The Hyades Cluster

[zarpaulus]

The Hyades, the closest star cluster to the original Core Worlds, was naturally an early target of Federation colonization. Even before the Federation Charter was signed, a magsail was boosted from the Alpha-Proxima line towards the Hyades. After the Secession War on Schwartzwelt was resolved the surviving rebels were loaded onto a torchship bound for the Hyades. And as the wormhole network was just reaching out to the second wave of colonies, a linelayer was already bound for the cluster. By the time the Hyades’ stargate was built in 1473 PX, there were already colonies approaching a century old in the cluster.

The high density of small, young stars in the Hyades encouraged the development of a beamferry network unseen anywhere else in the Federation. Voyages between neighboring stars may take less than a decade using booster beams, even “flare-riding” magsails have been known to make such trips in as little as half a century.

However, those very same flares have made it impossible for biospheres to develop except around the very furthest rim stars, and even then they only developed microbial life before colonization. This need for radiation shielding led to the development of a habitat-based “Belter” civilization in the middle Hyades. Many of these habitats have retractable sails, both for station-keeping and to enable them to move to richer fields after depleting the local resources. It’s not unknown for habitats to spend centuries drifting from one booster station to another, never settling down in one place for more than a few years.

Most habitats paid little mind to Federation authority even before the Collapse, treating the Guard as little more than “toll booth operators” to whom they paid their booster fees. Little changed after the Collapse as a result. Some booster stations went offline as their crews fled, some habitats turned to piracy, other boosters stayed operational but under “new management.”

Within 50 years of the Collapse something that a few have called a “new Federation” was formed by the booster stations of the 71 Tauri-Theta Tauri run, mediated by a fleet of sailcraft and nomad habitats, the Hyades Trade League. Not a centralized polity like the Federation, more of a treaty organization, the League consists of hundreds if not thousands of habitats spread across the cluster. Any habitat or ship can apply for League membership and be approved by the combination of a booster station in the League and any other two habitats. League members are obligated to assist one another in times of crisis and are forbidden from armed conflict with other members. A specific term in the treaty obligates League booster stations to decelerate any League magsail that requests their service, and then arrange payment later. Acceleration is notably not obligated except in cases of extreme emergency such as pirate attack or natural disasters like asteroid impacts. The Hyades Trade League has no “capital” but the 71-Theta and Kappa-Upsilon runs have the densest populations of League members. Some have worried about the possibility of a split or even conflict between the two runs.