“May you live in interesting times.” – Old Earth curse

Truly momentous events have occurred in the last 24 hours which confirm that humanity is not alone in the universe.

Late on January 4th 3003, a pilot by the name of Cmdr DP Sayre was torn from hyperspace near the Pleiades Nebula, his ship disabled and a ship of unknown origin scanned him, whilst he watched helplessly.

Many pilots have since been interdicted in the same way, leading to unprecedented levels of speculation across the galaxy.

What we know so far:

They haven’t attacked or damaged any ship yet

The encounters are happening near the Pleiades Nebula

The vessels appear to have a central ‘eye’ or cockpit

They use a different form of propulsion to our own – they leave red vapour trails

Their use of hyperspace also differs from ours – we don’t have the technology to interdict ships in hyperspace, for a start, and they do. Plus their hyperspace tunnels look completely different to ours – like a rent in the fabric of spacetime, to a weird greenish other dimension

They travel at around 500 m/s

Their shields are very strong – stronger than human ships are capable of achieving (verification needed)

They appear to be made up of three round parts which move independently, and spin rapidly when they enter hyperspace

They emit bright green light when they face the ships they’ve interdicted, which is reminiscent of a scan

They are organic in appearance

We are unable to ascertain their jump destinations via our primitive Framewake Scanners.They are armed – a scan reveals that they carry what our tech identifies as a ‘pulse laser’

They completely incapacitate our ships. They seem to be able to switch every system in them off at will, including your Christmas Tree Bobbleheads! This causes no lasting damage (as far as we can tell)

CCN’s Chief Scientist Julian McCoy has released this statement:

“This discovery of unidentified space vessels bearing incredibly superior technology is deeply concerning. After being violently displaced from a witchspace transit and subjected to an unknown scanning procedure by such spacecraft on two separate occasions–a terrifying experience–I’m quite certain that they are not of human origin and certainly related to, if not of the same class as, the multitude of crashed vessels within the Pleiades Nebula and surrounding regions.

“As an advisory to all CCN members and the greater galactic community, I advise caution when approaching or being approached by the vessels. My personal hope is that this unidentified species, race, or life form proves to be of an intelligent nature like humanity and that we can coexist peacefully; however, we may be forced to defend ourselves.”

The Gazette also caught up with Cmdr Unrealization, who experienced one of these encounters, and who kindly shared some truly remarkable footage.

“It was pretty freaky, I gotta say.” he remarked.

As of yet there are no reports of encounters in the Colonia region, though it is impossible to predict events in the days, weeks and months to come.

Cmdr Souvarine, speaking on behalf of the CCN, makes the following recommendations:

“These close encounters appear to be confined to a specific region of space a long way from Colonia. However, citizens of our region must take nothing for granted. In the unlikely event of one of these encounters, I urge all pilots to exercise restraint. So far, none of these encounters have been aggressive. Until we have more information, we should not attack these vessels.”

Whatever the future holds, it is almost certain humankind has not seen the last of these encounters. Today the galaxy seems a little more mysterious, and the universe a little bigger. Whether these events transpire to be the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end, only time will tell. These are indeed interesting times!

Photographs and video by Cmdr Unrealization, used with permission.