Historical Briefing

The Voidship War

In the early stages of Terran expansion there was a splinter philosophical group known as ‘Evolvists’ who migrated in mass to Sol b (a brown dwarf star orbiting Sol prime out in the Kuiper belt). This group’s main focus was opposition to humanities expansion to other terrestrial worlds, fearing the elimination of proto-intelligent native species.

This group quickly made inroads into AI, neural mapping and bio machinery. They gave rise to the ‘Voidship’ class of vessel – what amounted to a self-replicating, intelligent bio-machine.

For whatever reason, the voidships declared war on humanity, destroying the Evolvist enclave and then began a string of vicious conflicts with the rest of human space. The war took over a decade and was ‘to the knife’ in every respect. Several colonies were destroyed before the main nest at Sol b was destroyed. The disturbing question that remain was what happened to the Evolvists? Many believe that the Voidships were in actually a violent Evolvist faction, given that the central voidship nest incorporated the central consciousness repository of the group, containing all uploaded individuals as well as their central AI nexus.

In the end though Node alpha was destroyed and there has not been a Voidship sighting in over 20 years. Observers are confident of humanities victory given that part of the entities lifecycle involves spectacular deep atmospheric dives into Jovian class planets.

The First Contact war

The first contact war was caused by a simple misunderstanding, based on Humanities (apparently unique) use of the Einstein-Rosen bridge technology. The long distance exploration vessel ‘Endeavour’ arrived in a new star system, Mu Arae. As it turns out Mu Arae is a grav-lane nexus system for the polity knows as The Triumph of the Buul!’tcha, and as such is heavily militarized. Their reaction to an unknown vessel appearing in the middle of their star system, conforming to no known ID codes made them assume a pirate or assault vessel with some sort of failing stealth system. As such, they attacked without any warning. That would have been the end of it if the Endeavour had not been able to send off an emergency drone before destruction.

Fearing another Voidship nest, the Military Governor of outpost R-15 send a full reconnaissance in force. This resulted in a spectacular full naval engagement, with assault marines breaching Buul!’tcha Destroyers, multiple vessel casualties and all sorts of nonsense. Admiral McTimms withdrew after the mutual pummeling, but there was still no understanding what had happened. This pattern would repeat itself in the Mu Arae region, as exploration vessels would get ‘ambushed’ without warning, and then Dominion forces would arrive to smash the place.

From the Buul!’tcha perspective (not helped by their naturally xenophobic tendencies) unidentified scouts of non-galactic standard design kept appearing in impossible places followed by a military ‘raid’ of unknown reason.

From the Dominion perspective exploration vessels were getting ambushed without warning justifying reprisals.

An unholy mess in other words.

This went on for several years, until a Terran vessel encountered an actual Buul!’tch border region, who opened comms instead of assuming hostile intent and firing on arrival.

From that moment Terra became aware of galactic civilization, and the Galactics became aware of a new polity completely isolated from the standard grav-lane trade network equipped with a completely novel technology stack.

While the shooting war has ended, we live in ‘interesting times’.

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Greetings Crewperson Olis. I would be more than happy to answer your questions about this vessel and the Dominion.

This vessel was commissioned expressly for the purpose of testing the so called ‘skip’ drive, after a decade of successful prototyping from multiple institutes.

The hull was printed at the Luna Shipyards in 2349 on commission by a consortia of Universities including the Queen’s College in New Amsterdam, The London Royal Society of Physics, Cambridge, Oxford, The Technical Institute of Hyderabad, the Royal College of Canberra, and the Jovian Institut des Sciences. Major component outfitting was completed 9 months later.

I was installed in the vessel once the sensor suites were in place based on a fork of my progenitor’s neural map.

The Venture entered service in September of 2350 and began 6 month of shakedown and trial runs. The Skip drive had 6 successful automated test jumps. The final jump was undertaken with a full crew instead of automated, with the results you know about. This vessel then waited rescue in the orbit of Uranus – in the Earth Tertiary universe as I am calling it – for an indeterminate time due to failures in the vessels internal chronometer and the lack of Dominion nav beacons in the area.

I do not have any commendations, but my progenitor’s consciousness served with distinction during the Voidship Wars, earning the coveted status of Ace by destroying 8 Voidships during the conflict, as well as the Distinguished Service Cross for her role in the Defense of New Melbourne.

What other questions do you have crewperson Olis

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Hello again crewmember Olis.

External threats are assessed by a series of categorization according to their profile and emissions. Venture has a suite of sensors along the EM band, allowing me to analyze a tango from a wide variety of perspectives. One of the problems I have run into is my default rules for categorizing vessels has overfilled the associative data array for derelict vessels. As such I have had to dynamically restructure classifications to reflect the reality of this system.

Given all of that I analyse vessels using optical, radio, ultraviolet and gravimetric sensors giving me an fairly accurate profile of their capabilities, or lack thereof.

Venture can meet threats generally with twin rail cannons on a forward mount. On top of that this vessel was printed to military specifications giving it significantly more structural integrity than a standard Dominion civilian vessel. Further Venture is outfitted with significantly improved radiation and electromagnetic shielding to support the Skip Drive’s specifications. While Venture has a power signature that could support a more significant armament this is decidedly not a combat vessel, and as such has no close in anti fighter weapon mounts. Therefore, Venture is really build to flee conflict more than anything.

Venture also has a suite of sensors to for sentients who board Venture. These include biomedical and energy scans. Whenever you all arrive back on Venture I am able to examine your biota including exhalations and pheromonal profile in order to monitor any changes in your overall health looking for parasitic, viral and bacterial infections. Venture also provides me data via your waste and when your clothes are washed around your general health.

As to dealing with threats Venture relies on the crew for general security. I can help with analysis and I update the security station on main deck. Other than that there are lock down protocols to systems and compartments, but again, this is not a fully fledged military vessel with internal anti-boarding systems.

What else would you like to know