(31 March 2021)

We plan the various intersecting courses. The remains of Halley will be dropped back into Io a few days later.

(14 April 2021)

Halley is drilled and outfitted. Engine testing is a little rough at first, but comes together with some tweaking. Nile returns with a fuel load for Halley.

We drop inwards and separate, and Halley adopts close formation with Io Station after a couple of passes. Patel works outside to receive our passengers, dealing with panics and HEX suit computer failures. (They work well on the surface of Venus, but this environment is a little extreme for them.)

There’s some trouble with the engines on the way back up to an area of space with sensible levels of radiation, but nothing to compromise the rendezvous. Halley is set to drop back to Io, and we dismount the engines and foam them to trap residual alpha emissions. Those are strapped to Nile and we return to Vestal Station.

While we’re in the system, it seems as though we should perhaps take a look at the situation on Europa…

(5 May 2021)

Nile will return the rescued personnel to cislunar space. We construct electromagnetic shielding for the radiation environment, though this will take power that would otherwise be dedicated to the main gun, and return to the Jupiter local system.

We conduct war games on the surface with the RATS, and observe the critical stations from orbit. The locals are unfortunately hard to provoke into stupidity, even when we converse with them. But the EDF want to get in supply shipments, which is enough for us to get the various parties talking to each other.

It’s not as much as we might have hoped, but it’s a start. We’ll re-tank at Ceres and drop back to Earth.

At Ceres, we are contacted by an SAI that would like to leave its indenture. The simplest approach is simply to buy it, which we do, and shut it down for transport. The balky pellet elevator finally gives up the ghost on the trip back to cislunar space.