Eventually they understood our language, which is like theirs but slower. They explained they had fallen through the wrong wormhole in their Echo Cluster and ended up here in Sol system in our time. Their navigation seems a little ad-hoc.

They were keen to talk to us about history. Apparently their whole clan ethos is based on the legend of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his engineering exploits. They especially liked his way of taking shareholders money without going into fussy details about what he was doing!


Anyway before they can get home they must pick up some essential supplies amongst the Yale stars. But we must all be careful as apparently this part of space is claimed by the Lizards. Scary!

They have let me sign on as an extra crewman to pay my food and air. Well I did not actually sign anything but the Captain, Ahab, wrote something on his Compad so that's probably OK.



My ship stopped en route several times, at first I thought the crew was replacing engines which seemed to have fallen off and holes which had rusted through in the hull. However Captain Ahab explained that this was all perfectly normal upgrades and that IMT operates a rolling obsolescence "Just In Time" replacement protocol, this greatly reassured me.

Eventually, after a singularly unpleasant grating noise had drowned out all shipboard conversation for a day, I was dropped off at a mining facility orbiting planet Yed Prior to await pickup for the next leg of my journey.

I decided to make myself useful and set to cleaning up some of the inevitable mess and corrosion which occurs on a mining platform operating in a robust environment.  I was, therefore, surprised to be dragged in front of the Chief Engineer accused of attempting to breach hull integrity. He explained how the hull is in fact an advanced IMT composite of multicrystalline iron - duranium oxides, artificially strengthened with a layer of paint.

I was assigned to helping out on declagging the laser mining drill after the previous operator had suffered optical disfigurement (probably from staring at the beautiful green local sun too long).

After a month or so of this duty, a party was held in my honour - entertainment is hard to come by on these roughouse stations. They made up a reason ("record length of service in the job") and some of the famous IMT Grey Pies were consumed.

It's a shame that due to the lack of supply ships these had been all we'd had to eat for the previous month, but this time the lads had arranged a little surprise for me. How they laughed at my discovery of what appeared to be a Stormer eyebrow in my pie!

When I remarked upon the find, they explained that the chef had an unusual sense of humour and such things were always turning up. I finished the gristly monstrosity with gusto and with a hearty cheer we returned to work. We achieved a record output during the next shift which we spent on Blood Wine and all got a gold star sprayed onto our uniforms.

Unknown to us the diet was about to change. Next day we were attacked!



It was an attack by the Militant Vegetarian Front, a bunch of losers and activists who often cause IMT trouble. They were broadcasting messages about "despoiling" the planet with our laser mining drill.

Luckily a passing London Class caught our distress signal and arrived in the nick of time. The attacker was fried by the TurboLaser arrays. Strangely the boarding & salvage team could find no trace of a crew. However there were some delicious roast vegetables on board.

Eventually the stress and strain from the laser drilling operation took its toll. The hyper dimensional stress factor built up too high and the planet acheived total conversion to an useful asteroid belt full of easily harvestable minerals.

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Disclaimer: this is part of the IMT race website, gallery section. This page is a showcase for late alpha work being considered for inclusion in the race design. While it does reflect the spirit of the race, including their boasting nature, it does not reflect final design stats. The value of race prestige can go down as well as up. Planetary and selenite surfaces are subject to unpredicatable events including but not limited to: solar flares, mutant stargoats, acts of deity, time travelling Victorian gents, flood and capitalist rogues with large machines hell bent on taking off the topsoil to get at the minerals.

The images were made by raytracing using POVRAY and post-processed using Paint Shop Pro (various versions). The team use a number of machines with operating systems from Redmond and elsewhere. No packets were mangled in the making of this page. It is ostensibly GIF free.