CMS Greely

The CMS Greely was a Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces research vessel, one of the ships left derelict in the flotilla orbiting Tau Volantis after the Scenario Five purge. A modest frigate fitted out as a floating laboratory, the Greely held the desperate last message of its scientists, a coded order to hide the body called Rosetta, and it was Isaac Clarke who finally uncovered it two centuries later.

The vessel#

The CMS Greely was a modified light frigate, a medium-sized support ship with no permanent armament and only a modest engine for orbital maneuvering. Built around two distinct sections, it carried its life support, engines, and crew quarters in the aft and its main sensor array and a set of adaptable halls in the fore. Like its sister ship the CMS Brusilov, of which it reused the basic hull, it was a general-purpose vessel that could be fitted for almost any task. On the Greely that task was research: the forward halls were lined with water-resistant tarps and converted into laboratories for studying biological samples, and the cold storage decks were filled with biohazard containers kept near freezing for the slices of frozen Tau Volantis Aliens the team analyzed. Among the crew the ship carried the unofficial alias "Think Tank."

Scenario Five and the coded message#

When the Scenario Five contingency was enacted to contain the outbreak, the Greely became a killing ground. A scientist named Dr. Barton was caught broadcasting a coded message toward the surface of Tau Volantis, a looping transmission that repeated a single code phrase, "Papa Sierra." Soldiers carrying out the purge attempted to interrogate the others, but the scientists locked themselves inside with the broadcasting equipment. Because the order demanded that no one survive, the troops cut the ship's power to disable its life support and silence the signal.

In their final hours, Laura Engstrom and the surviving scientists barricaded themselves in the storage section, damaging the gravity inducer to raise an impassable electric barrier, and patched salvaged radio gear into the forward communications array. From there they sent their message to Dr. Earl Serrano on the planet below, pleading with him to send the code on or see all their work destroyed. When one captured scientist refused to yield even under torture, General Spencer Mahad ordered his men to leave the rest to their fate after stripping the ship of power, engines, and life support. The phrase "Papa Sierra" stood for "Hide Rosetta," an order to keep the preserved, uninfected Alien body away from Mahad and the purge.

Discovery by Isaac Clarke#

Two centuries later, Isaac Clarke crossed the flotilla on his way to repair the CMS Crozier and began picking up the Greely's looping signal of unknown origin, still repeating its code. Boarding the derelict, he found it sealed by a security lockdown and dark from the power outage the soldiers had left behind. After restoring power and tracing the lockdown to the ship's radio room, an audio log revealed what had happened to Barton and the others.

Exploring further, Isaac shut down an overloading power generator, which destabilized some of the ship's gravity plating, and recovered a key and a recording of Engstrom's plea. Reaching her office, he decrypted the message and learned that "Papa Sierra" meant "Hide Rosetta." He came to believe that the research surrounding the body called Rosetta was central to the entire mission, and that whoever issued the cleanse order had either panicked or known something the others did not. Later he returned to the Greely a final time to salvage a port-side engine from a wrecked shuttle nearby, taken to repair the Crozier. With that done, the Greely was left adrift in orbit with the rest of the flotilla as Isaac and the other survivors launched for the surface.