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The Avalon Experiment
Where>
In the Ross 154
System, on an outlying planet on the rim of the solar system.
Why>
In this sector of space, in the British Empire controlled region, a extreme deep space survey probe has found something very valuable: a large amount of pure Eirithium Drioxide, the mineral somehow connected to the Marr’aheb method of folding space. In a wild and dangerously fast move, the British Empire jumped at this chance to secure it’s own supply of the mineral…and keep it secret from the Marr’aheb and the rest of the Galactic Senate.
Under the cover of a deep space ice-mining depot using a front company called Avalon Futures [also a cover for various other BE secret ops]. The plan was to set up a base of operations and begin mining the mineral unbeknownst the rest of the Senate. For two years all went as planned.
Eirithium Drioxide is notoriously dangerous and difficult to mine and after several mishaps and a few close calls with passing ships from other [curious] nations, Outpost Avalon finally had acquired enough Eirithium Drioxide to begin small testing at the facility. By this time the facility had grown quite large, and had caught the eyes of more than a few of the other members of the Senate. A massive mining operation, a core group of mentalists, a large group of scientists, and a core Headquarters group [as well as an unknown number of soldiers bent on saving the facilities secrets at all costs, it is rumored that a Chinese ship that strayed too close to the facility mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again] were all stationed at Outpost Avalon.
Finally Phase One Testing was to begin. A heightened state of alert was set across the facility. The tests were started, and immediately began to go wrong, but the BE scientist were able to get it back under control before anything drastic happened. As a result, only 75 lives were lost that day, a small price to pay if the British Empire was to learn the secrets of Folding Space! However, the test failure did have one side effect, a massive blast of subspace x-ray radio waves were launched out into space…and was subsequently detected by two passing ships: one Chinese and one a Marr’aheb diplomat cruiser.
Closing in from opposite directions, the two ships grew closer to investigate what appeared to them to be a random space anomaly. They arrived close enough to the planet to send out active sensory detections just as the facility was about to begin another test. It could only lead to disaster. When the Marr’aheb discovered what was going on, a transmission was sent but because of the experiment, it only reached the Galactic Senate as a garbled fragment, only the location of the source could be determined with any certainty.
What happened at the facility has now become public knowledge, a British government official, the BE Senate Commissioner on Deep Space Survey Missions and Mineral Exploration and Exploitation, a Doctor Winston Archibald III, has been singled out and blamed for this tragic event. However, due to the fact that no one really knows what happened out there, no charges have been levied against him except for Chapter 1014:23a, disobeying the Regulatory Commission’s Ruling on Folding Space Experiments; A Complete Disregard for the Safety of the Senate’s Citizens; and Failure to Abide by the Geneva Convention Resolution on Space Freedom and Colonization Act. His fate is nearly sealed and many persons speak in hushed tones of the Empire using him as a pasty for their illegal maneuverings.