C.T.6

Significant Sentient Population

Uninhabited

Allegiance

None

Hazards

Like some bizarre game of popups, the sector contains thousands of large cloaking, teleporting asteroids! Thought to be ancient alien artefacts of some kind, the effects are contagious.

History

Whist the Tibran were busy with their Mining Colony, this sector was left for the Ajaxians to explore and in 2393, corporate scouts hopped through the gate hoping to find better news to report to their mining and colonization masters than what had been found at Star City.

What they found was an odd sector with a pale green sun and absolutely no planets, just tens of thousands of large, similarly sized asteroids orbiting around (one pictured). Naming the sector 'CT 6', in honour of the main funding corporation, Catalinya Tallows and hoping to find anything interesting to report at all, the scouts approached a select asteroid to take some samples and search for anything decent to mine.

They first knew something was out of the ordinary when the ships closest to the asteroid began to shimmer in the view of the ships further away. After a brief panic onboard the distant ships, the leading ships' puzzled crews reported that they could see and scan the others just fine and that nothing was wrong onboard.

All the ships proceeded, but were forced to mutually agree that things were getting strange when the asteroid they were about to land on simply vanished and a new one appeared out of nowhere some 10,000km aft of their position.

After trying unsuccessfully for a several days to get samples the crews eventually gave up and headed home reporting the sector to be next to useless, but having some 'interesting' teleporting and cloak inducing asteroids.

In the years since then, scientists have tried to study the asteroids, but no one can ever get close enough to determine anything substantial. Even tiny probes cause the skittish asteroids to jump position. Often it seems as if they are teleporting about for no good reason. The current theory is that the rocks are hiding some form of ancient alien technology long since forgotten about by a long dead alien race, although the reason they would want to create teleporting rocks, no one knows. Others suggest that the rocks are in fact some form of lifeform whilst yet another theory suggests that they are actually camouflaged ships of some kind. No internal scans have ever succeeded because the rock casing, if there even is one, is just too thick. Scientists have even tried a range of weapons on the asteroids, but they simply jump out of harm's way.

But whilst the academic world scratches it's collective head, combat craft have discovered how to use the effects of the rocks to their advantage. Whilst it is not possible to hang about near an asteroid and have it's cloaking influence cover a ship (the teleport before a ship can ever get close enough to be completely cloaked), combat pilots have determined that the effects of the rocks linger in space for a short time after they disappear. By flying full speed directly at one of the rocks, having it teleport away then flying straight through the middle of where it just was, pilots have found that their ships will fully cloak for the next few minutes, allowing them to sneak up on an unsuspecting foe and deliver a barrage of fire. Theoretically ships being attacked can use the same trick to escape, but they have to realised they are being attacked first. The element of surprise gives attacking ship quite an advantage as their targets rarely manage to defend themselves adequately.

C.T.6 (last edited 2013-04-17 19:27:46 by ecvej)