Gliese 832: 16.1 ly M1.5v
The star in this
system may be small, but the trouble in this system is anything but. More than a century ago, the Althani
colonized a moon around the largest gas giant in the system. The colony, called Menk, is currently home to
more than three billion Althani, and they’ve transformed the atmosphere to a
point that they can breathe the air without suits and breathers. The majority of the inhabitants are military
or corps employees.
The colony on
Menk is not the problem. There is a
smallish terrestrial planet about .5 AU from Gliese 832, and this planet and
its moon have been colonized by humans.
The colonization took place 30 years ago, and there are already one
billion humans inhabiting the planet (New New York) and the moon (New
Buffalo). Humans can breathe on the
planet, but they need suits to walk on the surface of the moon, which is why
the colony is built completely underground.
Many of the humans work for the human corps, but a number of them work
for the military, and it’s believed that many of those are working for covert
branches of the military.
The humans have
argued that Gliese 832 should actually be considered a part of their sector,
but the Althani have been here for quite a bit longer. The Althani don’t take well to others infringing
on their space, and there have been several battles fought in this system. So far, both species’ governments have
refused to get involved, instead allowing the military forces assigned to these
colonies to battle it out. So far,
things have stayed at a level of a few ships fighting at a time, but there is
always a chance, and it’s a good chance, that things will boil over and all-out
war will break out in the system.
Gliese 902: 37.1 ly K3V
Although this
system has a planet that could be colonized by humans and a planet that could
be colonized by the Culthan, the Althani have refused to allow outsiders into
the system. Their main reason for this
is that there’s a large moon orbiting the largest gas giant in the system. And on this moon is an Althani prison colony
called Ten-pa. The colony has four large
opaque domes, one in each hemisphere (northeast, northwest, southeast, and
southwest), under which they house some of the most violent criminals, and
while most of them are Althani, there are prisoners from the other species here
as well. The atmosphere outside of the
domes is highly toxic to any sentient species, with much of the atmosphere made
up of methane and cyanogen. The surface
also has winds that typically blow at over 100 kph, and often gust to 300
kph. Each of the domes is so far apart
that there is no way anyone could walk to one of the other domes, even with a
suit.
No one in their
right mind would even try to survive on the surface, and to date, no one has
ever escaped from Ten-pa. A few have
gotten out of the domes, but no further.
Ten-pa also has a highly advanced satellite system that will shoot down
any ship that doesn’t have clearance to be close, and if a ship does go down,
there will be no effort made to try to rescue the crew. Instead, they’ll be left to the atmosphere of
the planet, and if they happen to be close enough to a dome that they might be
able to get to it, they’ll be shot before they can get inside. There are no visiting hours at Ten-pa.
