S.L.S. Crew Log, 6/1/3302 - Operation Miller
01 Jun 2016Ardos Hammur
Begin Entry6/1/3302 - 15:06
D.S.S. Sword of Damocles - Bridge Terminal 01
Usr: Cmdr Ardos
It's funny what steady work will do to my therapeutic log entries, it seems the crew and I have been so busy lately I've ignored my commitment to keep this updated. Fitting though that my first new entry comes at the most stressful time we've had in quite a while. As I sit here at the controls of our sleeping ship, staring out at the burning mass that is the star of Witch Head Sector EL-Y d11, I can't help but laugh at the circumstances that keep leading me back to this screen.
Four days ago we were contacted by Deep Space Reconnaissance fleet commander Augustus Tomlinson and Anderson Heloc from Sentinel OpCom about a mission they were putting together for the best ships in the DSR fleet. They are calling it Operation Miller, it's an effort to reach out further into the black in hopes that we can begin resolving mysteries and answering questions the broader galactic community has about rumors of aliens, a rift, and conspiracies about why exactly superpowers are constructing new war ships. As Tomlinson and his superiors explained it to us I couldn't help but feel like it was the script to some old Earth movies I had seen in the archives when I was younger. Teams were being assembled to go look for the big bad aliens and find the nefarious threat before it found us.
We reviewed the information extensively before we left Magnus, they wouldn't let us review it until we agreed to go, and the reports and claims we are investigating appear to have legitimate details in them. Most appear to be reports from independent ships exploring on their own, others are snippets from Canonn reports which really piqued the interest of Ray and Myra. The drawback of the mission is the distance we need to cross to do the work we were assigned to. From Magnus it was a couple hundred lightyears to Betelgeuse, our first waypoint. From Betelgeuse it is still another couple hundred light years to our first stop in the Spirograph nebula where we are to investigate an anomaly another commander discovered while barnacle hunting. I've made contact with the commander who reported the finding, he was still at the site when we left the station but wasn't hanging around much longer. The information checks out and should be promising. After that, we navigate back to Barnard's Loop and the Horsehead nebula before finally attempting to enter the Cone nebula. This will make this the farthest trip any of us have made.
The trouble now is that the teams of scientists and navigation experts at Magnus told us that we would be able to plot a course to BD-12 1172 from Betelgeuse but the nav computer is unable or unwilling to do so. I pulled the logs from our last trip to the region and decided to try an approach from the Witch Head nebula like we had before. Now, with 300 light years remaining, we still cannot get the computer to lock the target destination. I've got Myra running diagnostics now to check for any issues or damage we may have taken when we botched a fuel scoop a couple of jumps ago. Until she finishes, we are parked in orbit around a Witch Head star already off course from our designated flight plan. The larger fuel scoop we requested ended up being turned down in favor of a new vehicle bay that holds two SRV's in case the Hare sustains damage on our extended trip. Refueling is already a tricky game but unfortunately it also takes a little longer now.
The real stress here, the reason this ship is so quiet and tense even now when we are parked is because there is a real chance we may come into contact with something this time. Before I began this entry I reviewed my first entry about the trip we made to Merope 5C and seeing the organics there for the first time. That feeling of dread we had watching the scanners, hoping it was not alive or would not swallow Ray on his first trip out in the Hare, it's returned worse than ever. Sure we could have turned down the job but I think there would have always been a regret in all of us that we admitted to having limits and let our fears control us. I'll admit I'm afraid, it's hard not to be. None of the action I saw in the service, no run ins with pirates, no emergency we have ever had on this ship or another rivals this fear. It's that fear of a dark we all had as a child, the fear of monsters in the dark. We spend our whole life in a bubble where we are safe and protected, then you leave the bubble to go where few men have gone before and help is literally days out at a full burn. None of us have said it yet but I expect in the coming days someone will say what we all are fearing. That we will find something out here and it will either be beyond explanation or kill us without hesitation.
I can only hope that we are ready when we stumble across it.
Log Transcription Terminated
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