The ship
More actions
The ship of the Pioneers mission carries its crew from Earth to Calima. During the voyage it is shaped between a sphere and an ellipse, made of a great number of identical cubic modules, the cubicles, joined around a hollow centre.
In Descent (2258)
Description
At the centre is the main transformer and reactor, which also generates the ship's electromagnetic field. A rotating belt of cubicles, the gravity ring, provides gravity during the vigils, and cabins are moved into it as each section wakes. Two cosmic radiation collector satellites are built into the structure, and a nanomesh around the whole ship turns micro-impacts into energy, absorbs hydrogen and protects it.
The cubicles have different uses: cabins of stacked recreation tanks, where the crew sleep and recreate; recreation cubicles, with a dining room on top and nine platforms of galleries below; work cubicles with operating armchairs; arbitration cubicles for the assemblies; hydroponic cubicles and others. Each can move on its own thrusters.
After the crash
In orbit around Calima the ship is sliced cleanly in two by a discharge through the The atmospheric particles; neither the nanomesh nor the electromagnetic field stops it. The reactor and the nanomesh disintegrate, one collector satellite is destroyed and the other stays in orbit, out of reach. Omega steers the upper half, with most of the gravity ring, towards the largest patch of land; the cubicles that land become the The wreck. The other half falls scattered over the water to the south.