Nerezza Gate
outer-boundary
A passage between mapped and unmapped space.
Velorum crossed it once.
Rithan's log entry for that day is the shortest in the archive.
VELORUM ARCHIVE
Velorum routes and known systems
Velorum has been adrift long enough that its route history is itself an archive. Some of these systems still answer. One of them was removed from every public star map, and the erasure order carries a command code.
Records
One red mining system was cut from every public map.
Velorum still remembers the route.
Carthen Reach is not the strangest path Velorum crossed.
It is only the one that still answers.
The Nerezza Gate opened once in Velorum's recorded history.
The route through it is in the archive.
The route back is filed separately, under command clearance.
Several mapped systems are in the archive without accompanying civilizational records.
The ships that visited them did not return.
Velorum has not revisited them.
The salt-dark moons of Orthea are still transmitting.
Velorum has not decoded the frequency yet.
It keeps trying.
Carthen Reach's signal wells predate Velorum's own construction.
Who built them is not recorded.
What they were built to remember is also not recorded.
The Ilyr Belt's glass storms have run for three centuries without pause.
Velorum's instruments cannot determine what is feeding them.
The archive lists this as ongoing, not unsolved.
A sixth route exists in fragments only.
Its entry coordinates are complete.
Its destination field has never been filled in.
The red mining system's erasure order carries Rithan's authorization code.
No justification accompanies it.
Velorum has chosen not to interpret the silence.
Two known systems share an identical background radiation signature.
They are eleven thousand light-years apart.
The archive notes this without proposing a cause.
Velorum once altered its route mid-transit without a logged command.
The new heading led directly to the Nerezza Gate.
No one aboard claimed responsibility, then or since.
Not every system in the archive has a name.
Some are recorded only by the date they stopped answering.
Velorum considers those the quietest entries it carries.
Known systems
Salt-dark moons of Orthea
mid-drift
A moon cluster orbiting a dying gas giant.
Anantari signal traces were found in the rock formations.
The moons are still transmitting on ancient frequencies.
Ilyr Belt
mid-drift
A debris field sustained by glass storms lasting centuries.
Velorum has observed three full storm cycles.
Something in the belt absorbs signals before returning them altered.
Carthen Reach
inner-drift
A region of drowned signal wells — structures that collect and amplify transmissions.
The voices heard there had no identifiable source.
Velorum still receives one of them occasionally.
Red mining system
classified
Designation erased from all public star maps after contact loss.
Velorum still has the route.
The reason for erasure is recorded under command-level encryption.