The Gilgamesh

The Gilgamesh is an ark ship carrying five hundred thousand humans away from a dying Earth. Most of its passengers remain in suspension while a small Key Crew operates the vessel. The ship follows star maps recovered from Old Empire wreckage. Its journey lasts thousands of years.

Description

The Gilgamesh has a fusion reactor, suspension chambers, shuttle and drone bays, and a forward facing anti asteroid array. Its crew section rotates to provide artificial gravity. The ship was built to last, but its exterior suffers micro impacts and vacuum erosion during the voyage. After the crew salvage technology from an abandoned terraforming station, they install a more efficient fusion reactor and improve the ship’s drive, shielding and security systems.

History

After about eighteen hundred years of travel, the ship wakes Holsten Mason, chief engineer Isa Lain and commander Vrie Guyen to investigate a signal. It leads them to a green planet guarded by the Second Brin Sentry Habitat. The satellite, controlled by Doctor Avrana Kern, forbids them from approaching the planet and takes control of the Gilgamesh’s systems. Kern eventually gives the ship new star map destinations. Guyen also sends colonists to a moon in the system to establish a base before the Gilgamesh departs.

Colonists reject Guyen’s plan to send them to the moon. Armed mutineers seize Holsten and Lain and escape in a shuttle, hoping to reach the green planet. Kern takes control of the Gilgamesh and the shuttle. The escapees survive and are recovered. The ship later leaves the system, but the moon base fails. Its people die before the Gilgamesh returns.

At another terraforming station, the crew recover technology and refit the ship. Guyen uses the station’s upload facility in an attempt to copy his mind into the Gilgamesh’s computer. The upload leaves damaged copies of him in the system, which interfere with ship functions. Lain and her engineers contain the copies, but the ship continues to deteriorate. Its suspension chambers fail, and generations born aboard the Gilgamesh help maintain it.

Role in the story

The Gilgamesh returns to Kern’s system because it can no longer keep travelling and the human passengers need a place to live. By then, the spiders on the planet have built an orbital web and developed technology of their own. The ship fires its anti asteroid array at the web. The spiders board the vessel and attack its crew. Their weapon spreads through the ship’s air system, incapacitating humans. The ship’s life support fails, and the defenders lose control of it.

The spiders use a modified nanovirus to make humans recognize them as kin. The surviving humans leave the Gilgamesh and settle on the planet with the spiders. The ark ship is later dismantled. Its technology and ideas inform the design of the Voyager, a new vessel built by the two species.

Unanswered questions

The account does not establish how long the Gilgamesh remained in orbit after its passengers settled on Kern’s World.

Sources

Children of Time, 2.1 Two Thousand Years from Home (ship, cargo and journey)
Children of Time, 2.5 All These Worlds Are Yours (encounter with the Sentry Habitat and Kern)
Children of Time, 2.7 Exodus (moon base plan and departure from Kern’s system)
Children of Time, 3.1 Rude Awakening (mutiny aboard the ship)
Children of Time, 3.5 Bearing a Flaming Sword (shuttle escape and ship’s weapons)
Children of Time, 3.11 This Island Gulag (moon base departure)
Children of Time, 4.1 The Cave of Wonders (terraforming station and recovered technology)
Children of Time, 4.7 Not Prince Hamlet (ship’s appearance and refit)
Children of Time, 5.3 Old Friends (moon base’s failure and Guyen’s upload plan)
Children of Time, 5.7 Ascension (Guyen’s upload and damage to the ship)
Children of Time, 6.5 Things Fall Apart (ship born engineers and failing suspension chambers)
Children of Time, 7.1 War Footing (return to Kern’s system and the defense plan)
Children of Time, 7.4 End Times (ship’s attack on the orbital web)
Children of Time, 7.5 Manoeuvres (battle damage and failed attempt to negotiate with Kern)
Children of Time, 7.6 Breaking the Shell (spider assault on the hull)
Children of Time, 7.7 The War Outside (boarding and fighting on the hull)
Children of Time, 7.8 The War Inside (spiders’ attack inside the ship)
Children of Time, 7.9 Last Stand (loss of life support and defeat aboard the ship)
Children of Time, 7.10 The Quality of Mercy (survivors land on Kern’s World)
Children of Time, 8.1 To Boldly Go (the dismantled ship and its legacy)

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