LOG_038_GEOSYNC
Author: Traveler
Traveler is the pseudonym given to the unknown author(s) of a collection of documents and memorabilia during and after the Second Golden Age of Human Space Exploration. Traveler's Log is an ongoing project to transcribe and archive these documents.
LOG_037_SEAGLIDERS_2
A flight of VD-10s in the cold morning skies of HKC 2901 c.
The VD-10 Skate is a medium-range escort fighter, reconnaissance craft, and, historically, as fighter-bombers. More maneuverable than Cormorant-class seagliders, they often accompany the lumbering freight aircraft of Kaua Merchant Navy (KMN) in groups of three to six as they cruise along in-atmo trade routes. Though agile, its small load capacity and low aspect ratio wings greatly limit their range; its detractors commonly criticize the comparatively high fuel demands, its middling performance across its variety of roles, and the reliability issues that arose early in its development. With changing interests and a declining need for aggressive escort fighters, the KMN eventually phased out the Skate in favor of newer, more economic designs.
LOG_036_CANYONS
>> RETRIEVING FILE... >> ACCESSING CONTENTS... >> ... >> START OF FILE 20720813-028 >> ==================================
The canyons were remarkably similar to certain geological formations found in southwestern North America: great sentinels of stone and rock, worn down by wind and water over eons, amber and ruddy in the afternoon light. Alero felt almost–what was it? Nostalgia? Disappointment?–for something they’d only seen in pictures. This was the closest they would get to seeing the original, light-years from the cradle of human civilization. They tipped their face towards the star, feeling warmth seep in; then restarted the engine, trundling ever onward to the next waypoint.
LOG_035_MONOLITHS
The mysterious structures were an old source of gossip for Torish and his friends: seven hulking anvil-shaped blocks of concrete, featureless except for their numbers, the buildings loomed over the magrail line that cut through the heart of the city.
During fits of boredom, they’d play a game to see who could invent the most outlandish story about the people who used them; sometimes, they would sit and watch from the street over for people who went near, or even dare each other to see who could get the closest to the buildings. Torish was the proud record holder of that one–he’d gone all the way to touch the facade of Number 5. Disappointingly–or thankfully–nothing had happened.
Torish had never seen anyone go in or out of any of the buildings, and if there were any cameras or windows, they were cleverly hidden or disguised enough to be unrecognizable. Sojarav had claimed that his father’s colleague’s sister had seen one person enter once, but Sojarav was also the most inscrutable of their little group and often sneaky when you least expected it, so who knew if it had really happened.
LOG_034_LISTENING_POST
LOG_033_SOMBRE_DIMANCHE
The space station Sombre dimanche drifts into orbit around HKC 2901, closing in on a far trajectory from deep space. Here, it will linger, a vast geometry visible to any dirtside observers even in broad daylight, comparable in size to the biggest moons in the system at its widest, a silent and shimmering beast mantled upon the horizon. To the station, this is but a brief stop on its endless journey; in two months, it will set upon its plodding trek again, outbound into the dark to parts unknown.
– excerpt from records collected on HKC 2901 d circa E.S. 2765, unknown author
Sombre dimanche was the first, and last, of a line of DSE superstations. Designed and built by several HIC member nations, it was part of an ambitious project in pursuit of interstellar exploration and research. Equipped with four Horizon drives, a modular design, and autonomous self-repair and -construction systems, it was meant to be a mostly self-sufficient station destined for long independent expeditions, crewed by over ten thousand personnel selected from varying backgrounds. The decline of the HIC, delays caused by multiple problems during its troubled development, and rising tensions between the various powers of the time brought an end to the program not long after Sombre dimanche‘s commissioning.
Over time, design oversights and software quirks enabled its robust autonomous systems to continue building upon the original structure long past its intended specifications, sometimes even independently rerouting the station for self-resupply. Communications with its human crew became sporadic and entirely ceased two decades into its expedition, and the more supernaturally-inclined even claim that all the original humans had slowly become supplanted by the ship itself. The sprawling structure grew so large that many of its oldest partitions are functionally abandoned: at the heart of the station, one can travel for miles without seeing another living being—with nothing for company except the arcing bones of a rusting skeleton and the echo of one’s own breath in the dark depths.
