The Caravans are a Milk Run
There was a planet-shaking explosion as you went through the first gate.
The supply caravans to the far reaches are a milk-run, they take years - literally years - but along the way friendships form that last forever, people are forged in fire and salt, or money is made to fund the rest of your life. The setup is simple: There are ten gates between here and the furthest colony. It takes around a year to travel between each gate. Nobody’s quite sure who made the gates, or why, but there is one major problem of them and carbon-based life-forms: Going through the gate lets off an EMP that fries any protection humanity has yet to build.
So, as you go through the gate all the power goes out. Between lack of air filtration, heating and anti-gravity, the ship’s an inhospitable environment - actually fatal - for around three days a few hours after each jump. Fortunately each gate we use is within travelling time of a hospitable planet, lush and green. None are populated full time - if there are reasons why, nobody’s told you - so for a few days every year the entire caravan of ships becomes a tent city on the face of some poor planet, joined by representatives of the colonies in the local area for trade and news.
Truth to tell, there’s only so much time you can spend cooped up with the same people in a ship - big or small - and the festival days are a reprieve from that. There’s no easy travel between ships in flight - universal docking connectors haven’t really caught on. Some spend the days relaxing, some devote their time to trade, swapping information from home, or just finding new people to meet; and cabals of scientists get together to look at new data coming out from the hub. (The data’s not... inexplicable… exactly… it’s just not within the usual bounds, and more so than it used to be. More so here than the last place. More so onward than backward. Something interesting is ahead).
The ships usually get comms up by the end of the first day, and the sensors can scan the planet you’re on by then. The trade network’s usually up by evensong on the second day, and then all the trades that have been arranged can be acted on. The IDs for cargo and supplies logged in, and the automatic transfers can begin.
The Faithful have their ceremonies like clockwork, and the Improved need their latest fix of juice. The other cadres and ships have their requirements and tendencies as well, and we can get to them soon, there’s no hurry.
Because the supply caravans are a milk run, and the planets we meet on are perfectly safe, and the colonies are all doing fine.
But there was a planet-shaking explosion as you went through the first gate.
Nicholas Avenell