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From: A-54H1
Position: Xur 5
Stardate: 201253281
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The months of waiting are finally over, my patience has paid off.
Finally, after seven long months after I graduated from the
academy, I've been assigned a mission and, more importantly, a
ship.
The mission doesn't sound too interesting, it is yet another map an
unknown part of the universe. It boils down to having a ship full
of scientists, flying to a far away-ish space and then letting the
scientists play with their fancy gyzmos. After some time in the
unknown space, we'll conclude that the unknown space isn't all that
unknown and that it is in fact quite similar to the known space.
Just vacuum and rocks.
The more I think about it, the more it feels like the higher
command just wants to be rid of me and they don't mind giving me an
expensive toy just so I sod off. But hey, at least I'll have my own
ship.
Now, about the ship. I almost spilled my coffee when I read the
assignment order. It is not just any regular ship, the engineering
corps really outdid themselves this time. It is one of the two
ships of Atreides class in existence, the wonderful A-54H1. I
wasn't really fond of the codename, so I imediatelly renamed her to
Asahi. Her older sister, A-54H0, was a prototype and was undergoing
trials during last two years. I haven't read the reports yet, but
apparently the prototype was finally approved for real world use.
She is like a dream. She has state of the art equipment,
propulsion, sensors, everything. She even boasts an Outer Hull
Reconfiguration module, meaning she can change the shape of her
outer hull to some degree. Not sure for what purpose, but she is
definitely packed with features. I can't wait to take her out of
the dock. So far I've been granted only remote and read-only access
so I can familiarize myself with her at least a bit, without flying
away with her immediatelly.
She is built to be flown with standard crew of 60, with skeleton
crew being just 10 people. In worst case scenario, she can be flown
with only 4 people, but I hope it won't ever come to that. From
what I heard she will be fully staffed and we will be carrying a
lot of passengers. I should receive the full crew roster in a few
days, so far I have no idea who I'll be flying with.
I'm really looking forward to taking her on her maiden voyage.
--- End of transmission
gemini://cosmic.voyage/Asahi/00000.txt