Jump
Enough has been written about the
Oldman transmission to fill a million books (actually 567,430 known tomes over 100 pages), enough that one might think that every theory had been covered, every mystery answered. And yet, even 800 years later, no one is closer to answering the fundamental questions: Who was the old man in the transmission? What was he saying? Who was the message for? And why was the message accompanied by plans for a device capable of tearing through space and time?
Regardless the mystery, there is no doubt that the course of history changed that fateful day a radio observatory on Newhome detected that bizarre signal. For the first time in 300 years, the powers of Newhome were united: The people knew that they were not the only ship to settle the stars, and now they had proof they were not alone.
Not only that, now they had the ability to reach their distant brothers in the stars.
It took five years for Newhome scientists to develop a prototype drive: it was the greatest scientific undertaking in Newhome history, combining the scientific minds and industrial might of the entire planet. It took three years to design and build the ship that would carry it: a ship that would breech the gulf of stars between Newhome and the wider universe. A ship that would come to be known as
Don't Know Where Where Going.
As the first FTL capable ship in the crux sector (although not the first FTL ship in the known universe; that honour goes to the Vivant, in the Eden sector), The
DKWWG was a trailblazer. Over its twenty year career (positively quaint compared to the 100+ year service life of modern starships) the
DKWWG discovered and explored dozens of systems. But it is the story of its first, and perhaps, most important flight that is the interest of this piece.
First, an explanation of the name: the ship was originally know as the
First Step. In the leadup to her maiden flight to the star “23-Flinders” (now better known as Trueblue), an odd bit of bureaucracy required the crew to complete departure paperwork. When they reached the question “Destination?”, the ships captain, Elias Henare, wrote: “Don't know where we're going.” When the paper was leaked to the media the phrase proved popular, and was adopted by the missions PR department as the missions motto. The (in)famous typo came about latter: a glitch in the computers used by the company contracted to produce mission uniforms and other paraphernalia resulted in the “Where Where”; the fault was not noticed until the uniforms were delivered. It was decided to keep the typo: as one crew member joked, “Better this be the only thing that goes wrong.”
As launch day dawned and the
DKWWG's jump engine warmed up, her six-man crew prepared to step into the unknown. Although several probes had been used to test prototype engines, this would be the first flight. Her destination lay some 5 light years away; estimated flight time would be three weeks, as long as nothing went wrong. Navigating would be the most difficult part of the journey; from the probe flight , it was known that the only element of the normal universe that could penetrate jumpspace was gravity. Gravimeters, knowing the estimated gravity of 23-Flinders and its planets, and aiming really carefully were essential.
Naturally, soon after transition, the Gravimeters developed a fault. All three of them. To this day, it is unknown how all the redundant sensors failed: everything from sabotage to diving intervention has been suggested. Either way, the ship flew blindly toward its target, their only form of navigation being the ships clock and an estimation of the relative speed. Unable to halt the jump once it began, the crew had no choice but to guess, hope and pray the ship would not emerge inside a planet, all while trying to repair the gravimeters.
As the two weeks ticked by, tensions rose in the ship. All attempts to repair the gravimeters failed, including one attempt that resulted in a death of one of the crew when they conducted a dangerous space walk. With the clock ticking down, it looked as if the ship would have to make a blind emergence, until one of the ships scientists made a discovery: the “sphere” or realspace that surrounded the ship in jumpspace fluctuated in size. She theorised these fluctuations were from the effects of outside gravitational forces. With no other options, and the clock ticking down to zero, the crew hap haphazardly navigated using the observed phenomenon as a rough guide of what lay in true space.
The arrival of the
DKWWG above the ringed planet
Sol scared the crap out of controllers at Sol's space agency: as one would expect when a mysterious spacecraft suddenly appeared in your orbit. As providence would have it, the Solians had just launched a probe with which they intended to explore what they thought was a part of the colony ship that had brought them here; instead the p[robe was sent to intercept the craft that had popped into existence above their homeworld. Minutes latter, it took perhaps the most famous photo in the history of the Crux sector.
First contract had been made
