Dauntless....

[Velociryx]

Anybody remember me?

'tis good to see that the fiction forum is still up, running, and filled with stories!

Was feeling a bit of a creative itch, and figured....ohhhh, okay...

Here's hoping you enjoy!

-=Vel=-

Captain’s Log, UNS Dauntless, Mission Year 2101, Captain Douglas Fairbanks reporting

I had the strangest reaction when I heard the music….I wept.

I cannot explain the hows or whys of it…only that it affected me in some profound and unseen way.

It is amazing, what we have lost, and yet, to still be here at all, in the face of that loss….staggers the mind and the imagination.

The escape pod was flying apart around us….to say that it was less than a picture perfect landing would have been a sublime understatement. In truth, it was just this side of Hell itself, filled with screams and wails of terror (this, from the officers….it was far worse back in the passenger galley….I know firsthand….my instruments shorted out not two minutes into the flight when the panel caught fire as we entered Chiron’s atmosphere, and without his instruments, I’m sorry to say that a senior radar tech has precious little to do on the bridge. So, with the first officer and navigator screaming like banshees, I ducked out for a quick smoke….strictly against regulations of course, but at that point, I figured regulations, and the handbook they had been so neatly and exhaustively typed in had pretty much fallen by the way.

I knew Gavin McGreggor was onboard somewhere, and he owed me half a pack from the poker game we were playing just before we hopped into the freezers for our Rip Van Winkle-style nap, so off I went to find him, and yeah….bad as it was on the bridge, it was ten times the worse in the passenger’s galley.

Gavin though, was nonplussed by the whole thing, and shrugged those great, Scottish shoulders and shot me a Devil-May-Care grin as he tossed me a pack and offered me a light.

“We been through a damn site worse back home!” He told me with an almost maniacal laugh, and that was certainly true enough. I could only nod in response as I took a drag.

And so we sat, two little islands of calm in the passenger galley while the whole world disintegrated around us, smoking away, and daydreaming of better times and most anyplace else but our current location.

Amazingly, the viewscreen was still functioning, and we watched our new home rush up toward us at far less than welcoming speeds.

We were gonna crash.

I knew this intellectually, but could not quite wrap my brain around the concept.

We were gonna crash, and our charred bodies would be spread out over several kilometers of alien soil, where we would, no doubt, become worm food, or whatever this place’s equivalent to worms were.

I had that thought before we had even landed, mind you.

Little did I know at the time how eerily accurate it was.

Needless to say though, we didn’t crash.

Well, okay, so technically it was a crash, yes. The landing gear didn’t deploy, and we came to a sudden, screeching halt as we plowed deep into the rich, loamy soil of our new home, burying nearly a third of what was left of our coming-apart-at-the-seams escape pod in the muck and mud.

And wouldn’t you know it, we landed during a thunderstorm, so there was lots of muck and mud to be had.

Actually, the thunderstorm was a blessing in disguise, I think. Hot as we were, it cooled the outer hull off much more quickly than if we had landed on a warm, sunny afternoon.

Got to find that silver lining when and where you can, I guess.

Impact killed the whole bridge crew, by the way. I was on semi-friendly terms with some of them too, but as I write this entry, I can’t honestly say that I feel any sense of loss or remorse over their passing.

Maybe it’s shell shock.

Maybe so much loss and chaos leading to the rebuilding of our lives here has….numbed my brain somehow to it all.

Hell, maybe it’s a lot of things. I don’t pretend to know.

I’m sorry they’re gone, but I shed no tears for the dead.

No time.

Anyway, when they took their less-than-graceful nosedive into the broad side of the planetary barn, the bridge (being at the front of the ship, as bridges generally are), crumpled like a beer can.

The rest of the pod pretty much came apart then, as it rocked with surprising gentleness to its final resting place, spilling some thirty colonists roughly to the ground as the safety hatches that had been welded to the no-longer-existant bridge came unhinged entirely, splitting us open like an overcooked egg. There's some of that fine, 'low-cost-producer' mentality for you. Our tax dollars at work.

There were some major burns as human flesh came into contact with the searing heat of the hull, but as I mentioned, the rain quickly remedied all that, and no additional fatalities….well, at least not till later that evening, but I’ll not even go into all that, except to say that rampant, inexcusable stupidity has indeed followed the remnants of humanity to the stars.

Amazing.

Oh, and here’s a little something else, besides.

The roaring in our ears had barely had time to subside when another, much louder roaring filled our senses, and I do mean that literally.

It wasn’t just a sound or a feeling….it was an all-out sensory assault.

If the roaring of our own pods demise was loud enough to deafen, then the roaring noise as what was left of the Unity fell from the sky like a mortally wounded, misshapen angel was loud enough to bring the heavens themselves to tears.

Not to mention the emotional impact of watching her die.

Suddenly, it really hit home.

This wasn’t no game. It was real, and we were right there in it, with no way home.

Not that there was a home to go back to in any case.

So…she died, and we watched the last little bit of safety and security we had known fly apart in a brilliant display of flame and superheated metal.

The impact when she hit (not our little rock, obviously, but it must have been reasonably close), jarred us to our bones.

I swear I could feel my teeth rattling loose in my head as she hit her final resting place.

But, I digress.

And they say smoking kills.

Interesting.

Not my experience, but interesting nonetheless.

And that’s how I got the commission as Captain of the Dauntless. Basically, I was the only surviving crewman who knew even the basics of how the blasted thing worked.

OoO

“Worked” is a relative term, mind you.

Actually, we were lucky as hell to have it at all, I suppose, given how much was lost during our ‘landing.’

Originally, there were three collapsible Unity Foils onboard, tethered to the underbelly of selected pods. Unity, Dauntless, and Stormgaard.

Which ones? Couldn’t tell you, but we got the Dauntless.

Would have lost her entirely when we impacted with Planet, but the mountings shook free, and she took a graceless tumble from about three thousand feet, falling some two kilometers south of our point of impact. Thankfully, the impact and heat shielding proved sturdier than the moorings, and aside from a curious hitching in the main drive, she proved to be quickly and easily assembled.

Getting her to water, however, was another task, and much more….well, daunting, actually.

In the end, we used the heat shield panels from the escape pod as a giant sled, and, through lots of good old fashioned elbow grease, dragged our little water lily to the sea. Finished the assembly in three weeks, while the landlubbers among us scurried around madly, fretting over how best to divide our meager supplies between the two planned colonial groups.

Me, I was glad to be away from the madness, and hand picked my crew of fourteen (McGreggor signing on straightaway as my Exec), and we set about the task of getting the old girl ready for her sea trials.

We were on open water more than a month before UN Headquarters was officially up and running, which I regarded as a feather in my cap.

Lots of debris in the area, too, including a pair of supply pods floating in the foamy, fungus-laden sea near where UNHQ had been established, and that was my first commission….to investigate the contents of the two seaward pods, and see if they contained anything that might be of use to us.

Actually, they did!

It was backbreaking work, but my crew proved to be up to the task, and then some!

Our first goal was to rescue a waterlogged, but still more-or-less functional Rover…simply invaluable from an exploration standpoint, and Tiny, my four hundred pound master mechanic (hey, I didn’t pick his nickname, he came to me with it!), told me he thought he could get it back up and running if we scrounged a few spare parts meant for the Dauntless.

Well and good, and he had my blessings.

Of course, we told the council that the rover was a loss, and they let me keep it to experiment, on the outside chance we could maybe do something with it.

I love politicking.

Besides, we brought them something else that made them drool.

A handful of working power couplings to get the lights turned on at UNHQ (OOC: 25 EC’s)….they were so pleased to see them that I honestly don’t think they’d have cared if the battered rover was gold plated, which was just as well as far as I was concerned. I had the makings of my own little private armada….one ship and a rover.

I was the Peace Keeping exploration force, aside from their one company of footsloggers who guarded our Great Father, Lal, as though he were Jesus Christ returned.

Good for them.

I had my ship, and I had my rover. Lal, they could keep.

[Velociryx]

OoO

But oh yes….the music.

That’s how I actually started this little rambling monologue, that will, God willing, serve as my memoirs when I am old and gray and ready to be dropped into the alien ground.

The music.

So there we were, a salty band of fourteen wannabe seamen, out there in our beloved little Water Lily, Dauntless, doing our level best to raise that waterlogged rover up from the choppy sea, when someone cranked up some tunes.

Credence Clearwater Revival, actually.

Susie-Q.

Damn.

I had not, until that moment, realized how much I missed Rock-N-Roll, and it did….I’m not ashamed to admit it. Brought tears to my eyes as we busted our collective arses, pitting raw stubbornness and muscle against a coolly indifferent and uncaring alien sea.

It was the music that done it though, I swear. Gave us that last little nudge we needed to succeed, and we gave ourselves a right nice round of applause as we finally hauled our prize up over the side of the ship.

Victory was sweet, and we had classic rock to help us celebrate.

Strictly forbidden, too, I might add.

It seemed that the Datalinks had room for classical, opera, and some a handful of old fifties tunes from Earth days, but there was, apparently, no time to do rock-n-roll justice. “More important considerations,” was the most often bandied about phrase if memory serves.

To hell with all that, man….give me some serious tunes!

Some brave soul smuggled a few thousand megabytes of contraband tunage onboard though (Tiny, my master mechanic, as it turned out), and I was eternally grateful for it.

So we spent the afternoon breaking a big sweat, testing the limits of our muscles and endurance, and listening to classic rock.

If not for the unsettling greenish cast to the sea, and the occasional glimpses of dark and unfamiliar shapes moving through the fungal murk of the waters, it would have felt like just another day on the ocean back home.

We knew better, of course, but the music went a mighty long way toward giving us our illusion.

And illusions are important, I have learned.

They keep us from despair.

That’s not much of a tether, I grant you, but when you’ve got nothing, you hold onto what shreds you find like a wolverine, and that’s what we did with the music.

Tethered to the homeworld by a bunch of shaggy hippies who were long dust and largely forgotten by what was left of humanity.

We kept the flame for them, and it was a good feeling.

Our little secret.

As one of the few surviving officers, I was given a much-coveted apartment in UNHQ, but I told them to keep it, or to give it to some newlywed couple or something equally generous. Didn’t really need it, and didn’t regard the ol’ HQ as my home anyways. The Dauntless was the only home I needed, and I intended to spend as little time as I possibly could on our little rock.

And she was a little rock, too, or at least that’s the sense we got from what few of our instruments still worked with any sort of reliability.

The powers that be had taken to calling our island home ‘Hope,’ and fresh from my successful venture with the pods, my second commission was to circumnavigate our island home so that we might gain a better sense of where we were, and how much land we had to work with.

Well and good, and I graciously accepted the commission, but there was a little something I wanted to do first.

We had been getting strange and strangely familiar readings from a landmass of undetermined size west of our rock, and I strongly suspected that I knew why that was. Nonetheless, I wanted to find out for certain, so before beginning our circumnavigation expedition, I dropped the rover crew off with sufficient provisions to explore the place, and left them instructions to contact me alone. The mainland didn’t need to know they were even there until I had my answers, and, good officers that they were, they respected my wishes.

I left them to it, already more than half certain of what they would find, and began my duly appointed rounds.

Sure enough, as Mission Year 2103 got underway, I got my answer.

We found Unity’s grave.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Captain’s Log, UNS Dauntless, Mission Year 2117, Captain Douglas Fairbanks reporting

Okay, so I can see already that these are going to make for some lousy memoirs.

Picked up this dusty log book and realized that it had been, quite literally years since I last even thought about it, and what a time it has been!

Much to tell, dear diary, and many signs of our progress on all fronts!

First, some historical footnotes of great import.

Apparently, I was not paying enough attention to the viewscreen as we plummeted to Planet’s surface in our ruined Escape Pod, because they just released the Vid-Feed on our first and only television station…it’s dedicated to news, and so far, we’ve been treated to droll reports about the weather patterns here (and, I’m sorry to say that our weathermen are no better at predicting rain here than they were back on Earth), and a groovy documentary about our progress so far.

In the released vid feed, the Monolith was quite visible as we streaked toward Chiron’s surface, and I was appalled that I missed it.

Lal ordered everyone to stay well away from it until it could be properly investigated, a job for his ever-faithful Footsloggers, and it was officially opened as a scientific observation post in 2103, after it had been determined to pose no threat to us and ours.

Who made it, and for what purpose? I have no idea, as I have never set foot in the thing, though I have heard on the comm bands that it contains wonders which will take us years to decipher…if we ever can!

What disturbs me, however, is that the thing is clearly constructed. What happens if/when its builders decide to return? Hell, we can barely feed ourselves at this point. Fending off an alien invasion would be nigh on impossible.

We don’t even know, at this point, if any of the other groups of colonists survived. We can certainly hope, of course, but given our own lackluster landing, and the fact that we saw one pod detonate not long after breaking free from unity, and….hard to say. So far, the shortwave band has been completely silent. If the other groups live, they’re keeping very much to themselves.

Anyway, it was an era of firsts, those early years. Data Acquisition was more-or-less up and running while I was busy with my beloved water lily, and shortly after I publicly announced that we had found Unity’s grave (just as I was commencing my circumnavigation adventure), I became something of a hero. Even got my own live television show, which was an unexpected perk.

On Earth, just before we left, “reality tv” had been all the rage, and we were ordered to keep the cameras rolling and chart our progress for all to see.

Frankly, most of that journey was entirely uninteresting. Dauntless’ top speed (on a good day with calm seas and a well functioning engine) was only four knots, and when the sea had even a marginal bit of chop to it, we often lost a shade of ground. So even though our island was a smallish one, it took fourteen years to fully circumnavigate it.

Islands, I should say, and they now offically bear the name “Hope Islands” at that. They’re just barely connected, and then, only in the dry season. When the rains come, it washes the tiny land bridge away completely, giving us two distinct (and quite small) rocks to call home. Clearly, we’re gonna need to move to our neighboring landmass, dubbed Unity after she that carried us in her womb to this alien world.

So there I was though…my own reality TV show, super ratings, and even several marriage proposals for me and my crew. Those ladies on the mainland really don’t seem to have enough to do if they’re interested in the likes of us. Our extended time at sea has made us….decidedly uncivilized. We have our ship and our rock-n-roll, and we actually care little for the comings and goings on Hope Islands, except that it does give us at least some tiny sense of rootedness.

For the most part though, we are each other’s family, and that’s all there is to say about it.

Early in our journey, we did manage to squeeze in a bit of additional salvage work, finding blueprints and schematics, along with some rudimentary building supplies for a recycling tanks, and as luck would have it, UNHQ was working on putting one together, so we made a quick stop to the coast to drop off the supplies. The footsloggers met us there and duly escorted the supplies back to HQ, in time to see the tanks go live in HQ the following year.

Just doing our part for the homeland, you see.

After that though, it was a bit of a repetitious grind. Not really much to report, but we ran the cameras anyway. Tiny and Gavin got into a huge belching contest, which was the highlight of the third season….told you it wasn’t all that interesting, but the ratings were stellar anyways, cos we were the only non-news show on.

A total lack of competition can sometimes be a good thing.

And me, I was the aloof Captain with the iron will. Hated the image the handlers created for me, but I can’t seem to shake it, even to this day.

And, not to say we didn’t have some bits of adventure along the way. Several tropical storms to contend with that took all our combined skills to survive, two close encounters with strange “Isles of the Deep,” fishing expeditions which revealed to the world some of the stranger creatures we had begun hunting and eating on our extended journey, and other stuff besides.

Sometimes though, I got really tired of the cameras.

In 2109, our scientists got their collective acts together, and managed to come up with their first advance of any note…a deeper understanding of Chiron’s Ecology, and plans for making a huge terraforming machine. Actually, they envisioned an army of such monsters, but we’ll see. Doesn’t concern us, but good to keep tabs on the homeplace. In other news though, our rover team left behind to explore Unity reported in with the discovery of a gigantic fungal….”stalk” for lack of a better word, on Unity. That was the highlight of the season, let me tell you. Must have been thousands of shots, both live and stills, of that damned stalk. Probably the most famous bit of worm ridden fungus on the whole planet.

Four years later, with a burgeoning population in the HQ, Lal ordered that we begin to spread out more, both to increase our chances of survival, and to make better use of what land we had at our disposal, and in 2113, our first ever colony group since planetfall was dressed and ready to go. I had mixed feelings about that. Felt a little rushed and forced to me, but then, nobody asked me, so I kept it to myself.

And, in 2114, we discovered something else, too.

Worms.

Worse, we discovered that they seem to have a taste for human brain matter.

The rover team was nosing around in the general vicinity of the great stalk when the attack came.

No one knew quite what to expect, but we found out quick enough. Now, it seems that not a day goes by when there’s not at least one report of an elevation in Psi activity.

Least the science weenies were able to come up with a way of measuring it.

Funny though, in all our close encounters with Isles of the Deep (which are just really big versions of their landward cousins), we’ve never felt any sort of psi attack.

Just lucky I guess.

Anyway, dear diary, I figured it was long overdue to make another entry here, and a good way to celebrate the completion of our second commission….we’re coming into port at UNHQ, upon completion of our mapping expedition around the whole of Hope Islands. Two weeks of shore leave, and then, we’re off again. Word has it that the next task our wise and benevolent leaders have for us is to repeat the circumnavigation magic, this time, ‘round Unity to see what we’ve got there.

The interior is fully mapped, thanks to the rover team we left there, but they’re getting tired of baked fungal stalk and homebrewed fungal gin, and could probably use a bit of company besides, so we’ll go get them, and catch up on old times.

For now though, this is Douglas Fairbanks of the Dauntless, signing off.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Captain’s Log, UNS Dauntless, Mission Year 2127, Captain Douglas Fairbanks reporting

Yeah yeah, I know…some Captain I am. Been ten years since I even opened this damn book!

Wow.

Another decade come and gone.

And as before, lots to report, but before I get to all that, I have to say, we might be in trouble.

We now know that at least one other group survived.

Colonel Santiago of the Spartan Federation, as she now styles herself.

Damned gun-toting feminazi is our warm, fuzzy term for her here on the Dauntless.

They got Stormgaard, by the way. And she’s in good working order. Probably even better shape than our ship, and I’m a bit jealous. She can outpace us by at least fifty percent. Gonna have to get Tiny to see if we can coax some additional speed out of the old girl.

Anyway, so while I was out charting the sea lanes south of Unity, here comes Santiago, full of bluster and…quite full of herself, actually.

Tried to extort money from our national treasury and used thinly veiled threats to drive the point home. And yeah, her warriors are well trained, no doubt. I think they’ve been watching too many re-runs of old Star Trek episodes featuring the Klingons, personally, but, gotta hand it to them, they can sure fight.

Anyway, at least the powers that be didn’t cave into her demands. They flatly refused, and she declared a state of war against us for our refusal.

Fortunately, her rabid band of infantry she brought along to threaten us with have remained on Stormgaard, skulking just off the coast of UNHQ, but it’s unsettling, for sure.

Lal called me personally and ordered me to come home and deal with the Stormgaard. Now, since we have no weapons to speak of, and certainly nothing that I can mount on Dauntless, I’m not sure just what I’m supposed to do, other than maybe ram the Spartan boat, but then, she can out pace us….but, like a dutiful son, I turned the ship around and we’re steaming as fast as we can back toward the HQ.

Show of force I guess, and who knows? Maybe our sudden return will do something to make the lady change her mind.

Seems to me that, with all that’s going on, and the constant battle for survival we all face, the last thing we need is to be at each other’s throats, but then, I guess that’s why I’m not a politician. I lack the necessary finesse to deal with such delicate matters of state, cos if it was me, I'd punch the lady’s lights out and be done with it.

Anyway, before all that, our science weenies did a bit more good, laying out plans for a recreation commons area to be added to each of our bases, and then, on the more practical side of things, they outlined a means for replicating the datalinks, so that we have redundant, interconnected capacity. This should allow us to face even a catastrophic loss without fear of losing all that precious information we carried with us from Earth, and I was pretty excited to hear about it. Looks like we’ll have ‘net access after all here on Chiron, whooohoooo!

Besides that though, about the only thing we managed to get accomplished between now and my last journal entry was the establishment of the UN Settlement Agency. Funny name, given that our little island can only hold, at best, three more bases before we’ve got nothing else to settle unless we start looking to Unity, and to that end, I broke down and talked to Lal about it. Fronted a bold plan to use Dauntless to begin ferrying supplies over to make it a viable idea. We could start with one of those new terraforming machines they’ve got up and running, get some base sites picked out and prepped, and then start transporting colonists across the water.

It’s a long term project, to be sure, but if we are to grow strong (especially important, in the face of Spartan aggression), I think it’s a necessary step, and I believe I’m beginning to bring Lal around to my way of thinking.

Sometimes, being a television star has its uses, you know? But I am a bit disappointed in myself, cos I just went back and re-read what I wrote, and I’m starting to sound so much like a politician now that I’m scaring myself.

Not good.

Must drink gin with Tiny and the boys tonight and remedy that most unfortunate set of circumstances.

Tonight is Meatloaf night, both because that’s what the galley is fixing for dinner, and because that’s what we’ll be listening to, thanks to our contraband rock-n-roll.

Meatloaf.

Yep, that should get me feeling decidedly un-political.

Oh…one more thing before I go.

We’re not aging.

Damned if I can figure out why, and apparently our science weenies aren’t having much luck there either, but it’s….weird. I should be getting old now, but I’m just not.

More on that later, for now…meatloaf. It’s what’s for dinner.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Captain’s Log, UNS Dauntless, Mission Year 2152, Captain Douglas Fairbanks reporting

Getting worse at this, I see. Now it’s nearly two decades since I touched this blasted book.

Good thing I’m not aging, since at this rate, it’ll take me a few hundred years to fill up this log book.
But that’s okay too.

Not that there’s not been a lot of stuff to report, to the contrary! But there’s a tradeoff present, you see, and I’ve been so busy living the adventures that I’ve had precious little time to write about them.

That’s what old age is supposed to be for, and it seems that I, and everybody else on Chiron, has been denied that.

We’re not getting any older, so I’m still trucking full steam ahead!

But….where even to begin?

Well, we’ve sure grown up a lot over the past span of years. Two new bases established on Hope Islands (Amnesty Town in 2128, and Social Council in 2139), giving us five bases on Hope, with room for one more.

Some good terraforming work done on our tiny landbridge, and it’s now a permanent fixture, but we still call the place ‘Hope Islands’ (plural) cos it’s what we’re used to.

Our parent bases (Data Acquisition and HQ) have begun working on massive projects that’s been tying up all their resources….the former working on something called the Weather Paradigm (not sure what the hell that is, but hopefully our weathermen will get a leg up on predicting those rains!), with HQ devoting all their resources to decoding the Genome in an attempt to understand just why it is we’re not aging.

Not that this ‘ageless’ state of affairs is drawing many complaints, but it does sorta redraw the societal map for us.

The fact is…things are different here. We ain’t home. Definitely not in Kansas anymore, and this…this change in our metabolism…this agelessness is just the beginning.

No telling where the changes will stop, or ultimately what they’ll mean for us as a people. As a race.

Ahhh, but I am a simple ship’s captain, and should not reflect too much or too hard on such weighty matters, so enough of all that.

As ordered, I duly returned home, minus the Rover, which I left on Unity for a while longer, in preparation for hauling one of those spiffy, expensive Terraforming monsters across (Santiago be damned! I might not be able to drive her away, but I’ll also not let her interfere with my pet project—Fairbanks’ Folly, as it’s being dubbed by the media, who have now come to the conclusion that my extended time at sea has made me utterly insane. I don’t care about all that though, it’ll just give me that much more satisfaction when the plan works, and we are stronger than ever because of it.

Vision.

That’s what we need more of.

I tire of the endless debates I keep hearing in council sessions. What we need is vigor and vitality!

I’ve had to spend the greater bulk of my “fame capital” in order to make this so-called ‘folly’ happen, and if I crash and burn, I will no doubt, be relegated to spend the rest of my days as a supply clerk in some back corner of the basement level of UNHQ, so I have a big incentive to succeed.

Already I have been made provisional governor of all of Unity, and all I need now to prove that this idea will work is one Terraformer (which I’ll purchase outright using the EC’s from my stint on TV—show ran twenty-two seasons, by the way, so I could retire fat and happy now if I liked!—and a colony group brave or stupid enough to trust me with their lives).

Hopefully, I’m still enough of a hero in the eyes of the people that I’ll get some takers there, because me and the crew simply aren’t enough people to go our own way and set up shop on Unity, although that thought too, has crossed my mind more than once!

Ahhh, but enough of my plans for the future…there will be time for that later. For now though, a few other historical footnotes to mention, so I can keep all the relevant bits of our history here in one place for myself.

2131 was a dangerous year for the folk of Settlement Agency. They had been so focused on building their recycling tanks and terraformer that they neglected the need for any sort of garrison. It took them years to realize this shortcoming, and they had just begun to train some lightly armored scouts when a rogue Isle of the Deep came from somewhere in the great northern sea and dropped a pair of worm boils off.

They made straight for the undefended base, which was unsettling and spoke of a…..level of controlled, directed intelligence that we had not first envisioned in these native creatures.

Thankfully, the garrison was nearly ready, and they proved their mettle early on, destroying both worms, and harvesting a few planet pearls (which can be nicely converted to EC’s, which has, by the way, become our official currency).

So there was that, and I’m sorry that we missed it, but the vid feeds were properly heroic.

In other, less heroic news, but cool nonetheless, our terraforming machine managed to plant the first forest of Chironian Oaks in 2131. Now that was seriously cool. Can hardly wait to get to land and go exploring some of that. Be nice to walk under the shade of a real tree again.

Our science weenies did a bit more good as well, mapping out ‘Ethical Calculus’ for us all, which I think is simply a means of extolling the virtues of democracy. Perhaps it was their way of saying that sooner or later, being functionaries of the United Nations and all, perhaps we should get around to holding democratic elections?

More and more, Lal seems to be casting himself in the role of a benelovent dictator, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. Perhaps that’s another reason I’m so excited about the Unity project.

2137 was a banner year for me personally, cos that was the year that I finalized my purchase of, and made my last payment on the terraforming unit I bought, and by mid year, I had her offloaded on Unity and prepping base sites. Then, it was back to UNHQ with me to see if I could drum up some brave souls who weren’t mired neck-deep in the Genome project, to see if maybe they wanted to get out and do some exploring….help me tame the land I had been granted governorship of.

Some luck in that department, and I’m spending the last of my fame-driven riches to put together an official colonial group. Want to maximize my chances of success since, if this doesn’t work, we’ll likely never leave Hope Islands, and that would be a shame, cos we’re better than that. We’re meant for more than that, and if I have to drag my bureaucratic brethren kicking and screaming to Unity, then that’s just simply what I’ll do!

I should also add that it was…strange…getting my terraformer over to Unity.

Had to pass right by the Stormgaard to make that happen, and as we did, Santiago called me personally, demanding that I speak with Lal with regards to getting the money she had demanded.

I pretended I was having transmission problems and thumbed the commlink off right in the middle of all her blustering.

Give me a break, lady, will ya?!

Let’s see….what else? Oh yes! In 2150, our first non-subsistence farm became operational! We’re no longer living hand to mouth, but finally, after fifty years of scratching out a living there on Hope, it seems we just might see a few good surpluses. About time!

And lastly, just this past year, our first Network Node went live, so we now have a bit of redundancy in the datalinks. Still not as cool as the ‘net back on Earth, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction, and who knows, I might patch in before they get their security system fully in place and upload some serious rock-n-roll….

Fairbanks, signing off.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

OOC Notes on the particulars of this game:

Huge random planet
Dense cloudcover (helps the AI...harder to screw that up)
Abundant native life
Average erosion
Ironman Transcend
Blind Research
Tech Stag



-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Assets developed...

[Velociryx]

What we're doing

[Velociryx]

Captain’s Log, UNS Dauntless, Mission Year 2201, Captain Douglas Fairbanks reporting

Have you noticed that I just keep getting worse at this journal-keeping? Perhaps I’m just not cut out for it, but I do keep coming back to it in the end, so maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Oh dear Lord, how best to sum up the last fifty years of my life? Of our lives and the brave new world we are carving out of the unforgiving alien planet we have found ourselves on?

There’s no good way to, so bear with me…since I have not written in so long, there’s much to tell, and it needs telling properly….can’t skimp over the details just to get it all on paper, it’s much too important for that.

So where to start?

Well, first of all, let me say that in 2153, two amazing things happened. First, and a personal feather in all our caps, something that we can be immeasurably proud of, was the completion of the Weather Paradigm. I’ve been using my remote connection to the datalinks to keep tabs on it, and it’s so much more than I originally envisioned!

There, at the center of UNHQ, is the most beautiful creation I have ever seen….an entire building devoted to understanding this strange new world we’re on.

It’s constructed in the form of a geodesic sphere (thank you Bucky Fuller, for your genius!), and when you step inside, you’re greeted to….a simply amazing sight. It’s one part museum, one part theoretical sciences, and one part cold practicality. The building itself encompases….a thought process that’s just plain hard to put into words, and I think its designers knew that intuitively. Understanding just what the Weather Paradigm means is something that philosophers will be debating and mulling over for decades, and perhaps centuries to come, but when you complete the tour of the building, you feel as though you truly have been into the core of a beautiful, living, vibrant planet.

It’s all about understanding that we are an alien presence on Chiron, and that the things we do…even small things, have an enormous web of consequences, both to us and to Planet. It’s about harmony with the native life forms, and living in such a way that we can peacefully coexist. Treating Planet’s native life as beloved brothers, rather than a speed bump to be driven over as fast as possible.

So far, everyone who has taken the tour has come away with the same feeling, and a whole new appreciation for the place we all call home.

God I love this Planet! Ha! Never thought I’d hear myself say that, but I really, truly am becoming a native son of Chiron, and this place is in my blood. It’s weird greenish seas, funny looking (but quite tasty!) fish, an abundance of mystery. Yeah, this place is home alright, and I’m even warming up to my landward duties!

Got some takers where the colonization project was concerned, and had my first base (UN Court of Justice) set up in 2154. That was a proud day, let me tell you! Now, I truly am a force unto myself. Nominally beholden to Lal and the rest of the PeaceKeepers who are my brothers, but…I got a ship, a rover, and now, my own subcontinent, which is even bigger than the land we started on. If I can but tame it….mind boggling possibilities!

Sadly though, 2154 wasn’t all roses and wine. That’s also the year that Santiago had had enough of her skulking off our coast, and decided to press her case ‘bout those blasted energy credits. So, she lands, and sends the whole of our island into an uproar. The garrison at UNHQ made for them, but the Spartans were wily fighters, and had established a base camp in the fungal bed just south of our base. They ambushed the garrison and destroyed them outright, but not before we fixed their position, and before they could relocate their base, here came Lal’s footsloggers and ended them! To their credit, the Spartans fought ferociously, and to the very last man, but our sheer numbers proved too much for them and we ground them to dust.

So…blood for blood. Now hopefully Santiago will see that we’re not the pushovers she obviously mistook us for and go bother someone else!

I doubt it but hey, I can dream, right?

Anyway, after the defeat of Santiago’s infantry regement, the Stormgaard headed for home, and I thought to track it, but had other duties to attend to, not the least of which included shuffling colonists all around to help our parent bases continue work on their various projects (immediately after UNHQ completed the Weather Paradigm, they set about also working on the Genome project. I’m not sure I get that, but okay….why have one when you can have two at twice the price? Or some other such twisted logic, but again, I’m just a simple ship’s captain, and was not consulted in these matters, else I woulda told them that they were out of their flippin’ minds!

Anyway, they did that, and wanted to get some additional colonists to UNHQ to assist with the massive project and play a bit of catch up, so off I went toward settlement agency to get the colonists there a bit quicker than they otherwise would have, and Stormgaard slipped quietly away.

Something tells me though, that she’ll be back, and bearing another belly full of angry Spartans.

What did we ever do to that lady? There’s something we’re not seeing or understanding here, cos she’s much too angry for it to be a simple matter of a few energy credits.

We proved ourselves in battle against her though, and I have every confidence that if she comes back looking for trouble, we will continue to acquit ourselves well and honorably in the face of her mindless aggression.

Another big milestone….in 2160, the science weenies hit upon a great idea that hearkened back to the ‘net of Earth, or at least the direction it was heading in when we left….a planet-wide system of interconnected datalinks. Good idea that, and the ultimate in redundant capacity. Hot on the heels of that idea came the notion of holo-theaters, and then, an awesome idea to convert the rapidly replicating datalinks into a for a for such entertainment. This project, dubbed the Virtual World, really caught the attention of the folk in Data Acquisition, who abandoned their goal of unlocking the Genome, and began chasing this new dream. Not a bad plan, since UNHQ was already diligently working at the Genome anyways. (OOC: Switched to Planned for the Industry kick to speed the projects along and the growth bonus)

Yeah, I get it now…maybe somebody higher up was in the know and saw it coming before it got revealed to the rest of us, and that was the reason for the whole “double genome” game.

I think I just might be getting better at thinking like a politician.

Scary thought.

Truly.

By 2167, I had appointed Gavin the head of Court of Justice, and he promptly sent an additional group of colonists to settle the interior, founding Criminal Tribunal base in the thick of the Unity wreckage. It was an emotional day for all of us, and I came to shore from Dauntless (now staffed with an entirely new crew, rookies all that it’ll take some time to properly train and break in…the new master mechanic is not Tiny, by any stretch of the imagination, but I fully supported Gavin’s choice of making that supremely talented—and very large—individual the base governor of Tribunal, and he seems to have taken well to the job. A good organizer, he has promised to set up a school for mechanics as soon as time permits, to give my new ship’s mechanic a bit of additional help and training.

I miss the old crew, but I also trust them implicitly, and frankly, I need them on Unity to ensure the project succeeds, so on Unity they shall remain. Eventually, I’d like to see all my former crewmen promoted to base governorships, but we shall see.

Also, 2167 was the year that the shortwave bands came crackling to life! Our transmitters are too weak to talk to anybody, but we’ve heard Miriam Godwinson’s Believers, Dierdre’s Gaians, and Zak’s University folk on the band at one point or another (and the Spartans too, but we already knew they were out there), so it seems that most of us have survived after all! I just hope that when we find these others, they’ll be on friendlier terms than the Spartans are!

Anyway, we heard that we had some serious competition for both the Genome project and the Virtual World. Seems our science weenies weren’t the only ones with big ideas, and comparable projects to our own were planned and being pursued by the other surviving factions, and at that point, it became a matter of national pride. We would by God, beat the rest of the pack to those projects, and we, as a nation, hurled ourselves into the task, even as I continued to slowly and steadily oversee efforts to bring Unity to life. It’s a barren, hard land, but under our constant attention, it’s beginning to blossom.

In 2169, we heard on the short wave that the Gaians were verging on a major breakthrough where the genome was concerned. We recalled two formers and retired to garrisons to put extra people to work on the project, but we did it! Just six days before the Gaians announced they had unlocked the secrets of the Genome, we had done so ourselves! It was a hugely important day for us, and I think every PK citizen on Hope Islands and Unity was on their feet cheering when the news came out. We had set our minds to it, rolled up our sleeves, and done it!

Three short years later, we heard similar news on the short wave band, only this time, it was Zak and the University we were competing with for completion of the Virtual world. Didn’t have to sacrifice any equipment or supplies this time, but we drained our national treasury dry to pay all the overtime needed to finish the project just ahead of our rivals, and suddenly we were really on the map! That was, in my mind, the day that we truly arrived as a nation. Three massive, macro-economic projects under our belts.

It was a proud day, and a stunning achievement for a people largely trapped on a tiny island with little to recommend it.

In 2174, and in recognition of the fact that Santiago and her Spartan Federation were still not speaking to us, Amnesty Town began working on a Command Center to be the nerve center for our military presence, such as it was, and they drew up plans to begin work on a core force of fast moving rover teams to protect our holdings. Now all we needed was some armor and weapons technology!

In 2175, our science weenies delivered, but what they delivered was neither armor nor weapons. It was however, detailed blueprints for duplicating my beloved transport ship, and creating a small attack skimship (dubbed the “Leopard Class Destroyer” by the weenies).

That was a banner day as well, but I felt…strangely threatened by it.

It meant that Dauntless was no longer unique.

Worse, she was old and had a huffing, chugging, sometimes uncooperative engine.

The ships built new would, no doubt be sleeker, faster, and better than my beloved water lily, and it pained me to know that.

Nonetheless, it also took a mighty weight from my shoulders.

I had been, for seventy years, charged with the care, protection, and responsible use of a priceless resource. Dauntless was, up until 2174, absolutely irreplaceable. Had we run afoul of anything out there on the wild blue-green, we would have been sorely disadvantaged.

Given my station, I petitioned to have Dauntless transferred formally to my personal ownership.

It took some serious lobbying, but in the end, I prevailed, speaking passionately before the ruling council and pressing my case hard.

They no longer needed Dauntless. She was obsolete. If someone didn’t take care of her, she would, no doubt, ultimately be destined for the scrap heap of history, and I couldn’t have that.

I would not stand for that.

She had been my home for more than seventy years. Faithful servant, old friend, reliable workhorse.

We had survived a great many trials together, she and I, and I would not be swayed from my course.

I was so relentless that ultimately, I think they gave me my way just to be rid of me, but frankly, I don’t care about their reasonings. I got my ship.

Good thing, too, because five short years after I succeeded in that personal quest, a certain Spartan Lady with a bad attitude came calling again, and I was glad to have Dauntless semi-retired from active duty, but more on that later….

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

2179 – Something wicked this way comes

I had just finished refitting The Dauntless when I got the news.

The fortunate thing about our newfound ability to construct sister ships for my beloved water lily was the fact that spare parts (which had been, prior to this, nigh on impossible to find), were becoming increasingly easier to come by, and the old gal hadn’t been running so well in the entire time we’d been using her.

Nonetheless, when I got the news that Stormgaard had returned, riding low in the water, implying a full and heavy cargo, I felt a twinge of fear. Still had nothing in the way of weapons I could mount on what was still the only ship in our ‘fleet’ and although the hull was already being laid for the first Leopard, I worried that it would not be in time.

Further, knowing that even the lowliest seaman in the Spartan navy was a sturdy and resolute fighter, I worried that a single Leopard might not be sufficient to the task, and lobbied hard for the construction of no less than two of them to face the Spartan menace.

In response to this, Lal appointed me to the post of Commodore, and gave me control of our entire fleet, including composition.

He also gave me a blank check, charging me with seeing to the defense of our holdings, regardless of cost.

I gained a new respect for the man for that, and silently vowed not to abuse the position, or the trust.

Two Leopards would suit our purposes well enough for the moment, and so that is all I ordered constructed.

Fortunately, we had a few fast moving ‘Tigershark’ probe foils in the water to scout and survey, and so, we had ample warning and time to prepare for the approaching Spartans.

Over the next two years, however, we learned something that was both startling and unsettling.

Stormgaard had a sister ship, “The Empress,” a larger, faster Transport ship, also loaded to the gills. Our probe units investigated and shadowed them as they approached, and we discovered that we were facing two regiments of Spartan Impact Rovers (4-1-2), and a crack unit of Spartan Infantry (4-2-1).

This wasn’t just an attack to test us…it was meant to finish us in a single blow.

Our weapons, such as they were, simply could not hold a candle to these.

Our garrisons were equipped with small, short range side arms (MK1 Shredder Pistols), and in the whole of PeaceKeeping territory, we had perhaps half a dozen hunting rifles that had been smuggled on board Unity by avid collectors who saw the wisdom and value of having a high powered rifle to work with.

The Leopard-Class destroyers, when built, would sport a primitive sort of railgun that could puncture the aluminum hulls of unarmored transports, but if we encountered anything armored with synthsteel, our ammunition would likely just bounce away harmlessly.

To say that we were outgunned then, was…yeah.

A variety of approaches to dealing with the Spartan attack were fronted, and one of those included calling for volunteers to enlist en mass to rush the Spartans when they landed.

We could use sheer numbers to overcome the power of their technology, and thus, destroy two and then capture (hopefully) the third unit with one of our new defensive probe teams (OOC: Inf. Chassis, now installed in a growing number of our bases, including the most likely target, UNHQ). Then, we could reverse-engineer those Impact weapons and meet them on even ground in future engagements.

A worthy plan, but extremely risky, because the Spartans, with two regiments of fast-moving rovers would, undoubtedly be able to hit us first, and we could not hope to survive the withering firepower they could bring to bear against us.

Then, as we launched a counter attack against the synth-armored infantry unit brought in to protect the rovers, we would no doubt have to sacrifice several units of our own to simply breech their defenses.

Too costly, and I determined to defeat the attack force before they ever made landfall. Spending liberally, I paid for sufficient overtime for the construction crews to allow us to complete both Leopards in record time, and sent them steaming full bore out to meet the pair of Spartan Transports.

Our first-ever naval engagement was a harsh one for us, this despite the fact that the Spartan Transports were unarmored and lacking in any weaponry of their own.

They were, however, assisted by the troops they carried with them, and the Impact rifles of the Spartans ripped great gaping holes into the hulls of our fragile destroyers. Nonetheless, in 2184, we made history, attacking and sinking both of Santiago’s transports as they drew close to UNHQ, and sending considerable tonnage to the bottom!

Sadly, doing so cost us one of our Leopards, and left the second badly damaged, and it limped to port in UN Court of Justice for repairs.

Still….I was duly pleased at the outcome of it all, and shudder to think about what may have happened if even one of those terrifying units had managed to make landfall on Hope Islands.

I am eternally grateful that we did not have to find out!

But….the threat remained. Yes, we had dealt Santiago and her Spartans a second blow, and this one was far, far more costly than the first had been. Nonetheless, we had been lucky twice, and it was on everyone’s mind.

Until we could mount a similar threat to her, we would be in constant danger, and relying on sheer luck was the purest form of folly.

Something had to be done, and it had to be done quickly.

That’s when I made the decision to leave.

Unity was in good hands. I trusted my subordinates to continue the work we had begun there together. They knew my mind, and many of my plans for the future, and they could get on find without me for a while.

Further, The Dauntless had officially been replaced, and was no longer needed.. With the Leopard in the water trolling, backed up by sleek probe foils, and with a new Transport already under construction, my water lily was….history.

A relic.

In all the defense meetings I had chaired, no one even considered using the oldest ship in our growing fleet for any sort of action against Sparta, or even for commercial shipping purposes as we began ferrying an increasing amount of goods back and forth between Unity and Hope Islands.

That really got to me.
They were discounting my girl.

Too old to matter. That’s what they thought, but I figured maybe she and I had at least one more grand adventure left in us, and so I began making plans to do something grossly irresponsible.

I, as Commodore, and undisputed Master of the Fleets of the PeaceKeeping forces, would assemble a new rookie crew for my beloved ship, and we would sail away to the south in search of Sparta.

The fact was that we simply had to locate her if we were to stand any real chance of making her stop.

Why was I the only one to see this?

I did not know, but it appalled me, and I knew…right then, I knew I had to do something about it.

So I plotted and waited for the right moment….

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Historical footnotes and other goodies

See? I told you there was lots to say….maybe that’ll be a lesson to me…if I write more frequently, then I’ll not have so much “catch up” work to do!

Nahhh.

Thick headed and slow to learn….that’s me.

Anyway, there were several key historical happenings I neglected to mention, having been rather focused on the part I had the greatest role in, that being, the second defeat of Santiago and the Spartans, but there were also lots of other milestones, and I don’t wanna leave anything out.

So….2180 was another good year for me, personally, as UN Enforcement Base got themselves up and running on Unity. That gave me three bases there…rapidly catching up with the number of bases on Hope Islands, and I think it really made everybody stop and take notice. We were just mucking around aimlessly over there, but were really making something. We were thriving…expanding.

I honestly think that there was a bit of jealousy in the hearts of our island cousins, and I couldn’t blame them. No more pioneer spirit. No more lands to discover.

Hope Islands were a completely known quantity, and I think that some, if not many of the citizens there ached for a return to the days of adventure. For them though, life was falling into a comfortable, predictable pattern, and while that pattern saw them gain access to an increasing array of creature comforts, it wasn’t really us, you know? Many of us had lived through the subsistence days of our earliest colonization efforts, when everything was full of danger and close to the bone. When one badly timed rain shower could ruin the crops and starve a few hundred (or more) of us.

And yet, by our own actions, we were taming and civilizing increasingly large portions of our world, which set up an intriguing paradox inside us.

I wonder what the Weather Paradigm would say about that?

2181 was a year of other firsts as well. That’s the year that production of our first Leopard Destroyer got fully underway, and also the year when Lal shifted governmental gears, away from our harsh planned approach, and into the more relaxed frontier style government that we had all grown up with.

Now that we had those big projects under our belts, we could relax a little, and so we did!

2184 was another banner year, as it marked the opening of our first Borehole…a massive shaft drilled straight into the heart of Planet. Granted, we lacked the means to make full use of this immense mine/fountain of energy, but we had one, and several more planned. A banner day indeed.

In ’85, the science weenies were at it again, giving us the tools we needed to really start ramping up our industrial production (OOC: Industrial Base), giving us the gift of Synthsteel. Unity had been sheathed in the stuff, but we lacked the production capacity or the means and precise formula to craft any of our own until ’85, and it really was an important achievement.

Sadly, with all that was going on around us (most significantly, the swirling danger that Santiago represented), our first use of that new technology was to prototype a new rover chassis with it….a synth armored rover. True, it was not sufficient to stop an impact round, but it was a damn sight better than anything we’d ever had before, and we marveled at its strength and impressive bluish sheen.

A key piece of our defense had finally fallen into place as of 2190, when the rover prototype was completed, and we were mightily proud!

Four years later, the weenies were at it again, this time, converting our primitive mining lasers to attack capable weapons. They were about twice as powerful and effective as our hand weapons, still far off the mark from Santiago’s big guns, but a marked improvement over what we had.

At least it was a start.

That too, was the year I decided to leave. Everything was ready, Unity was humming along nicely, and I knew that my boys could handle things well enough without me for a while (I would need to run radio silent, lest my unarmored water lily run afoul of one of Santiago’s own destroyers, and she surely had to have them!), so…time to go.

I left under the cover of darkness, and steamed south to greet the unknown, and it felt….good..

Better than good.

I had not realized how staid and boring my life had become, filled up with endless meetings and planning sessions for one project or another.

This was the life I had missed. The life I had been yearning for.

The sea and the unknown beckoned, and I answered their call, riding out in The Dauntless, living up to the name of my beloved ship.

Of course, my departure was noticed almost immediately, and two of our sleek probe foils raced to catch me when I refused to answer Lal’s numerous hails.

I broke radio silence long enough to order them to stand down. There were things I had to do.

That was all I said, and it was enough.

They left me be and let me go.

I monitored the comm bands closely though, and heard that Santiago returned in 2099, and was again pasted. Gavin had been made Commodore in my absence, and there were orders for my arrest upon my return.

So be it.

This is something I need to do.

Also heard that Gavin led a wildly successful campaign against the Spartans, winning our third victory against Santiago by prototyping our new laser weapons on a modified Leopard hull. The highly skilled troopers dispatched Santiago’s boat without breaking a sweat, and I knew that my homeland was in good care.

In 2200, Gavin radioed me in secret to let me know that we had our fifth base up and running on Unity with the foundation of UN Planetary Trust (OOC: Just sailed past the first b-drone warning). I think he knew that I would not send any sort of reply, but I also think he knew that I was pleased to hear the news.

I wondered if they’d make him arrest me personally when I returned.

If I returned, and there was a very real possibility that I would not….sailing unarmed and unarmored into the jaws of the beast.

In 2201, a year and a day after his previous transmission, Gavin contacted me again, and this time, I felt compelled to break radio silence, if only briefly.

He called to say that he had just defeated a fifth Spartan transport, sending more enemy tonnage to the bottom, and to request something of me.

In my absence, new defense plans had been drawn up to protect the coast and to provide early warning of approaching enemy transports.

The cornerstone of this plan included the creation of two “sea bases” which would serve as naval operating theaters and also early warning platforms.

With such platforms in place, the necessity of finding Santiago’s bases with all possible speed was somewhat reduced, and further, two probe foils (twice as fast as my beloved) were already steaming southward to do that very thing, but there was another task I could perform for the empire, and if I succeed, I would be granted a full pardon for my “crime” of neglecting my duties, and even be restored to my former post, if I wanted it.

The landmass east of us hinted at being….vast. Enormous. Larger even than Unity and Hope Islands combined…perhaps even more than thrice as large as this, and both our current land masses were all abuzz with the prospect of settling there and taming that mighty land as our next endeavour.

The prospect thrilled me, and further, my own assets were already in position to make that happen. Gavin told me that if I was interested, I could turn over my governorship of Unity to him, and he could get me governorship of the landmass that everyone had taken to calling “Goliath.”

That thrilled me too.

There it was again.

Adventure.

Danger.

Yes.

I broke my radio silence and announced my intention to change course. I would circumnavigate this mighty continent east of us, and I would succeed.

Gavin replied that I should be watchful for signs of my own assets on Goliath, and that he would see to it that they were transported there to make ready with all possible speed.

He knew.

He knew and understood me.

Truly, a great and priceless friend.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

2201, with ten good techs

[Velociryx]

2201, what we are doing

[Velociryx]

2201, assets of the empire, part one

[Velociryx]

assets of the empire, part two