Riemann

Orion: New Beginning

Forward Command Bridge, As God and Heinlein Intended, Haven system, Unstable Orbit around Jackal

"Captain?"

Francis stared out the window, watching flames lick the side of God and Heinlein's heatshield.

"Sir?" His communications officer, George, tugging at his arm, clearing Francis' temporary paralysis. He turns from the window and addresses the scope officer.

"How much time do we have left?"

"Eight minutes until aerocapture. Thirty-one until point-of-no-return. Sir."

Francis yanks his radio off the wall and shouts into it "Francis to Engineering. Mr. Renner, I need reactor power now!"

"We're getting fission events but temperature isn't rising above eighteen-hundred degrees. The reactor--"

Another voice, behind the chief engineer "Is behaving like a reactor, not a nuke."

"Get the old man out of my control room! We've got an emergency here."

"Wait" Francis says, recognizing the voice "Fermi, is that you?"

"Yes," the old man replies.

"Mister Renner," Francis sighs, "do you know who designed Aegletes?"

"Oh."

"Do everything Dr. Fermi tells you." With that, Francis hangs up.

_____________________________________________



Reactor Control Room, As God and Heinlein Intended, 29 minutes to point-of-no-return

"Your fuel is poisoned."

"What. That's impossible. Plutonium decays to Uranium after twenty-four thousand years. And that takes a billion more to decay. We should still have fuel." Renner throws his hands up in the air.

"How do you store the fuel?" Fermi asks.

"Same as always, you know that."

"And the reactor?"

"Wait till the thing cools down a bit, flood it with water from the tanks."

"Then there would be no problem--if the core was still plutonium. It's uranium, and it's probably burned itself down to waste by now."

"Nonsense. The uranium has even higher critical mass."

"But it micro-fissions from slow neutrons. Like in water."

From outside the control room, a familiar voice chimes in "Are you done with science lesson now? Can we go?" Boris, Sergi and Ivan float into the control room, their wide-eyed stares of wonder clearly indicating they have never been in such a place before.

"You are not bringing Bessel crew into my reactor room!"

"Do not worry. We're going to cargo. Where nukes are." Boris' casual tone does absolutely nothing to check Renner's fears.

____________________________________________

Forward Command Bridge, As God and Heinlein Intended, 23 minutes until point-of-no-return

"Orbit's down to seventy-one thousand kilometers. We've been aerocaptured."

God and Heinlein shudders, buffeted by Jackal's upper atmosphere.

"Prepare a probe. All our telemetry, the Sundiver data, everything our sensors have picked up. In case we don't make it Asphodel needs to know."

_____________________________________________

Forward Cargo Bay, As God and Heinlein Intended, 20 minutes until point-of-no-return

"One-hundred fifty megatons. One-hundred-fifty megatons. Two-hundred fifty megatons. Oh, here is forty-five megatons. Did not expect to see pipsqueak." Boris reads off yields as he floats down the cargo bay. "There are thousands here. Is half Asphodel's nuclear arsenal at least. Do you plan on blowing up planet?"

"One-fifth," Fermi corrects, "and yes, something like that." He glances around the bay. "These are all much too big. We need something small. Something you can hold in your hands."

"Our shells are that size. Shells of Bessel, I mean." Ivan suggests.

"Seventy-six millimeter armor piercing atomic ordinance" Sergi rattles off, then turns to Fermi. "Is that right size?"

"It's perfect. Let's go to your ship now" Fermi says, pushes off of a warhead, and starts floating down toward the aft cargo bay.

Boris and Sergi follow in the same manner. Ivan takes care not to use a thermonuclear device as a handhold.

_____________________________________________

Aft Cargo Bay, As God and Heinlein Intended, 16 minutes until point-of-no-return

"Here is shell." Boris holds the twenty-kilogram warhead's tip effortlessly between two fingers, and passes it to Fermi.

"Do you have any gloves?" Fermi starts to ask, then checks his watch and forgets about the gloves. "Better wash well afterwards..." he mutters, then unscrews the bolt on the back of the depleted uranium shell casing. Drawing out the dull gray hollowed plutonium cylinder, he holds it away from himself, wary of stray dust. "Maybe we should try to avoid breathing too."

"Is fine," says Boris, "Viktor used to lick them for good luck."

"Didn't you say he died of radiation poisoning? Nevermind that, get me that tin sheeting over there. We're gonna cut it into a rectangle and wrap it around the plutonium just like it is in the shell." Fermi reaches back into the shell and pulls out a smaller, solid cylinder of plutonium.

"Why we replace one metal with another? Why not just keep nuke in shell?" Ivan asks, holding up the tin sheeting while Boris cuts it with sheers.

"Because uranium absorbs and blocks neutrons. Tin doesn't."

Sergi catching on, says "So you see Ivan, today we learn how to make neutron bomb."

______________________________________________

Reactor Control Room, As God and Heinlein Intended, 3 minutes until point-of-no-return

"Won't the atmos ignite if we burn this deep?" asks Darren, the damage control officer.

"This ain't a plume--ain't like nothing is gonna fuse. We're still moving too fast for the explosions to catch us." Wilson responds.

A crackle comes over the comms, and Francis lurches upright in his harness. Fermi's voice. "I set the detonator for thirty seconds. Now, Ivan, we're gonna open the hatch now. See if you can chuck it at the glowing sphere at the center."

"Just like tossing potato." The rooskie's reply comes over the radio crisp and clear--he must be wearing a rad-suit--although Francis can't tell if the man is actually sober.

"Now Mr. Renner, I'm going to need you to flood the reactor with uranium as soon as Ivan tosses the bomb."

"Done. I certainly hope you know what you're doing, old man."

"And I need you to vent the reactor a second before the bomb goes off. Total blowout."

"Aye."

"I hit it! I think. I am of closing door now."

"Brace yourselves!"

The entire ship shakes as a subkiloton neutron bomb detonates within the reactor. Nuclear fire flares from its sides, blowing great gouts of fissioning plasma outward.

Several seconds pass, in silence, before Renner's voice comes over the radio.

"Reactor's running Captain. We've got power."

Noting his queue, Francis snaps "Full burn Mister Wilson. Let's get the hell out of here."

The helmsman pulls back on the throttle, and they are all kicked back in their harnesses, as the God and Heinlein ascend into the heavens.



______________________________________________

EVA, Factory Ship Fermi's Paradox, Erebos system, The dark side of Kronos

They sit a few meters from the hatch, just the two of them, legs hanging over the fuselage. Clad in bulky spacesuits, each with a tin can in his hand, they watch the machines below with a mixture of awe and fear. The spiders, each thirty meters in height, loping across the cracked, metallic ground, illuminated only by the arc welders they carry and the red-hot glow of their plutonium hearts.

"Historians will say that, on the day John von Neumann died, he left behind one thousand children" said Dyson, the taller one.

"If you're gonna get philosophocal on me, you might as well add a few more zeros" Taylor retorts.

The horizon turned a brilliant orange--the first glimmers of sunrise cresting Kronos' molten plains.

Taylor taps his can against the fuselage and stands up. "Beer's cold. We gotta move the ship anyways."

"Fuck the sun." Dyson says to himself, popping the hatch and clambering in.

Orion: New Beginning

Observation Deck 1B, As God and Heinlein Intended, Low Erebos Orbit

When he was young, Nicolas Fermi had visited the Flats of Light on an archeological survey, in search of ferryman fragments. They traveled to the dig in an armored truck with no windows. When Nico and the other scientists emerged, they wore protective goggles--the kind you wear when you want to fool yourself into thinking that you can stare at the sun.
But hiding his eyes behind polarized filters as black as the sky itself didn't seem to help--he stumbled from the truck, clutching his helmeted head in pain. The light seemed to infuse everything in burning agony. By the time he reached the camp, stumbling blind across the salted ice, Nico felt as though the blasted light permeated his very bones, attacking him with bitter, ultraviolet cold through gaps between his gloves and coat.



Erebos was far worse. The heatshield blocked the heat and most of the radiation, but Erebos enveloped them even then. Lashing spokes of plasma flared out around the ship, like waves licking over the bow. Nico knew the flares were thousands, tens of thousands of kilometers away, but he still felt them through the bulkheads, as though the god of the dead still held a grudge against Fermi for surviving Erebos' Cancer.

He can't help but squint and blink, despite all that dense metal between him and the sun. Nico keeps thinking back to his time on the Flats, when, in blinding moonlight, he had met Reines for the first time--a native of Flats of Light--an unblinking man of forty whose eyes, chapped, cracked and bleeding, would never see again.

Klaxons rouses him from the waking nightmare. "Alert. Centrifuge spindown in two minutes" the accent unmistakably Slavic--yet another rooskie. Nico wonders how half the spaceforce was crewed by the goddamn sandpeople, when less than a million actually lived in the White Sands. Probably the only people insane enough to crawl inside a Bessel. But then, by that measure, the crew of Icarus was probably pulled from the South Pole.

Gravity lessens from the comfortable 0.7 gravities, and in a minute Nico is weightless. He checks his watch, and, finding he has a good fifteen minutes to kill before burn, velcros his cup to the table and floats off in search of company.

__________________________________

Under the excruciating pull of gravity, Boris is not a happy man--even the mild 0.8 gravities he is subjected to in his quarters was point-eight too much. But for whatever reason, burns didn't bother him so much, even at three gravities or more. Maybe it was the knowledge that his suffering was finite, or perhaps the roar of the engine, but the jolt of acceleration was simply never so bad as the steady, nauseating crush of coriolis.

Sergi and Dimitri join Boris in a cheer as they become weightless, and Gregory starts passing the bottle around again. Ivan--the new kid, who replaced Viktor after he died of radiation poisoning on Mnemosyne--looks increasingly pale, and passes.
A man passes by the open airlock--old and wrinkled, definitely not crew, and so Boris calls out to him "Hello friend! You are scientists, yes? What is name?"

Nico catches his arm on the door, arresting his motion before replying.
"Yes. Fermi."

Sergi speaks up "You make bombs yes? We love you! Join us! Tell us about where we will be going."
"And who we are killing" laughs Boris, taking another swig from the bottle and offering it to the old man.

Nico had tasted the blasted stuff before--nearly pure alcohol, fermented from a tuber--the only thing to grow in the White Sands. The rooskies ran their dune buggies off the stuff. It felt like it was burning a hole in his throat, but Nico managed to keep the foul brew down.

"We're off to *hick* MS-1044-2. Yellow sun, a bit bigger than ours. Two gas giants--we'll be arriving at the near one--and half a dozen rocky worlds. We think."

"Yellow sun my ass" Gregory shouts, provoking more laughter from his comrades.

"You will have to excuse my friend here, he is not, how you say, with the times" Boris says with a smile, then leans in close to Fermi and whispers, loud enough they can all hear "and he thinks the aliens came from Streila". This time, even motion-sick Ivan laughs.

"Bullshit" is all Gregory says.

Fermi laughs quietly, looking at the bottle in his hands "So you don't believe there are other stars out there?" Gregory nods, slowly, and Fermi speaks again "One can only hope" before draining the rest of the bottle.

___________________________________________

Forward Command Bridge, As God and Heinlein Intended Low Erebos Orbit

"Confirmed, Captain. Cargo is secure; both Bessels and all the probes are accounted for. All twelve Serbers are in tubes and ready to deploy. We are ready to jettison the fuel tanks."

"What about the ordinance?"
"All warheads are accounted for, first salvo is racked sir."
"Good" Francis doesn't turn, but continues to stare out the polarized screen, watching the lancing red spots play across the interior heatshield. Four of them, each over 100 gigawatts, scorching his heatshield. Together, they almost doubled God and Heinlein's thermal power, and he'd be damned if that didn't make him uncomfortable. Sticking a continuously detonating nuke between the hab modules was bad enough.

Francis looks down, chewing his unlit cigar, and glares at the aft dorsal camera feed. Sure enough he can see them, through the static--four more Saint Ulam battlecruisers, boosting them into the great funeral pyre.

"I want the warheads pointed retrograde. We don't know if they'll see us coming."

His weapons officer flips several switches, and the missiles rotate to point aft. "I've set the computer to run gas flare equations and compute a firing solution while we're in-transit."

"We've reached thermal saturation sir."

"Jettison tanks, sound the alarm" Francis Eklund says through his cigar, and makes sure the belts on his acceleration harness are secure, then checks the digital readout to his left. "Burn in thirty seconds, mark."

"Mark" and then, through the shipwide comms "Burn in twenty-five seconds. Brace yourselves."

Francis spends the next two dozen seconds wincing at the reactor alarms, threatening the bridge crew with imminent containment failure and thermonuclear destruction.

"Sundiving in 3... 2..." the radio officer is cut out by the roar of the engines, and Francis is slammed back in his seat. Two g's--the upper limit of what Ulam was designed to handle.

"Saint Ulam Protects" the whispered, sarcastic prayer never fails to bring a smile to Francis' lips, even among the sounds of panic and chaos.

"Entering chromosphere!" his crew have to shout to be heard now. "Trajectory locked, boost complete, stepping down thrust to match friction." The engines dial down to much more reasonable levels, and Francis realizes he hasn't breathed in almost a minute.

"Are we within the jump range? Report!"

"All systems are responding. We're okay" announces Damage Control.

"Uh... We're in the jump zone... I think" the scope officer "the gradiometer is going haywire."

Tapping a control above his left arm, Francis reaches up and grabs a mic off the wall. "Icarus, we're ready to jump. Can you confirm depth?" After several seconds and no response he asks again "Icarus, can you confirm depth, over."

The reply surrounds them, alien, booming and distorted, emanating from the edge of the photosphere. "You are within the margin. You are cleared for long-jump."

Francis jams the key into its lock. Outside the bridge, they can see the Sundiver ring begin to spin. And then Erebos is gone, replaced by swirling, indistinct colors.

______________________________________

"We are horizontal, moving up toward i" Fermi says, addressing the bridge crew.

The damage control officer, Darren snorts, "it's j. We're at i right now."

Fermi, annoyed "everyone needs to be asleep before a 1º phase shift has occurred."

"Why's that?" George, the communications officer, trying to be funny.

"That's when the monsters come out."

______________________________________

Cryo Tray 1, As God and Heinlein Intended, Haven system, unstable polar orbit around Jackal
Three hundred thousand years later

Francis awakes, unlit cigar still in his mouth, to blaring alarms. He floats out of the open cryo pod--filthy xenos tech that, but it kept him from waking up as a pile of dust.

Around him officers and technicians race down the tubes to their posts. Unused to moving quickly in zero-g, it takes him almost two minutes to make it to the bridge. The gas giant looms above him, aurora glimmering, filling the sky as sun once had, so very long ago.

"Captain, we're aerobraking!"

The greatest fear of any sailor, to be swallowed ship and all by the murky green sea.

Orion: New Beginning

Sorry about the double post--I'll just use the second one for spaceships.

The Sundiver

The Sundiver is, in short, the galaxy’s most useless time machine. It is similar to the Alcubierre drive in that it requires the creation of a “warp bubble”, but the Sundiver’s requirements for activation are considerably easier (and more dangerous) to fulfil.
A spacecraft (hereafter referred to as “the ship”) activating the Sundiver’s warp bubble does not require exotic matter like the Alcubierre. Instead, the bubble can only be formed while the ship is subject to a very steep gravitational gradient, such as that found within a star’s chromosphere or near a black hole (oddly, the black hole is a safer approach here).
When the ship Sundives, its velocity does not change, nor does it suddenly arrive at its destination. From a perspective within the warp bubble, the outside universe, save for gravity is completely undetectable but otherwise nothing has changed.
Externally, on activation, the ship vanishes in a flash of gamma radiation. Any attempts to detect or interact with the ship fail (save for gravitational disturbance, covered below).
While the ship’s absolute timeframe has not changed, it has gained a complex steady-state term, as though multiplied by an imaginary exponential

αt*e^(iφ)

Thus, the ship is not travelling forward in time at the rate of 1 second every (external) second, but at a changing complex rate. It will travel forward in time, up in time, down in time, and back in time many times over the course of its journey. The crew (and the spacecraft) will spend just as much time in transit (potentially thousands of years) as they would if they had not activated the Sundiver, but externally the ship would appear at its destination moments after Sundiving.
If altered or subjected to significant trauma (engine exhaust) while in operation, the warp bubble will collapse asymmetrically and violently spaghettify the spacecraft across several hundred years. In fact, the warp bubble cannot be safely deactivated from within. Only when encountering a gravitational gradient separate from the one used to Sundive can the warp bubble be collapsed safely. The requirements for this are significantly more reasonable—the ship could emerge very close to a gas giant or within an Earth-sized planet’s atmosphere.
While within the warp bubble the external universe is, for the most part, unobservable—an indistinct blur of colors which don’t seem to have any connection with the normal universe. Prolonged exposure will drive any sapient species mad (in an Event Horizon fashion), but cryo-sleep can counteract this.

Warships

NPn Bessel v1B

Articulated robotic atomic spacecraft (Corvette)

36.3 x 19.5 x 14.1 meters
Neumann Pneumatic's flagship design, mass produced before and during the First Contact War. Bessel is extremely well armored for its size, presenting over 430 mm of spaced, sloped tungsten-carbide armor to the fore. It is almost impervious to explosive damage and kinetic projectiles.
While small and lightly armed, Bessel has been by far the most cost effective design to date. It is launched by SSTO.

1100 tons displacement
Crew of 3 (pilot, engineer, reactor technician)


Despite its weight, powerful SAS and RCS systems coupled with gimbaled engines on robotic mounts give Bessel unmatched manuverability and VTOL landing capabilities.
16 meganewtons AT 31 km/s
T/W of 1.47
Total dV: 15 km/s


Earlier versions of Bessel had to contend with low thrust and abysmal dV, restricting their use to Akheron, Mnemosyne and the moons of Scylla. Replacing the NERVA engines with open-core molten plutonium engines helps turn Bessel into a more well-rounded fighting machine.
This refitted version of Bessel also is equipped with the highest end computer systems on Asphodel: a state of the art Ming microprocessor from Sanctus, which operates at a whopping 1.44 MHz.

Armament: (Fore) 2 x2 76mm Armor-Piercing Nuclear Submunitions (1 kiloton yield), can also fire flak.

Engines double as low-output thermal reactors; backup battery and radioisotope power systems.
Double spaced armor ranging from 430 mm to 180 mm tungsten carbide
No FTL capabilities
Full ISRU refinery system

Three hundred and seventy-four Bessel ships are still in use (most are retrofits).
More than seven hundred ships were produced and launched before the end of the First Contact War.

OpA Serber

Rapid-launch laser platform (Corvette)

48 x 15.9 x 15.9 meters

Serber is a laser platform designed toward the end of the First Contact War, intended to replace the obscenely expensive Ulam battlecruiser.

650 tons displacement
Crew of 2 (optical technician and reactor technician)


Serber uses four open-core molten plutonium atomic motors, similar to Bessel's but less powerful. Propellant flow can be adjusted to optimize exhaust velocity (high gear) or thrust (low gear).
Even with atomic engines, Serber does not have enough fuel for both interplanetary travel and manuvering in combat when it arrives. It requires support of larger ships or fuel tugs to be effective.
7 meganewtons AT 27 km/s (high gear)
T/W of 1.1 (low gear)
Total dV: 9 km/s (high gear)


Armament: (Fore) 1 1.75 GW laser cannon (1.8 m aperture, 58% effeciency, microwave to near infrared)

1 Optical Atomics "Model 7" fission reactor (4.8 GW output) with backup radioisotope generators and battery systems.
2.2 meters of frontal conductive armor (refractory tungsten carbide)
No FTL
While Serber has impressive heatsinks for its size, it has few radiators and must rely on venting liquid lithium or reaction mass to operate its reactor or fire the laser.
Serber's heatshield reflects 60% of gamma and x-ray spectrums and can absorb microwave to near infrared spectrum to boost its own laser or engines.

Only 5 Serbers are still in service (left in orbit of Asphodel). A couple dozen are kept in reserve, ready to launch, but the design is very cheap to produce and launch.

OpA Saint Ulam

Rapid-deployment battlecruiser (Battlecruiser)

357.6 x 226.8 x 226.8 meters

Before first contact, Optical Atomics was comissioned to construct twenty-nine additional Von Braun exploration ships, with which to explore the newly discovered universe beyond the veil. When the first contact war begun, Asphodel was nearly defenseless--any ship launched was destroyed by lasers before it could reach orbit.
Trippling the number of engines on the Von Braun and attaching a prototype heatshield intended for Project Icarus transformed the exploration ship into a nearly indestructible warship.
Ironically, the ship's namesake is anything but a saint--Stanislav Ulam helped develop the atomic bomb, and is single-handidly responsible for several of the worst nuclear disasters to befall pre-FCW Asphodel.
1,600,000 tons displacement
Crew of 112 (mostly reactor technicians)


Six Optical Atomics gas-core plutonium engines drive Ulam--and they can be vectored by up to 30º, giving it decent manuverability in combat.
15.8 giganewtons AT 60.8 km/s
T/W of 1
Total dV: 47 km/s


Armament: (Fore) 1 145 GW laser cannon (7.2 m aperture, 58% effeciency, microwave to near infrared)
(Sides) 2 2400mm Gattling Defense Systems (2.4 kiloton warheads, ferro-flak or tungsten ball-bearing canisters fired at 8 km/s, fires 5000 rounds/minute)
68 laser-driven drones carrying 15 megaton warheads (individual dV ~15 km/s when boosted by 1 Ulam)

1 Optical Atomics "Aegletes" pulse fission reactor (400 GW usable thermal power)
24 meters (average) of frontal conductive armor (refractory tungsten carbide). Deflects 60% of x-rays and gamma-rays.
Bubbles of ferro-ablation fluid can liquify and be spread across heatshield to act as ablative armor.
Ulam can absorb microwave to near infrared light to boost its own laser or engine systems. The heatshield itself acts as a giant radiator and, when combined with active cooling systems allow Ulam to dissipate almost two terrawatts of waste heat.
The "Saint" retrofit adds a powerful electromagnet system to the heatshield, which, when driven by the Aegletes reactor, can produce an electromagnetic deflection field.
Additionally, retrofitted Ulams are equipped with the Sundiver FTL system--their heatshields and radiator systems make them very depentable, if inflexible, Sundivers.



Of the twenty-nine Ulams produced during the First Contact War, seventeen of them survive and are still in service. Eleven of the twelve destroyed during the war were shot down before reaching orbit.

OpA Icarus

The Sundiver (Titan)

453.6 x 309.6 x 309.6 meters

Built immediately following the First Contact War, Icarus was initially designed to test the Sundiver FTL system. It is fully capable of diving into a star and not only surviving, but operating within a star's chromosphere for months at a time.

2,000,000 tons displacement
Crew of 256 (very rarely does Icarus operate with a full crew--even Asphodelians are hesistant to serve aboard a giant radiation kaleidoscope).


Icarus uses an impulsive confinement fusion engine based on alien technology. It emits considerable amounts of lethal radiation.
43.2 meganewtons at 341 km/s
T/W of 2.2
Total dV: 59.5 km/s


Armament: 4000 thermonuclear warheads (average yield of 1 megaton).
(Fore) 1 16 TW graser cannon (11 m aperture, gamma spectrum, 11% effeciency)
Icarus detonates a 1 megaton fusion bomb directly against the heatshield, transfering gamma- and x-ray radiation through the hull via bremsstrahlung, where it is converted into a coherent gamma-ray beam via a lithium-tantalum lattice (total efficiency of 0.385% bomb-to-laser).

1 Fermi-Teller prototype fusion reactor (operating at a reduced output of 130 GW)
6 "Model 1C" fission reactors (60 MW output)

Icarus' heatshield is composed of nanoscale sheets of carbon and tungsten, and it can alter their composition to reflect any spectrum of light (between 90-60% efficiency; higher spectrums are less efficient).
Each hexagonal shell on the heatshield can be used as a microwave laser (typically ~50 GW, but shorter range than normal)

Icarus has an incredibly impressive heatsink array, capable of dissipating almost 50 terrawatts of waste heat (less than 20 TW when radiators are retracted).
Icarus is outfitted with a Sundiver FTL system, and is ideally designed to make use of it--between an aft-facing heatshield and powerful radiator systems, it can survive even the most dangerous dives.

Orion: New Beginning

The Atomists of Asphodel

Origins of Asphodel

[Part I]
In 2282, Charon, the first seedship, departs from Earth for the distant star system of Epsilon Eridani. The ship carries no human crew and is equipped with an experimental “FTL” system. Using nuclear thermal rocket engines, it achieves stellar escape velocity, and activates FTL. Charon vanishes, never to be seen again. With no sign of survival and no return signal, humanity assumes the ship lost, and abandons the poorly understood technology in favor of more dependable stellar engines.
But Charon was not destroyed, merely lost. Phase shifted out of the Earth’s reference frame, it drifts on through space. Charon retains its initial velocity, but time becomes a complex quantity, endlessly oscillating. Eventually, as thousands of subjective years pass, Charon’s reactors go dormant, awaiting a gravitational signature before they awaken.
The ship enters the Epsilon Eridani system, and nothing happens. A malfunction perhaps, or a slight miscalculation in trajectory. The ship drifts on, blind and lifeless, through the void between spaces. Hundreds of thousands of years pass within, and finally, Charon detects a gravity well.
It emerges from the complex plane at the edge of a planet’s atmosphere, approaching at a velocity of more than seventy kilometers per second. Automation scarcely resumes before Charon enters the atmosphere.
The machine minds on board react instantly, igniting the reactors and torching the planet with nuclear fire in a frantic attempt to save the ship. They succeed partially, regaining control just long enough to jettison colony pods. Charon tumbles, hull warping in the heat, struts buckling. It is torn in half by the atmosphere, and crash-lands near the now-radioactive North Pole.
But the colony pods survive, mostly intact, to land at various parts of the globe. Their feeble artificial intelligences, damaged as they are from the sudden landing, begin the cloning process. And within a few short years, the first humans walk the hills of Asphodel. The machines raise the first generation, teaching them of the great classical philosophers and mythology, but nothing else. Damaged as they are, their memory banks contain no other information. The machines tell humanity that this is the afterlife, that the Ferryman Charon brought them to Asphodel as a final resting place.
Civilization rises in the East, and the great Empire of Ghazele grows to encompass the largest continent. The humans of Asphodel, drawn from the best genetic stock and modified to suit their environment quickly give rise to a society analogous to Earth’s Rome. Science and philosophy flourish.
As they stare up into the skies beyond in wonder, as all humans inevitably do, they see nothing. No stars—only a sun and distant worlds orbiting it. Based on their understanding of mathematics and a few fragments of information they extract from the machines, scientists of the time believe their solar system of Erebos to be the last surviving system in a post-heat death universe. All other stars gone dark, all worlds dead. Only Humanity, the last species in the universe, trapped in Hell.

[Part II]
But Hell is good, for a time at least. The Empire of Ghazele explores the globe, encountering other fledgling civilizations which they exploit or cooperate with as it suits them. In time, they even explore the hazardous and radioactive North Pole, home to an unusual plant called Taiben and tribes that are dependent upon it for sustenance. Taiben is addictive and possesses numerous beneficial properties, essentially acting as both an anagathic and a steroid. Naturally, the Ghazele explorers brought Taiben back to the empire, where it flourished. They eventually concocted a much more potent drug from the plant, and returned to the north to exploit the local tribes. The savages took to the drug a bit too well, slaughtered the expedition and began to migrate south in search of more.
Refined Taiben, in addition to being a tremendously powerful steroid, degrades mental functions and increases aggression. And so, when the uncivilized barbarians met with Ghazele’s well-trained armies, the barbarians won. They ravaged Ghazele, moving steadily south, laying waste to the cradle of civilization.
The “war” raged for three thousand years. It was as if the barbarian hordes of Europe had destroyed Rome, then returned again every year to destroy it again, forever.

[Part III]
Technology and science regressed and all hope was lost. But eventually, the surviving Ghazele colonies and trading partners regained their footing and resisted the Taiben tribes, forming islands of stability in a war-ravaged world.
Time passes, and the Greater Empire of Sanctus rises from the ruins. Sanctus begins the slow task of regaining territory lost to the barbarians. They conquer lands in the other continent, territories that will one day become the UCS and the Corporate Badlands. The Holy Sañira Protectorate rises, well protected from the Taiben by mountainous areas along its border.
Sanctus eventually becomes strong enough to challenge the complacent Taiben, who had been content to ravage the Ghazele heartland. But when Sanctus calls upon its reclaimed territories for support, the new isolationist regime of Sañira refuses, sparking a series of border conflicts between the two former friends. A surge in Taiben aggression and the conflict with Sañira force Sanctus to abandon its colonies, withdrawing to the Eastern-most peninsula.
Despite setbacks, technology improves, and firearms start to become commonplace. Civilized armies finally gain the upper hand, beating back the Taiben incursions. For almost forty years, life is comfortable.
And then the Taiben begin to manufacture their own rifles. They launch global raids against all countries they can reach, collectively known as the Grand Raid. The Grand Raid is only held back in the advanced nations by advantages granted by the newly developed steam power and electric communications.

[Part IV]
With the advent of the industrial age, the nations of the world unite against the Taiben, invading the Taiben’s mountainous homeland. Massive advancement in technology allows the Taiben tribal forces to be crushed, but guerrilla tactics, theft of supplies and ambient radiation makes occupation costly. The alliance is eventually forced to retreat, but not before first using atomic weapons—manufactured in the Corporate Badlands by Ingle’s Corp, deployed by Sanctus. The Taiben homeland is devastated, irradiated forever, entire mountain ranges reduced to slag.
But the Taiben live on.
A new world power rises—a single man. Geoff Ingle is the primary nuclear arms dealer for the entire world. He sells to all first-world nations, creating a cold war in the aftermath of the Taiben bombing.
The atomic age is beginning—and soon, humanity will aspire to rule their tiny dark system—to harvest its wealth, and thus somehow survive the heat death that has befallen every other system.
But truth is stranger than fiction—even this fiction of a dead race, cast down by the gods, trapped in hell, surrounded by a desolate universe. Charon’s arrival at Asphodel predates human civilization on Earth. It traveled in the spaces between stars for four hundred thousand years, and yet when it arrives at Asphodel, it arrives five thousand years before it left, crewed only by mad machines.
Hidden within their dark nebula, humanity’s offspring will soon be their equals.
It is 4390 years after the founding of the Ghazele Empire, thirty years before first contact.

[Part V]
The Von Braun, first interstellar Asphodelian ship, begins its four-year mission to journey into the dark nebula, to discover more about the universe beyond Erebos. The voyage goes uneventfully, until the ship emerges from the nebula and the Asphodelians aboard--who expected a universe, inhabited by nothing more than dust and black holes-- glimpse the stars for the very first time.
In its haste to alert Asphodel of its discovery, the Von Braun turns around and fires its atomic engines to return--and in doing so, shines a nuclear spotlight against the black of Tartarus, alerting every alien species within twenty light-years to the location of Erebos.
Von Braun scarcely has time to return to Asphodel before aliens arrive--a surveying fleet of insectoids who view Asphodel as an ideal world to terraform. Immediately, they destroy what little orbital infrastructure Asphodel has, land troops in the Ghazele wastes and lay siege to the planet. The aliens use Asphodel's ice moon Mnemosyne as a base of operations as they begin to bomb Asphodel's cities.
Asphodel retaliates with a number of Bessel-class corvettes scattered on its moons, and although they have some success in disrupting the aliens, the Asphodelian ships are cut off from reinforcements--any ship launched from the planet is destroyed by laser fire before it can reach orbit.
Unable to fight back effectively against the biomechanical horrors unleashed by the alien landing forces, Sañira and Sanctus deploy nuclear weapons over the Ghazele wastes, turning almost a third of Asphodel's landmass to glass and kicking up millions of tons of radioactive ash.
After over five years of vicious fighting, Asphodel finally manages to get warships into orbit, at great expense. Ulam battlecruisers--protected by vast heatshields--prove almost immune to hostile laser fire and manage to reach orbit, where they crush the alien fleet. As Asphodel burns below, they shatter its moon, Mnemosyne, exterminating the last of the alien expedition.

It is six years after the First Contact War, and the Atomists of Asphodel have unlocked the secrets of superluminal travel. The Saint Ulam battlecruiser God and Heinlein hurtles toward Erebos, for the first Long Jump test of the Sundiver.
Fleets assemble in orbit of Elysium, preparing for war with a thousand imagined enemies.
Von Neumann's final legacy--strange, spider-like machines stride across the dark side of Kronos, replicating as they go.

Realms of Asphodel

[Ghazele Wastes]
Once the cradle of civilization, Ghazele’s former empire has been utterly obliterated by the Taiben, long before the aliens arrived. During the First Contact War, Ghazele was the main beachhead for alien invasion--when Sañira and Sanctus were unable to win the land war, they cut their losses and deployed nukes, replacing Ghazele's swamps and jungles with glass.
Since the war, aerospace companies have been moving infrastructure into Ghazele--testing nuclear weapons and engines in a nuclear wasteland carries little additional risk.
[Kingdom of Sanctus]
This waning superpower has gradually adopted a more and more isolationist stance in the wake of the Taiben occupation.
Sanctus occupies a wiry, elongated peninsula, lined with fiords and small island chains. Before the great raid, they were a center for great trade, but for the past hundred years they've adopted an isolationist stance, and being bordered by a nuclear wasteland hasn't changed anything. Sanctus tends to be cold and wet, with ever-present fog shrouding its well-defended cities.
Sanctus manufactures the vast majority of computer and electronic equipment on Asphodel.
[Sañira]
Nestled between three mountain ranges, this police-state has endured Taiben raids for almost a thousand years. Now, with their ancient enemy diminished, Sañiran officials struggle to invent new foes to keep their people in line. Sañira boasts the most powerful army, and is an industrial power only outmatched by the UCS.
Sañiran climate is moderately dry, and they've had horrible problems with nuclear fallout following the glassing of Ghazele.
[Swehteir]
Protected from the Taiben by Sanira and the vast oceans, Swehteir is possibly the most well-protected nation from the Taiben.
Swehteir’s climate is among the most mild on Asphodel. It boasts the best living conditions.
[Corporate Badlands]
Initially a coalition of mining cartels formed after the withdrawal of Sanctus, this region is now a vast, industrial wasteland. With no central government, each corporation is a nation onto itself. The water is unsafe to drink and toxic waste is often dumped into the great northernmost river (nicknamed “the Small Stygian Marsh” by locals). Snipers on the roof of a shopping mall take potshots at employees at the car dealership just down the street. Because of this, it has one of the worst economies in the world, yet the highest profit margins.
The Corporate Badlands is home to megacorporations like Ingle’s Corp and Makaron Metals. It is the second hottest and driest place on Asphodel (second only to the now-destroyed Ghazele)—temperatures reaching as high as 40ºC during the summer.
[Ji-leh]
With its safest harbors rocky—almost mountainous, Ji-leh might initially seem a horrible base for a trade empire. But those dangerous harbors provide protection from Taiben rafts—and on Asphodel, immunity to the Taiben is far more important than any inconvenience. Historically a mixture of monastery and marketplace, Ji-leh is now the wealthiest nation, per capita, on the planet.
The climate is temperate, cold and mountainous.
[Ingle’s Land]
A cold, mostly empty island purchased by Geoff Ingle, who uses it mostly as a vacation home. It is home to a number of refugees, who are either ignored or used as target practice.
[United Coalition of States]
Once a collection of warring, Balkanized city-states, the UCS has grown tamer with time. With the advent of the Industrial Age, and its proximity to the Corporate Badlands, it has become a manufacturing superpower, supplying the entire alliance during the Taiben war and occupation. The UCS currently possesses the most well-developed space program, and is in the process of launching the first satellites.
UCS’s climate is temperate and varied.
[Conglomeration for Mutual Welfare]
A collection of states favoring socialist policies seceded from the UCS after heated debates concerning universal heathcare and welfare. Within a single year, CWM unemployment numbers hit 38%. The CWM requested to return to the UCS. The UCS refused. Things have gone downhill since.
In recent years, economic collapse and mass starvation has practically destroyed CMW as a nation. CMW is heavily urban, with a mild climate.
[Global Governing Body]
An island chain, owned by what remains of the global government. Today, it holds little power outside of investments. The climate is humid and cold, fog often blanketing its cities.
[Taiben]
The word Taiben is synonymous with the barbarian tribes of the north, the plant with steroid-like qualities they are so fond of, and the land they call home. Much of Taiben is tundra or mountains, and it sports an unusually large number of caves and hotsprings heated by a natural fission reactor beneath the planet’s crust. The area was radioactive before the alliance nuked it—now it’s a wasteland. Many Taiben survived, but they are mostly disorganized.
During the First Contact War, the Taiben were the only group to defeat the aliens on the land, and then only with heavy casualties. There now exists an uneasy truce between the Taiben tribes and the nations of Asphodel--there is even talk of allowing Taiben to serve in Asphodel's new military.
[Zeeland and Strelia]
The islands of Zeeland and Strelia are an oddity amongst the nations of Asphodel, as the isolation of the ocean protected them from the worst of Taiben raids. A Ghazele colony, Strelia developed into an urban center, while the larger island of Zeeland was largely agricultural, feeding the populace of it's sister island. Protected as they were from the worst of the outside world, though maintaining trade with the other civilized nations, Strelia developed into a cosmopolitan hub of learning and art.
This all changed when, just over eighty years ago, massive, terrifying creatures swarmed over Strelia, aggressively attacking its people, and digging nests. It's still unclear whether this event was some kind of natural migration event, or if it was somehow triggered by man, intentionally or otherwise. Whatever the case, the once beautiful cities of Strelia are now home to the most deadly animals on the planet. The survivors evacuated to Zeeland, where they have managed to reconstruct much of what they lost, but artifacts of great value still remain on the abandoned island. Many would-be treasure hunters and fortune seekers make their way over, hoping to recover items to sell.
[Flats of Light]
It isn’t called the Flats of Light because of any inherent goodness or hope-like quality. It’s called the Flats of Light because it’s really fucking bright. Cloudless skies, ozone holes and reflective salt flats result in blinding and harmful rays. Those few who call the Flats of Light home wear protective goggles when outside or risk blindness.
[The White Sands]
Further south of the Flats of Light lies the White Sands—perhaps the strangest place on the planet. The White Sands, so named because one cannot tell the sand from the snow, is home to crazy, intoxicated “Rooskees” who roam this desolate land in dune buggies. Not a drop a water has fallen over The White Sands in recorded history, nor has any of the snow melted. Snow falls over the sandstone mountains to the West, where it is carried inland on strong winds—along with a healthy amount of sand, ripped from the sandstone.
[The Glorious South]
Those who travel further south than the Flats of Light are generally considered insane. The Glorious South is the most inhospitable place in all of Asphodel. Temperatures remain cold enough to freeze a man in his tracks, and yet there still remain mad survivalists who live here, eking out a bleak existence in the ice.

Worlds of Erebos

[Erebos]
Erebos, a small yellow star, surrounded by seven planets. To those within the system of Erebos, other stars are not visible—hidden from view by the cold nebula that surrounds the system.
[Kronos]
A tiny, scorched world, extremely close to Erebos. Kronos has an eccentric orbit, and is suspected to have a high metal content.
Kronos is the new frontier--for the past two years, Saint Ulam battlecruisers have been towing mining equipment and factories to Kronos, to harvest its considerable heavy metal and fissile materials.
[Stygia]
Commonly called the Stygian Marsh, Stygia is a runaway greenhouse planet with similarities to Venus. It has greater gravity than Asphodel and a much thicker atmosphere.
[Phlegethon]
Moon of Stygia, Phlegethon is little more than a captured asteroid.
[Asphodel]
Asphodel is similar to Earth, but markedly less hospitable. A thinner atmosphere and a weaker sun make it colder and more prone to extremes in temperature.
[Akheron]
First moon of Asphodel, Akheron rocky and cratered. Akheron is orbited by several dozen space stations, and is a major refueling depot.
[Mnemosyne (Destroyed)]
Mnemosyne was once a small ice moon in a distant orbit around Asphodel--during the First Contact War, the aliens used it as a primary staging area and refueling depot for their invasion of Asphodel, until Ulam battlecruisers shattered the moon with nuclear weapons.
[Hekate]
A cold, red, low-gravity world with a thin methane atmosphere.
[Avernos]
Hekate’s only moon is tidally locked.
[Lethe]
A small, dead world with considerable uranium reserves.
[Scylla]
The only gas giant in the Erebos system, Scylla has a considerable host of moons.
[Elysion]
Despite being much further from the sun, Elysion is arguably more habitable than Asphodel. Of comparable mass and size, its atmosphere is considerably thicker. Geothermal vents heat the moon, supplying enough heat to keep it warm year-round. While little life exists on land, Elysion’s oceans are teeming with life.
Colonization efforts are now underway--more than a thousand Asphodelians live on the Elysion shores.
[Kokytos]
An ice world a fifth the size of Asphodel. It is covered in mining installations and refineries, and heavily protected.
[Demos]
Massive, of comparable size to Stygia.
[Oneiroi]
A captured asteroid with a very eccentric orbit.
[Pol]
Even smaller than Oneiroi, Pol is also a captured asteroid.
[Taenarum]
Furthest world in the Erebos system, Taenarum is covered in a layer of ice. Powerful radio-telescopes peer into the nebula beyond, searching for possible invaders. Several warships are also stationed here.
[Notes on the Nebula]
The cold, dark nebula that surrounds Erebos provides a very effective shield, blocking relativistic objects and most forms of FTL due to sheer density. Ships can pass through it normally at more reasonable speeds though. The nebula begins approximately 30 AU from the highest point in Taenarum’s orbit.
Asphodelians have placed thousands of surveillance satellites within and outside of the nebula, in an attempt to detect approaching ships.

Economy, Technology, Climate, Culture and Government

Economy: It's been six years since the end of the First Contact War, and Asphodel still has not shifted away from a total war economy. In order to launch the massive Ulam-class ships, the whole of Asphodel was remade into a vast aerospace factory, launching hundreds of millions of tons of rocket each year.
Technology: The fourty-year ban on commercial nuclear power plants has finally been lifted (nuclear power is not considered as ecologically friendly as coal, as it does not promote global warming). Fission-fusion reactors power the next generation of spacecraft and true Von Neumanns infest the surface of Kronos. But while Asphodel possesses impressive engineering at fictional scale, none of the science is more advanced than what humanity possesses today--except the Sundiver.
Climate: Cesium ash falls over The White Sands, indistinguishable from snow. Asphodel is of comparable size to Earth, boasts over nine billion people, and over a third of its landmass is a radioactive wasteland. Even at the best of times Asphodel was a more hostile world than Earth.
Culture: Asphodel is markedly more conservative socially than other human empires across the galaxy. Still, in most nations there is no legal distinction between men and women.
Government: Bureacracy thrives in times of peace and disolves in war--and with minor exception, Asphodel has known nothing but war. The short-lived Global Governing Body has been replaced by an informal coalition of leaders (who behave remarkably well for people who had been at each other's throats just a decade previous). Still, the peace is tenuous--without a common enemy the various nations of Asphodel will inevitably turn against one another once again.

War of the Seven Suns (Sci Fi Naval RP)

Cybernetically augmented space cockroaches.

Kakerlak Species Info

Culture

Kakerlakes, while not overly aggressive, have little regard for the safety of themselves or those around them—the thralls simply don’t care, the journeymen don’t know any better, and the patriarchs are effectively immortal. The patriarchs behave less like a ruling body and more like a bunch of old war buddies on an extended camping trip.  They have considerable interest in the culture, technology and food of other species. Thralls lack initiative, and will obey the commands of anyone who is convincing enough.  Journeymen aren’t quite as foolish but are imprinted to be loyal to the patriarchs.

History

Kakerlake are evolved from a cockroach-like species that infested a generation ship some millions of years ago.  The ship’s original crew perished some generations into their voyage, and were kind enough to sabotage the radiation shielding before they died.  Only some plant life and pests survived the radiation, and as the ship drifted through space they evolved to match their environment.  Gradually, the Kakerlakes developed an instinctual understanding of tools sophisticated enough to maintain and even repair portions of the generation ship. The ship drifts for millions of years, and eventually encounters other alien life.  The Gedune uplift the Kakerlakes, augmenting some of their number with cybernetic computer systems, granting them long-term memory.  The first augmented Kakerlakes turned out to be skilled negotiators with little regard for their unaugmented brethren, and promptly sold many of the thralls aboard into slavery in exchange for the repair and refit of their ship.  These twenty-eight augmented Kakerlakes formed the Patriarchy of Babel, and continued on their merry way.

Physiological Description

The Kakerlak are evolved cockroaches, 3-4 feet in length.  They have a maximum lifespan of around a decade. Like normal cockroaches (but more so), Kakerlake are almost immune to radiation, able to survive thousands of times the radiation a human could.  They can survive hundreds of gravities of acceleration, and are very resilient in general.  They can function in vacuum for more than an hour without oxygen, regenerate lost limbs, and are even receptive to freeze-drying. Although they have a natural aptitude for tools and language, the average Kakerlak is comparable in intelligence with a dumb human.  Even the smartest could only be considered to be of average intellect by other sentient species.  And all un-augmented Kakerlake have a long term memory that lasts no longer than a week.  Although their instinctual skills make them well suited for the basic operation and maintenance of a spacecraft, without direction they are hopeless. There are more than six thousand un-augmented Kakerlake (Thralls) aboard Babel. Because of their resilience and regenerative capabilities, Kakerlake are easy to cybernetically augment.  The thralls are led by journeymen and patriarchs, which are augmented with computer systems which merge seamlessly with the brain.  The computer systems record for and direct the Kakerlak, imparting long term memories and enhancing their cogitation.  Only the smartest among the thralls are typically chosen for cybernetic augmentation, and those gain a plethora of computerized tools to aid them in mathematics, navigation and translation, among other subjects. Because long-term memory retention is solely the job of the cybernetics, Kakerlakes have attained effective immortality, and can even be transferred from cockroach to shipboard computer. Patriarch Kakerlakes are old; some have lived dozens of lifetimes.  There are only twenty-eight of them, and not one has yet died a true death.  As the Kakerlake journey between stars, they reside solely within the ship’s computers, except for the one patriarch designated as the Watcher.  During the long journeys through deep space these patriarchs guide their species’ evolution through a mixture of selective breeding and genetic engineering. Journeymen are young augmented Kakerlakes typically imprinted with only skills, not memories.  They direct the thralls, handle delicate tasks aboard the ship, and generally carry out the demands of the patriarchs.  Lacking the wisdom (and sentimental value) of the patriarchs, journeymen rarely live more than one life. There are currently only a hundred journeymen aboard Babel, although that number will rise in times of crisis. Kakerlakes are omnivores, and will eat anything, even dead Kakerlake.  Kakerlake females are smaller than the males and give birth to as many as a dozen egg cases in a single year—each containing 40-60 eggs.  Where space and resources are limited (such as aboard Babel), the young eat one another until the population crisis is resolved. Kakerlake exoskeletons are resistant to small arms fire and their underdeveloped wings allow them to, with significant effort, fly under Earth gravity.

Summary of Traits: Very resistant to radiation, vacuum, toxins.  Can withstand tremendous acceleration and are generally very durable.  No long term memory without cybernetic augmentation.  Augmented Kakerlake have a photographic memory.

The Tower of Babel

A mere 340 meters long, massing almost 780,000 tons, Babel is home to an entire species. Within, six thousand irradiated cockroaches crawl within its empty fuel tanks. When the ship refuels, they die en-mass, frozen in liquid hydrogen. The hull is dotted with ferro-thrusters (essentially gauss cannons) which function as high-thrust RCS engines and double as extremely short range weapons. Between the armored ribs lies the Siphon, which can suck in vast amounts of gas from atmospheres of gas giants or terrestrial worlds. Babel’s computer systems are a hybrid of digital and analog technologies—silicon transistors, fiber optic switches and even some mechanical components.  Such is their specialization that these systems are incredibly confusing repair and maintain. Fortunately, the Kakerlakes who made them yet live and possess photographic memories. Babel’s computer systems might be slower than those of other spacecraft, but radiation damage and EMP causes only minor and temporary problems. That, and they're operated by taped recordings of dead cockroaches.

Engine

Babel's main engine combines all the hazards of the Zubrin Nuclear Salt-Water Rocket and the Nuclear Thermal Gas Core Open-Cycle Rocket, with none of the safety precautions. A fissile salt is injected into a deuterium bath composing most of the reaction chamber in subcritical densities.  This fuel reaches supersonic speeds as it is pumped through the plenum and reaction mass is added (this can be anything, but denser elements will result in more thrust and less specific impulse).  It begins a thermonuclear reaction within the plenum, although this blast is shaped and contained by the still sub-critical fuel above it.  As the detonating mass is ejected from the nozzle, temperatures and densities cause a chain-fusion reaction (deuterium fuse, creating tritium and helium-3 which fuse creating helium-4).  At a low setting this process is more controlled and nets a higher specific impulse (but less thrust). Acceleration under normal operation ranges from 10 to 20 G's, but in close proximity to a gas giant Babel can create a fusion explosion within its atmosphere, resulting in over 100 G's of sudden acceleration. With a mass ratio of 3, Babel has nearly 9000 km/s of dV (enough to reach 3% C). (120 GN of thrust, ISP ~1,000,000 seconds). It can channel part of the engine's radiation through the hull and spine via bremsstrahlung and fire it as a powerful gamma-ray laser.

Adaptive Armor

Babel's hull is coated in meters of ferrous material that changes thermal properties radically with electrical current, acting as a form of adaptive armor. It can act as both a thermal insulator or a thermal conductor, serving as both ablative and conductive armor.

Along it's spine is a powerful radiator array, which combined with the adaptive armor is sufficient to allow Babel to enter a star's photosphere during a Sundive. Babel carries dozens of smaller support craft, most around 20 meters in length. Tugs, atmospheric and non-atmospheric landing craft, mining ships and boarding drones.

The Stars Themselves || Sci-Fi Nation Roleplay

Year 4412, eight years before first contact

Riemann stands a couple hundred meters from the rocket, sunglasses shielding his eyes from the bright glare of the SRBs. The sound of it this close is deafening.

He turns away, pocketing his glasses--the rocket rising behind him through the cool night air of the UCS's southern coastline--and jogs back to mission control. He is sixty now but still vigorous, with at least another decade or two left in him. But his friends were dying--Fermi had cancer; Bessel had been killed by a Taiben raid in the northern Corporate Badlands; Ulam killed himself and another thirty other scientists in a failed nuclear test. Neumann had been clinically dead for almost a decade now. Soon it would only be him and Reines--and Ingle, who, at ninety-five looked as though he would outlive them all. And the next generation--raised in a time of peace and prosperity--would be poor replacements.

Inside, mission control is an open multi-tiered series of lofts and platforms, like a stack of step pyramids. The past century of advancements in computer science is represented, from hand-cranked analog cams to new silicon computers from Sanctus. A vast screen dominates the room, stretching from one wall to the other. It oscillates between cameras on the ground and in space, focusing on the rocket as it ascends in the twilight, just keeping pace with the terminator.

Riemann's part in this launch ended a month and a half ago. He's here only as an observer. He climbs a staircase leading up to the balcony and takes a seat next to what remains of his oldest friend: John von Neumann.

Neumann had been dead for almost a decade--a decade ago, he had spent half a year aboard a poorly shielded space station, and returned a cripple, muscles degenerated and suffering from total organ failure. And yet here sits, watching the screen, silent but for his rasping breath and the mechanized exhale of his artificial lungs, the thump of his robotic heart.

On the viewscreen, they can see the ship emerging from the atmosphere, the launch stage firing its engines before jettisoning its payload and falling back to Asphodel. "It's... beautiful..." Neumann says, every word a gasp.

"The first of three." Riemann says, forcing a smile.

"I... won't live... to see the others..." he wheezes, confirming what Riemann had suspected. "I couldn't... have hoped... for a better... legacy." Neumann reaches down with a decrepit arm, and switches off his life support. "A better... funeral pyre..."

Riemann moves to stop him, to switch the machines back on, but that thin, frail, decrepit arm grabs his and holds it with paralyzing strength. "I die... today... in triumph or... tomorrow in... agony..." he turns away from Riemann, eyes back to the screen and his arm goes slack.

Riemann opens his mouth to speak but finds he cannot. On the screen, Neumann ignites its atomic motors. Riemann sits beside his friend and watches him die--and ascend into the heavens, propelled forward by nuclear fire.

The Stars Themselves || Sci-Fi Nation Roleplay

"Oh no Marcus, you misunderestimate me. You don't have to do me any favors. This little reactor's yours--and I expect your scientists will want to build a helluva lot more of em, stick em in submarines, whatever. Feel free. I'll even give you a copy of the patent rights, if you fellers care about that sort of thing. See, I figure this little thing's more of a proof of concept than anything else--and it's damn old. Designed it before you dropped the first nukes up north.

"Say your boys tear this thing apart, start makin' some improvements--and I'll bet with those computers you got ya'all can improve on it considerably. But I've been doin' this for twenty years, and I can make you a reactor with a thousand times as much output.that's a helluva lot safer. Even got some designs on fusion reactors I'm playin' around with.

"But the EPA won't let me build 'em in the UCS. Sure they don't make smog, but they also have none of the environmental benefits of a good old-fashioned coal power plant. There ain't gonna be no global warming anytime soon if we all switch over to nuclear power no matter how profitable it is.

"Now, you hand me that chip and you can bet your ass I'm gonna run right down to Neumann Pneumatics and see if they can't design me a replica. But we're at least twenty-five years behind you when it comes to all this computer stuff. So it's a helluva lot easier for you to just give me more of these chips. I'll help solve your nation's energy crisis and you won't have to deal with a potential security hazard."

The Stars Themselves || Sci-Fi Nation Roleplay

The table trembles, heralding the rocket's launch. All eyes turn toward it--a single stage satellite deployment vehicle. Roiling smoke billows out, inundating the surrounding structures, blinding Riemann and the Sanctans to all but the rocket's smoldering engines.

"Say Marcus--you don't mind if I call you Marcus, right? How much you think launchin' one of these things costs me? This one's 'bout a hundred tons, twelve ton payload."

The response is nearly instant, but not from Edison, not Telarius. "Twenty-three million, seven-hundred eighty-four thousand--"

"Cut that crap out" Riemann interrupts with a chuckle "'Course you know the figure, but you're robbin' me of my ability to make seemingly pointless rhetorical questions." Turning back to Telarius, he continues "Point is, out a that twenty-four million it costs me to launch this here rocket, twenty million goes into the launch stage. Payload's cheap as hell--just a bunch of comm satellites. Fuel costs are well under half a million. Now, ten years ago a pricetag a twenty-four million would have had fellers like myself drooling--I've got our ridiculously overblown military-industrial complex to thank for that. But then, say I could recover this here rocket, instead of lettin' it burn it on reentry or smash into the ocean." He points up--through the smoke the engine flame is still visible, far above them now. "That sort of re-usability would make me a mighty rich man. Or I could just launch ten times as many rockets."

"This one's got a vacuum-tube digital/analog processor that weighs two and a half tons--Von Neumann made it for me. Now quit your laughin'--you know the man's a genius. But the damn thing can scarcely vector thrust well enough for the gravity turn, much less a powered landing. But that microchip of yours could let me recover damn near everything. I could even start launchin' some multi-core rockets. Maybe even some fully autonomous spaceships later." He returns to his briefcase and begins to open it. "Now I figure you're wonderin' why I'm tellin' you about all this; truth is I feel I should be upfront about what you Sanctan fellas are gonna run into if you give me that chip. Well, that and I got me a captive audience." Unbuckling the briefcase, he turns it around to face Telarius. Within is a single cylinder, dull grey, sporting half a dozen unconnected nozzles and pipes.
"Now, this little baby's a three-point-five megawatt fission reactor. Sans steam turbine and uranium, of course. You can get yourself inta all sorts a trouble with a thing like this."

The Stars Themselves || Sci-Fi Nation Roleplay

Year 4402, eighteen years before first contact

Ungodly bright, the sun beats down on the industrial wasteland, cutting through the smog, reflecting off the towering skyscrapers and smokestacks. No signs of nature here--not even weeds in the sidewalks. Riemann walks among the crowds, men and women wearing masks and carrying umbrellas, forming a canopy of suffocating vinyl. The ozone layer here is thin, in the heart of the Corporate Badlands; the only clouds spawned from factories, offering little protection from the sun's lethal rays.

He reaches his destination--a vast structure of glass and steel, reaching high into the sky like some biblical Babylonian taunt. The receptionist is a man with a prosthetic jaw who recognizes Riemann and waves him through.
The elevator takes him half a kilometer up, to a meeting room with darkened windows overlooking the launch site. At the table sits an energetic middle aged man, staring out at the rocket below--perhaps a decade younger than Riemann himself. Behind him stand two other men, both highly conspicuous. One of them wears VR goggles and a bulky coat: probably a gargoyle. The other is dressed as a modern knight, but his sword replaced with a wicked-looking firearm.

Riemann sets his briefcase on the table a meter or so away from the Sanctans, its black leather still blisteringly hot. "Afternoon Mr. Telarius."

The Stars Themselves || Sci-Fi Nation Roleplay

The voice comes in over Bill's headset, loud and drowning in static "Hey Bill, you still alive over there?" He can't quite place the speaker, but the voice sounds familiar--and certainly less formal than he'd expect from a Sañiran inquisitor.

"Yeah, I'm doin' great" he coughs out.

"What's your O2 meter read?"

"Damn thing's busted--started showin' red fifteen minutes ago."

"We'll get you home. Just hold on a minute." Aboard Bohr, Fermi starts frantically searching the ship's supply locker. "We got any flashlights, Roman?"

"No. Your fault."

"Damn it." Fermi goes back to the comm "Hey Bill. You still got battery power? Can you switch on your lights?"

Bohr is a fine orbiter craft, but it wasn't designed to dock with another ship. The thing didn't even have lights--none where needed, not even on the dark side of Asphodel. But Gödel was designed to land on Akheron's surface, and Akheron sported more craters than the Taiben mountains. And these craters didn't glow. So landing in shadow wasn't only possible, it was the mission plan--the flattest surface Gödel could find would be at the center of a crater.

No response from Bill, but Gödel's lights switch on, and Bohr is bathed in a neon blue haze. Fermi puts on his gloves and helmet and pulls himself into the airlock.

"Hey Bill, I'm gonna open up our airlock. Can you make your way over here?" Through the porthole he can see Bill's ship, a mere twenty meters away. Fermi seals the interior airlock and undogs the exterior. His tether attached, Fermi pushes off into the abyss.

He exists in a universe with only two other objects--Bohr, behind him, Gödel ahead. Between and around them there is nothing. The neon blue light lances in through his faceplate, blinding him, and so Fermi holds up his hand to shield his eyes. To his surprise, the light goes away--entirely, as if the very act of shielding his eyes extinguished it. No haze, no reflection. The universe shrinks down to just him, one man drifting alone in the cold dark.

A sudden jerk--his tether. Panic rises in his chest and he pulls back hard, slamming himself into Bohr, frantically grabbing the handhold. Blinking back sweat, Fermi finds he is shaking uncontrollably.

Gödel's hatch opens, and Bill floats out, his movements fluid. "Nico, is that you?"

"Y-yup."

"You wanna float over here and give me a hand?"

"N-n-no way in h-hell."

Dirac's voice comes in over the comms "I'll get us closer."

Bohr lurches and Fermi sees Bill and Gödel grow bigger. Gradually, they drift together. "Nico. I'm gonna jump here--" he gasps, coughing violently. After a few moments it abates "--I'm gonna jump here and you catch me, okay?"

"Got it." Fermi untangles his arms from the handhold, calmer now.

Ten meters away, and Bill pushes off, drifting gracefully toward Fermi's outstretched arms. Fermi reaches out to grab him but can't quite reach and suddenly Bill is drifting over him, past Bohr, into the black empty sky.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit."

Fermi pushes off, up to meet Bill, and wraps his arms around the astronaut's leg. A moment later and the tether goes taut, then jerks back, and the two swing back over Bohr the other way, slamming into the dorsal heat shielding. They are shaken, terrified, but alive, and manage to crawl back into Bohr, Fermi's muscles trembling from exhaustion and fear, Bill wheezing, barely conscious. The moment the airlock is pressurized he frantically unscrews his helmet, gasping. "Thank god. Let's go home."

"Hell no." Dirac replies, not taking his eyes off his instruments. "We're gonna map the moon first."

Bill, baffled, scowls, then laughs.

"You didn't think we came all this way for you, did you?"