Cheating ghosts: The account of Captain Lutz Gilger, Project Angurvadal.

[Enkidu]

Over Bremerhaven

Marinenachrichtendienst
Entry Zwei

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Notes: Arrival in the Bremen system. Crew neither anxious, motivated, nor bored. Seven total lighting failures in fifteen hours. Vessel life support inconsistencies - relying on tanked air and scrubbers to pressurize centralised compartments. No sign of seepage. Will require food tradeoff in six to seven days or we will be forced to locate the stores. Do not have the drones to spare.

Scientists coming aboard in fourteen hours. Make note to prepare the inflatable skybridge. Will use ventral airlock Seven-oh'-Phi. Escape preparations are inadequate. Positioning in Lagrange point three. Prepare marines to avoid any souvenir collecting on the part of the civilians.

Planet Bremerhaven. Where government projects go to die.

I cannot attest that I was anything less than disappointed when the admiral disclosed our service destination. The location remains…. More solemn than many of the crew would have enjoyed. Yet we will have amenities enough, under a more than satisfactory defence apparatus. I certainly could not ask for more from the goodwill of my homeland; the crew have been notified of such.


We are close enough to benefit from the insurance of the Branschweig’s fighter screen. The intial science teams have come aboard – we don’t have enough bedrolls to roll for them, and the crew seems…. Disincentivised… to use the vessel’s living accommodation. There’s enough dry mould in the ventilators to asphyxiate a herd of Hamburg cattle.


The vessel’s navigation has been mostly a matter of slaving thruster control to beacon-based waypoint vectors – we’ve had trouble activating navigational VI. I have personal reservations as to the viability of the vessel’s more sophisticated system, a term I use loosely. Much of this hardware was last generation when I left the academy. Now, it is academic. We are writing the history books as we go along.


The fusion toruses are operable. They are perhaps some of the few major design elements of the vessel consistent with what scant design documents we have concerning the original spyglass prototype. The reactor units are colossal. With auxiliary power alone we have been able to operate the stellarator and the vessel’s primary, secondary, and tertiary drives. Yet propulsion is a negligible element of the wider design.


Till we can decipher why the vessel’s is funnelling ions through its own hullplates, we will be remain cautious. I suspect an inconsistent shield modulator is the least of it, and without sufficiently hardened EVA equipment, directing man or machine to physically sever the noise transmitters from the hull is unconscionable.

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