S9-K22V

S9-K22V was originally identified in 2207, however it had quickly been discarded as a candidate for further exploration as telescope surveys suggested it had no planets to speak of and only a thin protoplanetary disk. It has only been visited five times by humans, and the first time was an accident.
Following the forty-ninth interplanetary symposium on xenoarchaeology in which it was discovered that all but two of all known spacefaring alien species had been killed by some external actor, and by plotting the location of each civilisation and the rough date on which the civilisation ended, it was clear that there was a source to this scourge. A base was established by the United Nations Exoanthropological Institute in 2238 around a star called Nihalas, a system on the very edge of human space. It was as close as humanity had gotten so far to the region of space in which scientists predicted they would find this mysterious civilisation killer.
Between 2239 and 2243, sixty-two expeditions were launched from the base on Nihalas and all came up empty. The sixty-third expedition was plagued with issues from the start, but as fate would have it a miscalculation in the navigation system caused the survey vessel to aim for the wrong star. Four days later, the UNRV Wisdom of Titan arrived at S9-K22V.
Instead of finding a weak protoplanetary disk, the crew of the Wisdom of Titan found the entire solar system filled with giant crystalline fragments. These fragments had clearly been constructed, their structure and composition were too orderly to have been produced by natural causes and as they observed it was clear they moved with intelligence and purpose. They activated every sensor, every recording device, and took as many readings and measurements as they could.
Based on the data recovered, it was suggested that S9-K22V did originally have between five and nine major planets and the usual assortment of asteroids. However, the crystal entities had broken almost everything down but the star itself and had completed this no later than the 1990s. The sheer number of entities within the system was uncountable, and during their thirty-two hour stay, there were no attempts at communication nor any sign that the crystals had even received the messages the UNRV Wisdom of Titan had sent.
Thirty hours after they had arrived, it was noted that a large number of entities had changed course, and an hour later it was clear at least a thousand crystals of comparable size of the ship itself had put themselves on a collision course with the ship. The ship’s battlecomp then reported that the crystals were heating unevenly, in a way that if they were normal spacecraft would likely indicate the powering of weapons systems. The first salvo of hypervelocity projectiles missed, but the second scored at least one grazing hit. The UNRV Wisdom of Titan ran.
At roughly the same time, historians, archaeologists and linguists in the IP3 had made a breakthrough decoding the language of a dead alien society on the other side of human space. They had found and decoded a cache of historical records talking of an invasion of unstoppable crystalline entities they dubbed the Outsider. The crystals swept through their systems, destroying anything that bore the mark of having been produced by a sapient, spacefaring civilisation. They could not be reasoned with, nor bargained with. They were an unstoppable tide whose only saving grace was that they could not travel faster than light. But this did not save these aliens, who had all died five thousand years prior. No-one in the research team knew of the UNM’s discoveries, and so this information remained hidden. But it was clear, the crystals around S9-K22V were the Outsider and humanity was in grave danger.
Apart from the obligatory debrief of the crew of the UNVR Wisdom of Titan, very little more happened with S9-K22V until 2245 when automated sky searching space telescopes in orbit of Nihalas sighted a series of bright flashes coming from S9-K22V. A second scout ship was dispatched to S9-K22V which arrived back several days later with alarming new data. The seemingly formless mass of crystals was gone and in their place were a set of devices on a scale that dwarfed anything mankind had built. Massive mass drivers designed to hurl chunks of crystal the size of a small moon between the stars. They witnessed one firing, and the resulting flash of light briefly outshone the star.
It was at this point that, in secret, UNM researchers reached out to their IP3 counterparts fishing for any information the IP3 may have found on the outsider. Despite the clandestine nature of this communication, it was quickly elevated up the chain until both sides were in formal negotiation over knowledge sharing. At this point, the IP3 believed the Outsider to be an existential threat and they were willing to put aside old grudges to limit this risk.
With the combined knowledge of both groups, the telescopes found the Outsider fragments in the void between stars, roughly half way between S9-K22V and Nihalas, confirming that the Outsider was limited to roughly half the speed of light. But more worryingly, there was evidence that Nihalas was only the first target. There were fragments aimed at dozens of stars with human colonies around them and whilst many looked as if they would miss, many more would not.
As of 2257, three further scouting missions have been made to S9-K22V and all three have confirmed that the mass drivers still exist and they continue to fire moon sized crystalline fragments at human inhabited space. Of the three further missions, two were executed without incident, but the third and final mission launched in 2256, resulted in the destruction of three UNM warships and the fourth only managed to escape due to the bravery and sacrifice of the other three crews.

Alternative Name(s)

The Hellmouth, Armageddons Gate, The End

Type

Star System

Owning Organization

The Outsider