Second Chance
A decommissioned asteroid mining vessel, reclassified and refitted at GOW Yard 7. The ship that started this whole project.
The Story
The Second Chance arrived at Grimsby Orbital Works on a quiet Thursday, which was appropriate because the ship itself was very quiet. It had been quiet for approximately three years, having been decommissioned from the Kowalski & Daughters mineral extraction fleet after an incident that the official reports describe as “structural retirement” and the yard workers describe as “she fell apart a bit.”
The original classification was asteroid mining vessel. By the time GOW’s assessment team had finished their survey — which took four days, two of which were spent arguing about whether the port cargo rail technically still counted as “attached” — the classification had been amended to “asteroid.”
This is not, technically, an insult. It means the vessel had achieved a state of structural simplicity that put it on roughly equal footing with a medium-sized rock. The assessment team noted, with characteristic understatement, that the hull retained “significant potential.”
The Refit
Yard 7 drew the job. This surprised no one. Yard 7 always draws the difficult ones, partly because they’re the best at them and partly because the other yards have learned to look busy when the allocation board comes round.
The refit took eleven months. The original plan called for eight, but the original plan also assumed the internal framing would be where the blueprints said it was, which it was not. Not even close. Someone, at some point in the ship’s history, had rearranged approximately 40% of the structural members without updating any documentation, in what the lead engineer described as “either a work of genius or a fever dream.”
They rebuilt her properly. New framing to GOW spec. Quad-sealed throughout — the full standard, no shortcuts. The drive was overhauled, the cargo systems replaced, the crew quarters brought up to modern habitability standards (which mostly meant the heating now worked and the water was the correct colour).
The Build Log
Build documentation will be added as the model progresses. This is the first ship on the workbench.