The Kemys
"As part of my tour, I was given a fly-by of the Kemys - I asked if I could see the recovery-operations, but my liason politely informed me that only full-body cyborgs with shielded cranial-shells could safely do so - and to my surprise, it wasn't far off from third-committee ships, give or take some panelling and a few hundred holes. Everyone on Parime treats the old gal like a holy-site, and once Vaduz made it safe enough for them to board, it even started getting pilgrims. It was technically the first demilitarized-zone between the FUC and Vaduz since nobody wants to risk a stray railslug so much as glancing the Kemys, but Vaduz have always had first dibs on recovered tech and data, being the only ones who can handle going inside..."
Purpose
The Kemys's purpose was to act as both a deep-space colony ship and as a test-bed for attempting mixed colony/crew-compositions: The ship was managed by multiple high-level machine-intelligences, supplemented by drones and crewmen cycled in and out of cryostasis while carrying a substantial payload of fertilized embryos. It contained all the materials, technology and data needed to start and maintain a colony even in the most hostile of enviroments, along with several 'black box' components needed to establish paracausal technologies, omninet-communication and construction of a rudimentary blink-gate.History
The Kemys was ordered from Second Committee colonisation bureau on the 25th of May 4395u, and was laid down at the Olympian Shipyards shortly afterwards. The ship's construction was delayed multiple by design changes and the implementation of prototype systems into its design, and Kemys was not launched on its initial test until the 1st of Feburary 4399u. She was accepted into Second Committee expansion/colonisation service on the 19th of March 4400u and after trials, formally commissioned for the Parime colonisation on the 11th of april 4400u, given her name Kemys after the companion of Sir Walter Raleigh, who saught the mythic city of El Dorado. More trials and fine-tuning of cutting-edge systems followed for the ship and her initial escort-wing followed before she was declared operational on the 19th of november 4400u, and began preperations for its destined journey with full compliment of crew and colonisation-assets the following year. Her maiden voyage commenced on the 2nd of January 4401u from Olympian, with prior schedules estimating her journey to finish before the end of the century. The maiden voyage was captained by Edwina Blake, who would lose her life a year in following complications during a surgical operation, leading to Jerome Magnusson to succeed as captain for the remainder of the term. As one of the largest colony-ships in service at the time, and the first in a new class of colony-ships, the Kemys' maiden voyage attracted considerable attention from the press and public, and more than 20,000 spectators watched her depart from the shipyard. The majority of the Kemys' journey was considered without note, only suffering trivial incidents along the majority of her journey. Only one of such incidents actually delayed the Kemys, when a chemical-leak in her engineering-decks necessitated temporary shutdown of several drive-engines until the leak could be decontaminated. The Kemys continued her journey without note for over 90 years, cycling crew in and out of cryo-stasis and preparing the colonisation assets for their task on Parime. In the opening days of 4498u, the Kemys finally reached the outer limits of the 41 Uphi system, to much celebration of the crew, and procedures for entering stable orbit of Parime had begun. On the 1st of December that same year, 41 Uphi began to erupt in unforseen and unprecedented solar-particle events. The Kemys was immediately bombarded with high-speed coronal masses, ionizing radiation and electromagnetic fields that immediately crippled the ship and incapacitated a number of key crewmen, leading to a cascading series of malfunctions that began to quickly destroy and render parts of the Kemys completely unsafe for all life. Then-Captain Karina Stolarz officially ordered all hands to abandon ship with as many of the colonisation assets as they could. All three of the colony-landers were prematurely detached from the Kemys with the aim of making an emergency landing-burn on the icy moon of Falias, which was the intended initial colony-site. Of those three ships, only two of them succesfully reached Falias: the third, containing the majority of salvaged data and technology from the Kemys, was struck by a remnant coronal-mass and lost with all hands aboard. While the colonists made their home on Falias, the Kemys' remaining failsafe systems gradually began to shut down what remained of the ship after futile attempts at automated damage-control. The ship was no longer in danger of being destroyed, but the lethal temperatures and radiation-levels would leave the ship completely uninhabitable and all remaining technology on board lost for centuries as it slowly drifted in the fringes of Uphi's gravitational pull. In 4993u, a Vaduz expedition-team led by Pathfinder Samy Baillargeon was commissioned to explore the drifting wreck, utilising cutting-edge technologies to enable exploration of the Kemys within acceptable margins of safety, and began their descent into the scorched, irradiated hull on the 6th of january the following year. Though many of the systems had been damaged beyond repair over the centuries, the expedition-team were able to recover multiple intact components of paracausal 'black box' technologies that the system's colonies had been unable to reproduce, leading to the eventual reconnection of Parime with the Third Committee Union space. For years afterwards the full scope of activities carried aboard the Kemys remained a closely guarded secret of the Vaduz, until the arrival of Union Universe-Building Forces in 5006u, where it became a destination for numerous researchers, historians and even religious pilgrims. Current recovery-operations have focussed primarily on reinforcing core-structures and scrubbing away radiation from high-traffic areas, to limited success.
Designation
SEVP
Motto
"Paving the road to El Dorado."
Owning Organization
Width
881.1 meters
Length
5,431.1 meters
Height
1,151.0 meters
Weight
Aprox 981,000,000 metric tons
Speed
Sublight
Complement / Crew
9,200 Personel, Potential 21,000 Emergency-Compliment
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