CAPTAIN's LOG, Captain Rachel Daninburg, USS PALADIN, Commanding:

As usual, I like to get my own thougts down each time we recieve a new mission, outside the normal log reporting.

The DENEB to INDRI warp highway has always been a wonderful curiosity, as well as an efficient means of reaching the edge of the Alpha-Gamma border zone. Not that there's much out there to look at, but there are a few systems in the outer ring at that location which have proved interesting. The real rub of the highway has, in my opinion -- and I feel I'm in the majority here -- the fact that ships traveling on it are going so very fast  relative to non-highway space that they cant safely exit (and re-enter) to examine the thousands of systems ALONG the route. And some of them, as has recently been revealled, are real treasure-houses of minerals and biospheres. It's been my understanding that, heretofore, the starships which have surveyed those systems have had to allstop (which still puts them at high warp relative to local space, given the nature of the subspace currents in the highway), launch re-inforced probes with field dampeners out of the highway rapids, and then come back in the other direction and retrieve those probes.

The operations have been about 25% successful, I've been given to understand. Most of the time, even the field dampeners on the probes, which are meant to protect the probe from the monumental deceleration of leaving the subspace rapids, fail, and the probes are lost. As well, when the ship comes by to retrieve the probes, it's been a hit or miss operation, much like trying to catch a fish from a raft on rapids. Which is why the survey map for the sectors bordering the highway look scattershot.

We've recieved orders to report to DS23 which lies at the start of the highway. There we will recieve the same trickery fleet has been using on the probes. PALADIN is the strongest, fastest ship we have -- or her class is -- and built for the stress of high speed SCM (space combat maneuvering). So if any hull can handle the torterous twisting, we can. The modifications are temporary, and will be useless for anything other than dealing with warp rapids. They wont make us elsewise any faster, though the effects on our operations generally are still theoretical. They call the project OPEN GATES. If this works, our task will be to visit a particularly choice sector bordering the rapids, 9981. It has a thick population of main sequence stars with several developing biospheres, at least one of which is significantly older than SOL. If this works, the mission itself will be stimularing, to say the least.

I'm concerned, however, about the risks. But this is one of the many things for which the PROMETHEUS class was designed; so we'll see.

End Log.