First Year, Alone
My wings still want to stretch, to grip the air, to lift me higher - my voice to cry across the sky! - for the honor I have earned, to commence this day! I am a
pilot! My life and my wings are my own, my fate held in no other's talons, crossing the stars independent of all the rest of the galaxy: One of only two with that true honor, we the first, among many, many more who shall be! This is the only true independence, as our people well know in their star-yearning hearts. The pilots who share the duties aboard our Nest cruiser are nothing like the same: They are responsible for the lives not only of themselves, not only even of each other, but of the two million colonists flying with them, entirely dependent on their actions and their skill. This is no way to live, and no risk such a pilot might take could be condoned.
No pilot - no pilot of
Altair - would ever be so cruel as to enter combat with more lives riding on their skill and choices than their own! To have millions, even dozens, even one or two behind me, trapped and helpless as though caged, at the mercy of the enemy without their talons on the controls, would be unthinkable! But I may take what risks I choose, for I fly alone in my state-of-the-art scoutcraft, unarmed perhaps, as yet, but ready to face any danger that may greet me as I cross the stars, straight toward the heart of the galaxy!
There are four stars within our standard fuel cells' range, but only one that shows any promise: The one whose spectrographic signature is closest to Altair's. The white giant in the opposite direction, even further out along the same edge of the galaxy as Altair itself, and both blue-hot stars stretching away from it toward the galactic core, are all too young and bright - our astrophysicists say they always will be as long as they're on the main sequence, going supernova long before they reach Altair's present age of several billion years - to have much chance of supporting the kinds of worlds on which we could live, but in case of an unlikely outlier, my fellow Scout pilot is heading for that white giant, and I'm flying to the most-coreward of the two blue stars, to see what's there. We don't expect much - not at first - but that's why we have these Scouts, with fuel reserves to carry us twice as far as our standard cells could go: Once we arrive, no doubt discovering nothing habitable, we can move on to other stars within our full and longer range, and with the help of future Scouts, map out our entire corner of the galaxy. That's the plan, and it's up to me and the other pilots to execute it. By the time you get this, clutchmates, friends, I'll be on my way out to a hyperspace vector, ready to jump! Wish me luck; I'll stay in touch though the breadth of the galaxy separates us!
Fourth Year, Alone
Everyone's just arriving, and it seems those astrophysicists knew what they were talking about!
That's the shot I'm sure you've already seen, of our huge spacefaring Nest sending down its first lander to the glorious jungles of
Monteverde II! It's incredible to imagine those two million colonists rising out of their crash seats, emerging into the clear air, wings spread, among the lush and spectacular greenery! Is it true that nearly half the Altairans are heading after them, taking transports across space to feel the freedom of our new world's skies in turn? I can well believe it - in spite of the administration's cluelessness about how that's going to affect the economy.
As for us in the scouting corps, we've found about what you'd expect at stars like these:
Down at the white star, my colleague Yeerith had to flag the system purple: As we feared, the white-hot supergiant is so young, no planets have had time to form from its whirling protoplanetary disc. The only semblance of life there was an old local transponder - old by
our standards, on the order of centuries or millenia at most - left by one of the minor subject-peoples of the legendary precursors, identifying the star system as "Togashi." Yeerith's moving on from there to complete our survey of the local neighborhood, still not expecting much at the blue star we saved for last, figuring the orange star further out along the rim is going to be the ship's final short-term destination, hoping to see who if anyone meets us there, and it's not only a faster trip to take in both stars this way, but the only way we'll likely see that blue star anytime soon, since it's isolated from any direction we're otherwise likely to go until we get new fuel cells or another colony.
Here, for instance! I've had a lot more luck at the coreward blue star, which isn't saying a whole lot. This star is of course much smaller, but still young enough that I was pleasantly surprised to find any kind of planet with an atmosphere - still less a world where photosynthesizing lifeforms have managed to take hold! The planet's surface temperature is so high that virtually all its water is divided between atmospheric clouds and subterranean aquifers that frankly are mostly sand, but still there's enough life clinging to the surface to keep the oxygen levels in our breatheable range and potentially to sustain our lives! It won't exactly be a mining colony - the place is compounded of space dust, mostly carbon, silicon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium, hydrogen, and sulfur, with far less iron, sodium, and chlorine, still less heavier metals than on our homeworld or Monteverde II - but there's hope that some of us may one day live here at least!
Oh, and I'm on to the lying buraucrats in the production bureau: Don't let them tell you that all the millions leaving for Monteverde will prevent the rest of you from finishing a new scout ship this year! I'll bet if the new Sovereign was a little more used to dealing with them and could plan against their lies a little more carefully, you'd be able to finish
two! I assume the plan, once both
are built, is to send them up to the old, red stars nearest Monteverde, with the one at the galactic edge slated to continue along the edge of its fuel cells' range, while the first one out, like me, does its best to scout out toward the galactic center. I'm off on an even longer trip than before, and the most promising yet: My coreward destination is a star that looks almost like a twin to our Altair!
Eighth Year, Alone
You'll have to excuse me: I'm still kind of in shock. If only you could see it here! I knew to expect something hopeful but
look! Jungles like Monteverde's, nearly as extensive, visible at once from up in space ... but that's
nothing to what's hidden in
among them down here!
The cloud cover was so dense at the site, I couldn't believe what my scanners were telling me! I flew in, right through a thunderstorm that I think is being
generated - by ancient planetary development machinery! Even I could see at a glance that it wasn't working right - most of it wasn't working at
all - and the wildest part of the scene, little pieces of the ruins cascading through the lightning-lit sky through the rain, unbuilding and rebuilding purposeless-seeming alien spires, all around and across the site, are more than I could begin to understand. You can see the terrifying picture, if you'll forgive my presence: I know I'm not exactly photogenic. But around the
edges of the site, in places where spires were being unmade, they didn't leave bare earth: A whole series of crawlers scrambled over the soil, restoring the jungle floor until it meshed seamlessly with its surroundings! I was able to take recordings of the crawlers' activities, and took chemical samples from the area as they were working, and though I haven't dared to touch them directly, some of the novel interactions they're using should be applicable back home: Enough to improve our own efforts at ecological restoration in the areas around our factories! In the meantime, I've flagged this system in gold - the color of our Sovereignty - because though we can't get here
yet except in long-range scouts like my own, I have every hope and wish to see our people fly across the jungle's verdant canopy, and study the ancient site below in more detail than I ever could with my limited training!
Eleventh Year, Alone
Maybe it's nothing to last year's news from the other direction around galactic rim, but I just heard from Yeerith again, and there's another world down there where we may be able to live!
I'm glad the poor bird found something: It must have been tough at those white and blue stars, turning up nothing but tumbling comets and subplanetary chunks of rock amid the swirling dust at Togashi and Nishi, even though none of us expected much from them, before finally making it down to that orange star and finding a planet with an oxygenated atmosphere - arid, yes, but not nearly as dry as the poor world I found at my blue star on the way out here - and Yeerith's next destination too, since it seems likely that's where our next fuel base will be, with the jungle world I've found here with its active precursor artifact site as a high priority. The really big disappointment is Arai, where our
third Scout dropped out of hyperspace this year ... and is about to jump right back out again. We thought the place was a promising red dwarf star, but arrived to find it's actually a binary system, the two stars orbiting just a little too far apart for a full-sized planet to survive in orbit anywhere close to the habitable zone without being torn apart by tidal and gravitational forces or falling into one or the other of the suns. There doesn't seem to be anything planet-sized in the system at all, so the pilot is off to another red star, about the same distance from me.
Of course we've all talked that
other red dwarf to death since last year, with its toxic surface rich in minerals and compounds as valuable as they are deadly. Of course the place is tiny, and I hear our scientists are still saying there's at least one chance in four that we'll never be able to survive there without help from alien species, but there's something about orbiting this jungle with its ancient alien remnants: It makes it easy to dream! And there may be more to dream about out there soon: that same pilot is in hyperspace, heading out to a
neutron star!
Twelfth Year, No Longer Alone
Keep this quiet, under the crooks of your wings, but we've got
action out here! Another ship jumped into the system from hyperspace, and it isn't one of ours! Designation is "Electron," and it's settled into orbit with me, keeping its distance, so it has to be an unarmed scout like mine - and it sent me a
message, requesting a secure channel for official diplomatic transmissions! It's just me and their pilot out here, lightyears away from our nearest colonies, but we set up a double relay and got everything set up for long-range communication ... through this spindly little strand of our scout-to-scout comm relay!
Don't share this, okay? If I weren't acting as the relay point myself, I'd never have
gotten this, and we're not supposed to know about it. You'll notice their diplomat's a
diplomat though, right? They make it
sound like they live in peace and harmony all the time, and they want to do the same with us - but check out the actual wording, and check our our analysis: They're "pacifistic militarists," which sounds to me like a civilization in total
discord with itself, and they're hoping relations with us go as harmoniously as
that!
Fifteenth Year, Sharing Our Star
Sorry it's been so long since I wrote; I've had to make constant reports back to the diplomats and exploration corps command, and sending more, even to all of you, is more than I can bring myself to do when I need a break from everything. Ioni zed (yes, that's the way it's supposed to be spelled, apparently) the Psi... excuse me, the
Mentaran pilot - I'll tell you the story behind that slip sometime - is in about the same position, and we've taken to meeting planetside and exploring together, sharing our hobbyist expertise to figure out what we can about the native life since we can't talk space stuff without giving secrets away. Her four arms - "her" seems to be the right word; apparently they have two different sexes, like us, with some limited dimorphism, though I've seen their photographic records, and I can't tell the difference unless she tells me - come in handy for a lot of our sample collecting, and of course I have a much easier time clearing undergrowth and reaching high places. We've come up with a bunch of strategies for using our strengths together, and it's good to have someone to talk to in person, even if she
is an alien weirdo with four arms! I've joked with her not to get too attached to me when she tries to treat me like a parent-figure: What if our diplomats mess everything up and we see each other through the cross-hairs of
armed ships someday? She laughs it off, but I'm half serious: I've
seen diplomats in
action. Anyway, I'm writing because I have to talk to
someone about the top-secret stuff I can't even
hint at to her!
Can you believe that neutron star at the galactic rim? That pilot must have a magic touch, though it would be better if the magic involved less-hostile environments. So apparently this one's
almost a carbon copy of the planet we found at the red giant just last year, bathed in so much deadly radiation that our planetologists might
never find a way to live there - make a bet, and the smart money could probably take either end - unless our Mentaran possible-friends or someone else like that can help someday.
Almost a carbon copy except that most of the radioactive elements are actually
surface minerals, way out beyond the wildest dreams of what the same pilot discovered at that toxic world. Same Scout's heading for the nearest white star next - several parsecs rimward of the supergiant that's next on the agenda for the Scout that found the other irradiated world - and if there's another super-hostile miner's heaven there, I'm going to suspect the pilot of doctoring reports!
Seventeenth Year, Still Sharing Our Star
We've got another Mentaran contact, but that's not all that's shaking! First of all, it happened out at the white supergiant another Scout just reached, out toward me, where it turns out there
is a planet, so far out from the star the place is frozen solid, with a layer of water ice and snow covering everything! That makes it easy, since Ioni zed and I can talk about it all we like during our jungle forays: We're both getting our information from our colleagues in the same place! But what I
can't tell her is about the secret Monteverde research projects started up last year!
I got to find out about both - from the lowest scientist on the totem pole at the lab, no question - because they both relate to me: First, I'm the one who sent
them the information that led to our
first planetological breakthrough, from the clean-up crawlers at the artifact site that I alone so far - not even Ioni zed - have visited. They tell me we wouldn't even have had a choice about what to research in the field if not for my results, but now their findings from all my carefully-recorded information will allow us to start developing terraforming techniques of our own more advanced than anything we'd have been able to contemplate otherwise - at least so soon - or, as an alternative we didn't take, to secure our colonies against certain kinds of hostile environments - even somewhat more-thoroughly deadly ones than our scout encountered in the other Mentaran scout's company earlier this year. Since that one ice world is the only
actual environment we'd ever encountered that it would help with though, I'm not surprised the labs are working on terraforming instead, with a lower expected completion cost on top of the rest.
Second of course was the matter of fuel: We need better energy storage options if we're going to explore more stars beyond the one where our mineral-lucky scout is due next year - a white dwarf, so not exactly promising - at least until we can get a fuel relay base set up at the poor desert world I found, and we'll need it to get a colony nest as far as this even
with that base up. To reach the arid world Yeerith found, way out at the rim, we'll need even better fuel, a nest with extended tanks like our scouts, or another way around, but none of those seem to be options so far. Since our scientists couldn't find a simpler way to develop lesser terraforming than they're working on, I imagine that project will be tabled for now, with all Monteverde's efforts going into the new fuel program, but is it true what I'm hearing about Altair? Have our factories caught up to our population already, and are you putting them on hold to get a new colony nest out right away - due in only four years? That's some serious dedication you've had to factories until now then - and I don't want to take too much credit, but I imagine it's helped some to be able to clean up their waste so efficiently too!
Twentieth Year, Alone Again
I'm losing a friend - I hope not forever. Ioni zed has been called back - or more likely, sent to scout another star; we never spoke about our peoples' secrets, including our own missions, but I can see her approximate heading as she accelerates for the jump to hyperspace, and at least she's not heading in the direction of our own worlds - and there's a real chance now that we'll never see each other again. She says someday when our people or hers can colonize this jungle world - if not before - there will be an opportunity for regular trade, and we'll be able to send messages by merchants much as I send these to you now, though through intermediaries. Perhaps so; her optimism is catching, backed as it so often is with cogent reason: She's sharp - though not much of a pilot, I have to say. I didn't even realize until recently that the reason she hasn't visited the artifact site was that she just isn't capable of piloting her ship safely through the induced perpetual thunderstorm, and can't reach it on foot from outside the storm's perimeter. It's funny, because she says she's considered an excellent pilot among her people, and I believe her; I guess all those arms and that wide cranium don't help with their flying instincts. Obviously I didn't volunteer to fly her in and give away state secrets, so she still knows nothing about it but what her scans can tell her from space - that it's down there, of course, and ancient and strange, but probably little more.
I won't be alone for
too long, at least. Our unluckiest Scout pilot - one I've never met, who left some three years after me and found nothing but a remnant star and small, hostile worlds along the way - should be joining me here next year, preparatory to one or both of us scouting further out once our range is extended by a new fuel base or technology. The other one I've never met is on the way to the ice world - having found as expected that the white dwarf has no planets at all, having blasted them all out into interstellar space and probably into pieces when it went supernova long ago - while Yeerith holds station, watching over the poor desert world I discovered sixteen years ago. Yeerith won't have long to wait either: The Nest for that planet should be ready to launch by this time next year! In anticipation of its completion and future success in the Hydrogen research labs, we've changed this system's flag from gold to green for the lush and vibrant life - and more-than-intriguing artifact site - of the world down below.
I hope my friend Ioni zed finds beautiful new worlds in her travels - and I hope to meet her there ... and help us claim them, as we hope most of all to claim
this one, for you and me and all the people of Altair!
And nice job getting us started. Improved Eco is a fantastic tech to get from an artifacts planet. 
They are always a potential threat, though. Their research abilities make them dangerous.
IIRC, this would be a 15 turn set, followed by one more 15 turns set, then the regular 10s. Hopefully I am right about that.![[Image: RSG_02_01.PNG]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2YuxJW3SDm17qDVFNEI3Y2ouo1ars-B-gpvjYFq2uLRM1yNEmtkvJstS1Pl_dDUC-pTYsTEeAkVzgTQ8_JTddpFdBhV8R9mnZjz0hkG0a5xez3bBrVLt6zecW0qmCW-NmhqgVeU-4lx2vWPueVlh50HOdMYR4cmLAypcjTlUGqQZZeGS5JGCLTMLdSJZp/s320/RSG_02_01.PNG)
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