Project Intrepid (Chapter 61 - The Sirens Of Moho)

[Watermel00n]

This is such an inspirational story! Re reading it again!

[Akagi]

On 10/4/2018 at 4:22 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

weavesilk.com

I made something with that for my 2001 replica, inspired by that EXACT post!

Spoiler

(It's for the bit during the Monolith scene at the end)

@Ultimate Steve I will send these once a day until you post chapter 56

[Akagi]

@Ultimate Steve

[Nazalassa]

Wow... Nice!

[Ultimate Steve]

Right, yeah, I owe y'all a postmortem, I'll get to that.

[tilliepops]

this a good story

 

[Akagi]

@Ultimate Steve Chapter 56 please

[tilliepops]

i think is comeing but yes @Ultimate Steve

[Maria Sirona]

"chapter 56 is coming"

Bruh

[tilliepops]

@Maria Sirona whats your proplem

[Ultimate Steve]

I will write when I feel like it, and not an instant before nor an instant after.

[Maria Sirona]

56 minutes ago, tilliepops said:

@Maria Sirona whats your proplem

The fact that Project Intrepid is over

[SSTO Crasher]

Hey @Ultimate Steve I was just wondering if this story is still active or is it cancelled. 

Also was 55 the finale

[Ultimate Steve]

19 minutes ago, SSTO Crasher said:

Hey @Ultimate Steve I was just wondering if this story is still active or is it cancelled. 

Also was 55 the finale

Its probably over, but I can't say for certain. I intend to write up a summary of what I had planned for it but I keep putting it off. It might come back some day but I doubt it. I still have the save and such.

[tilliepops]

9 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Its probably over, but I can't say for certain. I intend to write up a summary of what I had planned for it but I keep putting it off. It might come back some day but I doubt it. I still have the save and such.

i hope it not over

[SSTO Crasher]

Time to revive!

[tilliepops]

revive time

[Ultimate Steve]

(Rant deleted by me)

TLDR: Life is very full right now, I don't even have enough room for life, much less project intrepid. It might come back some day. I am very exhausted and know that this next year will probably only be harder. I am very glad that people still like my stories after all this time, thank you for expressing that, but please be patient. It is just as hard on me not being able to make more as it is on you not being able to read more.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Ultimate Steve

[Maria Sirona]

20 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

(Rant deleted by me)

TLDR: Life is very full right now, I don't even have enough room for life, much less project intrepid. It might come back some day. I am very exhausted and know that this next year will probably only be harder. I am very glad that people still like my stories after all this time, thank you for expressing that, but please be patient. It is just as hard on me not being able to make more as it is on you not being able to read more.

Good luck, Steve!

[tremonthedgehog]

Good luck, I promise I will not ask when chapter 56 is coming

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 55.5 - With All Further Ado (Status Update and Story Recap)

Spoiler

Hello everyone! It has certainly been a long time, but as the saying goes: The Story Of Project Intrepid Will Continue!

After seeing Mr. Dilsby come back after all these years to work on Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey once more, I felt something I had not felt in a long time: the Project Intrepid spark.

I can’t promise that we will eventually see the ending, nor that I won't get bogged down with stuff and disappear for another four years. Unfortunately, I'm not a high schooler with seemingly endless free time any more. However, I have done what I can to increase the odds that chapters will progress in a timely manner, and that me may eventually see an ending.

 

And so the question is: What killed Project Intrepid?

1. SETS. I had this big idea for this huge action sequence spanning several chapters, I got like 2/3 of the way through, and just was so sick of building sets that I stopped. I was spending so much time building sets and positioning them and taking story fluff screenshots instead of actually playing the game.

2. The stability and size of the save. My ambitions outgrew what the computer and modding community could handle and a lot of my time was spent on maintaining the save and fixing things when they broke instead of actually playing the game.

3. The complexity of the story. Every time I have the spark, I have to remember everything that happened, which entails going back through the stuff I wrote in 2016 or so, back when, quite frankly, I wasn't so great at writing. I spent so much time rereading the story to keep track of things instead of actually playing the game.

 

Eventually, these three factors combined to require so much effort to get up to speed, that by the time I got up to speed, I didn't actually have any more passion left to play the game, and with university, I often didn't have the time or energy either.

So what am I doing to fix this?

Firstly, that big action story arc, and probably future action arcs, are going to be mostly text based with few or no pictures. This is an unfortunate sacrifice, but it's what had to be done to get Voyage finished and I don't regret it, it is working so far for WIZARDS!, and I see no reason why it won't work for Project Intrepid.

Secondly, everything has been updated from 1.3.1 to 1.12.5 and I will attempt to limit my use of unstable mods. The modding community is now much more stable, but unfortunately a few ships got caught in the crossfire: my version of the Kraken (big airplane) used part welding and is gone. BDA-FPS is being a pain, as are the BDA nukes, so anything from the action sequences is probably gone. The only actual gameplay related casualty was the Minmus city, which fell victim to Kerbal Attachment System part deprecation, which I will hopefully replace with a better version soon. The ITV ships were largely stock parts, though, so as far as I can tell all of them survived. This newfound stability will hopefully lead to a smoother experience with less save maintenance required.

Thirdly, less fluff. I'm going to try to limit my construction of high part count ships and play with graphics mods in an attempt to reduce lag. This is really only a problem with the "Dragon Parade" though, the other ships are within my playable threshold.

Fourthly, I'm going to try to keep the number of story threads and round characters a bit lower, I did and still do take pride in the complexity of my stories, but this one went a little too spaghetti plot in retrospect.

Fifthly, well... Project Intrepid was pretty open ended, and I'm not gonna say more besides "spoilers!" for what I've done here, but...

And lastly, I will write a plot summary here that should condense the stuff I need to catch up on from 55 chapters down into the space of just one or two, so I can come back to it and skip a lot of catch up every time I lose interest and come back.

As of right now, these canon changes and retcons are taking effect:

• Kerbal death is now permanent, regrowth is not a thing any more. If you come across regrowth upon reread, mentally replace it with severe injury.
• The Kerbal Space Center is now to be alternatively referred to as the Kerbal Space Program
• ITV models are now referred to as types
• Some tweaks to the supernova related fate of Space Station Epic V (see below)
• The Kraken and the Monolith now use they/them pronouns, ancient eldritch space magicians probably don't have gender
• The Kerbol system is not on course to hit a supermassive black hole, rather it is on course to hit a fairly large stellar black hole (see below)

Hopefully this will make it so it takes less effort for me to jump back in, and decrease the number of jump-ins required for further progression.

In case you all have forgotten...

 

==========

 

A long, long time ago, in a star system far, far away, there were the Kerbals. After numerous centuries of war and fighting, there came an age of unrestrained capitalism, and right in the center of it all was Cloneus Kerman, owner of the largest gambling conglomerate on Kerbin, rich enough that he had bailed the government out of a depression on at least two separate occasions. Not because he liked the government, but because he just couldn't stand to see his casinos empty.

Purely out of spite and anger at the fact that the record for world's largest aircraft was being successively broken by machines that only flew once, he financed a massive luxurious flying casino designed to only fly once - but be refueled forever. This was known as the KFB-1 Kraken, and it took off into the air in 104 BPI (Before Project Intrepid).

At around this time, a group of Kerbals looked up and decided that it would be nice to look down from up there. In 100 BPI, Jebediah Kerman became the first Kerbal to enter outer space. Shortly after, Kerbals conquered the Mun, Minmus, Duna, and Ike with chemical ships and basic nuclear propulsion.

Many saw these efforts and believed that the history of warfare had all but come to a close, and that the future lied holding hands in the stars, but any and all hope of that was shattered the day that the nearby star Krion-B went supernova. The resulting blast of radiation made every unshielded computer in the Kerbol system go haywire. Space Station Epic V, the largest space station ever, experienced an electrical power surge, causing its engines to fire uncontrollably. Jebediah Kerman, in an attempt to activate the escape pods, accidentally vented the space station's atmosphere, causing grey-outs and blackouts among the entire crew.

The station fell back to Kerbin, landing on a known geological hot spot. Most geologists had been warning that an eruption was coming for decades, and that the hotspot was one small nuclear weapon away from detonation, and politicians had passed a small amount of preventative and mitigative measures. But, they were not enough to stop the resulting station triggered supervolcanic eruption.

This eruption in 90 BPI caused a worldwide famine. The space programs, relying on public funding, were nearly instantly shut down. As Kerbalkind had only a few semi-permanent settlements, everyone was returned to Kerbin in short order. The space program, now the most unpopular institution on the planet, was privatized for pennies on the dollar. In a desperate attempt to keep the dream of space alive, Jebediah Kerman took an impossible bet from Cloneus Kerman, the only one left who would fund them at all. In order to save the space program, Jebediah had to walk on all ten moons of Jool and Sarnus for effectively pocket change and return alive.

In 89 BPI, the OCTAVIUS mission launched, carrying Jebediah, pilot extraordinaire, Bill, Jeb's old friend and expert engineer, and Angela, a space crazy rookie biologist, crammed into a tin can for two decades. The prolonged period of social isolation and the utter lack of personal space took all three crewmembers beyond their breaking points several times over, but still, they persevered, both through the rigors of space and through Cloneus's constant sabotage attempts, but... There were consequences.

Jebediah began experiencing visions of the future in his nightmares. Dying in many, many ways, and waking up and being able to prevent it. He initially dismissed this as a continuous degradation of his mental health, but he soon became convinced they were something more.

Spirits were still largely high after all of Saruns's moons were landed on, the only hiccup being the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life on Eeloo during an incredibly rushed landing. However, the transfer to Jool, happening outside of a normal transfer window, took many, many years, during which the crew's mental state deteriorated significantly, with their recreational materials nearly depleted. 

As the crew landed on Jool's moons, Cloneus began to have a slow but gradual change of heart and began financing his own secret space program, slowly becoming fascinated with space travel, but unable to publicly admit it. Two of the employees of this venture were Marie and David Kerman.

After a nightmare incident on Vall, where the nauseometric effects of distorted planetary poles were observed for the first time, Jebediah finally told Angela and Bill about his prophetic nightmares. All anomalous illusions immediately ceased at that moment, and everything seemed normal until the Bop landing.

Jebediah was impulsively drawn towards a specific cater, seemingly having been given an infinite amount of jetpack fuel. There, he met an anomalous being who revealed that there were two ancient magicians in the universe - one of order, the Monolith, and one of chaos, themself - the Deep Space Kraken. Both magicians possessed a fixed quantity of magic, with which they fought a great battle, centuries ago, in which the Monolith defeated the Kraken. Neither could use the other side of magic, a magician of chaos could not cause order, and a magician of order could not cause chaos.

However, each magician could have an apprentice with which their supply of magic was shared. This apprentice must be mortal, but would be capable of both chaos and order - both the possible and the impossible. The Kraken had chosen Jebediah as their apprentice, and had attempted to do so by force - attempting to break Jebediah's spirit by repeatedly killing Angela and Bill, and forcing him to watch.

After a thousand lifetimes of torture, Jebediah's body had submitted to the Kraken, he was now the Kraken's apprentice. But, the Kraken had failed to realize that Jebediah's soul had not yet submitted, not even after so many years, for Jebediah, for better or worse, had grown a heart of iron during his many years of isolation, and with Jebediah's newfound magic, deception, and the bravery and initiative of Bill and Angela Kerman, the Deep Space Kraken was once more slain with the OCTAVIUS's mighty nuclear plasma sword.

Cloneus had, however, against his own wishes, sabotaged the OCTAVIUS's antenna, and eliminated their only method of communication with Kerbin. Jebediah attempted to learn how to use his new magical abilities to fix it, but only made it worse. The journey home was made in even more isolation than they had already been in. In the meantime, Cloneus's space program accidentally crashed a rocket into a large city, effectively shutting it down. However, the planetary attitude towards space had recovered enough that limited private spaceflight was starting to happen, with Kerbalkind finally making it back to the Mun.

 OCTAVIUS, practically falling apart at the seams, carrying its three minds, also falling apart at the seams, limped all the way back to Low Kerbin Orbit, and the return capsule, the Dragonhearted, successfully landed back on Kerbin.

However, the Kraken was not dead, only dying - It takes more than a few years post injury to slay an immortal. With dying rage, he vaporized the four outermost planets, Plock, Neidon, Urlum, and Sarnus, and scavenged all available magic from them, in order to change reality out of anger and spite.

The Dragonhearted and the crew re-entered the atmosphere, much faster this time, and just as Jebediah had pulled the wrong lever and doomed Kerbin to famine, Jebediah pulled the wrong lever and destroyed the re-entry capsule's parachutes.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not?), Marie and David were right there appraising the performance of an old trainer aircraft, and spotted the entry capsule, attempting to pluck it out of the sky with their cargo bay, and save the crew's lives.

After many, many attempts, long past their abort point, Marie and David successfully caught the capsule, but in a botched attempt to recover from the dive, they stalled and crashed the aircraft, dying upon impact, but saving the crew, and more importantly, saving the dream.

Cloneus, deeply saddened by this tragedy and now a reformed man, dedicated a large portion of his fortune to the newly resurrected Kerbal Space Program, fifty billion funds, 2,500 times as much as the original bet specified, and 200,000 times as much as the OCTAVIUS had cost. Bill and Angela married, a highly unconvincing cover story was formed for the disappearance of the planets, and the paltry samples from the outer planets were locked away in a secret vault to be opened when better technology existed - leaving the question of life on Eeloo painfully unanswered.

The influx of cash brought around a new prosperous era of space exploration, beginning in 69 BPI. The next 19 years saw a number of advances, including the construction of the Cloneus mandated Mun casino, massive space stations, permanent settlements on the Mun, Minmus, and Duna, bases on Jool's moons, and crewed missions to every world except for Eve and Eeloo. In the process, Dres was found to be an anomalous planet, an inaudible voice causing madness in all who ventured near it. This voice was dubbed "The Teddy Monster."

Throughout this timeframe, Jebediah was, well, rather careless with his magic once he learned how to use it properly, but that's a story for a little bit later...

However, a rival nation, the USKN, whose operations are so secret that nobody on the outside even knows what their name stands for, believed this influx of cash by a gambler with more money than most nations to be an attempt at spreading the unrestrained decadences of capitalism through the stars, and began militarizing space in response. The Kerbal Space Program followed suit, initially out of defense, but eventually out of offense.

This arms race led to the militarization of most planets to some extent, but Kerbin specifically. Tensions rose to just below boiling, but just as a space disaster had set off the hair trigger of a volcano, so to would it set off the hair trigger of nuclear annihilation.

In 50 BPI, the KSP supply shuttle Farlander (piloted by Valentina Kerman, Jebediah's sister), and a USKN Peril  medium fighter (piloted by Hudson Kerman, Valentina's ex) met in orbit. A minor squabble over the nuclearization of the Mun escalated into a space battle, causing the USKN ship to uncontrollably plummet into Kerbin's atmosphere, where it was mistaken by the KSP for a USKN nuclear missile.

The KSP retaliated with their own missiles, the USKN retaliated with theirs, and for half an hour, the sky was filled with fire.

This event, called the Great War, or the Sixty Minute War, or simply, The War, rendered the surface of Kerbin nearly completely uninhabitable. Most of Kerbalkind retreated into massive underground bunkers, largely constructed by Cloneus as a protection against catastrophe. Cloneus's sky casino, the Kraken, flew until it could not fly any more, and after decades of constant flight, finally splashed back down into the ocean. The bunkers expanded into cities, and these underground societies continued on as the radiation gradually decayed away and nature slowly reclaimed the once bustling planet.

The largest bases on other worlds were permanent, but self sustaining, not quite. The ones that were not destroyed in space battles kept going on for as long as they could, gradually evacuating failing colonies for more stable ones, but a sudden surge in solar activity fried most of the remaining computers, causing most of the remaining aboveground colonies to fail, leaving very few Kerbals in space alive.

For fifty years Kerbalkind hibernated, monitoring the radiation levels. Eventually they dipped low enough to allow for some short excursions onto the surface. During one of these excursions, an untouched observatory was rediscovered. An experiment to map the motions of the stars had, miraculously, been running untouched for the past fifty years. Previous short term measurements had calculated that the Kerbol system would have a very close flyby of the Krion system in about 200 years - the system that contained Krion-B, the star that had gone supernova and turned into a black hole about 90 years prior. It was not anticipated to be dangerous. In fact, it was anticipated to be cool. Kerbalkind could explore a whole new star system and learn about black holes up close.

However, this more accurate data from the long running experiment had determined that the Kerbol system was, in fact, on a collision course with the black hole remnant of Krion-B, and had only 200 years left of existence.

Everyone went into a panic, trying to figure out how to evacuate the star system. Most people seemed to agree that the right thing to do was to start incrementally, try to recover lost technology. Nobody had built a space rocket in decades. The space center was desperately rebuilt from old plans, and the plan of action was to ambitiously immediately resurrect "Project Intrepid", an old mothership concept, with an iterative approach to design. Overwhelmingly large ships would be needed to evacuate Kerbin, so it was deemed wise to learn how to build and operate these gigantic ships by building and operating smaller, but still very big ships.

The Intrepid Test Vehicle (ITV) 001 was constructed and launched, piloted by Gidrien Kerman. It promptly exploded upon engine ignition, with Gidrien barely surviving. ITV-002 was built with those issues fixed, and launched piloted by Stabel Kerman.

It made it significantly farther, but still exploded, and Stabel survived unscathed thanks to the newly installed abort system.

Stabel also piloted the ITV-003, which failed even worse.

She then piloted the ITV-004, which was yet another step back, nearly killing Stabel Kerman.

Patfrey Kerman piloted the ITV-005 to record altitudes, but was done in by a very badly designed external strut separation system, which neatly separated the ship into three pieces.

Shercott Kerman was up next, piloting the ITV-006, which faced several different issues that should have completely destroyed the ship. Shercott, however, persevered, and managed to just barely survive each one.

Shercott's flight of the ITV-007 proceeded with many failures, but he overcame them even more, very nearly making it to orbit.

Likewise, the ITV-008 suffered a similar fate.

By a stroke of good luck, the ITV-008 crashed very close to Jebediah Kerman's one man bunker that he had been residing in for the past fifty years, stuck there, unable to reach the nearest proper base due to radiation for the first few decades, and then for the next few, trapped by guilt for all of the suffering he had played a role in causing. After spending a thousand lifetimes being tortured by an ancient space magician, what's 50 years alone in a bunker, after all?

Jebediah, pulling Shercott from the wreckage, was ecstatic to hear that the space program was alive once more, and flew him home to the KSC on board his personal fighter jet.

Under the guidance of Jebediah, the problems were solved, and Jebediah and Shercott launched on board the ITV-009. Despite having to surf the upper edge of the atmosphere for several minutes, the ITV-009 successfully reached orbit and was christened the Intrepid.

Gidrien Kerman, mad at being forgotten and having her name misspelled several times, stowed away on board the logistics launch to the Intrepid, joining the crew on their shakedown cruise to the Mun.

After the launch of the ITV-010 failed so catastrophically that the details were completely scrubbed from the record, the slightly upgraded ITV-011 launched with Stabel and Patfrey Kerman on board. It successfully reached orbit and was christened the Creativity.

This was the last of the Type 1 ITVs, partly because they were objectively a bad design, and partly because mere minutes later, an old prewar nuclear cruise missile had crashed into the Kerbal Space Center, completely destroying it, although the ITV-011 spotted it on the way up, enabling a full evacuation of all KSC personnel.

It was later determined that one isolated underground bunker had collectively gone crazy and embraced anti intellectualism to an absurd degree, going so far as to form a "Flat Kerbin Society". When they regained contact with the outside world, they were appalled that round Kerbin believers were making doomsday prophecies and launching expensive rockets to just crash or fall off of the edge of the disk instead of attempting to make the planet inhabitable again. So, they attempted to do away with the heretics with nuclear fire.

After successfully landing on the Mun, Jebediah wandered off to check something on a hunch... After receiving a vision during a negative gravioli surge, Gidrien and Shercott decided to follow and found an old mostly underground Mun base.

After defeating evil robot clones of Bill and Bob Kerman, Gidrien and Shercott rescued Bill and Bob as well as Jebediah from a hidden prison cell in the base. Bill and Bob had survived these past fifty years on the Mun, and had constructed robotic versions of themselves to help with workload and keep them company. However, the robots had gone rogue and locked up Bill and Bob, and started working on advanced negative gravioli sciences in an attempt to determine if time travel was possible.

The five Kerbals left the base and set the aboveground segment to self destruct, returning to the Intrepid and drafting up plans to travel to Duna.

Meanwhile, the Flat Kerbin society initiates the first of several missions designed to prove that Kerbin is flat - launch a missile with a camera on it into space from a plane. Tomfurt, the pilot of this plane (who also went by Thedney and Tedfry at times), saw that Kerbin was round and grew disillusioned, piloting his aircraft into the Flat Kerbin Society's vehicle assembly building.

However, the Monolith, the magician of order, saw an opportunity - the gravioli experiments on the Mun exploded at the exact same time, and the Monolith used some of this energy to make a small spacetime modification.

The monolith saves Tomfurt's life and in return asks him to save their own life. The monolith cannot move and will be destroyed when the Krion-B black hole devours the Kerbol system, and tasks Tomfurt with creating a portal to another star system, requiring a new element created using surface samples from all eighteen bodies in the system - Sixteen planets and moons, including Jool, plus Kerbol, plus the fabled Magic Boulder. Tomfurt, extremely impressionable after his entire worldview was shattered, accepts without much of a second thought. The Monolith, however, has another motive... They wish to make Tomfurt their apprentice.

The KSP, scrubbing the radiation and rebuilding the KSC, can't launch any new large ships for the time being, so instead they re-establish themselves temporarily on the island airfield and launch a number of small rockets that outfit the ITV-011 Creativity for a mission to Jool and its moons.

After the KSC was repaired, work on the vastly improved and more capable Type 2 ITVs resumed, and the first prototype, the ITV-012 launched with Tomfurt on board.

However, engine cutoff resulted in the engine brackets exploding from the recoil, and the ITV-012 did not reach orbit.

The ITV-013 suffered a number of explosions on the ground and was repaired with more and more struts each time. 

After several attempts, the ITV-013 successfully lifted off in what is one of the most epic shots the KSP has ever taken. 

After anomalous forces caused the destruction of an internal part of the ship, the Monolith used some of his magic to restore order and correct the damage. Upon reaching orbit, Tomfurt christened the ship ITV-013 Magician.

Realizing that in order to refuel on Minmus in any reasonable amount of time, an engineer was needed, Milvy Kerman was sent up, and Tomfurt immediately let her in on everything. In exchange, she covered for his sheer lack of knowledge of orbital mechanics from being raised to believe in a flat Kerbin.

Tomfurt Kerman then collected the first of the eighteen required samples once they touched down on Minmus to refuel.

Shortly afterwards, the ITV-013 Magician left for Moho.

Soon after that, the ITV-011 Creativity left for Jool with a crew of Stabel and Patfrey, test pilots, Podpont and Angie, aircraft pilots, Bobwig, a mining and radiation mitigation engineer, Mojorie, a negative gravioli scientist from the country of Karniaire, Miteny, a goo-ologist, and Gemma, who seemingly refused to speak to anyone else on the mission.

The Intrepid was outfitted for its Duna mission with a number of support craft including a lander, a rover, small bases, and a scansat, and was refueled at the protest of Mortimer, whose mind is stuck in the days of excessive capitalism and penny pinching, and did not want to spend more than was necessary on this mission, despite the fact that money did not really matter very much any more.

The ITV-014 was launched, targeting an Eeloo transfer window, but just barely failed to reach orbit, and pulled off an awesome emergency propulsively assisted aerodynamic crash landing on the other side of the planet.

Everyone survived, and the crew had effectively managed to land a brick.

The ITV-015 was launched and was named the Independence. Its crew was Linise, Ermore, Billy-Bobwell, Moemma, Eltop, and Leegrid Kerman. It began a long trip to Eeloo. It was slightly improved over the Magician, but the shortcomings of the Type 2 ITVs were about to be made apparent.

After crash landing on Moho due to low nuclear engine TWR and not enough bipropellant fuel to run the VTOL engines all the way through landing, Tomfurt accidentally learns how to use magic, rewinds time, and successfully lands the ship through repeated use of magic.

The Monolith, who was not paying attention, was angered at how much of their remaining magic had been used up, but was also shocked that Tomfurt had become their apprentice so soon.

The ITV-016 Explorer, the first and only type 3 ITV, was launched on a mission to Dres, breaking the curse and becoming the first even numbered Intrepid to reach orbit. The ship, specifically designed to utilize the largely unexplored Dresian asteroid ring, was commanded by Kazu Kerman, the first deaf kerbonaut since before the war, and notable gravioli scientist. There were three other crewmembers on board, Kathlenna (Kazu's interpreter, among other duties), Doodard, and Gerdock. Its support craft were launched using rockets that were experimenting with reusable rockets in order to serve as pathfinders for future large scale reusable launchers.

On the last launch of this reusable rocket, it was fitted with a negative gravioli experiment intended to help perform an experiment on Kerbin's radiation belts. However, the last payload launched was so light that it had enough fuel to crash into the Mun, so mission control decided to have some fun.

However, on impact, the gravioli experiment went weird, and for a moment, two universes collided... But then everything went mostly back to normal.

After refueling, Tomfurt and Milvy discover that they do not have the thrust to weight ratio to get back to orbit with the amount of fuel required to get home. Someone at the KSC definitely didn't do their math right. However, by dumping most of their fuel, they manage to get back to orbit, enabling the rescue mission to be significantly easier than it would have otherwise been.

The KSP had gained a lot of experience with the launch of sixteen (well, five that actually worked) large reusable motherships. The Intrepid Test Program had been renamed to "Phase Zero" of the planetary escape plan, and a lot of resources were now being put towards Phase One, which was launching 1500 tons of supplies to Minmus in order to kick start a massive space colony there.

After several failed launches, the 1500 tons of payload reached Low Kerbin Orbit, and the transfer stage was refueled by a new launch vehicle utilizing clipped engines designed by the mysterious Experimental Engineering Division.

The Intrepid Rescue Vehicle (IRV) 002 was launched to rescue the crew of the ITV-013 Magician. The IRV-001 was designed to bring the entire Magician back but was not used because it was deemed not worth it for a ship that was already effectively obsolete. It was crewed by Allin and Ribwig Kerman.

En route to Duna, Shercott and Gidrien, who had gradually realized that they had become telepathically linked after the negative gravioli incident on the Mun, finally manage to recall a message that had played during the incident: "Beware the Teddy Monster." After executing a multi day long internet search as the Wi-Fi was not exactly great halfway to Duna, they learn about an old Dres anomaly where everyone who went to Dres heard a whisper repeating the word "TEDDY," and eventually went mad. They attempt to warn the crew of the ITV-016 Explorer, but can't due to a massive series of coincidences resulting in every single antenna on the ITV-009 Intrepid and her support craft becoming unusable.

Several days later, the crew lands on Duna, setting up the base, their exploration plane, and their rover.

The IRV-002 arrives at Moho and picks up the crew of the ITV-013 Magician, and inform the crew that the ship will be left behind. However, needing a ship to accomplish the Monolith's mission, Tomfurt and Milvy go rogue and take over the IRV-002 and set a course for Eve, becoming space pirates.

After some surface activities, Jebediah reveals that he has detected the wreck of the KSS Farlander in Low Duna Orbit. However, after getting too aggressive with the rover, Jebediah severely injures Shercott in a crash, and uses some of his incredibly small amount of remaining magic to heal him.

Without explaining much, Jebediah grabbed the Duna plane and flew to a site near Duna's south pole, where he found a small makeshift Duna base.

Inside, he locates his sister, Valentina Kerman! It turns out, after the space battle that had brought upon the Sixty Minute War, Valentina had managed to coax the near destroyed KSS Farlander all the way to Duna, where she eventually invented a hibernation machine. It did not work perfectly, however, but Jebediah managed to revive Valentina using his own oxygen supply.

Valentina was not the only survivor of that space battle, though... It turns out that Hudson Kerman also survived, and made his way to the bunker that later fell victim to anti-intellectualism. Still believing that the KSP had a nuclear missile base on the Mun, and that finding it would justify his attack on the Farlander that had accidentally started the Sixty Minute War, he painstakingly assembled a Mun rocket, disguising it as an experimental missile so the Flat Kerbin Society would fund it. He launched this rocket, bringing Fred Kerman, a member of the Flat Kerbin Society with him.

The duo successfully landed on the Mun and made their way to Bill and Bob's old Mun base.

Hudson approached the negative gravioli experiment just in time to witness the apparent resurrection of Robo-Bill and Robo-Bob. It turns out that the explosion that had killed Robo-Bill and Robo-Bob had actually been a successful if inadvertent test of time travel! Gidrien and Shercott messing with the Gravioli experiment had sent Robo-Bill and Robo-Bob all the way back in time to an era corresponding with version 0.13.3, where they had hid their logs inside the Mk1 command pod memorial. Hudson had found these logs a while back and noticed that they had stopped 100 days after they had started, and assumed that they would reappear at the Gravioli experiment 100 days after their departure. He was correct.

He was also correct about the base being a cover-up for a KSP led nuclear missile silo, which also explains why Bob and Bill Kerman, two of the most influential astronauts ever, were left there to guard it and did not abandon their post even after years of isolation (that, the fact that it was underground and well stocked, unlike most Mun colonies). Seeing mutual struggles, having a common enemy in the original four, and having goals that at least vaguely aligned or were at least interesting to one another (or in Fred's case, not really having another option), Robo-Bill, Robo-Bob, Hudson, and Fred joined forces and plotted their next moves.

Meanwhile, the Eve window was drawing near and the KSP felt that if it was to evacuate the system, and eventually land on a habitable planet, they felt that they should be ready for any planet they may find. Thus, tackling Eve, the planet that had eluded even the best engineers from the previous ages of space travel, was a top priority. If they could land something big enough to return from Eve intact, they could land big stuff anywhere, which was important for interstellar colonization.

Gene Kerman piloted the ITV-017, the first Type 4 ITV, which gradually exploded on the way up bit by bit, eventually completely failing.

The ITV-018, also piloted by Gene, fared a little better and reached orbit, though not before losing its ring. The ship was deemed usable without the ring, although it unfortunately looked way less cool. Gene christened the ship the Valentina.

At this time, the engineers finally worked up the nerve to land the 1500 tons of Phase 1 supplies on Minmus, and it worked successfully, except for tipping over, which was not a major problem.

The actual Eve Ascent Vehicle was to be taken to Eve by the ITV-018. The first launch did not work. The ascent vehicle exploded. The lander itself was able to limp all the way to the Valentina before the pilot, Leah Kerman, realized that the docking port had broken off during the flight.

The second flight was much more successful, although some of the Nerv engines had to be disabled as the Eve ascent vehicle blocked a few of them.

The third and final Type 4 ITV, the ITV-019, crewed by captain Anberta, scientists Vernie and Elkin, junior engineers Macfry and Pomeroy, and senior engineer Nataemma launched with a newly reinforced fuel ring.

Anberta christened the ship the ITV-019 Homecoming.

Carol Kerman launched the Gilly lander/transfer ship, called the "Gilly Hoppah," to the Homecoming, and more Eve ships were planned to be launched. However, shortly after this launch, a single plane, armed to the teeth with weaponry, approached the KSC.

The Flat Kerbin Society, angered at the KSP for their continued heresy and doomsday prophecies, and the ease with which they had rebuilt, retaliated by carpet bombing the undefended Kerbal Space Center, this time occupying it with military force so the personnel could not immediately recover like they had last time.

The ITV-018, ITV-019, and IRV-002 departed for Eve lacking any additional support due to the destruction of the KSC, and nothing much happened during the transfer due to the KSP being unable to launch any rockets.

The crew of the IRV-002 reached Eve and were picked up by Carol Kerman, piloting the Gilly Hoppah. Allin and Ribwig told Carol that they had been hijacked by pirates, but Carol, rivaling Jebediah in skill and badassery, having launched the Gilly Hoppah to orbit on just solid rocket boosters, and who had then been confined to doing things by the book for the whole transfer, instead of defeating the pirates, joined them because she was bored and fed up with her role on the Eve mission.

All five crewmembers, the three pirates Tomfurt, Milvy, and Carol, as well as the two hostages, Allin and Ribwig, took the Gilly Hoppah over to the ITV-018 Valentina, and took Gene and Leah hostage, forcing them into the Eve Ascent Vehicle, which the trio stole and christens Dragon.

The pirates forced Leah to land the ship in dangerous conditions in a suboptimal landing spot, but after a harrowing descent, the crew successfully managed to land on Eve.

Tomfurt collected his third surface sample out of the eighteen required.

Meanwhile, back on Kerbin, the flat Kerbin society, still occupying the KSC, rebuilt some of its facilities and launched a number of poorly designed rockets into space in order to prove that Kerbin is flat, each rocket more desperate than the last, when each inevitably proved Kerbin to be round.

The Eve Ascent Vehicle Dragon, having landed under suboptimal conditions, had sustained critical damage that prevented it from staying on the surface for longer than a few days. This greatly hampered the two remaining crewmember's efforts at science - one was the pilot, and one was never intended to land in the first place (and afraid of heights).

After a mild panic attack from Gene and a dramatic countdown, the Dragon successfully launched. In order to make up for launching from below the lander's rated altitude, Leah targeted a very aggressive ascent profile, leading to a lot of thermal damage to the second stage and very nearly leading to the death of the crew. This resulted in a second stage ignition failure. Gene prepared to sacrifice himself, using his jetpack to act as an ullage motor to allow the rest of the crew to reach orbit, but just in time, Tomfurt, having passed out from the acceleration, woke up and was able to use magic to fix the engine, enabling the Dragon to complete the first ever crewed Eve ascent in history.

On Duna, Jebediah catches Valentina up on the events of the past few decades, and the two cram into the single seat Duna plane, but crash on the return trip. In an attempt to reach the base, Valentina dies jetpacking, but Jebediah uses around 20% of his remaining magic to bring her back to life. It is also revealed that Jebediah and Valentina share a telepathic connection.

The two instead travel home via rover.

The crew then went to Ike, where Shercott and Gidrien went on a joyride with the rover, crashing and destroying it in the process.

The space pirates returned to the ITV-019 Valentina, and stole the Gilly Hoppah.

Back on Kerbin, the planet at large, stir crazy from over fifty years of living underground, had started to fall for the Flat Kerbin Society's lies. Wanting to see for themselves, Ferpont, Dunrie, and Jogee Kerman constructed a suborbital rocket and launched it from their rather oxymoronic jet powered sailboat, the USS Intrepid, and confirmed Kerbin's roundness. They shared their results in an effort to kick start a recapturing of the Kerbal Space Center.

The following day, they show up with a Tui dropship to take back the KSC, but find it abandoned, with a rocket on the launch pad. They board the rocket in an attempt to secure it, but find out that it had been set to automatically launch. The KSC was devoid of Flat Kerbin Society personnel as they somehow had the sense to evacuate for a launch, and the trio had forgotten about Kerbin's rotation when planning their assault and had arrived a day before everyone else was scheduled to arrive.

In an effort to better understand time travel, Robo-Bill and Robo-Bob use their negative gravioli experiment in an attempt to steal a craft from another universe and merge it with this universe.

The sailboat crew manage to pilot their Flat Kerbin Society spaceship to this new station using their combined thousands of hours in the hit video game Human Space Program, to find that Space Station Epic IV had been copied over from a parallel universe into their universe. This resulted in the duplication of Jebediah, Bill, and Bob, who had come from a universe where the Space Station Epic V disaster had not yet happened. Jebediah 2 is placed in charge of the construction of the Minmus city.

The following day, the assault on the KSC takes place and the facility was retaken by a 5000 Kerbal strong army. The Flat Kerbin Society was pushed out, and Project Intrepid could finally continue.

The space pirates once again stole a spaceship, the ITV-019 Homecoming, which is the fifth time they had stolen a spaceship, and set a course for Gilly, pursued rapidly by the rest of the crew in the Gilly Hoppah.

After numerous Gilly shenanigans, including the crew of the Gilly Hoppah docking to the Homecoming while it was bouncing down a hill in order to steal fuel while the pirates were asleep, and the exploration of a very large terrain rift, the Gilly mission concluded, with sample four out of eighteen acquired.

Tomfurt burns incredibly aggressively towards Dres, using almost all the Homecoming's fuel to place the ship on a 157 day transfer, relying on the good heartedness of the ITV-016 crew to rescue them when they flew past.

Meanwhile, in order to jump start the construction of the Minmus city, the ITV-020, the first and only Type 5 ITV, was launched. It was the largest crewed rocket ever constructed, capable of carrying 916 Kerbals to Minmus, representing nearly 5% of the KSC's staff. This massive workforce would jump start the construction of a new vehicle assembly building on Minmus, which was incredibly abundant in resources, and had a far lower gravity, making it far easier to construct interstellar colony ships from. The construction of the ITV-020 also served as good experience for the creation of colony ships, which had become much easier thanks to Valentina's invention of hibernation technology (although the ITV-020 did not feature hibernation technology).

The mission to Minmus was successful, and the crew began assembling the Minmus city.

The pirates had bet on Kazu Kerman's goodwill, and they had bet well, for Kazu Kerman had immediately ordered an aggressive course correction to arrive at Dres earlier as soon as she had learned of the news. Upon entering Dres orbit and discovering an asteroid, the crew are disappointed to find that they will not be able to refuel in time to save the space pirates, but upon reaching the asteroid, they discover something strange:

A boulder rich in solid magic. Not the magic boulder itself, but close enough. During a risky attempt to mine it, there is a negative gravioli surge, and the tanks nearly instantly fill up, allowing them to rescue the Homecoming.

In a daring hyperbolic rendezvous and rescue immortalized in story, song and legend, the Explorer caught up to the Homecoming and transferred over enough fuel to re-enter Dres orbit. This was the first time that two Intrepid Test Vehicles have operated in close proximity.

Both ships returned to Sparky, the proto-Magic Boulder, as a base of operations. Tomfurt had not anticipated the magic boulder and grew dizzied by the possibilities.

The Explorer performed refueling operations, sending its scout ships to search for fuel rich asteroids, not wanting to risk refueling from Sparky. Once again abusing Kazu's goodwill, the pirates steal the three seat Dres Runner and make a break for Dres.

The alternate universe Jeb Bill and Bob had taken a long range escape pod from Space Station Epic IV to the under construction Minmus City and were supervising the construction of the new shipyards - And had been tasked with the construction of an Intrepid class vessel to test that everything was working.

The ITV-021 Ice Cream, a Type 6 ITV, crewed by Sara Kerman, engineer, Elon Kerman, a bit of everything, Mortimer Kerman, an unwilling participant, and unrecorded others, became the first ever ship to to be built from the ground up on another world, and was tasked with launching a small station to the Jool system. For what it lacks in size, it makes up for in capability, featuring built in ISRU capability and high TWR VTOL, essentially aiming to fulfill the same role as the Type 2.

Robo-Bill, Robo-Bob, Fred, and Hudson embarked on a rover marathon across the surface of the Mun in an attempt to locate a vehicle they could escape the Mun with. They came across the ancient Mun casino and Mun museum.

They eventually found what was left of the spaceship OCTAVIUS after it had crashed into Kerbin, along with the only existing surface samples from Ovok, Tekto, Slate, Hale, and Eeloo.

After another extreme series of coincidences, a piece of space debris, believed to be one of the Flat Kerbin Society's test launches, struck the ITV-018 Valentina, causing its computers to go haywire, leading to an uncontrolled descent over Eve.

While the crew survived the re-entry and impact, they were now stranded on Eve without a means of communication, and were presumed dead.

Gene and Leah, against the advice of the other crew, undertook a harrowing nearly 100 kilometer journey across the surface of Eve to the crash site of an ancient prototype Eve ascent vehicle, in hopes that it would still have a usable antenna.

The KSP launched three mini ITV vessels (Type 7) at once towards Duna, the 022-A Dr. Wily, the 022-B Marble Machine, and the 023-C Applesauce, piloted by Mayl, Martin, and Joey Kerman respectively.

Above Dres, the crew of the ITV-016 Explorer discovers a second proto-magic boulder, this time orange. They had decided to let the space pirates continue their use of the Dres Runner as a test to see if the Teddy Monster was still real, and if it was safe to land.

After visiting the monolith and acquiring the sixth out of eighteen surface samples needed for the portal, the space pirates manage to triangulate the location of the Teddy Monster. Seeing this, the crew of the Explorer decides to send their own Dres lander down in an attempt to help the pirates purge Dres of this anomalous force.

A very bad parking job leads to the Dres runner tumbling into the canyon, although the Dres lander still barely had enough seats for the return journey. They uncovered the source of the Teddy signal, which turned out to be an elderly version of Tomfurt Kerman hibernating underground. There were now seven people and only six seats back to orbit. Young Tomfurt, not thinking rationally, stole Tomfurt's "vehicle" and attempted to use it to reach orbit, only to discover that this vehicle was actually a functional time machine!

After passing 88m/s, Young Tomfurt traveled back in time 100 years, getting stuck on Dres, later becoming Old Tomfurt after re-inventing hibernation, now the only Tomfurt in the current timeline. He had gone somewhat crazy, but was still mostly lucid.

After locating the crashed Eve ascent vehicle, Leah and Gene managed to send a distress signal to the KSC, but accidentally destroyed their remaining life support supplies in the process, and created a risky hastily constructed hibernation setup to preserve their lives, unable to return to the wreck of the Valentina.

The KSP, upon receiving the distress signal, went into overdrive preparing rescue craft.

The ITV-023 Valkyrie, the first Type 8, was launched and outfitted with two upgraded Gilly Hoppah replacements.

The Eve Self Refueling Exploration Plane, or ESREP, was hastily launched, crewed by actual airline staff, as a method to transport crew around the surface of Eve in a reasonable timeframe. In order to make it to Eve, it had to refuel on Minmus, which also helped test their fuel production abilities. Some more support craft were launched - Eve rovers, a scansat, an Eve glider...

But the KSP could not produce another mothership in time, so dragged the structural test article for the Type 4 ITVs out of storage and hastily retrofitted it. It was christened the ITV-024 Avalon.

An incredibly ambitious Eve ascent vehicle was also procured in record time.

In addition, the ITV-020 Philosopher Of Time departed for Gilly with a mixed load of crew and cargo, mostly silver, for as of yet unknown reasons...

The Robots, Hudson, and Fred also departed for Eve in their modified version of the OCTAVIUS, now called the Octavius Prime.

After a long amount of delays, a prototype 100 Kerbal spaceplane capable of travelling to the Minmus city, now called Minmusville, was successfully tested.

All three ITV-022 miniships landed near Duna's anomalous north pole in an an attempt to investigate.

Joey Kerman embarked on an incredibly hazardous climb to Duna's north pole, named Mount Death for a reason, risking death from falling, death from nausea, and death from falling into a terrain rift, to properly document for the first time the nauseometric properties of distorted planetary poles.

After a long journey, the ITV-011 Creativity at last entered Tylo orbit and began landing its very large fleet of Tylo ships onto the moon.

After an equally long journey, the ITV-009 Intrepid  returned to Kerbin, becoming the first Intrepid Test Vehicle to successfully complete its mission and return home. The crew board a return vehicle that they believe has been sent by the KSP, but it was actually a trap! The return vehicle takes them to an aircraft carrier operated by the Order Of The Two Poles, also known as The Order or POLE for short. This group, which splintered off of the Flat Kerbin Society, has rejected anti-intellectualism, but is yet unable to tell real science from fake science, and after Joey Kerman's polar adventure on Duna, has become obsessed with harnessing the nauseometric energy found at planetary poles. Kerbin, however, lacked deformed poles with rifts, so they captured the astronauts to teach them how to build rockets.

Meanwhile on Tylo, it was discovered that the mining rover was ineffective, so the idea of refueling the landers and hopping around the entire planet for more science was dropped. A number of Kerbals are temporarily stranded during crash landings, but the Creativity has six Tylo landers, so it was not thought to be a major concern.

As the Octavius Prime approached Eve, Hudson finally reveals his motive. Having finally proven that the KSP had put nuclear missiles on the Mun, he does not feel as vindicated as he thought he would be for his role in starting the Sixty Minute War. He resolves to do something good with his life - He believes he can prove that extraterrestrial life exists.

The last samples on the Mun were fake - The true samples were stored on a vault on Eve, intended to gate the analysis of those only samples behind the technological barrier of Eve sample return. Now that such a thing was proven, Hudson intended to steal some Eve descent pods from the wreckage of an old space station, descend to Eve, retrieve the samples from the vault, and hitch a ride back to orbit on the KSP's new Eve ascent vehicle.

The ITV-025 Heart of Courage was launched into orbit on a mission to retrieve the obsolete ITV-013 Magician from Moho orbit over concerns that the KSC would not be able to produce motherships fast enough given its current focus on advanced technologies.

The invasion of Tylo continues, with Angie and Miteny exploring the Tylo cave.

The rest of the Eve expedition reaches Eve. The polar glider is flown and the Eve ascent vehicle begins refueling on Gilly, and Hiyya and Mauline Kerman make contact with most of the crew of the Valentina  using Roverplane 1. The ESREP and the new Eve ascent vehicle were also successfully landed.

Jebediah's quest to teach The Order how to build rockets was going decently well, but the Kerbal Space Center began to get suspicious, and started believing that Jebediah had gone rogue and was helping the Flat Kerbin Society remilitarize.

Miteny and Angie discover an abandoned underground USKN missile base on Tylo near the Tylo cave. The one surviving USKN soldier had been abandoned after most remaining Joolian forces had been destroyed in battle, and had eventually attempted to escape Tylo by launching himself to orbit on one of the two missiles.

Tomfurt, now an accomplished apprentice after many decades in isolation to train, manages to use teleportation magic to steal the ITV-016 Explorer, and one of the proto-magic boulders. Initial attempts to teleport everywhere to get very surface sample are foiled by the Monolith, who explains that they have no method of getting a surface sample from the sun and should wait until they know how to do that to use up the boulder's magic.

The Space Pirates, also having no option to land on Jool, send a ransomware attack to the Kerbal Space Center and agree to release the files upon delivery of a Jool Ascent Vehicle to Jool. After inventing the propeller specifically for this purpose, the ITV-027 Dragon Parade, a modernized Type 2 ITV, was launched and outfitted for a mission to Jool.

The ITV-026 Flamedancer, the second ship constructed on Minmus, was the first Intrepid ship to be powered by ion engines, and was designed to study the sun, but also has an as of yet unrevealed Experimental Engineering Division ulterior motive...

The ITV-027 Dragon Parade was launched to Minmus for refueling after receiving its Jool exploration craft, which included the Jool Ascent Vehicle JAVELIN, and a space fighter designed to act as a deterrent against the space pirates from stealing any more ships. The KSP was getting very angry at them and wanted to be prepared this time.

Joey Kerman meets the Duna monolith and the Monolith began working his magic on him.

The crew of the ESREP rescue Leah and Gene, but both are severely injured and in need of urgent medical attention. Nevertheless, a partial recreation of long term hibernation technology is exciting news.

Gemma and Podpont landed on Tylo, at which point Podpont notices that everyone had been spelling Gemna's name wrong this entire time. Upon being called by her real name for the first time in years, and having taken a vow of near silence until someone figured it out, Gemna rejoices, opening up to Podpont about her theories for how the USKN soldier, Milmon Kerman, may have survived, and what he would have done after reaching Tylo orbit. She proves herself to be very skilled at all manner of things, and a natural learner.

Later on, during the ascent, Gemna muses about a possible meaning behind the SSTV signal that the ITV-022 ships found on Duna - That four beings would come together to activate a laser and destroy something on one of the moons of Jool.

Meanwhile, the Eve crew consolidated their ships around the ascent vehicle.

The Monolith guides Joey Kerman to Ike, where he acquires the eighth of eighteen required surface samples, but then threatens him into going to Jool at the next opportunity.

The ITV-011 Creativity reaches Laythe and the ships begin landing.

Jebediah, stealing several nuclear missiles, managed to help The Order Of The Two Poles construct a ship, called the Ultima, capable of carrying over 150 Kerbals to the Mun. For a recap of the important Order characters, Albert is the leader. Maya is Shercott's love interest. Gustav is Maya's sister and a pilot.

However, the Ultima's control scheme is a ruse! Jebediah ejects a pod containing the six person Intrepid crew and comes in for a hard landing targeting the KSC in an attempt to escape The Order.

The KSP, however, after seeing the nuclear missiles stolen and brought to what seemed to be a Flat Kerbin Society base, was concerned that Jebediah had gone rogue and had remilitarized, becoming armed to the teeth with fighters, bombers, and tanks galore.

However, upon landing, the situation is defused by a short conversation between Jebediah and S.A.M. Kerman, head of the Experimental Engineering Division.

However, the situation rapidly becomes dangerous when Jebediah learns of the Experimental Engineering Division's attempt to reactivate Project K, an experimental propulsion system that had nearly destroyed the planet several decades earlier, having been tested in high Kerbin orbit. The next test of Project K is to occur that same day inside a base at near Kerbin's north pole.

Jebediah is chased through the space center in an effort to convince any Experimental Engineering Division personnel to cancel the test.

This chase ends when Jebediah jumps off of the vehicle assembly building, with the goal of showing the KSC staff that he is willing to give up his own life to stop the test. However, with S.A.M. unconscious, the KSC is unable to contact the EED and Kerbin blows up.

The universe itself, however, steps in, rewinds time, and resurrects Jebediah Kerman mid-fall in 1.4.5, providing him with an EVA parachute, allowing him to survive the fall.

Jebediah escapes with the Intrepid crew aboard an armored jet powered troop transport and is pursued by the KSP's massive arsenal of advanced combat aircraft, having been assembled to defend against another Flat Kerbin Society attack. However, with the KSP lacking combat trained pilots and decent fueling logistics, and much of a plan in general besides "Shoot him!", Jebediah evades the combat aircraft with increasingly impressive stunts, culminating in the launch of the badly damaged troop transport into the cargo bay of a nuclear armed aircraft using a mountain as a ramp.

As Jebediah had just taken over a nuclear armed aircraft, the KSC viewed them as armed and dangerous and sent their most elite fighters after them. The nuclear armed aircraft, however, lacked the range to reach the north pole, so they took a gamble and went to the hangar of the KFB-01 Kraken, hoping to steal a resupply aircraft. Instead, they find the Kraken herself, having been safely landed just after the start of the Sixty Minute War, and reactivate it for its second ever flight.

However, they are pursued by an elite commando team led by Doodgun Kerman, a big dude with an even bigger gun, who latch onto the aircraft in a specially assault pod in an attempt to take over the Kraken before the KSP's Omega Squadron and their elite Hex-Archer aircraft can arrive.

And this is where we remain.

 

The ITV-009 Intrepid sits waiting in Kerbin Orbit.

The ITV-011 Creativity has begun to explore Laythe.

The ITV-013 Magician sits waiting in Moho orbit.

The ITV-015 Independence continues onwards to Eeloo.

The ITV-016 Explorer, piloted by the space pirates, sits around Dres, hauling a proto-magic boulder.

The ITV-018 Valentina sits in pieces on the surface of Eve, its crew awaiting the launch of the second ever crewed Eve Ascent Vehicle to deliver them into orbit.

The ITV-019 Homecoming sits in Dres orbit, the new home of Kazu Kerman and her crew with hearts of gold.

The ITV-020 Philosopher of Time sits on the surface of Gilly, filled with several dozen tons of silver and four hundred Kerbals, working on a secret project.

The ITV-021 Ice Cream  is carrying a space station and ISRU setup to the Jool system.

The ITV-022 miniships Dr. Wily, Marble Machine, and Applesauce are exploring the Duna system, with Joey Kerman in the ITV-022C Applesauce being forced against his will by the Monolith to go to the Jool system and deliver them two more surface samples.

The ITV-023 Valkyrie and the ITV-024 Avalon orbit Eve, awaiting for the launch of the new Eve Ascent Vehicle.

The ITV-025 Heart of Courage is en route to Moho to retrieve the ITV-013 Magician and further explore the surface.

The ITV-026 Sundancer is en route to space low above the sun for as of yet unknown reasons.

The ITV-027 Dragon Parade is refueling on Minmus for its ransomware-mandated trip to Jool, intent on confronting the space pirates with force if need be.

The Octavius Prime orbits Eve searching for the descent pods from the old MOSES station to retrieve the original Octavian Eeloo sample and prove the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The Ultima is en route to the Mun, where its crew aim to perform nauseometric experiments at the polar regions.

The Kerbal Space Program seeks to finally work out the kinks with their planetary evacuation plans, having, in three years, only managed to construct two failed evacuation SSTOs and a moderately successful, behind schedule, Minmus city and shipyard.

The Experimental Engineering Division aims to test Project K, a risky but revolutionary propulsion system that could make up for lost time and speed up evacuation efforts.

Omega Squadron has just taken off to intercept the Kraken.

Black Panther is flying somewhere, location unknown.

Doodgun and his commandos have just latched onto the Kraken and are cutting into its hull.

The Kraken is flying to the north pole base in an attempt to stop the test of Project K.

The Kerbol system will fall into the Krion-B stellar mass black hole in roughly 197 years.

Kerbin will be destroyed by the test of Project K in 32 minutes, 19 seconds.

 

The Story Of Project Intrepid Will Continue...

 

 

Chapter 56 - The Final Countdown

Spoiler

"Ah, the serenity of the corridors of the Kraken," Bill Kerman remarked to himself. It was, after all, one of his favorite pastimes back in the day, exploring the technically off limits areas of the flying casino city.

"Ah, the port miniwing support, the best - Hold on, who are you?"

"Ugh, they know we're here! Get him!" shouted Grenman Kerman, a powerful man with powerful grenades.

"SOMETHING TELLS ME YOU'RE NOT A SQUATTER!" shouted Bill as he ran away, barely ducking behind a wall as Doodgun Kerman sent several bullets his way.

"This just got a lot harder... Okay team. I'll go after the nearest two life signs, which should be Shercott and Gidrien. Grenman, you go after Jeb. Bill and Bob aren't gonna be able to do much, but Katchic? You try to take care of Val."

"On it, boss," said Katchic Kerman, who, as the theme suggests, was a sharp chick with an even sharper laser katana. The team of commandos split up to neutralize the Kraken. A few hundred kilometers away, Omega squadron was closing in...

"Man, this place looks abandoned!" said Shercott, exploring the outer promenade of the Kraken.

"It does, but... Huh. These are opened. Whisky and soda."

"Doubtless expired decades ago, probably got left on the table."

"A testament to Jeb's flying ability that they are still on the table after takeoff!"

"Oh hey! I think I found the button for the window control!" Shercott said excitedly as he pressed it and the shutters opened.

"Wow! We're so far up!" said Gidrien. "Don't break the glass, though, I don't want to get sucked into the APU inlets."

"Heh. Auxiliary power. That's bigger than most actual jet engines!"

"Man, that would have really been something back in the day," said Shercott Kerman. "Flying around on a luxurious flying casino in the sky, drinking champagne, looking at sunsets... Excessive, yes, but what's life without a little excess?"

"Indeed... Cloneus was, well... a character, to say the least. Not exactly the most moral at times, but definitely a character."

"I wonder what happened to him."

"Well he's dead, of course. He died in the war. If he somehow survived, he'd doubtless be dead of old age by now."

"True... Hey, what's this!" Shercott picked up a dusty paperback book off of the ground.

"No way! Is that an original printing of Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey?" asked Gidrien.

"Oh yeah, looks like it is!" Shercott excitedly opened up to a random page. "Chapter 21, page 5, where Dilsby challenges Jebediah Kermulan to a fight to the death! Oh man, I love this battle, it's one of the best parts!"

"Want to read out loud?"

"Sure! Chapter 21, page 6, here we go - "

*BANG!*

"AAAHHH!" screamed both of them.

"We're under attack!" shouted Shercott.

"Surrender or die!" said Doodgun, aiming around them with the purpose of scaring them, jumping down to the deck below. "You guys have been rogue for far too long. Please allow me to arrest you, this doesn't need to be hard."

"Wait! Don't shoot us! See? We have an original copy of Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey in its entirety!"

"Wait, for real?" Doodgun was momentarily distracted. Shercott attempted to signal to Gidrien to do something with this time, but was unsuccessful, as she could not decipher his signs.

"We have telepathy, you doofus!" shouted Gidrien in disgust.

Doodgun opened fire on the window, depressurizing that section of the aircraft as an intimidation tactic, but succeeded only in damaging the APU intake, and getting nearly sucked out of the window himself!

"AAAH!" he shouted, gradually pulling himself back inside the aircraft and away from his possible demise at the hands of the APU intake.

"This way!" said Gidrien taking Shercott's hand.

After running through several corridors, they emerged into a hangar.

"Shercott, what are these?" Gidrien asked. "This is a dead end!"

"The joust planes!" Shercott replied. "Get in one, I'll work the launch controls!"

"What do you mean joust planes?!?!?"

"The gamblers here used to hire essentially gladiators to fight in mock aircraft battles and bet on them. The goal was to ram the other planes with these I beam jousting lances and be the last person standing. They weren't really lethal if things went right. We won't be doing ANY of that though, we just need to get out of here!"

"That's crazy!"

"I'm not surrendering to that madman with a gun!"

A minute later, Shercott had already launched, and Gidrien was preparing to launch her plane from the hangar bay, when Doodgun caught up with them.

"Okay, I wasn't mad, but you made me send a perfectly good original copy of Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey into an air intake!"

"WHAT?" shouted Gidrien.

"WHAT?" shouted Doodgun. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE - "

There was a loud clang as Gidrien's air jouster released and shot forward. She attempted to frantically signal Jebediah in the cockpit to no avail. Doodgun prepared to launch his own jouster, but upon second thought, decided it wasn't worth it.

"All agents, this is Doodgun. Shercott and Gidrien have been neutralized. No way they're gonna be a problem in those tiny little jousters of theirs."

 

==========

 

Author's note: This is where most of the screenshots end. As the workload of creating a fully furnished battle scene, especially with the instability I was experiencing in 1.4.5 was the primary reason Project Intrepid stalled out, I will not be creating a fully furnished battle scene. In addition, I am having a hard time getting BDA FPS to work in 1.12.5, and the set version of the Kraken utilizes part welding to an extent, and that mod is also likely broken. I trust that your imagination is in top shape, and will be able to portray the action far clearer than I ever could under these conditions.

"Have some radio discipline!" hissed Katchic.

"Haha, I know you are here now! Someone didn't remember to mute their radio!" cheered Valentina Kerman, who had been wandering the museum halls.

"Stupid Doodgun. Looks like we're gonna have to do this the hard way!" Katchic powered up her purple laser katana and cartwheeled off of the top balcony down to meet Valentina Kerman amongst the numerous paintings and historical artefacts that dotted the museum.

"Nice lightsaber," Valentina said.

"Laser katana," Katchic hissed.

"Same difference."

"There is a difference!" Katchic aggressively insisted. "Look. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the lethal way."

"I'll do whatever you want after Jebediah reaches the north pole base."

"Oh no he isn't reaching the north pole. Not if I have anything to say about it. I'm not gonna let him nuke the polar city of Kabra!"

"What? Why would he nuke Kabra?"

"Because he's evil, duh." Katchic lunged at Valentina, Valentina dodged, Katchic instead sliced through a marble bust of Cloneus Kerman.

"How DARE you!" shouted Valentina. "That's a priceless artefact!"

"Do you want to know how much I care?" said Katchic. With a single swipe of her blade she cut through three paintings on the wall.

"No!" Valentina gasped.

"And I'm gonna keep destroying this stuff until you give in!"

 

==========

 

"Bob, barricade the doors!" commanded Jebediah. "I've just received telepathic word from Valentina that we are under attack!"

"I mean, why did you think we lost pressurization?" said Bob.

"Well, this aircraft is over a century old. Help me move this couch!" Jeb said. "We can't let them in the cockpit!"

Jebediah and Bob began shoving anything they could against the rear cockpit door. There were no shortage of objects, but as this was the ceremonial control point, they all tended to be either really expensive or really rare.

"Are we really gonna use gold statues as barricades?" Bob asked.

"Sure, no amount of gold can replace a planet!" Jeb responded.

"I mean, technically you can have a solid gold planet..."

"Agh!" said an out of breath Grenman, muffled from behind the hallway. "You have no idea how hard it was to lug this grenade launcher up all of those steps!"

"They're here!" panicked Jebediah. He grabbed the control column and pulled it as far back as it would go, causing the Kraken to slowly enter a steep climb.

 

==========

 

"It's pulling up!" shouted Gidrien. A functioning radio connected her to Shercott. The lumbering Kraken indeed began pulling up. A streak of fire rocketed mere meters underneath the Kraken.

"Wow, what was that?" Shercott shouted in surprise.

"We've got company!" Gidrien turned around to see five contrails in the distance -  five dangerous, rapidly approaching aircraft.

 

==========

 

"Omega-1 to Omega-5, how on Kerbin did you miss that? It is literally the size of a barn!"

"He dodged!"

"In something as maneuverable as a brick? As a bag of bricks?"

"I don't know! Maybe our missiles are broken."

"Hmm... Would explain a lot of things... Alright, looks like we might have to do this with guns, or at point blank range. But we've got to be quick, the polar ice cap is in sight."

 

==========

 

"AAAAAH!" shouted Katchic and Valentina as the gravity increased and they lost their footing. The uneven acceleration caused many of the sculptures and art pieces to topple, and one of the chandeliers fell from the ceiling, nearly crushing Katchic. Katchic adapted quickly, standing up and charging at Valentina in the increased gravity, but Valentina managed to catch her off guard by using one of the stronger looking statues as a shield.

"Those artefacts aren't so priceless now, huh, Val?" smirked Katchic.

 

==========

 

"I think we got him!" said Bob, having heard several grunts from the behind the door.

"Yeah, there were so many heavy awards on the wall that we may have knocked him out!" Jeb said.

*BANG*

A grenade exploded just behind the door. The seal broke, but the doorway was not yet clear.

"Nope!" shouted Jeb.

"We need to last another ten minutes or so!" said Bob.

"Alright," said Jeb. "Evasive maneuver time." Jebediah grabbed the control column and entered the Kraken into a largely zero gee roll, with an oscillating yaw component.

 

==========

 

Katchic, startled, lifted off of the ground, along with every single other art piece that wasn't tightly secured, and flailed around, severely disoriented. Valentina launched herself off of the ground with a scream, catching Katchic off guard, striking her in the chest before she could react.

"Now it's your turn to give up!" Valentina shouted as she threw a golden model of Kerbin at Katchic. She rose her katana to block, but her head slammed into one of the balconies, not knocking her unconscious, but coming close. Valentina smiled as she walked off the wall, jumped, and grabbed a sword out of the hands of a knight's suit that had just broken free from its display case. For at least as long as the zero-G roll lasted, it was now an even fight - Katchic may have a blade that could cut through hers, but Valentina had not only several years of adaptation to zero-gravity, but also a telepathic connection to the pilot.

Katchic swung at her, but Valentina dodged by the skin of her teeth, pushing off of a chandelier and cutting it free with her own sword. Jebediah swung the plane around once more, bouncing Katchic off of the wall and into the chandelier. The aircraft began to dive again, now 270 degrees through its roll, priceless artefacts split in two flying every which way. Katchic struggled to regain her orientation in the zero gravity, but just as Valentina nearly caused her to lose her grip on her katana, Jebediah had to pull the aircraft out of the dive, pinning both combatants to the ground.

The airframe of the KFB-01 Kraken was not rated for a high G pullout, but Jebediah knew that its listed limits were not necessarily the true ones.

 

==========

 

Bill Kerman struggled up the ladder through the high G forces as the Kraken groaned and strained in protest, just barely reaching the aft fireworks turret and picking up the radio before collapsing.

"Bill Kerman calling all joust planes, I saw you through the windows and I thought you could use some help."

"Bill!" shouted Shercott into his radio.

"Bill, there was a missile!" said Gidrien.

"I saw it," Bill said, managing to stand up long enough to sit down into the turret operator's chair. "I knew we would have company and activated the old jamming equipment Cloneus keeps hidden away in the "unused" voids of this thing."

"Cloneus can jam air to air missiles?"

"He was a man who would go to any lengths necessary to protect his business empire, richer than most governments. I'd be more surprised if he couldn't! The missiles will be deflected, but you can't jam bullets, and those Hex-Archers have Vulcans equipped!"

"What can guns do to the Kraken, though?" asked Gidrien.

"They can take out the only defense we have: My firework launcher, and your two jousting planes!"

"Surely you don't expect us to - "

"Ram the Hex-Archers? These guys are convinced we are going to nuke the polar city of Kabra! We don't have time to go around Kabra before the world ends, so we're going right over. They will stop us by any means necessary."

"Ramming the Kraken?"

"Worse. Each Hex-Archer is equipped with a single unguided, unjammable, nuclear air to air missile. If we don't take them out as soon as possible, we are dead, and with us, the planet!"

 

==========

 

"I think he's unconscious!" said Bob.

"Good," said Jebediah.

"Should I tie him up?"

"No," said Jebediah. "It could be a trap. That door needs to remain closed at all costs."

"Yes sir."

"I'm gonna do another roll to help Val," Jeb said.

"Every time you do that it adds like half a minute to our travel time!"

"How much excess do we have?"

"About two and a half minutes. Just barely enough to parachute down and unplug the machine."

"Noted. Try and figure out some ways to go faster!"

"I'm on it... Maybe we can dump the water tanks!"

 

==========

 

"Omega-1 to Jebediah Kerman!" said the pilot of the first Hex-Archer over the radio. "Divert southwards immediately - Are you - Are you doing a barrel roll? You're barrel rolling the biggest aircraft in the world? HOW?!?!?!?"

"Were you not paying attention, Omega-1? This is the second one he's done!" said Omega-3.

"Ah, so I didn't hallucinate the first one," remarked Omega-2.

"Shall I missile him, sir?" asked Omega-4. All five Omega aircraft were now flying in close formation slightly above, behind, and to the right of the Kraken's right wing.

"We are inside the glide slope to Kabra," reported Omega-2."

"Fire a warning shot," said Omega-1. "Wait until we are in direct bomb lobbing range for the real deal."

"Omega-4 firing!" Omega-4 fired a conventional air to air missile at the Kraken's starboard engines, but it veered off course in a spiral.

"They must be jamming them!" said Omega-1. "Jebediah Kerman! We will be forced to disable your aircraft if you do not immediately divert away from Kabra."

"Jebediah Kerman to Omega-1, we are en route to the Harrison polar research base to destroy a device that will destroy the planet in just over seven minutes if left unchecked. What would it take for you to trust me?"

"A diversion away from Kabra, for one!"

"Sorry, we don't have the time, unless we can borrow one of your supersonic aircraft... We don't even have nukes! The bomber we borrowed was returned with all weapons inside!"

"There were empty racks on the bomber," said Omega-1.

"You buffoons can't even keep track of how many nukes you have!" shouted Jebediah, frustrated.

"If you do not divert, we will be forced to fire our own nuclear weapons," Omega-1 said.

"Well... Hold on... Just one more... Isn't this cause for celebration?" Jebediah said.

"What?" Omega-1 was very momentarily confused.

"INCOMING!" shouted Omega-4.

Instantly, Omega-1's wings were shredded by incoming fireworks launched by Bill Kerman from the aft firework turret. The other Omegas began breaking off, but Omega-4 and Omega-5 were hit by a massive discharge of water from the Kraken's starboard wing water tank, the wing having just rotated in front of the squadron. Their engines sputtered out and died.

Omega-3 was struck on both sides by Gidrien and Shercott's jousting aircraft nearly simultaneously, shredding off most of the left wing and a small amount of the right wing.

 

==========

 

"YES!" shouted Bill.

"I thought you were going for the one on the right!" Gidrien shouted to Shercott, shaken up.

"It's hard to tell from that far away!" Shercott grunted, somewhat bruised from the collision, turning his aircraft around. "I lost a wing, but so did he! And I have four wings, and he only has two!"

"How many did we get?" asked Gidrien.

"One," Bill said.

"WHAT?"

"I ripped the wings off of one, he's gone. You didn't get close enough, these Hex-Archers can very nearly fly without wings, and he still has half a wing left! The two that got watered will doubtless be able to restart their engines!"

"Well, let's get back in there, then!" shouted Shercott, turning to face a Hex-Archer as its guns began firing.

 

==========

 

"You're getting tired," said Katchic as the aircraft entered into another steep climb and they were both pinned to the floor of the aircraft.

"Yeah, so are you," Valentina said.

"You're getting tired faster."

"But here's the thing," grinned Valentina. "You see, I have friends." The aircraft once more entered into zero gravity. Valentina jumped off of the window, straight at Katchic, who swung her katana at her, slicing Valentina's sword in half, but she dodged, and reached the balcony. Katchic held up the severed end of her sword as if to taunt her, grabbing onto a protrusion from one of the windows.

"Look who's losing now!" Katchic grinned.

"Exactly," said Valentina, ducking behind a column. As if on cue, the windows were peppered with gunfire as Gidrien passed directly in front of them, drawing fire from Omega-3, shattering all of the museum's windows. Katchic barely had time to express surprise before she, katana in hand, was sucked out of the window and into the sky!

 

==========

 

"Yes! One down!" said Jebediah. "We can fly normally now!"

"She had a parachute, right?"

"Yes," said Jebediah. A bunch of red lights filled the cockpit. "Mulch. All of those museum artefacts flew straight into one of the engines."

"But she didn't, right?"

"No, Val saw her, she's fine. But we're down an engine."

"Then we have 14 seconds of margin, then! That's not enough!"

"Then we'll simply take a brachistochrone trajectory," said Jebediah, entering the Kraken into a steep dive. There was an explosion and smoke filled the cockpit as a floor panel had bulged upwards.

"We have company!"

"He's trying to get in through the bottom hatch!"

 

==========

 

"They're diving!" shouted Omega-4, who had successfully restarted his engines. "This is it, this is the bombing run for Kabra!"

"He's almost over the city... Nuclear force is... authorized," said Omega-2, with some strain, as he was attempting to hit Shercott, but couldn't because despite the Hex-Archer's maneuverability, the jousting craft were about the size of a bumblebee, and hits were few and far be - 

*BANG*

There was a loud noise as Bill Kerman successfully landed another firework just ahead of the distracted Omega-2, sending shrapnel into the engines. "I'm hit!" he said, attempting to restart his engines. In the attempt his trajectory became predictable, and he was hit near simultaneously by another firework and Gidrien's jouster. "Omega-2, attempting emergency landing. Omega-5, how are your engines?"

"I have one, the other one won't restart," she said. "I think I can line up a shot, though," she said.

"Take it."

 

==========

 

Bill Kerman held his breath as he aimed at the incoming Hex-Archer, which was obviously lining up a nuclear shot on the Kraken.

"Not if I have anything to say about that," said Doodgun Kerman, pressing the muzzle of his massive gun against Bill's head.

"They are going to nuke us both, you know," Bill said.

"They wouldn't have sent us here if we weren't prepared to die for Karba," Doodgun grinned. "It's certainly one Moho of a way to go."

"Not if I have anything to say about that!" said Valentina Kerman, pressing her half of a sword up against Doodgun's throat.

"...I'm wearing a helmet, you know."

"Cloneus keeps these things sharper than cheese."

"Sharper than - What - " In Doodgun's moment of confusion, Valentina activated Katchic's laser-Katana that she had just barely managed to prevent from flying out of the window, and sliced Doodgun's gun in half! Bill Kerman turned around to punch him in the face, but Doodgun quickly overpowered Val and shook off Bill's blows.

"Omega-5 to all agents," barked Doodgun's radio. "May God be with you." All three turned around in horror to face Omega-5. They couldn't see it, but they could sense it - Her finger on the trigger, her finger further down on the trigger, and her finger all the way down on the trigger.

There was a flash as the air to air nuclear missile's motor ignited, but it was quickly overshadowed by an even larger explosion - seemingly out of nowhere, Omega-5 erupted in a ball of flame, her missile being diverted off to the side.

"TAKE COVER!" Bill shouted. All three of them ducked down into the fireworks turret as the active nuclear missile streaked across the sky. Time seemed to move in slow motion.

 

There was a bright flash as the warhead detonated. Off course, of course, but the blast wave ruptured nearly every window on the Kraken, and vibrated the wing so hard that the Kraken screamed in agony as her insides were snapped and twisted like twigs.

 

Among the components to be ripped off of the aircraft entirely were all of the fireworks turrets. Bill Kerman, Valentina Kerman, and Doodgun Kerman were all blasted out of the aircraft. The Kraken, bleeding, limped on through the sky, trailing debris as it went. Eventually, the trio would regain their senses and deploy their parachutes in time, but that hardly mattered now - what mattered was that they were out of the fight.

 

==========

 

"Black Panther is at your service!"

"Black Panther - What? You're on our side!" screamed Omega-5, falling out of the sky in her wrecked aircraft. "You shot me down!"

"I said, Black Panther does not fight with a rude squadron... And I believe Jebediah."

"Thank you, Black Panther," Jebediah said, frantically flicking switches on the Kraken's control panels alongside Bob. "Thank goodness we're still in the air... Barely."

"Not for much longer," said Omega-4, lining up his aircraft at close range.

"You're too close! You'll die!" shouted Jeb.

"And we're right over the city," Omega-4 said, pulling the trigger. There was another explosion from beneath the cockpit as Grenman set off another grenade, and the hatch yielded even further, setting off even more warning bells and severing some connections.

"No!" shouted Jeb, aggressively steering the aircraft, attempting to dodge the unguided missile, but from such close range - there was nothing that could be done.

Or rather, one thing could be done. Jebediah concentrated very hard, reached his hand out, and used up half of his remaining magic to shove the missile a few more meters out of the way, completing the dodge.

"What was that?" shouted Omega-4. "It just teleported!"

"Missed me!" Jebediah chuckled.

"No! You idiot! That missile was set to detonate on contact! It's gonna hit the city!"

"YOU idiot!" shouted Omega-3. "Why would you set it to detonate on contact?!?!?!?"

"Calculated risk," said Omega-4.

"What do you mean CALCULATED RISK?" Omega-3 shouted. "You just nuked a city!"

"It's a tactical nuclear weapon set to minimum yield. It might kill a few hundred, maybe a few thousand if we're unlucky. Jebediah is carrying a strategic nuclear weapon, capable of killing all 100,000 Kerbals in the city. Omega-3, fire your missile! That is an order!"

 

==========

 

Instantly, Black Panther, Shercott, and Gidrien dived towards the missile, which was now out of its fuel and falling like a bomb down to the city below.

"I'm here," said Black Panther.

"Can you shoot it?" Shercott asked.

"I can't hit that, they could barely hit you! Not with the pitiful amount of ammo I have left!"

"Okay, I have an idea," said Shercott, accelerating downwards in an attempt to intercept the missile.

"Shercott, no! I forbid you!"

"If I hit it, it's gonna blow up. And it will take out us three, and nobody else!"

"You two fly away, it's going to be me!" said Black Panther. "Nobody else has to die!"

"Nobody has to die at all," said Gidrien, steeling herself and taking a deep breath, pulling alongside the missile in a delicate dance.

"Just like Marie and David," gasped Shercott.

"But unlike them, I'm gonna survive." Marie, in a vertical dive, only a kilometer or two above the city, one hand on the controls, stood up into the airflow, bracing herself against the top wing, reached up, and very carefully plucked the nuclear missile out of the sky, sitting back down and placing it, rear side first, between her legs, and pulled up as hard as she could, the missile greatly limiting both her visibility and the travel distance of the control column.

"I can't look!" Shercott said, bracing himself for the bright flash and subsequent release of death, but it never came, Marie, flying between buildings, had just barely managed to pull out of the dive in time, and had successfully prevented the destruction of downtown Kabra.

"YES!" shouted Black Panther.

"Gidrien, you did it!" shouted Shercott.

"I still have to land with an armed nuclear weapon in my lap," Gidrien said nervously. "One that weighs like a third of what the plane does... Shercott, do these things have landing gear?"

"No, they were supposed to dock back with the Kraken or fall back to the ground defeated."

 

==========

 

"Look! They just stole a SECOND nuclear weapon out of the sky!" said Omega-4. "Shoot them before they nuke the city!"

Omega-3 sat in his half destroyed aircraft, in perfect firing position just behind the burning, bleeding, falling behemoth of an aircraft, finger on the trigger.

"What are you waiting for? FIRE!"

"Omega-3 to Gidrien."

"Gidrien copies."

"The nuclear missile can be disarmed by turning the recessed orange handle on the +Y side."

"Why are you HELPING them?" shouted Omega-4.

"They all just tried to sacrifice themselves to save the city," reported Omega-3. "We're not even over the city any more... If they were going to nuke it, they would have done so a minute ago. They're telling the truth... They are going to nuke the north pole base to save the world." The pilot of Omega-3 took his hand off the trigger.

"THANK YOU!" shouted Jebediah, frantically trying to keep the burning aircraft aloft, gradually pulling it out of its dive. "But I was telling the truth even more, there is no nuke! We were going to parachute in and unplug the machine!" There was a loud noise as another one of the Kraken's engines exploded from the damage it had sustained. "Bob, what's the time?"

"Ninety seconds until detonation, eighty seconds until we get there."

"That's only ten seconds to stop it! We don't have that!" Another engine exploded. "Now we definitely don't have it!" Jebediah completed his pull up out of the brachistochrone dive, just narrowly avoiding the surface of the polar ice caps, having traded altitude for airspeed, with no more altitude to give.

"I can go faster!" said Omega-3.

"I'm transmitting the coordinates, but in order to unplug it, you must - "

"I'm not unplugging it. I'm going to nuke it," Omega-3 said, activating afterburners at full power and surging ahead of the Kraken, breaking the sound barrier in his nearly wingless aircraft.

"Can we survive going through the blast?" Bob said nervously.

"I suppose it doesn't really matter as long as he gets there in time," Jebediah said.

"Omega-3 firing at targeted coordinates in three... Two... "

*BANG!*

Omega-3 exploded into flames under a hail of Vulcan cannon fire from Omega-4.

"Oh no you don't!" shouted Omega-4. The pilot of Omega-3 attempted to pull the trigger, now under 20 kilometers from the polar base, but the connections were already severed, and the trigger did nothing. The pilot bailed out as his aircraft crashed unceremoniously into the polar ice caps below, kicking up a debris field that was ingested into the Kraken's right hand engine bank, knocking out nearly half of the Kraken's remaining engine power.

"We're going down!" shouted Jeb. "Come on, just a few more kilometers!"

"Gidrien, can you throw your nuke into the base?" Shercott asked.

"I'm too far behind!" she said.

"What are we going to do?" Bob cried in desperation.

"We're going to ram it," said Jebediah. "That test room is on the top levels, just barely underground."

"You madman... Twenty seconds until contact, thirty until detonation," Bob shakily said, strapping himself into his chair, bracing for impact.

"I hope this works," Shercott said, pulling up and away from the impact side. Omega-4 finally had regained some semblance of common sense and was pulling away as well, as were Black Panther and Gidrien.

*BANG!*

Grenman's next grenade utterly obliterated the hatch and filled the hatch with smoke and Debris. Jebediah drew his revolver, and aimed it at the new entrance.

*BANG!*

Jebediah was thrown back by another grenade explosion that completely mangled the control panels, and buried him in the wreckage. The Kraken abruptly entered a shallow climb, losing precious airspeed and gaining altitude, now completely uncontrolled. Jebediah, trapped by the debris, quickly regained his senses, and spotted the control cables.

He tried, but he couldn't reach them.

He tried, but he couldn't move.

He looked around for any pieces of debris long and narrow enough to reach the pitch cables, but he did not find any.

"Jebediah," said Grenman, walking into the room, effortlessly tossing Bob Kerman out the now broken window, with a scream that very quickly faded. "Tell me the location of the nuclear weapon you stole."

"Grenman, please, push the nose down!"

"And die?" Grenman chuckled.

"We all will in moments!"

"Well if you won't cooperate, I'll remove the threat myself, then!" Grenman leveled the grenade launcher at Jebediah. "Any last words?"

Jebediah desperately looked around for anything he could use. Magic wouldn't be enough, not with how much he had left and the complexity of the control systems... And then he saw it.

"What about a last meal?" Jebediah asked from beneath the wreckage, gesturing towards the baguette the receptionist at the KSC had given him, neatly nestled near the top of a pile of debris.

"Uhh... Okay?" Grenman grabbed the baguette and handed it to Jebediah. Jebediah snatched it and shoved it as far as it would go, up to reach the Kraken's pitch control cable. The stale, expired baguette was solid enough to hold the gable in tension, and the Kraken began to dive again.

"You're a madman!" shouted Grenman as he wrestled with the broken control column in an attempt to reverse the dive, but to no avail.

"Yes," said Jebediah with a maniacal grin on his face.

The Kraken plunged downwards out of the sky. Grenman dug for the control cables.

"You'll kill us both!" Grenman desperately pleaded.

"The window's right there!"

Grenman stared at Jebediah for a second, a second that felt like eternity. He pulled out a grenade, pulled the pin, and after what could have been forever - put the pin back in, jumped out of the window, and deployed his parachute. He flew along the fuselage, dodging debris and columns of fire and smoke as the Kraken shot past at nearly Mach 1, far faster than it had been designed to fly, narrowly missing the Kraken's massive tail.

Jebediah Kerman held his breath and braced himself.

The KFB-01 "Kraken", the world's largest aircraft, smashed into the surface of the polar ice sheet, plowing a deep trench as it carried on by momentum alone, disintegrating and collapsing as she slowed.

Massive rainbow tendrils erupted out of the ground just in front of the nose of the aircraft, instantly growing to kilometers in length with a bright flash as the experimental Project K activated, sending a surge of gravioli and K particles across the face of the planet.

And then the flaming wreck of the Kraken collided with the underground test stand, creating a tremendous burst of light, visible from the Mun, and bathing the entire Kerbol system in an inconceivably intense blast of negative gravioli particles, thus bringing an end to the second ever flight of the Kraken, and the second ever test of Project K.

 

==========

 

"Jeb's dead!" sobbed Gidrien as she sobbed, flying over the flaming wreck of the crash site.

"No wait! I see his parachute!" said Shercott. "I think he got thrown out of the front!"

"His parachute's on fire!" said Gidrien.

"He's falling!"

"Yup, he's dead, he hit the surface pretty - Nope! He's alive! He just got up!"

"I'd love to stay around, but fuel is running low," Black Panther said. "Good job saving the world, that explosion looked quite nasty. I can't imagine the chaos that would have happened if it was allowed to happen even a fraction of a second later." Black Panther, in his Kerbin Mining Corporation Fighter 3, broke away and headed south, presumably towards Kabra's airport.

Gidrien and Shercott approached Jebediah and bailed out of their own battered jousters, deploying their parachutes and landing next to Jebediah.

"We did it," Jebediah said. "I can't believe we did it!"

"WE DID IT!" shouted Shercott. "WOOOHOOO!" As if to respond, the fire reached the Kraken's store of fireworks, setting off a massive fireworks show that would intermittently continue for the next several minutes.

"Wait, what happened to your nuke?" Jebediah asked.

"I uh, I just chucked it after I disarmed it."

"You just randomly chucked a nuke?" Shercott asked in disbelief.

"Ehh, can't possibly be worse than the one that actually detonated," said Jebediah, brushing the incident off.

"That base was fully evacuated, right?" Gidrien asked.

"As far as I'm aware," said Jeb.

"Wow... We just actually saved the world, didn't we?" Shercott said.

"Yup."

"I... I don't feel much different, just tired," Gidrien said.

"Well, it has been a long day," Jeb said, laying down in the snow and closing his eyes.

"Look!" Shercott said. "The Kraken! Someone just walked out of it!"

"What?" said Jeb, sitting up.

"There! Walking out of the fuselage!" All three began jogging the kilometer or so to the side of the crashed, burning aircraft.

"Of course!" said Shercott, out of breath, a few minutes later, as they approached the wreck. "Someone was living in there, someone had to be drinking the soda, and there wasn't any dust on that Kerbfleet book!"

"Is that - no. No way!" Jebediah said.

The old, hunched over figure with a cane had emerged from the side of the aircraft and was slowly making his way towards them. As they drew near, the figure lifted his head, showing his face to the trio.

"C - Cloneus?" Jebediah asked in shock.

"The one and only!" Cloneus chuckled.

"But you're dead!" said Shercott.

"Oh, I will be, sooner or later," Cloneus apathetically mused. "Probably sooner."

"That makes you the oldest Kerbal ever, though!" said Jebediah, astounded

"It's amazing the medicine that money can buy, but it has ran out."

"The medicine or the money?"

"Oh, both, I suppose," Cloneus muttered. "What meaning does money have any more? There's only so many times you can cause hyperinflation in the same bunker." Cloneus chuckled. "And there's only so much medicine in one bunker. But I digress. I was a dead man long ago, but I felt like I just couldn't die, like I was waiting for something. I guess this is what I was waiting for, Jebediah! I suppose it makes sense, you spent 20 years in a tin can waiting for me, and I spent 20 years in a bunker waiting for you."

"Cloneus, we need to get you to someplace warm, you aren't dressed for - "

"And what a light show that was!" Cloneus remarked. "Excellent piloting! I didn't wake up until halfway through!"

"You're not mad about the Kraken?" Gidrien asked.

"Heavens, no!" Cloneus laughed. "I considered trying to take her out for the insurance money once, this thing just wouldn't die. But it turns out that nobody would even insure the thing! She was always coming down eventually, I was a little disappointed when it just landed safely because of the war, thank you for giving her the ending she deserved! I am quite disappointed, however, at the loss of that original Kerbfleet book."

"Uhh... Sorry. Nobody else was in there, right?" Shercott asked.

Cloneus coughed. "No, everyone else slept beneath the hangar."

"You mean there was a bunker beneath the hangar?" Jebediah asked.

"Yes, Jebediah, and I know we had taken a bit of an... isolationist stance since everyone else reappeared, but we were working on stuff. I think you should know about that before I go. Here, take this." Cloneus took off his signet ring and gave it to Jebediah. "Show this to them, they'll let you in. Hopefully the technologies we've created can be of use to you."

"Cloneus, what are you talking about?" Jebediah asked.

"Good luck escaping the planet... I'm not quite sure what happened, but judging by the sky you'll need all the luck you can get."

"What are you  - oh." Gidrien looked up.

"Well, I suppose it's time, I don't have to wait any longer. Goodbye everyone, and thank you for the light show. I think I'm gonna head out before things really start getting crazy." And with that, Cloneus fell over backwards, dead of old age, looking up at the stars.

"Guys," said Gidrien.

"What?" Jebediah asked, looking up at the stars.

"It's just a bright star, that's all," Shercott said. "Maybe we blew Minmus up by mistake? I hope not, I've got friends up there!"

"No, that's not Minmus," Jebediah said, "And it's not a star, not any more at least."

"Oh," said Gidrien, her eyes widening.

"I think, when we crashed into Project K, something went wrong with time," whispered Jebediah. "Very, very wrong."

"Yeah, wait - the constellations look... weird, don't they? Just slightly off," Shercott said.

"We had two hundred years," said Gidrien in a scared, quiet voice. "Now... It can't be more than a few, can it?"

"Guys, please just tell me what that thing is!" Shercott pleaded.

"That's the Krion-B black hole," said Jebediah. "And I don't know why, but we're a whole lot closer to it than we used to be."

 

 

 

The Story Of Project Intrepid Will Continue...

 

 

 

 

[Watermel00n]

LETS GO FINALLY

All these old mission reports coming back, wonder if Project Kappa will be next.

[Ultimate Steve]

Chapter 57 - Picking Up The Pieces

Spoiler

The senior executives of the Kerbal Space Program waited anxiously in one of the conference rooms in the administration building.

In attendance were:

• Rick Kerman, chief financial officer
• Walt Kerman, public relations officer
• S.A.M. Kerman, head of the Experimental Engineering Division
• Sergeant T, chief security officer
• Gus Kerman, KSC vehicle assembly manager
• Kari Kerman, Research and Development lead
• Sandra Kerman, representative of Krypton Laboratories
• Jebediah Kerman, astronaut
• Jebediah Kerman, Minmus construction supervisor (attending virtually)
• Katie Kerman, Mayor of Minmus (attending virtually)

With an empty chair for Linus Kerman, chief scientist, and another empty chair for Wernher Von Kerman, chief designer.

The old grandfather clock in the corner kept ticking onwards.

"Will someone please shut that thing up?" Walt asked. "It's really bugging me."

"Yeah, it's like, every second matters now," Katie Kerman said. “I don’t need a second by second reminder.”

"I don't know what you're on about, you can just mute it seeing as you’re attending virtually," Sergeant T said. "I don't want to mess with it, it was a gift from Cloneus."

"Well, we've already destroyed enough of his stuff today, what's one more." Jebediah stood up from the table, made his way over to the clock, opened up the window, and with a grunt, pitched the entire device backwards, where it plummeted several meters to the ground below with one final dissonant clang of its bells. "Problem solved."

"Where are they..." mused Kari Kerman.

The doors burst open and Linus Kerman ran in, breathless, and took his seat. Everyone looked up at him with anticipation.

"Well, spit it out, no sense doing introductions!" demanded Rick.

"The new measurements suggest that Kerbol and most of its planets will be swallowed into the Krion-B black hole on Year 6, Day 389, plus or minus a few days. The planets not swallowed will be ejected into deep space to die a cold death." Everyone in the room erupted into expressions of despair.

"Today's Year 4, Day 174," Rick Kerman said. "Someone do the math?"

"426 days in a year, 6 hours a day..." Walt Kerman plugged the numbers into his calculator. "Two years, 215 days. 1067 days in total. 6402 hours. You mean I'm supposed to tell the general public that they have 6400 hours to live?"

"Better you than some amateur who's inevitably halfway through the calculations already," said Linus.

"But they're gonna ask for our plan," Walt said. "We don't even know our plan! How are we going to have a plan before this leaks? We can’t just tell them we don’t have a plan and expect them not to panic, but how can we make a plan in the time it takes them to simply just look up?"

"I don't even know the old plan at all," Sandra said.

"We were using secrecy to prevent people from panicking, and to try to get people excited, but I think now the opposite strategy is warranted," began Gus Kerman.

"So, just so we're all on the same page. What was the old plan?" Jebediah asked. S.A.M. Kerman opened his mouth. "The FULL plan, S.A.M.!" Jebediah snapped.

"Phase zero," Kari began. "Rediscover how to build, operate, and navigate large spaceships as practice for later."

"Phase one," Katie continued. "Create a colony and shipyard on Minmus to facilitate the construction of planetary evacuation ships."

"Phase two," S.A.M. continued. "Research, develop, and produce advanced technologies to locate and explore a world to colonize."

"And finally, phase three," Gus said. "Once we determine how to do so, build enough colony ships to evacuate all 5 million or so Kerbals on Kerbin to this new world."

"And let's go in order. What have we accomplished so far?" Jebediah asked.

"Phaze zero has launched 27 Intrepid Test Vehicles so far, 29 if you count all of the minis," Kari said. "A number of spares and unrealized concepts exist in storage. Of those 27, 16 reached orbit, of which 15 are still operational today, again counting the triplets as one. We have successfully reached every world except for Eeloo, Bop, Pol, and Vall, solved a number of mysteries, including the whereabouts of Valentina Kerman, and the nature of the Teddy Monster. We have successfully ascended from Eve, located three separate instances of successful or semi-successful hibernation, and demonstrated the operation of a ship that can carry nearly a thousand Kerbals. We have, however, underestimated the need for redundancy on these short journeys, and also underestimated the threats that they would face, leading to a number of simple failures cascading into catastrophes, and leading to a number of stolen spaceships."

"And what were you planning to do next?" Sergeant T asked.

"Well, explore more. Do search and rescue missions for any surviving Kerbals in the system. Investigate the possibility of life on Eeloo, I suppose."

"Thank you, Kari. Katie, you're up," Jebediah said.

"Phase one launched 1500 tons of supplies to Minmus to jump start a colony. The ITV-020 Philosopher of Time launched 916 Kerbals to Minmus, of which about 500 stayed behind to continue the construction of Minmusville, 400 of which went to Gilly. Despite intermittent at best resupply missions from Kerbin, we able to extract local resources, create a large space colony, extract large amounts of fuel, and domestically produce most of the non-electronic components for two Intrepid Test Vehicles. We were later planning on completing Drydock One, and beginning on the phase two ships, but Minmusville was severely damaged by that gravioli blast and likely needs to be completely rebuilt."

"Believe me," Jebediah 2 said, "if Minmusville was intact enough for me to be streaming from its spire, I would be doing so."

"Thank you, Katie and Jeb," Jebediah said. "S.A.M., you're up, please. Tell everyone everything. And I mean everything."

S.A.M. took a deep breath.

"The Experimental Engineering Division was founded a long time ago to create advanced technologies, back in the day we stumbled upon a sparkly asteroid in space around Dres."

"You knew about those?" Kari stood up and looked at him. "Send us all you know, we still don't know what we are dealing with here!"

"I will, but, please understand. Those boulders are extremely dangerous, but only if you know what you are doing. It is very hard to accidentally destroy a planet with them."

“The space pirates know what they are doing,” Kari said. “Who knows, maybe this elemental portal thing isn’t as insane as we think it does.”

“No, the space pirates do not know what they are doing,” Jeebdiah said. “I have reason to believe they might know someone who does.”

“Well, do tell!” Kari said.

“Guys, I was talking!” S.A.M. said. “I was about to reveal the entire plan, and you interrupted me?”

“Alright, then, we can put a pin in this whole sparkly asteroid thing, then,” Jeb said.

“Project K was… Well, is… An attempt to utilize the material in these sparkly asteroids to create a propulsion system of unspeakable power, one that could theoretically enable interstellar travel in mere weeks, or even days. But it is obvious we have bit off more than we can chew. We almost blew up Kerbin twice testing it, and we sent Kerbin into the future? We’re still analyzing the data on that… But we’re also working on time travel as well, without much success, but we got a lot of good data from, uh… dooming the planet… It was an accident.”

“Keep going.”

“We also have been working on other propulsion advances, such as the 2.5m Rapier and the clipped Mammoths. We have a fusion program, but it is fairly halfhearted. But the big stuff… For phase 2, we had three steps. Step one, locate a habitable world. In order to do that, in an operation called Project Searchlight, we used several dozen tons of silver, a local resource extraction setup, and the manpower of 400 Kerbals to embark on a project that would turn Gilly into a massive optical telescope, capable of identifying any habitable world in reasonably reachable distance.”

“I still think we should have just built it here, on Minmus,” said Katie.

“We anticipated better long term results in the lower gravity environment, but knowing what we know now, Minmus would have been a better short term option,” S.A.M. admitted. “It isn’t done yet, but it is getting close. Step two was to send K-drive probes to nearby candidate planets, and Step three was to send a crew to assess final habitability… Needless to say, steps 2 and 3 are no longer feasible to complete.”

“And that’s everything?” Gus asked.

“I mean, unless you want me to go into more detail on time travel.”

“Tell me what your name stands for,” Gus said. “Then I might believe you.”

“What? No, that’s a secret!”

“Tell him,” Jeb said.

“I’m only telling if Sergeant T tells first!”

“Twinkletoes,” Sergeant T admitted. “My name is Twinkletoes Kerman.” Rick Kerman stifled a laugh. “It’s not funny!”

“It kind of is,” Kari said.

“It stands for Secret Agent Man,” S.A.M. snapped. “Are you happy now?”

“Terrific, I’m overjoyed on this glorious day!” Gus sarcastically threw his hands up in the air.

“And Phase Three,” Jebediah said.

“We were going to build a prototype generation ship on Minmus,” Gus said. “There were a number of designs, but it was looking like we were going to build O’Neill cylinders. Creating something that could support people for that long was gonna be huge and a massive undertaking. There would have been thousands of these ships in the end, but then we found out that Valentina, then later Gene and Leah, and Tomfurt all managed to create hibernation setups. This would tremendously simplify our operations, but we have thus far been unable to safely recreate the technology.”

At that moment, Wernher von Kerman burst into the room and proclaimed “I’VE DONE IT!”

“You’ve done it?” Gus said excitedly.

“Yes! I’ve successfully entered hibernation and returned alive! Mostly! My pinky finger is looking kinda weird though, huh…”

“What was the problem?” Gus asked.

“Well there were like 15 problems, but the main one was that two of the computers weren’t communicating because the complete bodge of a UART connection we had involved soldering thin wires directly to SMD pads, but when connecting those with alligator clips we forgot we had to scrape off the insulating coating, which made the connections not really work, but - “

“He’s gonna talk for 2 hours if we let him, there are kinks to work out, but it works now,” said Gus. “First good news all day. That means we can build a lot of smaller ships with existing technology, assuming we can mass produce 5 million hibernation units in 2 and a half years. But we still don’t know what kind of planet we are going to land on or how fast, so we have to be ready for anything. We were going to wait for Phase Two to find something, but I don’t know if we are going to have that luxury any more. We were also going to send colony supplies beforehand, and an early team to set up the colony, but who knows if we can any more.”

“Alright,” Linus said. “That’s what we were going to do. Now here’s what we are going to do: We’re going to build the smaller but still big colony ships and design them to land on most reasonable atmospheric worlds, and start building them before we know where we’re going. Once we know where they are going, we’ll make any modifications we need to and then launch the ones we built one by one, and keep building and launching more until everyone’s out.”

“We’ll need to get everyone to Minmus,” Katie said. “We will need to rebuild the city as everyone’s arriving, and while building even more infrastructure!”

“Good,” Gus said. “We will need the practice for building our colony on our next homeworld as everyone’s arriving.”

“Okay, hold on,” Wernher said. “We won’t be able to launch people for the first bit of our time left due to not having the planes, and the last bit, we’ll be too close to Krion-B to escape. If we assume we have 2 years, our average rate of launching will need to be 16 Kerbals a minute.”

“Then we’ll launch 16 Kerbals a minute!” Sergeant T said.

“That’s a 96 Kerbal spaceplane every 6 minutes,” Wernher said. “If it takes three days to get there, three days to get back, and a day to load and unload, which is a great deal optimistic, we need a fleet of 420 craft. Four crew per ship, and no breaks, we would need 1,680 trained pilots. We barely have 100, and most of them are in space! And then there’s the fuel requirements! We can’t operate 420 spaceplanes! We can’t even land two of them reliably!”

“We can’t make the scaled up Rapiers that fast,” S.A.M. said. “We could barely make the four prototypes.”

“Then we will need to change our strategy,” Linus said. “What if instead of sending everyone all the way to Minmus, we just launched everyone to low orbit, waiting for a transfer ship? We could maybe get 200 Kerbals per flight that way, that’s only one every 12 minutes. We can launch each plane every two orbits, if there aren’t delays, so each flight will take, what, an hour and a half? That’s a fleet size of eight, a crew of 32. Plenty of room for spares and relief pilots.”

“The transfer ships can get their fuel from Minmus,” said Katie. “Or, refuel themselves. If we can take 1000 Kerbals a trip, we need one ship to depart Kerbin every hour, so we would only need like 40 or 50 of them, less if we go faster or can fit more people on each one. We’ve already built around 30 large ships, and we can reliably operate them and land them on Minmus, at least more reliably than we can land large spaceplanes.”

“And we already have one and a half unused Philosopher of Time class ITVs in storage to get us started,” S.A.M. added.

“I’ll get them refurbished immediately,” said Gus.

“If we can fit a thousand hibernating Kerbals on each ship, we need 5000 ships,” Katie said. “That’s about one per hour. If we can get a hundred thousand people up here all focused on cranking these out like tin cans, that’s a hundred thousand man hours per ship when we’re firing on all cylinders. That sounds like a lot, but we have to make EVERYTHING. The electronics, the hibernation kits, some of that is probably easier to make on Kerbin, but we don’t know how much. So, we need to get the man hours per colony ship down to at least that.”

“Rick,” Linus said. “You’re the finance guy, you’re great at cost cutting and economies of scale. We’re sending you up to Minmus as soon as possible, you’re gonna supervise that production line and get it going as fast as Kerbally possible.”

“Roger that,” Rick said.

“Double all those rates,” said Jeb 2. “We’ll need at least as much cargo as we do crew, both to Minmus and to the Homeworld.”

“But the logistics of planetary evacuation,” said Walt. “We’re going to need an industrial base to make all of this stuff, and a million Kerbal colony on Minmus, while also preparing the supplies necessary for a Homeworld colony.”

“Well, fortunately, tens of thousands of engineers around the planet just became effectively available,” Sergeant T said. “These past three years have been a few thousand nerds learning how to walk, being interrupted by war every few months. But now, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to see what a whole planet looks like running.”

“Alright. I can work with this,” Walt said. “We’re gonna build an evacuation city near the KSC to simplify logistics, then another city on Minmus. We’ve got to reallocate as much of our industrial base as possible to this effort. But we’ve done the math, and it is possible. I’ll start working on the press release, it will be out in the next half hour.”

“Don’t forget farming,” Sandra Kerman said. “You can’t just send 5 million Kerbals to Minmus and expect them to not starve. Or the Homeworld for that matter.”

“Younger me, I’m so glad I’m not you right now,” Jebediah said.

“This is not going to be an easy task,” said Jeb 2.

“Okay, didn’t we put a pin in something?” Sandra said.

“Right,” Jebediah began. “The space pirates are going on and on about magic and stuff… And we’ve heard them call those sparkly asteroids magic boulders, which makes me think they may be in contact with the monolith.”

“The monolith?” asked Sandra.

“Right, here we go… There are two ancient creatures that inhabit this solar system. The Deep Space Kraken, and the Monolith, eldritch creatures of chaos and order, respectively.”

“Wait, so there’s actual aliens?” Sandra asked.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Jebediah said. “I met the Kraken during the OCTAVIUS mission on Bop. They told me that they used to move planets, and they taught me the magic of this universe. Or at least an abbreviated version. They sought to control me, and almost won, but I managed to break free. We killed them, or so I thought.”

“Wait, so you have the powers of an ancient space wizard?” Katie asked. “Why don’t you just teleport the entire planet away?”

“I would, but the universe ran dry of magic long ago,” Jebediah said. “I have enough left to undo one, maybe two small mistakes. But the Monolith… The other ancient space wizard… Just as the Kraken took me as their apprentice, so to may the Monolith have chosen an apprentice, and I’d bet all my money, if I had any, on it being Tomfurt Kerman.”

“For real? The Flat Kerbin guy?” Linus asked. “No idea how he got past screening.”

“Ehh, practice,” Walt said. “We’ve got to launch the entire general public to space, and we need 10,000 starship captains. Gotta set the competence cutoff somewhere.”

“The point is,” said Jebediah, “I had one magic lesson by a hateful magician who barely told me anything, and for all I know, he was lying to my face. We have no reason to assume Tomfurt knows what he’s doing, but the Monolith… They have a plan. And if the Monolith thinks that these boulders are important… And are possibly a source of magic… And thinks we can escape the solar system by creating a new element using surface samples from every world… I need to talk to them. If it takes launching a hundred Asteroid haulers to Dres to gather enough Magic, maybe we can move Kerbin after all.”

“Yes,” said Linus. “I am a man of science, but in this situation, we need to pursue all possible avenues of escape… Except for Project K. That can wait until we are a little more desperate.”

“Don’t we need a surface sample from the sun for that?” Jebediah 2 asked. “Even with my piloting, that does seem rather hopeless.”

“Actually, if an atmospheric sample can be substituted… Maybe we might have a shot at that,” said S.A.M. “The Experimental Engineering Division has been working on some interesting heat shielding technology.”

“What about time travel?” Sergeant T asked.

“I’ll keep you posted on that,” S.A.M. said. “We don’t yet have a working prototype, but it might be worth a shot.”

“And don’t forget about me,” Sandra said. “Cloneus founded Krypton Laboratories underground mostly to keep everyone busy. We haven’t made anything revolutionary, but we have perfected a great deal of rocket parts that may aid you, for instance, ducted fans, and complete lineups of 1.875 and 5 meter rocket parts.”

“Alright, so it is settled!” said Wernher Von Kerman. “Two and a half years to escape this planet. I’ll work on perfecting and producing the hibernation gear. Walt will tell the general public and coordinate planetary logistics and morale. S.A.M. will complete project Searchlight, work on perfecting the larger Rapier engines, pursue time travel, and maybe, if we are desperate, resume theoretical, and possibly eventually practical work on Project K. Sergeant T will ensure that no disgruntled parties will disrupt the evacuation efforts, organize the defense of the space center from any more large scale attacks, and if necessary, deal with the space pirates. Gus will work on getting the Minmus transportation network up and running. Kari will work on colony ship design. Rick will deal with mass producing colony ships. Sandra will integrate the new parts into the supply chain. Jeb 2 will deal with the logistics of rebuilding Minmusville. Katie will deal with the human factors and production side of things on Minmus. And Linus, you will get better estimates of impact time, velocity, the Delta-V and times needed to escape the system, and which planets are being ejected versus swallowed.”

“Could we not just move to Laythe if it isn’t being swallowed?” Rick asked.

“And then we’d be drifting through space without a star,” Kari said. “We’d be dying a slow death at the hands of entropy.”

“I don’t suppose we could nudge Laythe a bit and set off a gravity assist chain that ends up with us orbiting the black hole system,” Sandra said.

“That would rely on about seventeen improbable things, including Jebediah and this so called Magic Boulder, but once I have better numbers, I’ll see if it can be done,” Linus said.

“Alright then, that’s it, meeting adjourned,” Wernher said.

“Hold on,” Jebediah said. Everyone turned to face him. “What about the Intrepid Test Vehicle program?”

“We’re going to shut it down,” Gus said. “It was a success. We figured out how to build and operate large ships. Now we need to put that knowledge into practice. We will soon no longer have the manpower to spare to waste on exploring the system.”

“Okay, sure, but we can’t just leave everyone that’s currently out there!” Jebediah protested.

“We’ve got maybe 1200 guys up there, maybe 200 not counting Minmus and Gilly,” Gus said. “We have 5 million Kerbals down here. I’m sorry if we can’t continue to spare custom experimental gigantic motherships at the drop of a hat.”

“The Independence isn’t even scheduled to get to Eeloo for another 2 years, what am I supposed to tell them? “Hi, yeah, you’re dead and we’re not coming to rescue you?””

“Yes.”

“Man, we really botched that transfer, five years to Eeloo, we’re a bunch of amateurs,” Linus said. “How could we possibly evacuate an entire planet in two and a half years if we can’t even do a simple Hohmann transfer correctly?”

“Okay, settle down,” Rick said. “We have plenty of unused ITVs in storage, and there will be a transition period between what we have now and full tilt evacuation. We can probably produce a handful of custom motherships, but it will have to be in the next month or two.”

“You’re in charge of that, Jebediah,” said Wernher. “Get as many of them home as possible.”

“Right then. We’re aborting the Jool mission.”

“But we can’t,” Linus said. “The space pirates have got our entire database hostage, they will delete it if we don’t deliver them the JAVELIN. We can’t get the Dragon Parade there and back in two years!”

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do, then,” said Jebediah. “Wernher, can you get me a hundred hibernation kits before the upcoming Jool window?”

“It will be a tight squeeze, and they won’t be of fantastic quality, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Alright then. The ships that we can get home, we’ll get home, but the others, we’ll send to Jool. We’ll complete all of our… unfinished business… there, and send a delivery of everything needed to retrofit those ships into interstellar hibernation capable vessels. Then, we’ll depart from Jool.”

“They aren’t going to trust us, you know,” Sandra said. “Yeah, we’ll just send you guys a bunch of borderline untested experimental equipment and ask you guys to fly between stars in prototypes that could barely fly between planets… Let alone how they’re gonna land. They totally won’t desert back to Kerbin at all costs! Those that can, at least.”

“If they won’t trust empty words, then I’ll go there myself,” said Jebediah.

“What?” said Wernher. “You’re mad!”

“As always, old pal. I want the conversion kits loaded onto the Intrepid before the Jool window. I need a full load of fuel and ideally some sort of ISRU setup. Assuming my crew is willing to come with me, we will depart and complete our business at Jool, and then depart for the Homeworld in the last few months or weeks.”

“And what if we never find the new Homeworld?” Walt asked. Jebediah took a deep breath.

“Well, we have to, don’t we?”

“But what if we don’t?”

“Well, we will. I’ll bet my life on it.”

“We all are.”

==========

“This is Jebediah Kerman calling all Intrepid Test Vehicles. You have doubtless heard the news by now. We are living in the final years of the Kerbol system, and the Intrepid Test Vehicle Program has been all but canceled. We still have a few more launches ahead of us, but we are now focusing almost exclusively on Project Homeworld. I have been tasked with ensuring your safety. Most of you will either be returning to Kerbin or consolidating at Jool. I will be personally delivering interstellar conversion kits in the ITV-009 Intrepid, and we will progress from there onwards to the Homeworld. With that in mind, here are your orders:”

“The ITV-011 Creativity is to continue her mission around Jool. Rather than remaining until the next transfer window, she will set up shop and wait for the arrival of the other ships for the next two or so years. During this time she will complete her science mission, set up shop for the next ships, secure the system against any possible space pirate threat, attempt to solve any pressing Joolian mysteries, and search the system for any survivors of the Sixty Minute War.”

“The ITV-015 Independence is to divert immediately to Jool as not enough time remains to complete an Eeloo landing, and no fuel remains to accelerate the process.”

“The ITV-019 Homecoming is to return to Kerbin at the next Dres to Kerbin transfer window, and is not to attempt further conflict with the space pirates. We anticipate their departure to Jool in the near future using a maximum fuel usage hyperbolic trajectory requiring a rescue. Do not follow them, if you arrive at the same time, we will likely not be able to rescue you both. Upon return to Kerbin, she will assist with the evacuation to Minmus.”

“The ITV-020 Philosopher Of Time will return to Kerbin at the next transfer window upon the success of Project Searchlight. Project Searchlight must not fail. Upon return to Kerbin, she will assist with the evacuation to Minmus.”

“The ITV-021 Ice Cream will continue her mission to Jool. Upon arrival, she will complete her planned construction and scientific objectives, and will then refuel arriving ships for their interstellar journeys, if necessary, completing hyperbolic rescues for any ships coming in particularly fast.”

“The ITV-022A Dr. Wily, the ITV-022B Marble Machine, and the ITV-022C Applesauce will complete their scientific objectives at Duna, search the system for survivors, although with three spare seats and so little time, there might not be much we can do, and then return to Kerbin at the next transfer window.”

“The ITV-023 Valkyrie will return to Kerbin at the next transfer window, but if needed, will stay as late as possible to return critical Project Searchlight personnel to Kerbin in the event that Project Searchlight runs long. Upon return to Kerbin, she will be retired or used as general cislunar transportation.”

“The ITV-024 Avalon will return to Kerbin at the next transfer window if hull integrity permits. If hull integrity does not permit, she will transfer her crew to the ITV-020 Philosopher of Time and be left in Eve orbit.”

“The ITV-025 Heart of Courage will continue her mission to Moho and complete her scientific objectives and strategic objective of recovering the ITV-013 Magician. Additionally, she will stay as long as necessary to search the planet for survivors and return them to Kerbin. The ITV-013 Magician will be returned to Kerbin as soon as possible and will assist in the evacuation to Minmus, and possibly, after a minor refit, the evacuation of the Mun.”

“The ITV-026 Flamedancer will complete her scientific mission at an accelerated timescale with fewer, more aggressive orbital passes, and then return to Kerbin. There are no post return orders at this time.”

“Lastly, the ITV-027 Dragon Parade will undergo a rapid interstellar refit if there is time, and depart for Jool, targeting the earliest possible arrival, to the extent of having minimal fuel remaining. If necessary, we will construct booster rockets and drop tanks to assist. The sooner the JAVELIN is delivered to Jool, the sooner we can stop worrying about the space pirates, assuming they keep their word. The ship will remain at Jool and complete scientific, search and rescue, and refueling objectives until it comes time to evacuate the system.”

“And lastly, the ITV-009 Intrepid will undergo a refit to add additional capabilities, and depart for Jool carrying the equipment necessary to modify herself, the Creativity, the Independence, the Explorer, the Ice Cream, and the Dragon Parade into interstellar starships. Our plans for additional Intrepid Test Vehicles are still very much up in the air at this point, we will keep you posted, but we will do our best to leave no stone unturned, and save every single Kerbal in the Kerbol system from the jaws of Krion-B.”

The Stories of Project Intrepid and Project Homeworld will continue…

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

And, two chapters in one day! The previous one had been sitting in my drive for a few weeks, not sure why I didn't post it earlier, but after so long, we have another gameplay chapter, most of which was done in the past two days. University is calming down a little bit now (but don't expect it to last haha) and instead of planning ahead for life I took the weekend to play some good old fashioned Project Intrepid. Meaning mostly, that I have to put up with craft that were designed by 2016 me!

I messed around with visual mods a bit, so the visuals may be inconsistent in places, but I think I've landed on a combination I like.

There's another third of this play session that didn't make it into this chapter and will be in the next one.

Chapter 58 - Starry Poles And Salty Oceans

Spoiler

There was a thunderous roar as the ITV-028 lifted off from the launch pad at the Kerbal Space Center with the power of several pallets of Vector engines, operated by a skeleton crew of four individuals.

The spaceship, one of three Philosopher of Time class Intrepid Test vehicles (also known as the Sagan class in early internal documents), had previously been mothballed along with her other sister as the original produced far too many Localized Adverse Graviolis. It was said that any Localized Adverse Gravioli detector (also known as a L.A.G. detector) brought within 2.5 kilometers of the ship needed re-calibration in order to be useful again.

Thus, the class was mothballed (and there wasn’t much of a need to bring 916 Kerbals anywhere). Indeed, the L.A.G. levels of the entire solar system had risen dramatically with the number of ships, so a lot of unnecessary hardware was stripped off of the ITV-028 in a (mostly in vain) attempt to remedy this. (Note from beyond the fourth wall: I think it has something to do with the IVA overlay functionality, or something else related to having a lot of (even empty) crew cabins. I stripped this down to so few parts and it still lags very badly. Might be why it performed fine in older versions. Might have to replace the passenger cabins with stand in cargo bays with ballast.)

However, there was a need for the vessel, a need its crew intended to fulfill - assisting in the evacuation to Minmus. The third sister had been left unfinished and wouldn’t be ready for a while longer.

The launch had occurred at a fortunate time, the whole planet had been stunned by the news, on the edge of either resolve or despair, but the rapid wheeling out of the vehicle from the hangar to the launch pad, in under six hours since the announcement, firmly tipped the majority of the planet towards the resolve side of the scale.

The ITV-028 was christened Deliverance and remained in Low Kerbin Orbit for checkouts, awaiting the first test flights of the new 200 Kerbal LKO SSTOs.

 

==========

 

“This is Steven Kerman of the ITV-027 Dragon Parade to the Kerbal Space Center, I’ve got those L.A.G. measurements you were talking about, and they’re not good.”

“This is Sandra Kerman at mission control - “

“They put you on mission control?”

“Shut up, nobody else was doing it.”

“No, I mean, congratulations! Sorry. Emotions are hard.”

“No problem.”

“Anyway, the detector is reading 805 - “

“Good heavens, how did that ever get approved?”

“Beats me.”

“Well, we have another idea for what we’re going to do with stuff. Feel free to undock the space fighter.”

“Finally, we’ll do so right away. Nobody ever wanted it. Good riddance.”

“Don’t get excited. It is still going to Jool, just not with you.”

“Bill Kerman, well, the other Bill Kerman, go for undocking!” There was a clunk as the space fighter dropped away.

There was a rumble as it fired up its engines and flew away into orbit, awaiting further assignment.

“Looks like we forgot to turn off the oxidizer tank before refueling everything, this ship is full of oxidizer!” Bill said.

“Another headache,” Sandra said. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”

“Steven to home, L.A.G. levels have decreased to 622!”

“Not the best, but passable… “

“Ugh, who designed this thing?” Bill complained. “There’s literally no way to generate power besides running the engines. So many parts, and they didn’t think to slap a solar panel on it.”

“They are considering replacing it entirely with something better,” Sandra said. “Sergeant T is taking command of all military forces of the Kerbol system… Well, it was supposed to be just the space assets… In light of the news, several cities have pledged their entire military might to the KSP, and all of that falls under Sergeant T’s domain… He is perhaps one of the most powerful men alive right now. Anyway, He wants you in Low Kerbin Orbit for the time being.”

“Got it.”

“Be aware, you may be assigned to a different ship.”

“Sure, anything’s better than this thing.”

 

==========

 

Over the past few days, packed with events, the spaceship Ultima, operated by the Order Of The Two Poles, had reached orbit and had successfully navigated to the Mun despite the Order having lost custody of Jebediah Kerman.

“This is Albert Kerman of the Ultima, calling the Kerbal Space Center.”

“Ugh, FINALLY!” Sandra said. “You know, it really would have been nice for you to call us earlier before we almost blew the planet to smithereens, arguably twice!”

“Oh, water under the bridge.”

“As you’ve probably heard in our numerous unacknowledged hails, sit tight where you are and we’ll send a rescue mission.”

“Negative, no rescue mission is required, nor requested.”

“You mean your amateur built ITV-level ship is doing just fine and isn’t falling apart?”

“Yup! Jebediah sure is a legend! Too bad he isn't our legend any more...”

“...Well, just know we have a couple 100 Kerbal spaceplanes we no longer need that can get to you, we were preparing them for launch, they will be here when you need them.”

“If we need them. The Ultima is perfectly capable of landing on Kerbin on her own, we even tested her!”

“Didn’t all the chutes rip off?”

“I’m pretty sure we fixed that - Oh, what’s that Gustav? We didn’t fix that? Ehh, no matter, we’ll just fly more carefully.”

“Anyway, so if it isn’t to request a rescue, why are you calling?”

“We’re about to brake into low polar Mun orbit, and we can’t decide between the north and south pole. We will do a visual survey if we have to, but we were wondering if you could send us some charts so we can select the best landing site.”

“I don’t think we have that, unfortunately… The radar data of the Mun from before the war is long gone, and all data we have now is purely visual, nobody has been to the poles in a good long while. Unfortunately, you’re on your own.”

“Right, it was a long shot. What about nauseometer calibration data?”

“That, we can manage.”

 

==========

 

The Ultima braked into a Low Munar Orbit, switching to its final stage.

Its crew approached both poles, looking for signs of the mysterious polar rifts that seemed to be cropping up all around the system, 

"There!" said Albert. "A slight rift in the north pole! Can you see it?"

"I can see it!" said Gustav. "Not much of a landing site, though."

"We're awfully close, are you sure we're above the minimum safe altitude?"

"Of course we are! I double checked and - Oh."

"Okay, well, for this orbit, at least, we were safe. We should probably raise it a bit for the next one, though."

Some time passed and the Ultima passed over the Mun's south pole.

"Look at that!" said Albert. "Beautiful! Not the ideal shape, but well defined!"

"And there's flat land!" said Gustav. "I think we have come to a decision!"

One orbit later, the Ultima fired up her main engine and slowly came to a stop right next to the south pole.

"Nauseometer reading 0.007," Albert reported.

"Roger that. You know, if it read anything but zero anywhere but next to the poles, we could probably make a latitude measuring instrument," Gustav mused.

"Hmm, good idea."

"Alright, we're within visual range!"

"Nauseometer 0.092 and rising."

"Hey, there's the pyramids!"

"We're really close now, concentrate, Gustav!"

"It would be easier to concentrate if you didn't bug me about it, Albert!"

"Right, sorry. Nauseometer 0.37. Much tamer than Duna's poles."

"Hovering... On this historic day, the Order of the Two Poles has - "

*THUNK*

"...Landed. Well, I've seen worse landings. Great job, Gustav!"

"Thank you, Alfred!"

"Alfred Kerman calling Kerbal Space Center mission control, about that rescue mission..."

 

==========

 

"Nauseometer 0.47," Alfred reported as he cautiously walked towards the Munar south pole. "The Duna mission didn't feel intolerable discomfort until after 7.6 or so, so we should be good for long term habitation at this distance."

"Approaching the pole now," Alfred said, while jetpacking. "Nauseometer 1.7, 1.8, 1.9... I've been waiting for this my whole life."

Alfred touched down and cautiously crept to the edge of the ridge overlooking the Munar south pole. This wasn't the exact vertex, but provided the best approach angle.

"Oh my - I see it!" Alfred cheered excitedly. "I can see the stars!"

"It's so... So beautiful..."

 

==========

 

The Order assembled and deployed one of their carried craft, officially designated the Pole Illuminator. However, it was quickly renamed to the Illuminati. If everyone was calling the Order a cult, they might as well lean into it all the way, they thought.

The purpose of the Illuminati was to take over the world illuminate the very dimly lit polar regions to survey the polar region and make way for the Order's equipment.

Of interest was the ridge of pyramidal spikes leading up to the north pole.

The Order counted ten peaks that could be visibly discerned. The ridge continued, but each peak quickly became less and less prominent to the point of not really being a peak any more. They named these peaks after the greek alphabet. Peak Alpha was the one closest to the pole, with the lettering increasing the further south you went.

In the middle of this image, Peak Eleven is shown, the first thing that can be called a peak after the eleven distinct peaks closer to the pole.

The pole was also dotted by a number of deep, steep pits of unknown origin. The Illuminati descended into one to measure it, and then, running somewhat low on fuel, returned to the Ultima. Its crew began unpacking the Order's scientific (or pseudoscientific, depending on how you ask) equipment, preparing the first in a series of experiments to harness the polar nauseometric energy.

 

==========

"So, given the news, what now?" Bobwig asked from his residence on the surface of Laythe.

“Well, seeing as we’re going to be here a while, I think we should do some housekeeping,” said Stabel Kerman, commander of the ITV-011 Creativity.

“We’re going to be based around Laythe, most certainly,” said Patfrey. “We’ll send ships out to Bop and Pol, and we may consider re-basing around one of those for refueling operations in a few years when the others get here. But for now, gravity and an oxygen atmosphere are of the utmost concern, though science expeditions to the other worlds are also of paramount importance.”

“Most importantly, we need to relocate to the coast,” Angie said.

“And your reasoning?” Miteny asked.

“Look how hard it was to land the Laythe Aeronaut III,” she said. “That narrow, tall wheelbase, with no control, it’s abysmal. I’ve tried to take it off in the sims several times, I haven’t succeeded once. If we can find a flat area down by sea level, flight operations go from virtually impossible to somewhat reasonable.”

“Great, now the planes aren’t working,” said Miteny.

“But what about the ore?” Bobwig asked.

“There’s still some ore on the western coast… We could move to another island, but we really can’t, as that mining rover can’t swim. We’ll just have to hope it is enough, because landing here repeatedly for years is a non-starter.”

“Woohoo! Road trip!” Bobwig shouted.

“What we really need to do, though,” Podpont said, “Is to redesign the plane.”

“The next plane is two years away,” Miteny pointed out, “And we aren’t going to leave Bobwig down there that long, I hope.”

“I’ll gladly stay if it means not having to endure any more of Miteny’s yapping!” Bobwig joked.

“Just use the EVA construction tool!” Gemna said.

“The what?” everyone said at the same time.

“The EVA construction tool, duh. Bobwig is an engineer, he can move things around. We can extend the wheelbase, move the elevons, detach the sepratrons, and make the aircraft into something slightly better.”

“Wait, you mean we had this the whole time?” Bobwig asked.

“Uhh, yeah?” Gemna said. “I remember training with it back on Kerbin.”

“Huh, I don’t… Weird. That would have been very useful earlier.”

“I swear, this entire crew is suffering from severe memory loss! It’s like that time y’all forgot we had EVA parachutes!” Gemna scoffed.

“Alright, moving rear landing gear… Wow, this tool is ridiculously intuitive… Moving front landing gear… A bit weirdness. Now, the elevons… I don’t know where the center of lift is, but in order to get this thing off the ground, its gonna need to be a canard configuration.”

“I can tell you right now that it’s too slightly forward and will pull up and stall if you try to take off in that thing,” Gemna said.

“You don’t even have a calculator out!” Miteny said.

“Oh, right, most people need those, my bad, sorry.”

“She does lift calculations in her head, then apologizes!” Mojorie said.

“You know,” Angie said, “I bet those bow planes on the submarine would be better used here.”

“Fantastic idea!” beamed Gemna. “That should put the centers in just the right spot and also allow for better control authority. Quite frankly, I have no idea what the original designers of this craft were thinking, it is almost like this entire mission was dreamed up five years ago by a high schooler in half an hour in a mexican restaurant in a notebook.”

“How oddly specific,” Podpont remarked.

“Alright, I’m done with the modifications,” Bobwig said. “Angie, you ready with the remote control?”

“As I’ll ever be… Here goes!” Angie lit both Juno engines and steered the Laythe Aeronaut III downhill in preparation for the takeoff run. Everyone held their breath as the only means of long range exploration thundered down the takeoff strip…

“Woah, that’s quite the angle of attack! I’m basically flying this thing in a permanent stall!” Angie said.

“Try to fly it down that canyon, it should get better,” Podpont said.

“The first thing we’re doing when we get down there is deploying the submarine,” Stabel said. “That thing’s gonna perform so much better without that extra mass.”

And so, Angie flew the Laythe Aeronaut III westwards along the Laythian island.

“Huh, this doesn’t look like a great landing spot.”

“Sensors show a flatter spot further south,” Patfrey said.

“The further south we go, the less ore we get,” Miteny cautioned. “We can’t run the drills below a certain point!”

“That’s a problem for a little later,” said Bobwig. “We’re at 11 percent up here, we don’t really need that much for the small amount of refueling we will be doing.”

“There!” Angie said. “That’s a good flat area!”

“Angie, you’re stalling!” Patfrey said.

“Oh no - AAAHHH!”

“Oh. A bit shaky, might need to adjust the friction control, but that’s much better. It was so difficult to land this thing up on the mountain, and here we basically crash landed it into a dune and it stayed on its wheels!”

“Good job, Angie!”

“When we go down, please don’t stall us and crash us into a dune!” Miteny said.

“Now, to drive 30 kilometers,” Bobwig said.

“You know, your rover could use some modifications too,” Gemna said. “If I were you, I’d stand it up on its side and move the wheels down, axially out, and maybe a small amount laterally out. You’re coming awfully close to hitting the terrain with that radiator, and any slight incline is gonna absolutely tank the entire craft if you’re going anything over 5 meters per second.”

“Thank you for the insight, Gemna, I’ll see what I can do.” “How in the world does she know that?” Bobwig thought.

 

==========

 

After some time fiddling with the wheels and coming up with a solution Gemna praised as “Adequate,” Bobwig Kerman discovered the wonders of MechJeb’s rover autopilot.

“It’s so great!” he shouted. “At no point in time do I feel in danger of crashing! I can’t believe I’ve been manually driving for years!”

“Self driving cars, am I right?” Angie chuckled.

"Frankly, I don't know how they expected me to drive this thing normally, given the absolutely wonderful view I have from the driver's seat."

(From author: I would crash this thing every kilometer. MechJeb did 20 kilometers, straight shot, downhill, zero crashes. I’m never going back!)

After the drive was complete, Bobwig pulled up to the Laythe Aeronaut III to test the drills. He klawed on, turned on the equipment, and sat back to read a story on his Kpad.

After a full day of testing, it was determined that, at least in daylight, the rover could produce a paltry 5 liquid fuel every 40 minutes, which amounted to roughly 25 per day.

“This sucks,” Bobwig proclaimed.

“It wouldn’t suck so bad if we had more power,” Angie said.

“Wait, hold on… I’m still getting power. The sun is down, this shouldn’t happen!”

“Check the craft schematics? That’s odd… Is Laythe perhaps transparent?” Podpont posited.

“Aha, found it!” Miteny proclaimed. “There’s an RTG in the submarine… How did we forget that?”

“Looks like we’ll have to steal it after we’re done with the sub, or transfer it between a few different uses,” Gemna said.

“Hold on a second… We are extremely power limited right now,” Bobwig said. “We can’t even power one small drill, let alone the other one, or the very power hungry ISRU unit. This is the one place where power matters, on the rest of the ships, everything beyond a single panel is basically just there for aesthetics.”

“I’ll go EVA now to check it out!” Stabel said. After a brief delay, Stabel had approached the Laythe SSTO.

“Alright, so good news, we have an RTG on the SSTO that we can pilfer. We can replace it with some small solar panels from what little of the TYLO ARMY remains, they have way more than they need.”

“Wonderful, that will double night time production and significantly increase daytime production.”

“Okay, this is gonna be a bit unpopular, buuuuuut… The Creativity herself has six Gigantors.”

“I always thought the 3 by 2 arrangement looked kinda stupid,” Miteny said. “We can go down to 2 by 2, if you can find room to put them on the SSTO for transit.”

“Already done!” Stabel said.

“And it is possible that we can even bring them back up when we are done!”

“Fantastic, problem solved!” Gemna said. “The next step, however, is to actually land.”

“Right then,” Podpont said. “I’ve been simulating this enough, let’s do this.”

“And, you know, even if we can’t get the refueler working at full tilt,” Patfrey said, “Now that we’re not going back home, we have a lot of extra liquid fuel in the Creativity’s main tanks. While refueling the sub and the exploration plane may prove difficult, we don’t really have to worry about how many trips we can make with the SSTO, within reason, at least... Well... Actually, that thing uses a LOT of oxidizer... So maybe we'll have to worry about oxidizer but not liquid fuel. I don't know, we'll see."

==========

“Hello there!” Jebediah Kerman approached the monolith.

“...Hello?” Jebediah stood, as did the monolith.

“Look, I know I never paid you a visit, even though you were right here, and I know I’ve been rather irresponsible. And I know I’m the apprentice of your worst enemy and all that. But can we just talk for a while?”

“No.”

“Ah, so you can talk! Why don’t you want to?”

“I can only change things in the name of order,” the monolith replied.

“How much does Tomfurt know?”

“As much as he needs to.”

“And I suppose if you aren’t gonna tell him anything, then you sure aren’t gonna tell me anything.”

“Typical Jebediah. Very clever, often just barely too late.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you know who to call.”

“I cannot call.”

“I mean, I can get  you a cell phone? See you at Jool somewhere. Good luck with the surface samples!”

“Wait,” the monolith said.

“What, now that I’m walking away, you want me?” Jebediah said, exasperated.

“Deliver me a surface sample from Kerbin.”

“I’ll do that if you tell me everything I would understand about how magic works, the magic boulder, this portal thing… I just want to know.”

“I will not teach you.”

“Well, then here’s your surface sample!” Jebediah scooped up a chunk of dirt and tossed it lightly at the monolith.

“You knew what I meant.”

“And you know what I meant. And unless you want to let me in on what the Bop is going on with this universe, even just a little bit, you’re gonna have to get your Kerbin surface sample from somewhere else.” Jebediah turned around and walked away, and the monolith said no more.

 

==========

 

“This is commander Ermore of the ITV-015 Independence calling the Kerbal Space Center.”

“Roger that, Independence, reading you loud and - Ah, right. Light speed delay,” said Sandra, tired after a long day of attempting to control the space program’s various solar system assets.

“We have received your message about Jool diversion and we will not be following your recommendation. We will proceed to Eeloo. Our crew is dedicated to unveiling the mystery of Eelooian life, even at the expense of our own. That being said, if you can put together a crewed mission to Eeloo in short order, we will divert, if not, please try to ship us some express hibernation kits. Surely you can spare a small ship. Anyway, we’re gonna play around with lightening the ship, our Delta-V is a tad low. That’s all, have a great evening. Ermore out.”

“Great,” Sandra let her head fall into her hands, and her hands onto the console. “Gene, how did you ever manage this… Hey Gus! Jeb! We need another ITV!”

“What now?” Jeb asked, looking up from his pile of schematics and calculations, obviously very sleep deprived.

“The Eeloo gang isn’t gonna divert, they want us to send them kits or a different Eeloo crew.

“Wonderful, another space mutiny,” sighed Jeb.

“I’m beginning to see why Sergeant T wants to have a space force so much,” Gus said.

“Well, if we can spare enough ships for the space force, we can probably get something to Eeloo,” Jebediah sighed.

“Looks like someone needs more coffee!” Kari said, cheerful and perky as ever.

“No thanks, it is too late… I’ll much better be able to work the problem after a good night’s rest.”

“Ditto to that,” Sandra said.

“Good night, everyone, I’ll see you all tomorrow,” Jebediah said.

“Good night, Jeb!” Gus yawned from his desk. “I’m gonna try to get the plans for the third Sagan finalized, then it's lights out for me… Might not make it, though.”

“Alright, don’t exert yourself too hard.” Jeb walked out of mission control and shut the door.

 

==========

 

"Alright, are we all go?" Angie asked.

"I'm go," said Podpont.

"So am I!" said Mojorie.

"Ready as I'll ever be!" Gemna proclaimed.

"Who on Kerbin designed that thing," Miteny scoffed over the radio. "You can't even use two of the seats, they are too close."

"We will fix it on the surface," said Podpont. "Anyway, hang tight up here, y'all. I'll see you down on the surface in a few days or weeks!"

"See you! Don't crash the thing!" Patfrey said.

"Okay, this is ridiculous!" Miteny said. "That thing doesn't even have RCS? How did we dock it in the first place?"

"Beats me," Angie said. "Radio home and tell them to send better aircraft with the next wave of ships."

"I would, but why would they?" Stabel said. "There's just not much reason to explore at this point, beyond search and rescue, of course."

"Perhaps for redundancy," Gemna said. "We do only have one of each, and as we've proven, it is very, very easy to crash stuff."

"Good point, I'll let them know that," Stabel replied.

A short time later, the Laythe SSTO (the actual name of which had been lost to the sands of time, but the crew had come to call her the Laythe Aeronaut IV) de-orbited, and began a long, cool, slow re-entry. A textbook descent.

Well, textbook besides the inversions needed to keep the gigantors cool while still reaching the landing site.

"Hey, I can see you guys from here!" Bobwig said. "Welcome to Laythe!"

"Hi Bobwig!" Angie shouted. "I'd wave, but this thing only has screens, no windows! Whose idea was that? That's the stupidest idea ever, not having windows on a spaceship..."

With much less protest than the exploration jet's earlier landing attempts, the Laythe SSTO touched down on the flat area of the beach.

The flat part was a decent distance away from Bobwig, but still within easy taxi distance, especially as most of it was downhill.

"And, wheels are stopped!" Podpont proclaimed.

"Excellent flying, Podpont!" Angie said.

"We're here!"

"It is very good to see another face again, and an intact way off this rock!" Bobwig said as he ran over to hug the four additional Kerbals who now called Laythe home.

"Gemna, I dare you to take your helmet off!" said Mojorie.

"Isn't the atmosphere poisonous?" Podpont asked. "Like, didn't Jebediah Kerman almost die due to ammonia poisoning his first time here?"

"That depends entirely on how long the terraforming machines ran after the war started," Gemna said. "That ammonia is like the one thing preventing Laythe from being mostly habitable. Given how often they broke down even with a supply chain, chances are that a few weeks or months after the war started, they all broke, and Laythe's atmospheric ammonia composition is like 80 or 90 percent of what it was."

"Hmm, well, I'll get the spectrometer - "

"Oh, there's no need for that!" Gemna said, yanking off her helmet, much to everyone's panic.

"Uh... Huh," she said. She took a good long look around, took several deep breaths, and gazed up into the sky.

"Gemna, get your helmet back on!" Podpont demanded.

"No, hold on," Gemna said.

"What is it?" Mojorie asked.

"Smell for yourself," Gemna responded, opening up Mojorie's helmet.

"Oh!" she said. "But how in the world - "

Angie and Bobwig took off their helmets, followed shortly, with a sigh, by Bobwig.

"Not a hint of ammonia to be found," said Podpont.

"Which means?" Bobwig asked.

Gemna smiled. "It means that there's someone, or a lot of someones, out there, and they have been keeping those terraforming machines running to this very day."

"Well then," said Angie. "I guess that means we've got our work cut out for us. Let's find them, and rescue them." 

 

The Story Of Project Intrepid Will Continue...

 

 

[IntellectualTortoise]

So glad that this story is continuing and I can't wait for more!

I like how in a lot of planetary evacuation stories in sci-fi, limited resources (and the plot) necessitate that some people be left behind to face the apocalypse, but the Kerbals are willing to work their butts off to evacuate everyone in the system! Definitely gives the story a more wholesome mood.