Commonwealth of Earth

[Sematary (OP)]

I have a new project coming up so I am starting a new AAR to knock the rust off. There will be no real background on this AAR because it would be incredibly ridiculous and honestly I don't really feel like coming up with one for a project like this. The first update will probably be done sometime tomorrow.

[Sematary (OP)]

There are few messages in Earth history that make big enough impressions that they are remembered for all time. Two good examples of this happened in 1969 and were uttered by Neil Armstrong. The first was “Houston, the Eagle has landed.” And the second one was “That’s one small step for man, [static crackle] one giant leap for mankind.” As the 20th Century pressed on and the 21st began to do the same almost every memorable message was captured or accompanied by audio of the message just as Apollo 11’s messages were. That changed quite a bit when Trans-Newtonian physics got involved in the early 2020s. The Commonwealth of Earth’s navy instituted a policy that all priority one and two messages be sent as text in order to minimize distortion and ensure transmission. At the time the new generation of radios, which used a variation on jump drive technology to almost instantaneously send messages within a solar system, were still new and their limitations were unknown. The first message of great import sent this way was Commodore Ellis Swift’s report of the first jump point found. His message marked the discovery of the first time humans found a way to leave their home solar system. Captain Sophie Shah of the CE Agincourt’s series of reports a few days later records the first passage of humans to a different star.

-Excerpt from “From Mars to the Stars: A History of Humanity’s Early Space Days” by Allen Roth, Copyright 2200 Watney Triangle Press



March 2025

Report: 08:30:00 2nd March 2025
Subject: Mission Report
From: Commodore Ellis Swift, Captain CES Illustrious, Commander Grav Survey Task Group
To: Vice Admiral Emma Scott, Commander Commonwealth of Earth Space Command
Priority One

At 00:39:01 Earth Standard Time on 2nd March 2025 the sensor officer of the Illustrious announced he had found an anomaly that matched the projections of what a jump point would look like within established parameters. Exact time of discovery discovered by later examination of the logs. The sensor officer of the Illuminous reported the same thing 16 seconds later. Seven minutes of discussion between both sensor officers as well as several tests confirmed the discovery to levels surpassing all requirements.  So that by 00:46:00 we were able to announce the discovery to the crews of the ships. This report is time stamped seven hours and forty four minutes later because we have spent the time mapping the point and analyzing every conceivable output. We have found that the point is quite small as predicted, almost a point in fact with almost no length, width, or height. We have mapped its exact position and have updated charts and we have dropped a small beacon that will help guide navigation computers to within distances needed for the functioning of jump engines.

The point lies 1 billion and roughly 50 million miles from the center of the sun on a heading of 53 degrees as read by our charts.

We are continuing our survey, there may be other jump points.




Report: 11:04:36 8th March 2025
Subject: None
From: Captain Sophie Shah, Captain CE Agincourt, Commander First Task Group
To: Vice Admiral Emma Scott, Commander Commonwealth of Earth Space Command
Priority One

Transiting


Report: 11:05:00 8th March 2025
Subject: None
From: Captain Sophie Shah, Captain CE Agincourt, Commander First Task Group
To: Vice Admiral Emma Scott, Commander Commonwealth of Earth Space Command
Priority One

Transit a success. Jump engine can shoot message through, but after jump there is residual energy can be used by radio to send short message. AC-B-II possible habitable.


Captain Shah looked at the sparkling blue water that almost completely covered the planet beneath her. They had crossed the 4.6 billion kilometers slowly taking eight days. She had no idea what awaited her and if there was life to be found. About a billion miles from the planet she had ordered active sensors turned on, up until that point she had been relying on passive sensors hoping they would pick up any EM or thermal signature far enough away to give her crews time to react. The disappointment of not finding any signal out of the ordinary simply grew as time went on and the planet got closer. The task group had been in orbit around the planet for a couple of hours by now and she looked over at her sensor officer and the science officer who had been huddled over a series of read outs since the active sensors were able to pick up the planet’s atmosphere. “What’s the official report?” She queried.

Lt. Johannsson looked up at her before standing straight and giving his report, “There is no life on the planet.” Before she could interject he held his hands up, “I don’t just mean there is no sentient life, I mean there is no life of any kind being picked up.”

She stared hard at him before pointing at the screen that currently served as a viewing screen displaying the planet as if the screen were a window. “How is that possible? Look at that water.” The irritation was clear in her voice; from what she could tell this planet had the building blocks of life and here her science officer was telling her there was no life on it.

“Its not surprising really,” he began, “The star is smaller than the sun, its just over a fifth smaller with slightly under two fifths the luminosity. The planet is smaller than Earth with less mass and its tidally locked. Our sensors have said that the average temperature of the planet is  23.2 degrees centigrade which is a very nice temperature but now that we are here we have found that number is an average of two extremes. The water on the star side of the planet is very hot and close to boiling while the water on the far side is only not frozen due to heat transfer and the currents this huge temperature gradient creates. Lt. Franklin and I have confined most of our search to the twilight area of the planet because that is the only place extremes does not come into effect and we found nothing there, and there is very little chance anything escaped our sensors. Now there is a higher chance on the extreme parts but in this case higher still means very, very low. Maybe if the Commonwealth government creates a pure science vessel in the future and it spends more than an hour studying this planet they may eventually find a microbe or something but we can honestly say there is no multi-cellular life on Alpha Centauri B II and it is highly unlikely that there is single celled life on the planet.”

Finally Sophie nodded, “I see. Thank you that is all.” Without another word she looked over to the helmsmen, “Lay in a course for the jump point, full speed.”

“Aye, Captain.” Came the reply and as the order was relayed to the other four ships of the task group the Agincourt left orbit and headed home.

[Sematary (OP)]

When people imagine the early days of the Commonwealth and its expansion into space they generally think of a fleet with a Victory class carrier and its 20 fighters swarming around the outside, a couple Invincible class battleships, a few Dervish class escorts, and a handful of Tribal destroyers. This is mostly thanks to movies and books of the time, and even “historical” pieces made today. They are partly correct, the CE Victory was the lead ship in its class and was the pride of the fleet and at the time they were the largest ships ever built even to the point where a task group was not considered a fleet unless it had a Victory class carrier in it. But the real power projectors in the early days were three very different classes from the Victory. The Agincourt class cruiser was the core of the task groups that projected the Commonwealth’s power outside of Sol. Accompanying these cruisers were the Tribal Mod Js, which were the same as the Tribal destroyers but these had a jump engine shoved in. Before the creation of the Jump Gate Network the Agincourt task groups were the only ones who could even leave Sol and did most of the early exploration.

-Excerpt from the introduction of “The Agincourt, the Hero of Early Exploration.” By Theodore Francesca, Copyright 2184, Penguin Publishing


April 2025

Captain Stephanie Booth shook her head. 61 Cygni was the third system found by the Commonwealth Navy and so far each had a possibly habitable planet, in fact 61 Cygni –A-II was the closest to Earth yet found, but so far they were all tidally locked and lifeless. 61 Cygni-A-II took 116 days to rotate once and had no tectonic movement, there was almost no energy left anywhere in the system. Another system to mark on the maps as possibly good for future terraforming and mining. It would almost be better if the systems had just dead planets, but no they keep finding worlds that should be decent for creating life and so far nothing. This finding might be better if her task force did not take almost two weeks to get here, like Captain Shah she had ordered a slow approach to the planet to deny any life they found possible tactical knowledge about the speed of her ships. Now she finds out that she could have been here in less than 4 days. Time to go home and report.


May 2025

Naomi walked into Vice Admiral Scott’s office. The Admiral briefly looked up at her and motioned her to a seat. “Thank you for joining me here. I understand we have quite a bit to talk about today.” Emma Scott said before setting her papers aside and giving her entire attention to the scientist in front of her.
“I suppose.” Naomi said with a shrug. “I mean its not actually that much. The technology is pretty profound and the specs I will be giving to your office if you accept my proposal will be long but everything can be summarized pretty neatly.” The lack of decorum slightly rankled the Admiral but since Naomi Faulkner was not a part of the navy there wasn’t a requirement for decorum.

“I see. Why don’t you summarize it for me then?” Scott asked.

“Well, one of the problems we have had with jump engines are that for all of their usefulness they are rather large, they would be even more so without the previous advances in efficiency. For example the Tribal Mod Js are about 2,000 tons larger than the Tribals without any increase in firepower and only a tiny increase in survivability that comes from having more stuff in the ship. A jump engine large enough to allow a Victory class to jump would be so massive its considered prohibitively expensive right now. Things get a bit sloppier when you consider that due to the different strains that military ships can take as compared to commercial shipping can take military ships and commercial ships have to have different jump engines. But the one bright spot in that is that a single jump engine can currently bring two other ships along for the ride. So with that my team and I figured out a way to build a structure in which a group of ships can use to jump at a jump point. Since size is not a constraint in this device it can jump both commercial and military ships and can generate enough power to jump more than three ships at a time. Not only have we created this device but we have created a prototype that can build it that’s only 50,000 tons.”

Vice Admiral Scott thought for a few seconds nodding to herself. “Interesting. So essentially you are creating a gateway on a jump point?”

Showing more excitement than she had so far Naomi nodded vigorously and almost got up out of her seat. “Yes! Exactly! We believe that this gate can help push out how far we can expand by rendering jump engines optional.” Her excitement faded for a moment and she sat fully back down in her chair as she continued, “The only downside is at the moment our prototype takes six months to build this gate. If this is approved we have plans for a ship that is pretty much just this construction machine, engines, and crew space and while they are out proving my design my team and I can get back to work on trying to shorten the time needed to build this.”

“I see. Yes, that is acceptable for the moment. We will accept your plans and consider building your ship but if you want more than one run of the ship then you must deliver on a shorter time.”

At this Naomi actually jumped up and clasped Vice Admiral Scott’s hand in both of hers before shaking it rather harder than she had intended. “Thank you, oh thank you sir. I will do that.” With that she fairly ran out of the room.


John Penn was leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the side of his console. He was bouncing a ball against the ceiling and wall of the ship just he had for the last couple of hours. Kirk Donovan looked over at him, “Its almost lunch time.” He stated with boredom, his computer game on pause on the second screen of his console.

“Yep.” John said between bounces. “How’s it going over there? And no I don’t mean your game, I don’t care about your game.”

Kirk consulted his main screen for a second. “Nitrogen, still at 0.007 atmospheres. CO2, holding steady at 0.003 atmospheres. That is good since we haven’t touched those yet. O2 at 0.0895, looks like we are almost half way there at least as far as oxygen goes. Funny thing is right now O2 makes up 89.95% of the atmosphere.”

John nodded, “Don’t get too excited. Once O2 gets to its desired volume we have to add in this so called ‘safe greenhouse gas’ and then add in other smeg to bring O2 down to only 20% of the total. The whole fleet will be here for something like four years.”

Kirk looked at his screen a bit morosely. Even though the ships were equipped with food and recreation for deployments lasting ten years, none of them liked to be reminded of how long they would be gone. All they had for company was each other and the dead red rock they were orbiting. The good news is once the atmosphere got closer to breathable they would be able to walk on the surface and be among the first to do so.