SS Osiris

The SS Osiris was a Human ship developed on Venus that was designed to find and retrieve the long-lost Human space probe known as Voyager II.

After confirming the loss of Voyager I in a solar flare, what remained of NASA decided that, after nearly 400 years in space, Voyager II had to be retrieved, otherwise it ran the risk of attracting more hostile species to Earth.

The SS Osiris was commissioned to track Voyager II's radio transmissions and intercept the probe, a mission that was estimated to take up to 2 years with the Osiris's advanced pseudo-slipspace capabilities. Despite having a crew of just 150, the Osiris had enough supplies on board for a crew of 3000 for a 12 year mission, and no-one was ever told why. On May 4th 2360, the Osiris departed Venus and sped away in search of the long-lost probe.

However, after a year in space, it became clear to the crew why the excess food and supplies was needed. They began receiving garbled transmissions from the probe, implying that someone had found it and was using it to broadcast an SOS. When the Osiris finally reached Voyager, what they found shocked them.

The probe had been captured by a scarred, warped and temporally displaced Human ship - claiming to be from the mid-2500s. It was a warship from the Human-Covenant War, that had been knocked back through time by a Forerunner artifact that they had picked up, which had since been inactive. As per the League's temporal directive, the Humans on the ship refused to return to the Solar System due to what they had laerned. The original 150-strong crew joined with the 50 Humans that were still alive on the future vessel, and they simply stayed in orbit around the nearest star.

For 200 years the Osiris patiently waited, with its crew locked in temporary stasis, until the in-built solar clock awoke the sleeping Humans and set the ship on a course for home. By the time the Osiris reached Earth, the Human-Covenant War was over, and the suprised Human Government welcomed home the crews of the two lost ships, as well as the even longer-lost Voyager probe.