor world with oxygen, water and life. Though, we will not be leaving our ships due to rather harsh environment - the planet is three times heavier than Earth and no sunscreen will help at 49C surface temperature. However, even seeing sights of life and forest from inside the ship should entertain the crew.

24 Feb: Waandti 3 is magnificient! We have not expected to see such gorgeous sights. Despite its high average temperature, the planet has many snow-covered mountain ranges the biggest of which spans across the entire hemisphere. There are beautiful seas, rivers and lakes. At one of the photographs we can see a beautiful beach. Another one captures a mountain range descending into an ocean. Its snow melts and flows down in a river. During the first age of exploration on Earth, voyagers were getting sick of constantly looking at blue sea. For us, Waandti's oceans presented a pleasant change from deep black nothing, which we've already seen enough of. We will not refuel here since we have more than enough hydrogen to get us to Faackcan. On with it!

26 Feb: Ta-dam! After three months we're finally in Faackcan system. First, we will conduct photography and send one of the Wyverns back to deliver them. There should be no problems since the Wyverns can hold their own in a battle. Then, another Wyvern will return with measurement data leaving the Tiercel to do geological and biological exploration and a battleship to cover it. They will return in the final wave and bring samples.

11 Mar: Photography and gravitational pull measurements were postponed due to shortage of time and equipment related problems and we have now started conducting geological exploration. Our first target is Faackcan 7 gas giant. The Tiercel landed on the planet and deployed four MB4 mining machines. Results of brief MB4 analysis were phenomenal! Two probes hit precious metals, one found a metal streak and another found a low concentration of minerals! It may be another equipment failure (I'd not be surprised since we had quite a few of those already), so for the next while we will stay on Faackcan 7 and wait for MB4s to gather samples.

1 Apr: The fool's day! Oh what a day it was! At 2:00 AM board time the crew was awaken by sirens and ordered to their battle stations. For the next 5 minutes the crew eagerly searched the sky for an alien craft attacking us before Richard Feynman, our weapon systems specialist, realised what date it was. After that, there was a great party for the rest of the night and day with crewmembers pulling various pranks on one another, but none as grand as the first one. To everyone's pleasure there were no restrictions on alcohol this time because the ship is landed and will not take off in the next 24 hours. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the very first samples from MB4s. Though it has been 20 days since their deployment, not one tonne of precious metals has been gathered yet. It is now clear that we will be unable to explore all planets this time. The entire mission must take less than 10 months or we run a great risk of hyperdrive failure. The trip to Alioth is 3 months long, which means we must leave at the end of June.

4 May: Another great party was thrown! Today is the birthday of Commander S. Sadly, partying is all we can do right now as the mining machines have failed to gather any samples yet. It may well turn out that Faackcan 7 will be the only planet we gather mineral samples from in this mission since we are already past the half-time point of our mission. Commander S took the decision to take off and search the Sharnsworld for the MB4 left behind by the last mission. Perhaps we can get some samples to analyse from there.

9 May: We have arrived to Sharnsworld and located the MB4 left behind by the previous mission. Unfortunately, it was left in a location totally unsuitable for mining. Or perhaps the location became such after the mission's leave. In either case we found the machine turned on its head, which is clearly visible on the photo. The machine was loaded aboard, sterilized and examined. It is fully operational, except rather large deformations on its sides and top part. The metal there is bent, scratched and in some places even ripped. It is currently unknown what caused the destruction. Our biologist suggests that the marks are a little too big to be caused by any known animal. In addition the vegetation around the spot is untouched. Though, it would have plenty of time to grow before our arrival. We used this machine to search for minerals or metals on Sharnsworld, but found nothing except water. Since water is so abundant and easy to mine on Sharnsworld, in every case the machine targeted it instead of any minerals that may have been around. It looks like the settlers will have to conduct a more advanced geo-exploration once the colony is founded. Next, we will deploy the MB4 on Faackcan 4 and return to Sharnsworld for bio-exploration.

11 May: We have arrived to Faackcan 4. Some more religious members of our crew are sure that this planet is cursed. Well, it's either that or there is a previously unknown phenomena. Once we entered the planet's thick atmosphere, high winds hit us and threw way off course. The ship is equipped with standard system that compensates any atmospheric effects. This system worked perfectly on all gas giants, yet could not help this time. The farther in we went, the more we were affected by another thing. All systems' response times increased as well as the ship's speed. The meter still read 1000 kmh, but it felt like 200 at best. Finally, when we were about 200 meters above ground a strong force pulled us in. With the ship responding many times slower than it should we were unable to turn our tail to the ground in time and crashed into the planet. Luckily the speed of impact was not that great and we survived, suffering 76% hull damage. Somehow, no crucial systems were impacted and Paul Martin says he will be able to repair the ship soon. We deployed the MB4 a couple of times before finding a very small mineral deposit. Previous deployments found nothing but water. But it does not matter, because remembering our landing there is a snowball's chance in hell of returning for the machine later. So, we'll not be leaving it. We will soon quickly explore the planet for signs of life and get the hell out.

12 May: Our ship is now all fixed up and ready to go thanks to Martin's efforts. Meanwhile, our first outdoor mission in this system brought zero results. The planet is flat like a table, polished by high winds in its thick atmosphere to be almost a perfect sphere. Surprisingly, sonar and X-Ray scanners suggest a vast system of caves about one hundred meters beneath the surface. This is very strange, but we have no way of exploring them since we found no entrance from the surface. According to the scientists who analysed our samples, the planet is dead and has always been so. There is neither life, nor traces of its existence on the surface. Our task here is almost done. We will try to use one of the thargoid missiles to blow 100-some meters of rock and uncover entrance to underground tunnels, but chances of success are very slim.

12 May: Damn, damn thargoid missiles! As I wrote before we attempted to blow up an entrance to the underground caves using the thargoid missiles. We flew to 15,000m above ground level, set the target and fired the missile. Instead of targeting the designated ground square, the missile went astray (as it was later determined towards Sharnsworld!) almost 120 degrees off mark and continued on course for over 800 km until it ran out of fuel and self-destructed. Surprised we re-aimed and fired another missile. This, too, went astray. Only instead of 120 degrees it turned around 180 targeting our ship! We evaded it originally, but it came back and hit the mark stripping our shields and making some decent damage. No vital systems were damaged. If it were a sci-fi novel, I'd say that something is living in those caves and puts one hell of an effort to keep us out. Of course, it can't be true... I think. In either case we're out of this damned planet. It's a general agreement among the crew that Faackcan 4 is not a nice place. I say if Thargoids want it, they're darn welcome to keep it!
 

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