Reports of 82-83Important eventsFebruary 14th, 82Commander Miles of the Herald sat in the mess hall eating his breakfast when a voice on the comlink interrupted him.
- Captain, Sir, we have a large EM contact at 24 million kilometres away on our sensors. We are tracking something moving at nearly 2600 km/s coming from the third planet of this system and heading straight for this planet. It was the sensor specialist on the bridge
- Have they detected us yet? Commander Miles asked
- No Sir, given the high resolution of their scanning beams I seriously doubt that. The specialist answered
- Order the helmsman to ignite the engines and break orbit, get me the captain of the Scott on the com!The Herald slowly accelerated and broke free of the Gas Giant they had been orbiting. It had been a rather anxious one and a half months, waiting for someone in the Centaur system to start missing them. By now they missed their agreed upon contact time with nearly a month.
Commander Miles ordered the ship to head for the pre-arranged emergency coordinates just a few hundred million kilometres from the gravity well leading to Centaur. They would not want to lead anything close to the Gravity Well, just in case they didn’t know about it and they could also not jeopardize the Scott’s position there.
It was quite apparent after just a short while that they indeed had not been detected, the ship using the scanners had not altered course to follow them and nearly a day later the Herald could no longer sense the scanning signature of the alien ship.
The Herald reached the coordinate a few days later and in February 22nd there was a familiar voice over the com system as the com officer of the Repton broadcasted a message for confirmation of their whereabouts. A few days later both the Herald and the Scott were safely back in Centaur space.
This would certainly be an interesting debriefing at Terra Nova Headquarters.
March 5th, 82It had come as a chock to most when the news of the incident in the Drake system leaked out to the public. Panic quickly rose upon Terra Nova and even some riots raged in a few places.
The Senate had convened an emergency meeting and Harrison Cole, the Interstellar Director, had addressed the assembly.
- Fellow citizens and senators, it is a deep tragedy what happened to the Sheraton. BUT… we cannot… I repeat… we cannot ignore the fact that it was we who were the intruders, not them. Would we have done anything different?
- Let us see this as the beginning of a new era in human history. We WILL overcome this and learn from it.
- The aliens surely were as startled by our appearance as we were. Let us now move forward, let us try and send a team of scientists and diplomats to start friendly communications.
- I assure you, we will succeed!The Directors speech was successful and a majority agreed to send a science team to initiate contact with the alien species. A team had hastily been gathered using the brightest and best humanity had to offer. In under just another month they had boarded a long range jump capable shuttle filled with scientific equipment and communication devices. They were now in transit to the Gemini system.
Initial contact was established in May 29th but was met with severe difficulties from the start. The alien language was very hard to understand. But no one were about to let anything as trivial as that to stop them. A few months later full communications was established.
By May 3rd of 83 slightly more than one year later the first physical meeting between the Federian and Human species had taken place. It was formally held at the human shuttle in Gemini space.
The Federians were an impressive race. They had dark greyish thick skin and where a good few decimetre taller than humans and quite thin but certainly not weak. They were dressed in rather simple but practical clothing in bright colours.
Something even more impressive was the ships that they arrived with. There was a rather big ship with three smaller ships. The larger ship was estimated at maybe 15-20k tons and the smaller at about 10k tons. No scans could be taken of course so it was hard to know their exact measures. It was rather apparent though that these were military ships. When this close you could actually see them with your own eyes from the bridge of the SED shuttle.
The talks took several days, especially due to all the complex translations. The Federians had presented themselves as House Kishono of the Federian Empire. It was apparent that humans had trespassed into their space. They also threatened to destroy any human vessels that entered into what they regarded as their space.
They did not seem to care much for the Gemini system but they made it perfectly clear that any attempt by humans to send ships into Gemini would be responded to in kind and any further incursion into the Drake system would force them to take a more active role in hunting down and destroy the humans.
The Federians seemed very hostile, but at the same time agreeable. They seemed to be taking their word very serious, but no one knows for certain it wasn’t all an act.
The agreement was that Gemini should act as a Neutral zone with no military presence by either side. Communication between the species was to continue as to assure the agreement was still valid. Other than that the Federians didn’t seem interested in improving their relations much.
New exiting timesAfter the incident in the Drake system the Senate was quick to issue new orders to the SED headquarters. All activities were to finish and ships were to head back to Terra Nova as soon as possible. Operations in both the systems of Phoenix and Hydra were cut short and the ships were ordered to return to Terra Nova.
In Centaur the gravitational survey of the system was almost finished and so they were permitted to finish. There was also one geology survey vessel that had permission to stay on mission while the Repton stayed at the gravity well to maintain communications.
By May of 83 when the agreement between Terra Nova and the Federians was finished the senate again felt more confident. The two remaining exploration task forces were given three survey vessels each while the rest were to be kept in reserve. Survey of the Centaur, Hydra and Phoenix were to be completed as soon as possible.
Currently most of the fleet were undergoing extensive overhauls and new expeditions had to wait for almost a year.
Research reportHigh Density Duranium Armour
Survey reportJP found at Hydra
JP found at Centaur
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A I: Duranium 26,879,110 (0.4), Neutronium 1,272,384 (0.1), Corbomite 1,493,284 (0.1), Tritanium 32,878,760 (0.1), Boron 432,964 (0.1), Mercassium 10,214,420 (0.5), Vendarite 60,871,200 (0.8 ), Sorium 20,358,140 (0.1)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A II: Sorium 3,036,000 (0.4)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A III: Duranium 40,969,350 (0.6), Boronide 26,481,320 (0.1), Corundium 2,802,276 (0.1)
Minerals Discovered on New Earth: Duranium 40,500,000 (0.1), Corbomite 33,640,000 (0.1), Mercassium 9,610,000 (0.1)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A II - Moon 6: Duranium 1,311 (1), Boronide 829 (1), Uridium 2,007 (1)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A IV: Sorium 118,510,000 (0.5)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A Asteroid #25: Duranium 2,650 (1), Neutronium 8 (1), Tritanium 3,540 (1), Mercassium 4,706 (1), Vendarite 471 (1), Sorium 1,592(1), Uridium 534 (1), Corundium 4,900 (1), Gall 259 (1)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A IV - Moon 40: Duranium 1,707,552 (0.8 ), Boronide 992,016 (0.9), Vendarite 1,327,104 (0.6)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A V: Sorium 473,200,000 (0.7)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A V - Moon 5: Corbomite 116,964 (0.3), Vendarite 26,244 (0.7)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A V - Moon 13: Duranium 7,465,248 (1)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A V - Moon 14: Duranium 217,800 (0.8 ), Corundium 160,000 (0.5), Gallicite 270,400 (0.8 )
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-A Asteroid #383: Duranium 15,878 (1), Corundium 6,416 (1)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-B II: Duranium 7,403,552 (0.1), Corundium 11,587,220 (0.1)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-B II - Moon 2: Duranium 83,232 (0.9), Boronide 318,096 (0.8 ), Vendarite 484,416 (0.7)
Minerals Discovered on Centaur-B III: Neutronium 81,000,000 (0.1), Mercassium 2,924,100 (0.1), Sorium 1,822,500 (0.1), Corundium 14,288,400 (0.1)
Colonial reportNo substantial news in the colonial efforts. Some new auto mines deployed to Borelia, small amounts of infrastructure and people have arrived to Lindara.
Royal Navy reportRNSS Echo (Copernicus class) built at Terra Nova, Co. Commander Jay Lee
RNSS Myrmidon (Copernicus class) built at Terra Nova, Co. Lieutenant Commander Hong Chan Xiong
Future plansThe future of Terra Nova was flowing from a horrible doomsday scenario in the beginning of 82 until a sigh of relief in 83 when a deal was struck with the new alien government. Still, plans had to shift focus from production and logistics investment and more into military oriented focus.
The R&D part of the Royal Navy was hard at work. They had to come up with a creative way to use the meagre resources at hand to build some form of ship or ships effective enough to oppose a technologically superior opponent. This task was not so easy, to say the least. The current plan is to build two different designs as a starting point of a defence fleet able to protect both Terra Nova and its colonies.
One ship should be an advanced scout ship with strong passive scanning equipment and smaller crafts with low resolution scanners docked in its hangar. This ship should be no greater than 6000 tons, preferably smaller since the resolution used by the enemy in the previous engagement was for ships at 6000 tons.
Another ship should be a Destroyer armed primarily with heavy long range torpedoes. Hopefully they could engage the enemy before they are detected. The size of these ships should land close to 6000 tons as well, perhaps somewhat bigger.
The biggest problem in the initial stages will be defence against enemy torpedoes. We have no idea what type of torpedoes the aliens would use, if they even have torpedoes, but it is assumed that they do. There are no reliable technologies that are available for a good torpedo defence so initial Destroyer design will be about speed and long range strikes.
The civilian government has decided to stabilize the gravity wells between Zandoria and Centaur. In order to do this a new design for such a ship has been on the drawing board and research into a gravitational stabilizer module has been initiated. Plans going forward are to establish a new colony on New Earth and build up a military base. The system has many options for a very good strategic defence with asteroids and Lagrange points that can be exploited.
These plans are of course nothing that is possible in the short run, but maybe in five to ten years’ time.
Technologies that will be worked on for the future are stronger and more reliable EM and Thermal sensor systems, more powerful yields and better fuel efficiency for longer range on our missiles.