Ghost Ships in the Uncharted.

[Enkidu]

Treatise on ghost vessels in the Uncharted Systems.

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The Marie Celeste, The Jian Seng, the old vessels of Earth, whether driven by oar, sail, steam, fuel oil or sunlight, always remained potential victims to the vastness of their medium. Ocean, the uninhabitable void, occupied most of the Earth from which we are descended. Now that our homeland is space itself, the no-mans-land in which no ship can find its port are infinitely expanded. Corralled as we are by the limits of the jump gate network, and the Jump holes for the more daring, coupled to the spread of a neural encyclopaedia that can put name to every construct ever beheld by the gaze of man, the cosmos has, for the concerns of the majority of its citizens, been thoroughly mapped - at least those within the sphere of human interests.

Yet the truth remains that the majority of the Sirian star cluster is inaccessible to man - jump holes are indiscriminate, and often favour specific star systems in their formation, propagating in the presence of other subspace rifts. There remain vast numbers of star systems which the jump connections leading into them were once open, and have now sealed before a connective jump gate could be established, or have been rendered inaccessible by some unavoidable natural cataclysm, such as the movement of dark matter clouds or ionic drift. Some star systems have simply drifted too far from their neighbours for natural jump connections to form, whilst others are impossible to naturally phase align with. These “Unknown Systems” are virtual treasure troves, the next step in the evolution of man’s exploitation of the Sirius Sector, now that the basic territorial shapes of the wider houses have been hashed out by the interconnecting lanes. The bold few have already attempted to hash out their fortunes amidst these unknown regions, heralding the dawn of a fresh age of discovery - yet, for every vessel of man that drifts in, there remains a possibility of something drifting out.

The phenomena of “ghost ships” - lost, seemingly abandoned vessels sailing without ownership or ports of call remained a familiar role in the colonisation of the Solar system, before quantum neural net communication truly internationalised data transfer. Vessels in distress would rarely be found. In Sirius, it is not unusual to encounter the hulks of vessels stricken by either natural or organised cataclysm, lost amongst the stars, but to find entire functioning vessels or space stations remains comparatively rare in a Sirius wherein there is always someone listening. Yet the opening of the Unknown systems has rendered space a veritable treasure trove - long-lost mining platforms, their service robots still diligently functional, their centuries-old extraction bunkers still stocked with ore, rare, antiquated or completely unknowable equipment left in their inventories by creators unknown, the list of discoveries write themselves.

Yet there always remains the possibility, the risk, that the treasures of the unknown are less than inert. Beyond the intimacy of the Neuralnet, the galaxy is filled with the potential to transcend convention.

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)

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