Top Left: Fournier,Top Right: Doherty, Middle Left: Shimizu ,Middle Right: Mendoza ,Bottom Left: Mahoe , Bottom Right: Alesana
CLEA DATA FILE
Team Identities:
- Kalea Mahoe (Mission Specialist – Electrical/Propulsion Engineer)
- Bevely Mendoza (Mission Commander)
- Evie Doherty (Pilot)
- Izuki Shimizu (Mission Specialist – Xenobiology)
- Loto Alesana (Mission Specialist – Systems Engineer)
- Percy Fournier (Flight Engineer)
CLEA Classification:
- Skilled Humans
Special Skills and/or Abilities:
- Many varies skill across the crew such as engineering, navigation, flight training etc.
Limitation(s)/Weakness(s):
- Outside of their ship they are have only normal “human” capabilities.
- Inexperience
Rap Sheet/Criminal Traits:
- N/A
Notes/History
The Hawking Crew is the unofficial name of team that made up ESA Space Mission 226B.
Following the Breach Day event a large space ship was discovered orbiting Earth. The ship appeared to be in a decaying orbit and various space administrations feared what might happen if it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Since CLEA had to provide reports on its operations in order to continue operating internationally, many governments were aware of the existence of a number of space faring “teams”. The situation called for urgency but none of those assets were available and CLEA had no control to request them either. That meant the crisis was left to civilian space agencies to try and resolve. The general opinion was to assess if the craft was hostile or if it was “dead” as believed. The latter then left two choices, one being to boost it to higher orbit or to destroy it altogether.
ESA was the first agency able to put a launch together and assembled a crew suitable for the mission parameters. They also chose to send Izuki Shimizu a renowned xenobiologist in case the ship was alien in origin. For orbital operations, ESA used a Star Child transfer vehicle which normally seated four but could in this case be adapted to take six.
At six in the evening the mission was classed as go status “Hawking” left the launch pad. When the Hawking got out of Earth’s atmosphere and the crew performed its orbital burn they were able to glimpse the unidentified craft for the first time. Of most interest was the fact it looked similar to designs proposed for the future of Earth space exploration, only the technology had not yet been developed.
Another series of burns brought the Hawking to within forty feet of the unknown craft. It was the noticed that the docking port was of ESA design which was strange. At mission control’s request Mendoza asked Doherty to dock with the larger craft. Boarding the vessel they discovered it was in darkness and there was no life support. A plaque indicated it was called the Antares and the ship was indeed of Earth design albeit not from our universe. The ship also appeared to have a lot of burn marks indicating that some sort of fire fight had taken place.
When the team located the bridge all the systems it seemed as dead as everywhere else. Mendoza asked Mahoe if she could try and restore power, thinking that if they could not then they would have no choice to destroy the ship as the Hawking would not have enough thrust to raise the orbit of such a large mass.
Mahoe headed down to where she thought the engine section might be and found the electrical systems by following the power conduits. Near the aft of the Antares she located what appeared to be the engineering section of the ship and found that all the electrical breakers had been tripped. She felt that they had been deliberately shut off because she knew that even in an accident not all breakers would trip.
Resetting each one in turn the entire ship then came alive as the various computer systems awoke. First lights, then life support and then an artificial gravity which took them by surprise as the crew ended up falling to the floor. As more systems became active a small army of drone robots powered up in the alcoves.
At first Mendoza was worried it might be self defence system but the robots ignored them and rapidly started to repair the ship. Once the computer systems on the bridge went live, Mendoza was able to get into the ships log and discovered that on the reality the ship had come from, the Myzx had over run the planet.
The Antares had been created as a warship in a last ditch attempt to fight the invading forces. Having made many allies in their fight against the Myzx, the ship had been given a lot of alien tech, much of it untested. It was to be the first in a series but before it received its crew compliment the ship had been abandoned.
Mendoza assumed that the Antares had somehow got caught up in the breaches of the “Breach Day” event and pulled to our universe. Though far in advance of our own tech, as it was designed by humans she felt that if they could get some sort of engines working and it could be saved the ship would provide years worth of research.
She did not have to wait that long for without warning the computer announced that the jump drive was activating and a moment later the bridge area was surrounded in a bright light and once it cleared they were no longer above Earth. The space jump had also destroyed the Hawking.
Now stranded the team worked together to discover what had happened and how they could get home. The Antares was well stocked so food and water were no problem. In time the crew learned from the logs that the jump drive used a special energy that was limited. The entire system was under the control of an alien system which the crew were unable to decipher. They assumed that the jump drive was perhaps an automated emergency response.
Piecing together the data they worked out that the Myzx had attacked the ship resulting in the drive activation which the crew had attempted to shut down by turning off the power. Why they chose to abandon the ship though was a complete mystery, other than a hypothesis they knew they might be stranded like its current crew.
Though they had no control over the jump drive and the system now appeared to be dead, the crew still had hope for the Antares was equipped with another FTL of a supposed “standard” design but there was a down side. It would take them a long time to make it home. As the crew got used to months on board the Antares they started to learn its many systems which included a faster than light communications system. Finally able to send a message home they learned that they had been thought dead. That record was now set straight but apart from morale support and some technical help, essentially the crew were on their own.
Of the many systems of board they discovered it had some impressive defensive arrays consisting of multiple energy beam cannons. It also had eight hangars. Four of these seemed to be set up for small interceptor like craft, albeit none were on board. A further two housed two small shuttle transport craft and the last two seemed to be for auxiliary usage. The team theorised that the original crew had used one of these to come aboard before the Myzx arrived and had then left by another means, perhaps the missing fighter aircraft if there were not many on board.
Having transport meant that the team could visit planets on the way home as well as docking at alien space stations. Without the translation technology other humans had “acquired” bartering for supplies and not getting killed by hostile aliens was something of a problem. The team were predominantly scientists and engineers. They did not have any military training or experience.
Despite their lack of combat skills the ingenuity of the team meant that after only three years after leaving, the Antares finally made its last FTL jump back to Earth. At first they got a heroes welcome. They were ordered to remain onboard until the various world governments decided who should take charge of the Antares and things started to turn quite nasty.
The crew therefore decided that in the interest of world peace and to better protect the planet from some of the dangers they had seen on their travels that it was best if they kept custody of the Antares, thus creating a balance of power between world governments. If nobody had it then nobody had an advantage.
Naturally the crew deciding to go rogue did in fact create a unified response. They were told to hand over the Antares or face arrest if they ever set foot on Earth. Potentially losing a valuable asset by forcing the Antares crew to leave, caused CLEA to get involved. Though they rarely entered into political turmoil, CLEA had experience with Vanguard and Galaxy Force. They therefore felt that in the best interest of protecting the planet they could take charge of the ship. As the same governments that wanted the crew arrested were the same ones that allowed CLEA to operate, they listened to the organisation and were forced to accept the compromise out of fear of leaving a hole in planetary defences.
The crew of the Antares accepted CLEA’s compromise also but were concerned that they would be replaced by a rookie crew. CLEA top brass though felt the current team were best placed to handle the ship since they had been onboard for three years. Instead CLEA only wanted to send to agents up to liaise with other “space” assets.
Seeing as the crew had already admitted in reports that they had no combat experience and that the ship had four fighter bays but no fighters, the agency supplied both in the same package by sending aboard Agents Mishra and Dadachanji.
As the Earth was relatively protected by the Eopua it was decided to release the ship for a purely defensive role and allow it to tackle threats to humans that managed to get past the Eopua. This was only made possible when the ship took on a number of aliens who had both experience outside of Earth and/were capable warriors.
