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The Ancile- chapter three
Posted By: Jammerfer<Jammerfer@hotmail.com>
Date: 14 February 2005, 2:49 AM
Read/Post Comments
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CHAPTER 3=========================================
0559 hours, March 3rd, 2286 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Colony Ship Ancile, Sol System.
Two Hundred Thirty-nine years ago.
Finally, the testing of the new Translight engine, quite possibly man's greatest achievement was ready to commence, and the mood of the men and women onboard the Ancile was nervous excitement. The Shaw/Fujikawa team were not coming on the trip to Proxima Centauri, but would be onboard the Ancile until the time came to launch. Nobody wanted to miss the opportunity to reach a star system four point twenty four-hundreths light years away in a matter of months, But ONI considered them too valuable to be risked on any experiment, especially one in which a single error would be more than fatal, it would be brutal. The creators of the faster-than light engine howeve;r despite their denied wishes, were in high hopes, and were not ashamed to show it. The self proclaimed "Sushi Party" onboard the Ancile was in fact, their idea, and motivated the crew to maintain their enthusiasm, the light ambience relieving their pre-mission jitters, the entire party was allowed by the ONI spooks simply, and only, for the stress relieving benefits.
The ship in which the first slip-space journey would be taken, the Ancile, was in fact a Colony class ship, the largest ships of their time. This was more of out of necessity than design, this made the engine safer, as the predicted hole that the ship would tear would be larger, relieving the need for pinpoint controls and reflexes, hopefully reducing the stress on the bridge crew. It would also be the first class of ships publicly released to support the SFTE feature.The Ancile had not seen any flight time before, prototype Colony ships were much larger than the typical human transports used to take people from one planet to the next, but this line of ships would not be unveiled for at least ten years if the mission went well. These would be able to transport an entire city's worth of people to distant moons and planets in other solar systems. The Ancile was the crown jewel, specially modified to carry the slipspace engines within it's crowded girth. The trip would require an extensive crew, about two hundred of the governments best scientists and engineers, along with the fifteen bridge crewmen to navigate and maintain specs on the ship. The entire mission would be in secret, as was the developement of the SFTE.
And so the time had come to bid farewell to the men and women onboard the Ancile, and there was not much the SF team could do but hope for the best, and saluting from the docking station, they caught sight of the bright blue light that began to engulf the ship as it accelerated into slipspace. The captain of the great Ancile bravely barked orders to his crew as the bullet they rode began to fly into the light, the rough metal contrasted with the heavenly glow around the entire machine, fierce and proud the ship went into the unknown, and all of the men and women who witnessed it's departure never before had seen such a furious beauty. Then, like a quick breeze, it was gone...
- -------------- Chapter Epilogue -------------- -
The Ancile had been scheduled to return in within a year, but after two years, scientists on the Shaw/Fujikawa team began to study every possibility as to why it had failed to return. It was months later that they made a vital discovery. They had theorized, and even expected, for the tunnel in slipspace to be a mere "pinching" of space, but the reality had been that this pinching was more of a time distortion, a factor that they were ill prepared for. They added this factor into the design of the next slipspace engine by modifying the dependency of the engines from brute force, to the mere balancing of the speed, more like sliding on ice rather than breaking through it. The new engine was then placed onboard the Odyssey, the sister ship of the Ancile. It's passage was successful, though it arrived at a five percent difference of the schedule. Months later, the "first" SFTE was unveiled to the public, which never learned of the fate of the men and women of the ship. ONI, with pleas from the people who knew what had taken place, included in it's final report an honor towards the crew of the Ancile, who went without flinching into the gates of hell.
Or so it was thought...
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