- "I can swear someone somewhere is watching me."
Ok guys this one has been on my mind lately. The details that we have just don't add up. How does a tanker with an experienced crew wind up over 5000ly off course without any sort of jump-drive or whatever? Anyway, here's my write up. Hopefully someone out there might have a nugget of knowledge that can help shed light onto this cold case!
- "I can swear someone somewhere is watching me."
The LWSS Anastasia was a privately registered Argosy that was discovered adrift 28ly from the gravitational center of the NGC-3446 (Closest named system, Persephone: NGC-3440) red giant on August 3rd 2271, nearly 5672ly off its intended course. The NSV Cydonia, captained by Miroslav Malina, found the LWSS Anastasia in decent overall condition, with no evidence of external damage. Initial investigations found no evidence of the ship's crew. On the second sweep of the ship, the crew of the NSV Cydonia assessed the ships engines to ascertain if it might be skeleton crewed, and discovered the remains of Deck Technician Jozef Biskup within the aft auxiliary CDX Fusion Boiler's interior chamber.
Jozef Biskup's body was autopsied aboard the NSV Cydonia by Staff Surgeon Amaya Palmer. Biskup succumbed to a combination of exposure and internal bleeding induced by blunt force trauma. Five of his ribs were fractured, his left arm was broken at the elbow. Examination of the boiler's exterior reveals that Biskup was forced into the chamber and welded in. Biskup was wearing his standard jumpsuit, a stripped toolbelt. Both his emergency oxygen canister and skinsuit were missing from his person. No other crew, nor remains were located.
A Confederate tow crew successfully pulled the LWSS Anastasia from its delaminating orbit and returned it to dock on August 30th 2271. Official investigations found now evidence of foul play beyond Biskup's corpse. All crew belongings were in place, including a cold cup of coffee on the bridge. No lifeboats or lifepods had been ejected. Terrestrial dirt was found near an equipment rack in the aft of the ship in an engineering closet. A crowbar, a signal tuner, two flare packs, and a high capacity energy cell were all missing from the closet when contents were cross referenced with the maintenance manifest.
Both the official Confederate investigation and a private investigation hired on by the family of First Officer Iris Watts found no evidence beyond what's already been presented. Or, as the 'feds wrote it; “The LWSS Anastasia lost her crew and course under unexplained and extraordinary circumstance, that of which are not known.”
- "I can swear someone somewhere is watching me."
So what do y'all think? Sorry for any mistakes I might have made. It was hard to make this both an interesting post and an informative one. I don't have access to the autopsy report from the Cydonia unfortunately, so its hard to glean much more information about Jozef Biskup than what's been released on the few press articles about the LWSS Anastasia by the 'feds. I've put in an information request with their central database but haven't gotten anything back yet.
Edit: Hey, big news! The Confederate Central Shipping Database got back to me and they thought it prudent to share me the full blackbox flight log! I'm no expert on Huhtamo blackboxes, so I've sent it off to JumpingBreen from the NAKED SUN report for analysis, since I know he's an expert on these sorts of things.
- "Professional inquiry only."
Hey guys, this is JumpingDean here, it looks like the Anastasia's blackbox was thankfully fully functioning. It hadn't been dumped since 2269 (yikes!), so I'll cut to the interesting bits. If you want to see the full log yourself you can DM me or SempleBobert for the archives (they're split up by month and compressed, it was a bit of a hassle to get them human readable).
On June 20th 2271 Anastasia passed by Jadzia (NGC-2241), the traffic control ping registered them at system border (10ly) fully en-route. They had been traveling for 10 days at sub-light speeds and making good time too. Doesn't look like anything was wrong there.
On June 30th 2271 they passed by Nexus (NGC-2246), just a system over, though this time they passed through system space proper rather than at a the border.
We have a gap at the start of the July record, but it looks like the IFF system couldn't get any pings out to any traffic control in the area. Plotting the coordinates over a starmap shows that the Anastasia deviated from its course. It looks like RCO Darian Mills switched the system to track local sub-space pings rather than scanning for FTC towers. This seems weird? Well not really, its standard practice when you head off of the standard star-lanes and fly through empty space. Essentially you make a 'comms bubble', which means you can't get incoming pings, but your outgoing pings are a lot louder. I've shot a few emails to the FTC tower out in the Zebetrious nebula (NGC range 2250-2300) to see if they registered the Anastasia passing through their local empty space, since they do cover that area.
Reviewing further flights that XO Arthur Cadwaller was on reveals that he served as the First Officer on a smaller civilian transport ship, the UBA Leithe 2, which on 3 separate occasions used this 'shortcut' between Nexus (NGC-2246) and Arrakis (NGC-2320), so that all lines up.
Except Arrakis FTC never appears to have registered the Anastasia. At least their public record doesn't show that, and the blackbox doesn't register it either. I hit up an old friend of mine who used to be in the FTC circuit and well, Arrakis FTC has nothing on their internal logs at all.
So this is where it all starts getting weird, because the next entry registers a local FTC ping at Turin (NGC-3278), which is pretty close to where the Anastasia was found. Between these two entries, that's a total jump of about 4500ly. Which, even with a bluespace drive (which the Anastasia didn't have, remember its a subspace vessel) isn't possible. How does an Argosy without a bluespace drive move that far in such a small amount time? Even if, hypothetically they say, managed to somehow convert their CDX boilers into some sort of magical engine that sped faster than any known engine, how did they do it without being spotted or being picked up on any sort of radar system. Hell the bluespace ripples if they were to jump that fast as well! Really its just baffling its just like they blinked from point in space to another.
The blackbox never registered anymore FTC pings after the logged entry from Darian Mills changing the comms mode, because it never got switched back to standard operations. So I guess the crew disappeared somewhere in that timeframe between registering at Nexus and then Turin, which gives us about one week of time to work with where the Anastasia is entirely unaccounted for.
After that the logs really just cover information we've already got, the ship drifts, it keeps broadcasting in localized sub-space, FTC pings pick it up but just get the registry and its operating mode, so the automated systems never raise red-flags because of the comms mode. That's it really. I've never seen anything like it. Thoughts?
- "I can swear someone somewhere is watching me."
Hey here are the images rom the case files for those who can't load 'em. (They're thumb-nailed bcuz they're pretty large, so click to enlarge.)
These were taken after visual contact was made over NGC-3446's gas giant.
