Elinor
Elinor watched the readouts from her work station as information continued to come in through the ‘Skreap’s sensors. She watched as the starship came closer and closer to the last Fabian Gateway before the Bastion System. The vortex wormhole green inside the large ring structure that opened it.
They had already passed through several gates on their way to Bastion. Elinor continued to watch as the tip of the ‘Skreap’ touched and than entered the vortex, and the whole ship was pulled forward, and her sensors scrambled as the starship entered.
It lasted only an instant, but life changed for Elinor and everyone on the ship. She never knew truly knew what happened when they entered the gateway and traveled the great distances through space. She understand the math, and technical information, but she couldn’t describe it. Most couldn’t. Their vision blurred, and the ship was gone, and sometimes she thought she could see the stars, but as fast as it happened it ended. It wasn’t like a Hyper Speed Jump, it was different, it was faster, and it did not normally come with the Jump Sickness from their own FTL travel.
Elinor watched the readout come back to life as she and the ship exited the gateway vortex, and emerged in the Bastion System. The change in everything that had been on her work station changed as the ‘Skreap’ picked up new targets and information from the system as a whole.
The system they had left was little more than a way station that would have little value if not for the Fabian gates in it. There was no habitable worlds in that system. A few listening posts and scout ships that patrolled the Fabian Gateway a few gates from Bastion on each side of the the Bastion system.
The Fabian Gateways had limited range, and there were dozens of gates between Bastion and XXXXX to the north, and dozens more from Bastion to Marhold to the south, and again dozens more that linked them to XXXXX along the north western route. Bastion and Marhold were the only systems which systems which laid on a cross roads of the gateway system of the old Fabian Gateway Network.
Bastion was one of the busiest system in the Commonwealth, and the Dragon’s Head Nebula. The only other system with more trade was the Kingsgate System, last world in the Commonwealth along the Fabian Gateway before it crossed the Dralan Trade Route through the Furmann sector of the Kingdom of the Salians. There couldn’t have been a bigger different between the two systems, and her readout was full of information.
There was only a single habitable world, and moon in the system. Bastion held over 25 billion people on it though, and even the small moon of Rath on the edge of system had a sizeable population. There were however four Star Fortresses throughout the system, and a large shipyard complex.
Ships came and went through the ship as trade throughout much of the whole Dragon’s Head Nebula went through the system before leaving the Nebula for mostly other nations within Fabian Space, although a not so small portion made it’s way west to the Furse Space, and a smaller amount even went to Bolgar Space south of Furse Space.
