ICV Antikythera

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ICV Antikythera

Information
Class: Antikythera-class generation ship
Shipyard: Stratford Shipyards, Earth
Built by: Illium Conglomerate
Type: Interstellar generation/science ship
Launched: April 19th, 2068
Status: Repurposed as a transit station, orbiting Proxima Centauri b/Porreaux

“Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.”

The ICV Antikythera was a pre-FTL generation ship launched in 2068 from Earth orbit, intended to arrive 204 years later, in 2272, in orbit of Proxima Centauri b. It carried 1,208 crew, and was commissioned by the Ilium Conglomerate as a scientific and colonization expedition to humanity’s closest neighbor, one of Ilium’s last major acts before it collapsed in 2070 and was broken up into smaller organizations.

Commanded by Captain Claudio Almeida, the ship spent 3 years under construction at AXIOM’s Stratford Shipyards, and with a length of 702m, it rivaled even today’s lumbering bulk freighters in size. Constructed before many modern breakthroughs in space engineering, such as artificial gravity generation, Lumicom, and most critically, the Alcubierre warp drive, the Antikythera was highly engineered, designed to sustain seven generations of Sol’s best and brightest on their great venture to a new world.

Humanity had some experience with such generation ships before, Stratford Shipyards having already constructed and bid farewell to the joint AXIOM-UN ACV Ty Franck in 2065, departing on a course for Tau Ceti; the Antikythera nonetheless possessed the largest habitable body (and therefore, innumerable engineering challenges) ever created at that time, surpassed today by the largest of airtight station sections. Powered by (contemporary) state-of-the-art fusion thrusters, the Antikythera was expected to perform a brachistochrone flip-and-burn trajectory towards Alpha Centauri, before decelerating into orbit of Proxima Centauri b and disgorging its scientific/colonial contents, eventually coming to rest in orbit around the planet.

History[edit | edit source]

Departing from Stratford Shipyards on November 8th, 2068, fully crewed and prepared for its two-century-long expedition, the Antikythera’s acceleration out of Sol and into interstellar space ran well, with the documentation team aboard the vessel noting it had gone more smoothly than anticipated. Highly valuable data and measurements on the interstellar void were collected by the scientific contingent, while the crew aged and lived under the vessel’s artificial sun. Notably, the vessel’s laser tightbeam communications array completely failed in 2077, meaning concentrated, high-power transmissions could no longer be relayed back to Sol.

Captain Almeida died on June 20th, 2102, of terminal lung cancer, and was succeeded by Captain Jingmen Huang, who, just nine days later, on June 29th, 2102, was contacted by Lieutenant Commander Vitaly Hertzog of the HSC-135 Forward Bound. The Alcubierre drive had been invented, and the Final Frontier Project had beaten the Antikythera to Proxima Centauri b, now known to be habitable and dubbed Porreaux; the Forward Bound had spent four months chasing down the Antikythera’s faint radiation signature in the interstellar void. Faced with this knowledge, the crew of the Antikythera eventually came to the decision to continue their original mission with the SDC’s help; the construction ship SDCA Harlan Ellison meticulously refitted the Antikythera with an Alcubierre drive, allowing it to arrive at Proxima Centauri b 170 years early. The ship decelerated into orbit around the already-inhabited planet and unloaded its cargo, tripling the fledgling colony’s population and providing it with a treasure trove of needed (and expensive) supplies. The Antikythera remains in low orbit of Porreaux to this day, acting as a point of transit, tourist attraction and anchorage, with the largest city on the planet named Antikythera’s Rest in its honor.

Crew[edit | edit source]

The Antikythera was staffed by a civilian crew drawn from the Illium Conglomerate’s best and brightest- engineers, sociologists, geologists, astrogators and botanists, all were given a place aboard the greatest voyage yet. Families, especially, were prioritized, their future descendants expected to land on Proxima Centauri b when the time finally came. The space maritime law of the nascent United Nations was enforced on the vessel and as a result, it featured a small security complement to deal with internal affairs. A civilian corporate vessel, the Antikythera carried no SDMC marine or special operations complements over its lifetime.

Design[edit | edit source]

The Antikythera was not blessed with many of the achievements of modern spacecraft engineering; it lacked many technologies we take for granted today, such as Lumicom communications, artificial gravity generation, and most importantly, the Alcubierre drive that would’ve and eventually did render its construction irrelevant. Its main habitable section consisted of a massive rotating drum section 224 meters in radius that spun to provide 0.6gs of centripetal gravity; on the interior surface of this drum was a dutifully replicated urban landscape, lit by a cylindrical artificial sun fixture placed on the drum’s axis of rotation. The drum’s sections were designed due to the lack of artificial gravity generation, and therefore, artificial inertia compensation, to angle themselves towards the craft’s nadir, compensating for the acceleration of the ship’s main thruster assembly. Its few remaining airtight sections, such as the ship’s bridge, CIC, reactor chamber and life support, were not provided gravity, instead relying on acceleration from the ship’s fusion thrusters and magnetic boots to create the sensation of up and down.

Armament[edit | edit source]

The Antikythera, a civilian vessel with no military purpose, was completely lacking in armament or armor beyond basic lightweight alloys and Whipple shielding.

This page was contributed by user HikariGlace.