The Lastlight Hulk

A colony transport should be either on the ground at its colony or still in flight.

Rules Reference

Field	Value
Aesthetic	ruin
Anchor System	lastlight
Controlling Faction	none
Fold Bleed	high
Population	0
Role	satellite
Zone	Beyond

Notes

Dangers: The hulk sits in low orbit, tumbling very slowly, in the same direction, every time it has been observed., Every airlock on the hulk is sealed. Every airlock on the hulk opens from the inside., The reactor is cold. The hulk's instruments read as warm.

Hooks: The hull bears a House shell livery long since dissolved. A legitimate salvage claim would require confirming the shell. No one wants to confirm the shell., The flight recorder is intact. The flight recorder holds three seconds of audio. Three seconds is not enough to explain a colony transport landing on a world that should not have needed it., A pirate outfit tried to scuttle the hulk for scrap and discovered the keel was made of an alloy no one on the crew could identify. They sold the alloy as curios. The buyers reported it hummed faintly when held.

Lore: A colony transport should be either on the ground at its colony or still in flight. The Lastlight Hulk is neither. It is in orbit around the colony it was supposed to deliver to, eleven years after the colony went dark, in a state of preservation no working drive would leave it in. The hulk is treated as a hazard by Confederation doctrine. The hulk is treated as a shrine by the few Rim crews who know it is there.

Notable: A colony transport, deep-space rated, designed for one trip. Its registration reads as a Third Wave vessel sponsored by a House shell that no longer exists. The drive is intact. The drive has never been fired., The cargo manifest, recovered from the bridge log, lists four thousand bunks and four thousand names. The names are spelled correctly. The names do not match any Earth-line diaspora record., A single porthole near the bow, painted over from the inside, with a child's handprint on the inside of the glass.