Kethane.... a must-have!

Kethane is a green substance found underground in many planets' surfaces. One of these planets is Kerbin, one of the five planets in the Kerbol system with an atmosphere, alongside Eve, Duna, Jool and Laythe, one of the two planets with oxygen, alongside Laythe, and the only planet in the system that hosts life.

Home to the Kerbals, Kerbin has been often the hub of massive cities, ranging from unkempt slum-like cities to a metropolis with high-end technology for a Tier 6 civilization. And it all wouldn't have been possible without Kethane exploration. Kethane itself is useless, but when you combine it with eletricity and science, and know what you're doing, you get many other critical resources, namely liquid fuels like gasoline, combustive oxidizer, monopropellant fuel, and others. It is basically an omniresource.

Many Kerbals believe that space exploration came from the fact that Kethane resources were expiring, and that they worked on a way to harvest Kethane from the Mun, Minmus, and eventually from the other planets. Contrary to that thought, however, the main reason Kerbals went to space was because they thought it was cool. Space rockets date all the way back since Kerbin had only two cities. The main breakthrough was to combine Space and Kethane exploration.

Unfortunately for the Kerbals, Kethane was also running out on the other planets. Even Eve, which has oceans of pure raw Kethane, was running dry. The comitee of space exploration often had discussions about what they could do. They ranged from peaceful, civilized debates to all-round fights. Bill and Bob often had conflicts in beliefs regarding the incomming fate, and had either civil debates, or fights to the death. Often the latter.

However, at Day 24, Month 6, Year 233, the final news came. Only Eve had the last Kethane, as Kerbals often avoided mining from it since it's astoundingly hard to escape, but even then, Nedfrey Kerman and his crew transmitted a message to Kerbin that they had sucked the last drop of Kethane. True enough, radar scans revealled that Eve's oceans were gone. A meeting between the presidents of the major countries and states of Kerbin was invoked at the capital of the United Federation of Kerbin and Laythe.

"Well, what are you going to do now, smart guy?" taunted Mitdrin Kerman, the emperor of People's Empire of Pandora, a civilization rivals with the Federation.

"Shut up, emperor, taunting us will do no good." scolded Gregsey Kerman, the leader of the Federation.

"Ignoring the childish insults of the Empire," said Macemone Kerman, president of the Nothern Provinces. "We'll have to either sit and wait until Kethane spots regenerate, or we try to aim for the stars."

"The former is not an option, and the latter will be extremely hard to," replied Corfore Kerman, representant of the Republic of Quergelia. "My vote is to try to find a substitute to Kethane."

"I don't think we have a resource as omnifunctional as Kethane to replace it," replied Gregsey.

"I may have a solution to aim for the stars," said Donming Kerman, president of the Republic of South Pole. "My proposition includes a ship launching from Kerbin and perform an Oberth-Kuiper manuever with Eve and Jool." Mitdrin moved his hands in motion for him to continued. "The ship will pass through an Eve flyby in a prograde route. There, it will use the Oberth Effect to accelerate enough to aim for a Jool encounter. When the craft gets to Jool, it will once again use the Oberth Effect to accelerate into a Kerbol escape orbit."

"That's a complicated, but great idea, Donming," commented Gregsey. "But the problem is to have Eve and Jool perfectly aligned. That pratically means we need a Kerbin -> Eve -> Jool window, as opposed to a single window," he added.

"Well, actually, astrologists commented that there's a Kerbin -> Eve -> Jool window that will open in five days, so we're right on cue," commented Macemone.

"Which star we could send a base to, anyway?" asked Mitdrin.

"Well, the 'star' I have in mind isn't actually a star," answered Macemone. When he saw he got confused stares, he immediatly explained. "I had observed this rogue planet for quite a while. It is located right behind Kerbol relative to the Galactic core. It seems to have life, or at least plant life, and surprisingly, a small star-like object orbits it, and a Tylo-like object also orbits the planet at the same altitude of the 'star', and is located just on the other side. It's quite likely to have Kethane as well. I named it K-11."

"Well, it's decided. We'll shoot for this rogue planet. Gentlekerbs, get the engineers to duty and prepare the kerbonauts."

It was literally a fight to place the K-11 Base Alpha in the launch pad. It had to use the very last suction of fuel made of Kethane from Eve, and riots were made, mainly because most Kerbals out there didn't knew that this Kethane would be put into good use.

Sponsored by Lack Luster Labs, K-11 Base Alpha was, in a nutshell, a large tank with habitation spots. It had capacity for 42 Kerbals, beared a cargo room possessing twelve exploration rovers and five airplanes, had two greenhouses, permitting plantation and oxygen production during the space trip, and had a high-gain antennae for communication with Kerbin. The antenna itself couldn't contact Kerbin, but it did have capacity to talk to a communication probe located between Duna and Dres, used for contact with Laythe to Kerbin.

The rocket was massive, so big it couldn't even fit in the original launch pad. The space center had to use Wayfare's XL Pads, which were completely useless until now. For reference, the XL Launch Pads were as big as the space center. The rocket fit each and every available cubic meter of the pad.

Of course, even Rockomax Brand didn't have parts big enough to launch that monster of a rocket, so the space center had to buy KW Rocketry's monster-sized parts. That rocket completely dwarved the Deep Space Kraken, now defeated and resting on Bop's north.

"Enough of narrating the rocket! Launch it, alterady!" yelled Jebediah Kerman from K-11 Base's control tower towards the blabbing mission control. FINE.

"Liftoff in T minus ten...."

"Nine!"

"Eight!"

"Seven!"

"Six!"

"Five!"

"Fourthreetwooneliftoff!" said Jeb as he grew impatient over mission control, and mashed the 'flight' button. Bill simply facepalmed at Jeb's eagerness.

Now, begins the Great Wait Of Oberth-Kuiper Manuever. The little Kerbals had no idea of what trouble they were putting themselves into...

Author's Notes:

...as if they ever had an idea of the trouble they had ever since year 83!

Yeah, I decided to finally write up a crossover with Kerbal Space Program. There were only two here, and one of them is dead, which makes it only one crossover story. I hope this one lives, too, but since I have tendencies to lose motivation to write stories out of the blue, I might randomly drop this story.