The Last Year of the USDS Explorer

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Pre-Mission Data

500 years after World War 3 close to around 1000 years ago we sent out several crews to explore the nearest solar systems. We found that we were not alone as we had thought for hundreds of thousands of years. While we mostly found peaceful races that were at or close to the same level of technology as we had been back around 2020, we did come across a hostile race in space, even with how vast and empty space is and how hard it is just to come across anything floating out there. We don't know what they want from us or why they keep attacking. We have never been able to understand them nor they us. It has been just over 200 years since we last encountered them.

Today is June 8th, 3842 and it is also the celebration of peace the anniversary of the last battle against the aliens that we have fought against. Last week we received an old style S.O.S. signal. judging by the type of carrier wave it had it looks like it came from an old Pegasus Colonial Carrier called "ESCS New Beginnings"* (one of the first colony ships). We did a systems scan on the signal and found that it had to of taken over 800 years to get to us. Needless to say it is an old ship out there and it disappeared over 900 years ago. Earth Space Fleet Command (they are the international space command that is like the old U.N. of over 1500 years ago from before WW3) was end over when they found out about the signal. Since we were the first to receive it Earth Command has asked us to check it out.

We have been traveling in cryo for the last 473 days. While my ship is one of the oldest short range explorer class ships (really the first of its design) and has a maximum crew capacity of 11 and a cryo passenger capacity of 24 the crew only consist of myself and 3 others. The ship has the ability to have an external cryo array attached to the sides of the ship where the current solar arrays are located. Since it's original construction it has had some modifications done to it while it was in the service of the military with them using it as a test bed for new technologies like the "Hyper Jump Drive"@. I am the captain (as well as owner) and my ship is the "USDS Explorer"**. My name is Captain Patrick Gilliland and I am one of the last "norms" (a norm is a person that has not had any sort of augmentation tech implanted that was not needed nor any sort of genetic alteration). My 1st officer is a little guy named George Mickels (he is a bit of a drunk but if you can get him sober then he is a genius when it comes to navigation and weapons). My 2nd is also my science officer. Her name is Arrica [arreessa] Nichole (she is just a pure genius on almost everything). The last person on the crew is a lady whom we don't really know very well because she is a bit new to the ship. Her name is Abbie Berry and I met her on the 3rd Earth Orbital Platform, she was desperate for work on any outbound ship available and there was something I liked about her and so far she has been a great cook and mechanic (even if it is her first time is space).

These are the daily logs from my ship and the official record of what happens from everyday. I have made sure to record all ship sensor scans in their raw form so that if we missed something then the intel guys back at the USDS and ESCS can search through them for anything and possibly make a discovery. I have also done this in case if anything happened to us while on missions. My only hope is that we make it back home as the area that we are heading towards is very close to the "DARK ZONE"***. I have included a list of hazards below.

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Hazard List (This list is not organized in any way.)

Black hole

Super Nova

Pulsar

White dwarf

Rogue asteroid

Rogue planet

Rogue Moon

Dark matter storms

Plasma storms

"Dead Nebula" (A non-star making nebula that has gathered around a large asteroid or small moon.)

Worm hole

"Silent Gravity Well" (similar to a black hole but is created by a zero mass object and will only pull

you through an area of space until you pass a certain point then after the same area of zero-g it

will then push you away with the same force similar to how a fan or pump works.)

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@Hyper Jump Drive = a cross between a hyper drive and warp drive in that it forces the ship into a

pocket of hyper space that is between hyper space and normal space then moves through this

pocket with the help of a sub-warp drive system to allow FTL travel at 5x the speed of light for a

standard unit. Range and speed is dependent on both number of active drives and total mass of

the ship with cargo.

*ESCS = Earth Space Colonial Service (aka Earth Space Command Service)

**USDS = United Space Defense Service

***DARK ZONE = An area that can not be seen into nor scanned from outside.