July 6, 2755: Vael Station, later to be known as the Outpost, was officially founded. Positioned within the Elegara system, it was publicly listed as a deep space waste processing facility. In truth, Vael operated as a Black Laboratory, clandestinely funded by the most radical factions of the Axiomatic Circle.
For decades, the Elegara system had been renowned as the Sanctuary of the Mind, a beacon of open scientific inquiry. Vael Station, however, existed as its shadow, a place where ethical boundaries were disregarded in pursuit of results. Its core directive was to conquer the Cellular Entropy Limit, the biological degradation that rendered cloning technology a dead end.
Early research was spearheaded by a younger, more ambitious Dr. Edward Nelson. Under his guidance, the Vael team achieved breakthroughs in Psionic Cellular Bridging, an experimental process attempting to stabilize clone tissue using latent psychic energy. This highly controversial work was later denounced by the Red Sun Dominion as Double Maltech, a heresy considered worthy of planetary sterilization.
Dr. Nelson eventually transferred from Vael Station, an event that preceded a catastrophic incident at the primary Elegara Station. His departure left the Vael Black Laboratory further isolated, allowing its unethical research to continue unchecked in the shadows of the Elegara system.
[Current Year] - 25 Years Ago: The Red Sun Dominion fleet arrived in the Elegara system, initiating what they termed a "Diplomatic Annexation." Faced with imminent discovery and capture, the scientists at Vael Station activated the Null Protocol. Their first desperate act was to vent the station's atmosphere, a brutal measure intended to eliminate all test subjects and erase incriminating evidence.
Remarkably, one subject, Subject 7—a clone with heightened psionic capabilities—survived the purge by subconsciously maintaining an atmosphere bubble through telekinesis. Concurrently, the scientists scrambled all navigational beacons and engaged the station's tractor beams. They pulled in a surrounding asteroid cluster, effectively burying Vael Station inside a dense, spinning cocoon of rock and silicate dust, now known as the Razor's Edge.
[Current Year] - 25 Years Ago to [Current Year] - 3 Years Ago: From that point, Vael Station, now a hidden tomb of frozen ambition, began its silent drift through the Elegaran debris belt. It was powered by a dying fusion creep, slowly losing its energy reserves. The Red Sun Dominion was aware of its existence, having intercepted encrypted telemetry, but the Razor's Edge proved too dense for capital ships and too erratic for standard sensors to penetrate.
Unbeknownst to the Dominion, Subject 7's feral and uncontrolled psionic projections had created a pervasive perception filter around the station. This psionic echo subliminally caused human pilots to steer away and AI sensors to suffer logic faults when focused on the station's coordinates. Deep within the station's server core, physically disconnected from the network, lay the Nelson Archive, containing the uncorrupted blueprints for the Clone Transference Core—a valuable prize Arch Technocrat Lyra Vesh would covet for her flesh drone army.
[Current Year] - 3 Years Ago: The resistance group Null Hypothesis, after extensive efforts, finally discovered the derelict Vael Station. Rather than looting its secrets, they chose to repurpose it as a devastating weapon. They rigged the station's reactor with a potent antimatter charge.
This charge was configured to detonate if any Red Sun boarding party breached an airlock without inputting the correct localized code. The Null Hypothesis intended for the resulting explosion to shatter the entire debris field, unleashing a catastrophic cascade of meteors onto the planet Gelime, which they planned to blame on Dominion incompetence.
Current Year: Vael Station remains derelict and hidden deep within the treacherous Razor's Edge. Its aging systems are barely sustained by a dying fusion creep, making it a ticking time bomb. This silent monument to forbidden science, guarded by an unseen psionic anomaly and a cunningly laid trap, continues to drift, its dark secrets waiting to be unearthed.
