Borite System

Sindal 0609 (book 1) - Suspicious - Backwater

E655796-4
    Agricultural, Low Technology

    Low gravity (0.70)
    Thin atmosphere
    Large oceans
    Population 10,000,000+
    Impersonal Bureaucracy
    Visits discouraged, excessive contact with citizens forbidden

Borite was named for the high concentration of boron-heavy compounds in its surface. That is the most interesting thing about this system. From orbit, it looks like a yellow-brown stain of a planet, and it doesn’t even live up to this first impression. The planet is inhabited by several million unfortunate colonists who mine the borite or try to scrape a living out of the soil; it is ruled by the Borite Continuity Authority, a decaying remnant of the old Drinaxian bureaucracy. The BCA control all trade and travel on and off-world – not that many people come here.

 

Like Marduk, Borite is often attacked by the Oghman Clans, who target scientists and scholars. Writing is therefore forbidden on Borite except for the few heavily-guarded members of the BCA.

Additional: There is an ancient and ruined station in orbit around the gas giant in this system. It was once a High Guard outpost of the Sindalian fleet, protecting ships as they refuelled from the hydrogen-rich world below. Now, it is an abandoned antique, crumbling and punctured by thousands of micro-meteorites. It is slowly drifting down into the atmosphere, and will burn up in another five hundred years or so.

Downport: Run by the mining company that controls the planet. Everything has a price. Only a handful of ships land every month, and sometimes there is nobody around to do anything - not anyone who cares to help anyway. There is no writing allowed on Borite, so everything is either announced or presented using pictures. This makes the starport quite colourful and noisy once the administrator starts up the power generator.