Midgate

**Midgate** is a large galactic jump station that allows access to a wormhole known as The Beyond. Through the wormhole is another galaxy altogether. It is known as the Alpha Kentaurus galaxy. Originally maintained by the Strov-Rachetov Coalition, the Terran Confederacy seized it for the war efforts against the venkath, believing it a means to escape the genocide and restart humanity, far away from the threat. The original creators of Midgate are unknown, even to the Coalition.

While the plan never went through, Midgate continued to serve an important role for mining and colonization consortium's. Free from the regulatory environment of their home worlds, Midgate quickly became important for essential raw goods to help rebuild the Republic and her vassals.

### The Yazhu Expedition

The Yazhu Expedition was a deep space mining venture operated by the Creighton Extraction Corporation that was a convoy of seven mining ships and two large storage ships. Having discovered an asteroid belt through the discovery of an expedition ship, the convoy arrived to begin mining operations. A few weeks into the mission, captains began to complain about critical mechanical failures on drills. Storage ship engineers reported organic matter mixed in with their material loads. Both concerns were initially dismissed.

Now two months in, one mining ship went missing, assumed to have had its communication dish damaged by debris. An investigation was mounted by two mining ships. Finding the ship stranded and crashed into an asteroid, an away crew boarded the ship. In the interim, the primary fleet reported it came under attack by unknown assailants. Already on board, the away-crew came face-to-face with the insides of the ships seemingly gutted of all valuables, messily picked of anything shiny or what wasn't bolted down.

Abandoning the ship and returning to the home fleet, they captured footage of strange creatures crawling over the hulls of the fleet and clawing their way through ports or small spaces to crawl into the ship. Afraid that they may be overrun, the fleet was given the orders to jump back to the gate.

Returning to the gate and fending off the attackers through closing bulkhead doors or through engineering tools, the Midgate Port Authority dispatched security personnel to take control of the situation. Afterwards, the ships' exterior was investigated to find several 'eggs' had nested themselves to the bottom exterior of the ships. The alien species was one previously not encountered. They have since been defined as velor.

### Adapting

After the Yazhu Expedition Incident, the Republic government orchestrated several science and military ventures to find the origin of this threat, and to investigate if the velor would prove to be a threat to the Human Sphere. Returning to the asteroid field that the attack had taken place, a military expedition fended off a more aggressive attack than the miners had experienced. Capturing a number of velor that boarded their ships through attempted interrogations and experiments, it proved impossible to create a tool to translate languages. The velor proved to be just a step above a feral animal. Although their behavior proved sporadic and irrational, the attack was orchestrated by a number of scraped-together vessels. While the weapons had only inflicted minor damage, it proved that the velor were capable of piloting vessels.

After the attack, the Republic provided new grants to the Midgate Port Authority to put into place a means to seal the gate on command to bar entry from the other side. The Port Authority is also guarded by a small fleet. Ships returning from beyond the Midgate are scrubbed down of any eggs that are found usually on the underside or similarly well-hidden areas of the ship.

## Credits

Midgate picture is designed by Kresimir Jelusic on ArtStation. It may be found here.