Brave New Worlds, Part One
28 Apr 2023Jacob Church
+×+log incoming+×+"Huh, it's saying I'm on a shipping lane. Wow, that's kinda cool."
Jacob was in supercruise heading to Distant Horizons, returning home from his latest survey mission. His last expedition has raked in nearly half a billion credits, and enough data to keep the science team busy for a month. Dropping out of supercruise, he saw what some of the money had been spent on. Gleaming in her new Imperator livery, Distant Horizons now had an impressive air about her.
Once aboard, Jacob exited the elevator to a very eager and excited Science Officer Marely Odom, who was chattering loudly and barely comprehensively about "ideal...abundant...colony..."
"Give me 5 minutes, please!" Church shouted over the noise, and then to himself he muttered "Let me at least take a leak, for cryin' out loud..."
10 minutes later, Jacob sat at his desk with Officer Binder, Petra McGuire the Cartographer opposite. Pacing around the room excitedly was Odom, who could barely contain herself.
"So, you say you've found...what, exactly?"
"A Water World, but this one...we sent Pope out to have another look, drop some probes and so on, y'know, the usual stuff...it's...it's very *rich* in resources" McGuire explained, "And we're working with engi..."
"Never mind that, tell them about the other one!" Odom butted in "Oh I'll tell him. You know that moon with the 8 bio signals you catalogued? Well, I went back to check for myself, you don't often see an octo in the wild...anyways, I took a few samples and ran a few tests. They came back and...the soil is as good as any sandy soil from back home."
"Which is why we three think it's the best candidate system so far for planetary colonisation. There's abundant water and fertile ground..."
"And we need somewhere to put all these people fleeing the bubble too, can hardly get to my cabin" interrupted Binder. "I mean it. There was a family of four playing snap outside my door all night."
Jacob had spent the last several hours reading through the reports from Cartography, Vista and Engineering detailing the system, its resources and options to colonise. He could find no reason within the reports to hang a "No" on, in fact, the place looked ideal.
It was the engineers report that convinced him to go ahead and fill out the commanders report to send with the paperwork to the Tribunal.
Distant Horizons would enter orbit over the water world (planet 1), and the colony would be placed on 4a, the richly abundant world nearby. Water would be transported from planet 1 via DH to the agricultural colony on 4a.
Now that was decided, Church turned to the - quite literally - nuts and bolts of the operation.
+*+log ends +*+