"Every person here is a successful, experienced soldier. You've survived battles, emergencies, and plenty of unwelcome surprises. We're survivors. Trouble. And sending us out beyond the Light Wall is their way of getting us out of the way. It doesn't matter if you were part of the Federation or the Republic, because neither of them survived the war. Unfortunately, that means that any victory during the war, as a whole or a single battle, doesn't matter anymore. I realize that is painful to hear. Everyone sacrificed so much, and we lost so many. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter anymore. The memory of the war is erased as soon as it's over. The new government and most of the population don't want to think about it, let alone see reminders of it every day. Which means they definitely don't want to hear any of us telling war stories or mourning those who've gone. It's not fair and it's not right, but it is the way things go after a war. And this is our only chance to change their minds."
The bay doors slid open behind Finley, giving the crew their first glance at their new home.
The UES Loss was…not magnificent. A fancy patchwork quilt at best. Made from leftovers of greater ships that didn't quite fit together without a little trimming and a lot of stitches. Her core frame was the oval shape of a Mercy-class warship, the fighting backbone of any space force from Earth. Her Hell Engines were stolen from a Faith-class star cruiser. She had wide-range omnidirectional sensors from a Hope-class frigate and a core mapping system from a Curiosity-class scout ship. Her armament contingent was massive and a mix from pretty much every level of warship currently offered, and a few that had been decommissioned during the war.
She even had an Ion cannon from a Perseverance-class carrier, the rarest weapon found among the Earth fleets. The superpowered weapons were costly to build and had been limited to the carriers that sacrificed speed and maneuverability to carry massive amounts of troops and supplies.
There was a solar sail tucked away, and from the outside, you couldn't see any hint of the treasures locked away inside.
"That's the ugliest ship I've ever seen." Beau Callahan winced. The human race had come far enough along in their space travel that new ships were designed with an eye to beauty as well as function and the UES Loss resembled more of those first few years when they were stumbling into space and throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck in terms of finding a working design for a ship.
"There's more to her than meets the eye," Finley said. She already looked terribly fond of the Frankenstein looming over them. "Our mission is to reestablish contact with the universe beyond the Light Wall. It has been almost a hundred years since the human race ventured beyond the Milky Way, and over a decade since we've gone beyond the wall. There's no telling how things have changed in that time. Whether the Alari are still our allies. Whether any of the colonies established before the isolation have survived. They are sending us to record change, but what we will really be doing, is exploring an entirely new universe and we have no way of knowing what's waiting for us beyond the Light Wall."
~ tbc