Benjamin Chester
Benjamin Chester is an independent citizen and retired private investigator who was one of the founding members of the Wallglass Investigations Agency, where he also created the Wallglass Archive of cold cases. He aided the Alliance Salvage Guild in its investigation of the ghost ship Adamastor when it arrived in his home system of Chukchan in October 3306.
Timeline
10 MAR 3307
- Erik Gunnarson and Francesca Wolfe, two detectives from the Wallglass Investigations Agency, examine the background of the Adamastor megaship.
Gunnarson: "When Wolfe and I started this project, we knew this case would come first. We're both protégés of Benjamin Chester, creator of the Wallglass Archive. He retired years ago, but that old spark kicked in when a 'ghost ship' turned up on his doorstep! The Adamastor is a 200 year old derelict that drifted into the Chukchan system on autopilot. It's still there, with the Alliance Salvage Guild poking through its guts. Chester investigated its owners, a super-secretive company called Azimuth Biochemicals. We don't know what they were searching for, but what they found was possibly the first recorded Thargoid encounter. I've since tracked down evidence that the Adamastor had a sister ship – the Hesperus – which in 3113 was sent to… somewhere! Neither ship returned, but we only know what happened on the Adamastor mission. Of course, Wolfe had to go see that with her own eyes."
Wolfe: "Musca Dark Region PJ-P b6-1 is a busy system nowadays, but was unexplored when Professor Carver's survey team were there. Listening to their logs from two centuries ago while examining the research base was chilling… ghost voices from a ghost ship. There was evidence of blast scars, but I've seen enough battlefields to know what exchanged gunfire looks like. Azimuth's mercenaries weren't just firing at Thargoids, but at someone who shot back with laser rifles. Gunnarson tells me Azimuth was swallowed up by a rival called Pharmasapien. Did they infiltrate the Adamastor and try to take over? Or did the thing that Carver captured drive everyone insane? This is a seriously cold case, even for us. But maybe one day, more tantalising clues will emerge. And that’s what we live for."[1]
29 OCT 3306
- A private investigator has uncovered some background to the derelict megaship that recently arrived in this system. Little is known about the Adamastor, which returned on autopilot after two hundred years with no sign of its crew. But an experienced detective has come out of retirement to tackle this mystery. Local resident Benjamin Chester, who was a founding member of the renowned Wallglass Investigations Agency, told journalists: "I convinced the Alliance Salvage Guild to pass on some serial numbers that they discovered inside the Adamastor. Then I started scouring databases, interviewing sources and, well, doing my old job. The megaship was owned by a corporation called Azimuth Biochemicals. This was taken over by a similar company called Pharmasapien, but both were liquidated long ago. No mission records exist, but service crew reports mention that the Adamastor's passengers included scientists, engineers and some kind of military. Eventually I unearthed a flight plan, logged in October 3111. It plotted a course toward Barnard's Loop with fuel for approximately 370 light years, and was scheduled to pass by the HIP 39748 and HIP 33386 systems. I'm way too old to head out there myself, but l hope someone can use this info, and help satisfy my curiosity about what happened all those years ago."[2]