RENEWALApril 18 -- By the end of the day,
Rear Admiral Hank Rohrer, an accomplished survey officer, had taken command of the first fully-formed ESF and instituted TF ESF Alpha on board the Baltimore 1 Command Carrier! It was a historic moment. His first order of businesses was to begin the first fleet exercises that the SPACE Navy has ever conducted.
Joining him are staff officers
Cpt. Shad Gullo(Survey) and
Cpt. Asa Hotz(Operations). Under their command are the following assets:
Baltimore 1 Command Carrier(
Cmdr. Warner Godzik)
Gearing 1 Survey Carrier(
Cmdr. Christin Dinges)
2x JS Explorer(
Lt. Cmdrs. Trevor Lerner, Clement Sarrett)
3x GSV Frontier(
Cmdrs. Lavern Camel, Elvin Harnett, Jay Cin V)
3x GEV Prospector(
Lt. Cmdrs. Marc Cypriot, Fredrick Holcomb, Alfonso Galyen)
This also lowered Earth's fuel reserves to a shockingly low 2 million litres, SPACE has less than 15 million combined in the tanks when Titan and Callisto are added in. Most of Titan's supply was immediately shipped to Earth. It is expected to be a little over a year for the other XR, which will complete ESF Bravo.
April 22 -- Baltimore 2 is ready, and the Baltimore Marine SY is able to go silent.
Late April --
Garland Sidhom is in the news again. He's on an absolute tear and now has elite-level skills as a project lead.
May -- By the first of the month Earth has dipped under 1.25m liters. This is scary territory. The last group of Perrys to be scrapped are inbound just a few days out, and their tanks will be drained beforehand in order to boost the supply. It's not a huge amount, but about 700-800k can be gained there to make sure supplies last until Titan's shipment comes in.
Mid-May -- The exercises are supposed to be for the crew, but
Rear Admiral Hank Rohrer has gained a meager amount of operations skill in the process.
May 19th -- The Ambassador is ready. A team of the best and brightest junior expendables were found. The sole representative from BOG,
Marion Polizzi, concerned many. This was a lightning-rod of a choice if ever there was one. She has as fine a skill for diplomacy as anyone, but has a wicked streak in her as well. She's the kind of diplomat who will make nice to your face, stab you in the back, then dance a jig on your corpse in celebration. Then again, there's a chance that might be what SPACE needs in this situation ...
Regardless, it's a risky selection. The team will be led officially by
Col. Karen Cotsis, though Polizzi is pulling the strings in actuality.
Col. Jeff Wiechmann along with
Lt. Cmdrs. Jean Rickabaugh and
Arturo Calnan round out the group.
Commanding the Ambassador itself, though he's in truth a subordinate on this mission with a duty simply to ferry them around, is
Cmdr. Fritz Weinstock. He's not exactly overjoyed by the assignment but as someone who knows how to keep the peace and get things done, he's definitely the right man for the job.
It would only take a little over five days to reach the jump. Final approval was obtained from Fleet Command for the first jump in almost 23 years. After this long, there was no way to know what to expect. It could be years of nothing, or it could be very 'exciting' and brief. The sane ones hoped earnestly for the first option.
May 24, 0328 -- Final approval from the two Forrestals at the point where nothing has ever once been detected was obtained. The Ambassador was enveloped in a bluish hue ... and then disappeared.
And the waiting began.
May 27 -- Triton's base is demolished. A DSTS is already on the way. Only Sedna's remains.
June 2 -- SITG ThermoScan 121(
Bessie Wallander) is finished.
June 6 -- Long Beach completed.
June 15 -- Final Long Beach finished, sixth group deployed. Long regarded as the most incompetent researcher in SPACE,
David Gruis(PP, 47) has reached accomplished status. He may yet become actually important before he retires ...
Some thought was given to whether the two dozen Long Beach are actually enough. The tanks are at about 13m right now, a concerning situation but most of the ships that need to be built have been built. Still, with another tanker coming next year, another Gearing coming at the end of the year, and who knows what else, the mine shipments are drawing more fuel ... building up a reserve for the future will require massive amounts. They'll be needed eventually for certain, so why wait. Another two groups of four are ordered, and the slipways resume their active state at the P&A Group SY. Ironically when the Long Beach was first proposed, it was considered by some ridiculously massive and far more than SPACE would ever need. About that ...
Another two slipways are ordered as well. With this many harvesters it will take a very long time to refit them all if and when that becomes necessary. With most of the mineral stockpiles stable and duranium slowly edging upwards, Director Awad is gambling that it's an affordable expense. And can we really afford not to do it?
Mid June -- Gallicite exhausted on Halley's Comet
June 19 -- The Ambassador returns. It has been less than four weeks since it jumped out.
DIPLOMATIC MISSION LOG -- EPSILON ERIDANIMay 24, System Entry. Wrecks on the Pioneers are still visible about 1.5b km from the jump, right where they were reported almost a quarter century ago. It was a rather morbid and gruesome sight, an apparently permanent graveyard in space. They had not been touched. Apparently the aliens don't consider our technology worth the effort of salvaging. That's ... well that's beyond words.
Still, they were here to do a job. 25 years after first contact, the diplomatic channels were officially opened. Would anyone respond? Were they even still here to do so?
The answer didn't take long. Within the first day, long-range sensor instruments determined that something out there was receiving the messages. There was no question, they were still here. Somewhere. Probably near the wrecks. But no response was made. Either they couldn't understand us, or they didn't care to reply. Neither was encouraging.
The team was already beginning to sense their mission might well be futile.
June 4 -- Just as the team officially noted that it looked like establishing contact might be impossible, there were a few small signs of progress over the next week.
June 19 -- That was really the only positive note in the log unforunately. Before and after that opening week of June, it was more a situation of one step forward, two or three steps back. On this date, 25 days after the beginning of the mission, team lead Cotsis had to report that they had simply run out of options.
The mission was a failure. The aliens are simply too different, there's no basis for meaningful, effective communication and in the unanimous opinion of the team we are only antagonizing them by further attempts. Cmdr. Godzik had no choice but to accept the verdict and jump back to Sol.
SPACE Sector Command was not pleased at the news, but it was not entirely unexpected either. We made the effort. We tried to attempt peace. They've shown they aren't interested or capable of it repeatedly. There is only one option available. It's been true in a de facto state for a generation, but Director Awad made it official.
Humanity is now officially at
war with the aliens in Epsilon Eridani. This cold war can only end with the surrender and/or extermination of one or the other. SPACE's #1 priority is to make sure we win a fight we cannot afford to lose. All other concerns are secondary.
Late June -- With only the Sedna base left to deal with, Awad orders the next step in resolving the base situation. Mercury, Venus, and the four moons of Jupiter are still without any protection. Enough prefabricated Ticonderogas exist to handle all of them twice over. Yes they are basically 'stone-age' technology from the mid-60s, but they are something.
June 25 -- Diplo team arrives back on earth. A mysterious accident kills a junior naval at the same time, around 10 AM GST. The two incidents are probably unrelated, but the intranet goes crazy with conspiracy theorists' unsupported allegations and speculation.
July 1 -- Mercury and Venus have everything in place, and a single construction brigade begins work on each of their respective Ticonderoga bases.
Early July -- Navy Chief
Mitchell Feeser adds a bit of Logistics knowledge to his resume, and the last of the Perrys are scrapped.
July 10 -- Io and Callisto begin work on the Ticonderogas there, the other two moons await incoming construction brigades. So far all of them are expected to be finished early next year. Also, research finished on Small Troop Transport Bay, fit for a company, though we have no units that small yet.
Alphonse Lambeth led the work.
Mid-July --
RA Parker Lanzi has become accomplished in her current posting as Communications Officer at Fleet HQ.
Director Riley Awad, and to a lesser extent the public, is growing impatient with the continuing 'fleet exercises'. Over the strenuous objection of Chief Feeser and Rear Admiral Rohrer, he orders ESF Alpha to get going and stop the exercises. They want another five months in addition to three already spent in order to get to what the navy feels is a sufficient level of training and coordination. Awad goes apoplectic at that notion, pointing out that this isn't some complicated combat maneuver they're being asked to perform -- it's survey operations. With the current fuel situation, they can't afford to burn more of it up with these training exercises, and delaying the mission isn't an option either.
Combining the concerns for a shakedown run and fuel supply issues, with the rare optimal position of Saturn at nearly the same bearing as the Barnard's Star point, the furthest one in Sol, Awad orders ESF Alpha there first. There won't be a better chance in terms of a good refueling point. Saturn takes almost a 30-year path around the sun, so while it's a very unglamorous place to start it served as a useful compromise and made practical sense with the goal to survey all the systems eventually anyway.
July 15 -- After topping off at Earth, ESF Alpha breaks orbit and heads for Barnard's Star. It's almost a four-month journey, so it'll be late in the year before they arrive. Operation Renewal was officially underway. It was expected to take most of the decade to map the six systems.
July 20 -- Sedna's Tennessee base is the last to be destroyed.
July 24 -- Construction begins on the final two Ticonderoga bases on Europa and Ganymede.
August -- ESF Alpha has passed through the asteroid field and is nearing Jupiter orbit path.
July 27 -- Caldwell finished(x4). Two more groups to go.
Mid-August -- Sedna expands again, now at 37 complexes.
September -- Now roughly midway between Saturn and Uranus orbits, ESF Alpha's progress is agonizingly slow for most observers on Earth.
Early September --
Lt. Cmdr. Bandus Meian has a less horrible initiative now.
September 25 -- The final DSTS departs for Sedna. Research Lab and Ordnance Factory production are increased to pre-election levels(33 and 13 percent respectively).
October -- ESF Alpha has reached the midpoint between Uranus and Neptune orbits.
Early October --
Dr. Rosemary Urenda has bumped her already elite skills up again. Anything that gets ion drives here sooner is worthy of praise.
** At this point, a power loss cost me notes on what happened for about the next year and a half. I can recreate the major events, just not specific personnel/research stuff. Thankfully Aurora saves constantly. I need to do a better job of doing that myself
![Smiley :)](http://aurora2.pentarch.org/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif)
**
Mid-November -- ESF Alpha reaches the jump and departs for Barnard's Star, which was discovered and last visited back in 2055. It's time now to wait ... and hope that humanity has better luck this time around than they did in the 50s.