30th February 1892
Newton and Kepler have returned to Victoria, reporting they found no additional jump points in Oxford and it is therefore a dead-end system. After refueling and resupply they will be heading for Edinburgh to begin a new survey.
15th March 1892
Sir William has finally convinced Queen Victoria that we shouldn?t name continue to name new star systems after cities in the British Isles and the Dominions, partly because it could be divisive if some regions of the Empire feel they are not being adequately represented and partly because Sir William believes systems need more ?romantic? names than Sheffield or Birmingham (no offence intended to the inhabitants of those fair cities; well not by me at least). Therefore the Queen has decreed that systems should be named cities of the ancient world, starting with the Greeks. Given Sir William?s fondness for the cultures of antiquity, already apparent in the names of the planets and moons in Britannia, I suspect the Astronomer Royal had a significant influence on that decision too.
14th June 1892
Mr Blandford has informed me we suffering from a shortage of Mercassium. Although Victoria has a deposit of 30,000 tons, its accessibility is only 0.1, which means we are only extracting a small amount each year. In order for the Empire to expand we need to build colony ships and research facilities, both of which require large amounts of Mercassium. The only significant amount of Mercassium within the Britannia system is on Antheia, the third moon of Athena in the Britannia-B system. There are also much smaller deposits among the asteroids in the Ottawa system but they cannot be reached until our first Blenheim class jump cruiser is ready. The five Cunard class freighters in service therefore have their first task ? moving automated mines on the long journey from Victoria to Antheia.
Antheia Mineral Report
Duranium 200 Acc: 0.9
Corbomite 172,225 Acc: 0.8
Boronide 230,400 Acc: 0.8
Mercassium 21,025 Acc: 0.8
Vendarite 75,625 Acc: 1
Sorium 24,025 Acc: 0.8
10th September 1892
The Royal Sovereign class battleships Repulse and Royal Oak have joined the fleet, doubling the warship strength of the new Royal Navy.
1st January 1893
Under the guidance of the Royal Society, British scientists have developed a breakthrough technology called a Jump Gate. Once built on a jump point, the Jump Gate will allow any size of ship to pass through, removing the need for a jump drive. These jump gates can be built between Victoria and any interstellar colonies we may establish, allowing easy access for trade and further colonization. In addition, they will allow communication between any systems linked by a series of jump gates. Creating the jump gates will require a number of jump gate components, built by our construction factories and transported to the jump point in freighters so they can be assembled by a specialised construction ship (see below).
Brunel class Construction Ship 7000 tons 716 Crew 817.8 BP TCS 140 TH 240 EM 0
1714 km/s Armour 1-32 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0 Damage Control Rating 9 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 43% IFR: 0.6% Maintenance Capacity 657 MSP
Jump Gate Construction Ship: 180 days
Whitworth Ion Engine (4) Power 60 Efficiency 0.70 Signature 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 36.7 billion km (248 days at full power)4th February 1893
For the last twelve months, Newton and Kepler have been surveying and exploring nearby systems. They have found three new jump points in Edinburgh, three more in Ottawa and a further two in Ionia, one of the systems beyond Edinburgh. Known space now includes nineteen systems, six of which have been surveyed. A second ideal habitable world has been discovered in Athens, adjacent to Ottawa, while the other two systems beyond Ottawa, Sparta and Corinth, include two more worlds very close to habitable. One has a breathable atmosphere and a temperature of -4C, just below human tolerance, while the other has an acceptable temperature but only ninety percent of the necessary oxygen level. Unfortunately the jump points to these systems are between two and three billion kilometers from the Ottawa ? Britannia jump point and the Britannia - Ottawa jump point is five billion kilometers from Victoria, so the round trip for eventual colonization will take some time.
9th February 1893
Two more Newton class survey ships are completed, taking the total for the class to five. Galileo is already working on a survey of the London system, Newton and Kepler are en route to Melbourne while the two new ships, Halley and Copernicus, will be dispatched to Manchester.
5th March 1893
The jump cruiser Blenheim is launched from the Thorneycroft Shipyard. Her first task will be to escort a colony expedition to the Cambridge system.
8th April 1893
The colony expedition returns and reports that 200,000 colonists have been established on Cambridge-B III, creating the first British colony outside the Britannia system. In a grand ceremony, Queen Victoria officially changes the name of Cambridge-B III to the Artemis Colony. I suspect my Astronomer colleague has been whispering in the Queen?s ear once again.
3rd August 1893
Mr Blandford has informed me that the geological survey ship James Hall has found a particularly interesting moon in the Cambridge system. It has significant quantities of five minerals including Duranium, Mercassium and Sorium, with most at high accessibility. This will be a much better long term prospect than the Antheia mining colony so the nine Cunard class freighters now in service will begin moving automated mines from Victoria. The sixty-three mining complexes on Antheia will remain there in the near future due to the long trip involved in retrieving them.
Cambridge-B VIII - Moon 9 Survey Report
Duranium 636,192 Acc: 1
Corbomite 853,776 Acc: 1
Mercassium 219,024 Acc: 0.9
Vendarite 147,456 Acc: 0.9
Sorium 1,016,064 Acc: 0.6
29th December 1893
The Royal Sovereign class battleships Revenge and Resolution are launched from the Swan Hunter shipyard, taking the total number of the class to six.
26th January 1894
The gravitational survey ship Halley has just entered Britannia through the Manchester jump point, bringing news that is both fascinating and disturbing in equal measure. In late December 1893, Halley?s sister ship Copernicus was working on a solo gravitational survey of the Marathon system, two transits from Britannia via Manchester, while she waited for her Halley to join her. Marathon has a G2-V star, similar to Sol, and eleven planets. Marathon II is a desert world with an average temperature of 62C, high although tolerable gravity and a breathable atmosphere, giving it a colony cost of 0.53. The third planet is the largest rocky world to be discovered to date, with a diameter of 30,000 kilometers, a dense oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere with oxygen pressure well above the safe level and a gravity of 1.65G, making it unsuitable for human colonization.
Several days into the survey, while holding position to take gravitational readings, her sensors detected a strength-60 thermal signature, just twenty percent of the signature from her own engines, at 100,000 kilometers and approaching at 3157 km/s. Despite being understandably stunned by the appearance of what was almost certainly an alien ship, Commander Scott Morley quickly ordered his helmsman to maintain the 100,000 kilometers separation and his tactical officer to engage active sensors, which revealed a tiny ship of only 950 tons. As the contact changed course to pursue, Copernicus moved further away at 4000 km/s and stopped. After repeating this manoeuvre several times, the commander of the alien ship seemed to get the message and halted his own ship?s futile attempts to close the range. With the two ships now stationary, Commander Morley attempted to hail the alien vessel. To his surprise, the aliens responded almost immediately and appeared to have a spoken language that didn?t sound particularly alien. In fact, it sounded strangely familiar to some of the officers on board the Copernicus. Playing a hunch, Commander Morley played the alien transmission to his whole crew. One of the engineers, a Kyrgyz tribesman from the north-west frontier prior to the Transference, recognized the language as Mongolian, albeit a very old dialect. With his help, combined with that of the library computers, the linguists among Copernicus? crew finally stated that their best guess was 13th century Mongolian, around the time of Kublai Khan. Commander Morley hailed the aliens once more, using video and audio and addressed them as best he could given the limitations of the quickly programmed translation software.
Within a few minutes, the aliens replied with video and turned out to be human and plainly of Mongolian origin. They initially appeared as surprised as the crew of the Copernicus to be conversing with other humans, although that surprise seemed to be rapidly turning to suspicion. While the Mongols continued to be guarded in the ensuing exchange of information, it did not take long to establish that they too had suffered an equivalent of the Transference five years previously. Whatever force was responsible for the Transference, it appears that it affected at least one culture from the past history of Earth in addition to our own transfer from the present day.
After eighteen hours of discussions, it was becoming increasingly apparent the Mongols were not prepared to disclose any further information, including which planet was their homeworld, although given the environmental conditions Marathon II seemed to be the most likely candidate. Despite their reluctance to reveal anything new, they still seemed eager to continue the negotiations, although the small ship?s commander, Khan Yuan Gang, was obviously becoming agitated despite his efforts to conceal it. Commander Morley was growing suspicious and decided that it would be best to withdraw for the moment in case a larger and more dangerous Mongol vessel arrived. His suspicions increased after he informed Yuan Gang that his ship would be departing and the Mongol captain become progressively more desperate in his efforts to make them stay. Rather than head directly for the Manchester jump point, located closer to the star and about thirty degrees of arc from his current position, he set course for the outer system, intending to loop back and throw off any Mongol pursuit. The small signature of the Mongol ship soon dropped off Copernicus? sensors and Commander Morley hoped the reverse was also true. There was still no way to know if the Mongol ship had approached because it was also on a survey mission or if planetary sensors had spotted Copernicus, although if planetary sensors had detected the scout, an interception would probably have happened much sooner.
Five days later, Copernicus entered Manchester, without detecting any more Mongol ships en route. Halley was already in Manchester and closer to the Britannia jump point so Commander Morley contacted Commander Harry Little on the Halley and asked him to report the situation while Copernicus remained within sensor of the jump point, ready to monitor any pursuing Mongol ships. It took Halley three weeks to reach Britannia, during which time Copernicus detected no sign of anything transiting the Marathon jump point.
As a result of this report, the Queen and the Prime Minister have formed a Royal Commission to decide how best to deal with this new reality, both in terms of resolving the immediate situation with regard to the Mongols and for long term planning now we know we are not alone in the universe. The leader of the Commission will be Lord Randolph Churchill, an experienced politician and formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. The rest of the Commission will fulfill their roles on a part-time basis as required. Their names and areas of expertise are provided below:
Sir Archibald Primrose (Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs): Interstellar Relations
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Richard Hamilton (First Space Lord): Military Operations
Sir William Christie (Astronomer Royal): Astrographics and Astronomy
Mr William Thomson (Head of the Royal Society): Research and Development
Mr William Blandford (President of the Geological Society of London): Geology and Resource Planning
Sir Edward Harland (Shipbuilder): Shipbuilding and Production
Sir William White (Naval Architect): Ship Design
I will also be a member of the Commission, partly because of my role of official Chronicler of the Empire but mainly because my own historical knowledge will aid the commission in dealing with cultures from our own past. I have previously mentioned all members of the Royal Commission within this Chronicle with the exception of Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Archibald Primrose. I will therefore provide the reader with some background. Lord Randolph Churchill is the third son of the Seventh Duke of Marlborough and married to Jennie Jerome, an American considered to be one of the most beautiful women in two worlds. In 1885 he become Secretary of State for India and a year later Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. A year later, he resigned in a dispute over funding for the military and his health began to deteriorate. Fortunately, our vastly increased medical knowledge after the Transference was sufficient to return Lord Randolph to full health, allowing him to return to government service. He has two sons, the eldest of which has recently graduated from the Royal Naval College at New Dartmouth and taken command of a Cunard class freighter. Despite his humble first assignment, I am informed by the head of the Academy that young Winston Churchill has a promising career ahead of him.
Sir Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, is a member of the Liberal Party and if we were still on Earth would not be serving in a government headed by a Conservative Prime Minister. After the Transference, Queen Victoria asked Lord Salisbury to form an all-party government and so far this has worked very well, even though no election has taken place on Victoria. As with Lord Randolph, Sir Archibald has a notable wife, in this case Hannah de Rothschild, daughter of Mayer de Rothschild. Upon her father?s death in 1874, she became the richest woman in Britain. Sir Archibald is a keen fan of horseracing and is reputed to have said that he had three aims in life: to win the Derby, to marry an heiress and to become Prime Minister. He has so far managed the first two, as his horse Ladas won the 1893 race at New Epsom, and given his obvious capabilities it seems very likely he will eventually manage the third.
Until the Commission can decide on our new policy, Copernicus and Halley will remain at the Manchester - Marathon and Manchester - Britannia jump points respectively; the former watching for Mongol ships and the latter relaying any warning to Victoria. Our six Royal Sovereign class battleships will remain in Victoria orbit. They will have enough warning to move to the Britannia ? Manchester jump point if required and they cannot proceed into Manchester because of their size. At 12,000 tons they are more than double the size of the Blenheims, our largest jump-capable ships.
29th January 1894
The Royal Commission met for the first time today with a focus on the short-term response to the discovery of the Mongolian presence just two transits from Britannia. I presented a brief overview of the history of the Mongol Empire on Earth, the largest contiguous Empire in history and the second largest overall, after our own. Despite the Mongols? well deserved reputation for complete ruthlessness, they were remarkably civilized, emphasizing trade, religious freedom and rule of law. However, should anyone stand against them they would be utterly crushed; their cities destroyed and their populations massacred. During the time of the Mongol invasion, the population of China reputedly fell from 120 million to 60 million. The one saving grace is that the population of the British Empire is at least four times that of the Mongol Empire at its height, so if the Mongol Empire truly has been lifted from our own history, we should have a decisive advantage in economic terms.
After listening to my presentation, Sir William proposed a ridiculous theory that is nevertheless keeping me awake at nights. Someone or something has transferred both the British Empire and the Mongol Empire from Earth to planets in this distant part of the universe. Sir William believes that whoever was responsible for this phenomena may well have not stopped at two different cultures, but could have transferred many cultures from the past. Furthermore, and more disturbingly, he has put forward the idea that the British Empire could itself be a culture from the past if the Transference took place at some point in our own future. Despite the fact it is obvious that the present is the present and I surely would know if I was living in the past, I cannot help turning this over in my mind. If his nonsensical suggestion were true, what manner of humans could we encounter if they were from our own future?
The Commission could have spent all day arguing over Sir William?s theory if Lord Randolph had not firmly returned us to the planned agenda. Once the discussion began to address our more immediate concerns, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Richard Hamilton stated his view that all our shipyard capacity should be devoted to warship construction and new warships should be designed to make full use of the smaller yards, while our research facilities should concentrate their efforts on new military technology. Sir William White and Sir Edward Harland provided their full support, which is hardly a surprise as they design and build ships for a living and warships are obviously far more interesting than freighters. Mr William Thomson, head of the Royal Society was more equivocal regarding the direction of our research, pointing out that improvements in productivity and general technology would provide a greater long-term benefit in both military and commercial terms. Nevertheless, he did propose a long-term plan to establish several colonies devoted to the different fields of research, enabling specialists in each area to provide maximum benefit from their expertise.
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Archibald Primrose, urged a more evenhanded approach to the Mongols, believing that several of the Commission members had already assumed that the Empire would soon be engaged in conflict. If the Mongols could be reasoned with, that would be preferable to expending resources and lives in an interstellar conflict. He recommended a diplomatic mission should be dispatched to the Marathon system in an effort to reach an amicable settlement. Sir Richard, half out of his seat and a little red-faced, asked if the Secretary of State was seriously suggesting a peace conference with Genghis Khan. I interjected to point out that given the available evidence it was more likely to be Kublai Khan but I am not sure Sir Richard appreciated my assistance. Sir Archibald was less than complimentary in return and a remark that Sir Richard was more interested in playing with his battleships than dealing with the complexities of interstellar diplomacy almost caused a more physical exchange of views. Fortunately, Lord Randolph came between them, both verbally and literally, and quickly restored order.
Finally, Sir William pointed out that both positions could be accommodated. An expedition to offer an olive branch to the Mongols would not prevent increased military expenditure and there was no reason not to hope for the best but plan for the worst. Lord Randolph, who had performed mainly as referee up to this point, proffered his own view that we could not abandon all commercially related expenditure, pointing out that the Empire was built on trade as much as its military prowess. Given the lack of elections since the Transference, he warned that we should be careful not to descend into a military dictatorship. He therefore suggested that a new smaller warship of no more than 5000 tons should be designed immediately, to enable it to operate with the existing Blenheim class jump cruisers, and that it should be built in the three slipways of the Barrow Shipbuilding Yard, which was currently empty after completing the sixth Newton class survey ship. He also reminded the Commission that the seventh and eighth Royal Sovereign class battleships were already under construction and that the Swan Hunter Yard was being expanded in preparation for an even larger class that had yet to be finalised. Lord Randolph?s views on what he regards as excessive military expenditure are well known, as he resigned from his post as Chancellor several years ago in protest at the demands of the military on the Exchequer. In this case however, his suggestion was acceptable to all Commission members as a short-term response to the crisis, with the proviso that should the diplomatic mission fail the question of warship production would be re-addressed. As our research facilities are currently working on improvements to our active sensor technology, that is also acceptable to all concerned.
The diplomatic expedition will be led by Joseph Chamberlain, a Liberal politician who has recently been appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies. Despite their different political origins, he is also a friend of Lord Randolph and they worked together on several cross-party issues before the Transference. The expedition will leave within the week, on board the new Blenheim class jump cruiser Ajax.
14th February 1894
Sir William White and Sir Edward Harland have worked together to produce a new cruiser design in record time. The Apollo class, which will use the names intended for a series of second-class protected cruisers on Earth, is a cut-down version of the Royal Sovereign class battleships. To allow them to enter service as quickly as possible, there is no new technology included in their design. With five missile launchers and magazine space for ninety-five anti-ship missiles, they will provide the Empire with a capable warship that can travel to any part of known space, assuming a Blenheim class jump cruiser is available for escort.
Apollo class Cruiser 5000 tons 476 Crew 728 BP TCS 100 TH 360 EM 0
3600 km/s Armour 4-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 6/0/0/0 Damage Control Rating 3 PPV 20
Annual Failure Rate: 66% IFR: 0.9% Maintenance Capacity 273 MSP
Magazine 380
Whitworth Ion Engine (6) Power 60 Efficiency 0.70 Signature 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 51.4 billion km (165 days at full power)
Vickers S4 Missile Launcher (5) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
Bloodhound 50/35 Missile Fire Control (1) Range 50.4m km Resolution 35
Broadsword Anti-Ship Missile (80) Speed: 21000 km/s End: 38.3 minutes Range: 48.2m km Warhead: 6 MR: 10 Size: 4
Rapier Anti-Ship Missile (15) Speed: 24000 km/s End: 22.3 minutes Range: 32.1m km Warhead: 6 MR: 10 Size: 4
Foxhunter 48/60 Active Search Sensor (1) GPS 4800 Range 48.0m km Resolution 60
T6 Thermal Sensor (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km
to be continued...
Steve
