PROGRESS UPDATE POST #12
"Constantinus Mark II"
(Lore / Detailed fictional background)
19 years ago, at the dawn of the 22nd century,
Constantinus Mark II set forth to an interstellar voyage that ended up being its last one.
That old mountain of steel was originally built as a secure ride for diplomats sent out to negotiate war-time policies between Humanity and the nearest technologically advanced species of the Orion Spur. As such, it was designed big enough to house two Class 'E', graviton-resonating wormhole generators capable of facilitating jumps in the 500-5000 lightyear range. It had notable armor, energy shielding and weaponry, almost but not quite enough to qualify as a warship. And it also provided the space and living necessities for a staff large enough to serve every "special need" of the diplomatic passengers, as well as to protect them in case of any serious trouble.
After it reached its 75 year age-limit and got decommissioned, the robust starship was bought by a company owed by over-ambitious techie billionaires. They heard that the interest for extra-solar tourism, especially on-foot exoplanet sightseeing was rising fast, so that was the direction they wanted to investigate in. They intended to explore what's out there before sending their clients into a potential hell. So their engineers were put on the job to refit the dusty fossil that was
Constantinus, to turn it into a versatile exploration vessel. They started by removing a great portion of the ship's armament, sparing only what felt absolutely necessary (still an impressive amount of firepower), continued by fitting in a government-funded laboratory complex, and finished by re-decorating the living quarters along a more modern style.
What the company didn't realize is that they should've put twice the amount of care into selecting the crew they hired for the first journey of the renewed
Constantinus Mark II, as the amount of attention spent on equipping the ship itself. Long story short, on the sixteenth day after landing on the very first planet meant to be explored for potential hazards, the youngest biologist guy, Samuel Infecta, felt it would be okay to bring aboard, without telling anyone else, a sample of an indigenous phosphorescent mushroom he found. On route to the second target location, several units of the ship's locomotion machinery malfunctioned, and a forward-directed explosion made the whole thing come to a dead-halt.
The company never tried to retrieve the ship after the last thing they caught from its quantum-tunneling radio broadcasts. Two decades later astronaut legends still keep piling up about what's inside that ghostly piece of space junk, and what caused the total systems breakdown. Strangely, several unrelated sources tell the same tale of gruesome irony: the sample collected by the young biologist, Samuel Infecta, infected him, turned him into some monstrous mutant, and forced the ship to stop.
"The monster wanted to stay home" - they say - "but ended up causing enough damage that he couldn't fly the ship back to the planet. Now he's hopelessly stuck there, a mere half Astronomical Unit away from his beloved planet of origin... Still feeding on the mummified remains of the crew, and eagerly waiting for the occasional lost star-sailor to stop by."
Do these legends bear any truth? - Probably not... Perhaps not... Let's hope not.
In any case, if you choose to indulge in the quest of finding out what happened aboard the mighty old
Constantinus Mark II... Just be careful... Be very-very careful!
CHANGES MADE SINCE THE LAST PROGRESS UPDATE:
- Started sketching out the Habitation Level,
- Cut off around 150 meters of the ship's temporary front to prepare for redesigning it,
- Parked a separate entity, partially sunk inside the hull in a 45-degree angle, to see where to build/dock some stick-out reactors.
Celebration time! 
