Journal of a Space Miner 2

Entry 2

"This week was like no other in the galaxy. The Mastodon, a long-lost mythic spaceship from the old Safa’ary fleet named the Herd, has resurfaced. It is beyond the bounds of possibility to separate the tales from reality about what happened to the Herd over the past centuries… but one thing is sure, someone -or something- has drawn the old fleet from the depth of the universe back into our galaxy.

Whispers of sightings of smaller ships like the Ape-X or the unmistakable Dogg’O had become a little too common in space taverns to be ignored by the inquisitive minds of the BlackPool space apes. Those guys are always on high alert, as you know! So I decided to help them out, obviously. Who the hell wouldn't be intrigued by old tales of fascinating spaceships coming to life, right?

Of course, rumours travel fast and it wasn’t long before whispers turned to headlines: Behold! The Herd is here!

I got pretty close to the action and it turns out, the Safa’ary people may have abandoned their home some centuries ago, but they did not lose any of their might. The old fleet, composed of Ape-X and Dogg’O vessels turned privateers, calling themselves the Barrel Squadron, had been roaming the galaxies seeking profitable comets to mine. But something didn't add up, they were too well coordinated, too organised, too effective to be a mere squadron of old freebooters.

The BlackPool space apes could smell it, the Barrel Squadron was not operating alone. After months of research, of dead ends and accidents, our perseverance finally paid off and we caught a glimpse of a monumental spacecraft, the G-Raff. The battle-hardened longship is said to have outpowered so many spacecrafts that whole civilisations of space pirates fell under the colossal blasts of her guns… Now, that may be a wee bit more legend than fact, but it does justice to the incredible longevity of such an elusive nomadic fleet. Nonetheless, as mighty as the G-raff can be, our hearts were beating for another legend to be true.

We could feel the noose tightening. With the G-raffs located, the space apes were relentless and tales of the mythic mothership turned to clues, directions, drawings...

We were getting real close, the Mastodon had to be real! Space apes grew wild and unstoppable as they kept finding more evidence of a huge spacecraft being closer and closer. Variations in local gravity fields were getting more and more frequent, something gigantic was here recently...

And there she was. She was no legend anymore, an indescribable might. Space pirates live and die without seeing anything even remotely close to this: the last ship to have escaped the Sanctuary hangar a thousand years ago, was here.

The Mastodon is here.

** Communication ended **