Miriani

Missing Specialty Starship Spurs Worries of Praelor Reverse Engineering

High Guard Command confirmed today that a specialty starship, last known to be in Praelor space, has gone missing.

According to sources within the Department of Jumpgate Deployment and Primate Care, the battlecruiser "Expression", owned by Hale pilot Cria Marshall, fell out of contact with command in the early evening of May 24th. The normal procedure in such cases is for the Jumpgate department to investigate whether or not loss of communication was due to a failure in the jumpgate or due to a failed mission. It was confirmed at 7:21 p.m. that the issue was not one of communication. At 7:56 p.m., High Guard analysts determined that the starship had been lost in the course of battle with enemy forces.

While it's not entirely unusual for starships to be lost in routine strikes against Praelor targets, it is unusual for support ships to fall into enemy hands. Following the destruction, it was reported that a small number of smaller vessels that had been in the docking bay of the battlecruiser had gone missing. Typically, in cases such as these, the support starships are either destroyed outright or severely damaged by secondary explosions. Praelor combatants will usually finish the destruction, seeing no value in critically damaged human starships. However, sources in the Bureau of Starship Registration report that no signal was received from the CIRFBS (Critical Information Reporting and FTL Blackbox System) of the reported starships. One, in particular, is particularly worrisome.

The one-person Hale runabout, "Mirage", is equipped with proprietary specialty technology developed by the Hale Collective for use by its private pilot league and military support vessels. Sources in the Hale government could not be reached for comment at this time, so no public information about what technology, if any, is in Praelor hands could be ascertained. However, regardless of specifics, everybody can agree that Alliance specialty technology in enemy hands is a cause for concern.

It's unknown at this time what the Hale Collective or High Guard Command intend to do to retrieve this technology, nor can we speculate on the consequences of the Praelor acquiring the technology.

Gabriel Ivanova
Junior Reporter

Dated: 05/25/2362