Orbital

Significant Sentient Population

less than 50000

Allegiance

None, owned by the Glib Family Trust

Hazards

In combination with gravitational effects, operating system interference will result in less effective repairs and attacks in this sector.

History

Orbital was originally discovered in 2118 by the renowned privateer and bold pioneer, S.T. Macintosh. (Originally Ajaxian) After rather unimaginatively naming the sector Macintosh, the first thing he noted was the unusually large number of similarly sized planetoids (some 200 or so) orbiting around the sun in a complex, compatible and completely unique manner.

Unfortunately, in order to raise the required funding to partake in his mission of exploration, Mr. Macintosh had sought sponsorship from a number of corporations one of which was Macrostuffed Corporation. As part of the 2000 page contract that Mr. Macintosh had to sign in order to secure funding and could not be bothered reading, on page 1576 under the emboldened heading, "You have full rights to any sectors you discover including naming privilege" were the words "just kidding".

Not surprisingly Sector Macintosh retained that name for about 3 days before Macrostuffed Corporation did indeed say otherwise, took all rights to the sector, renamed it "Orbital" after the Corporation's new range of operating systems and launched a lawsuit against Mr. Macintosh for breach of contract

Founded in 1985 by Slate Glib, the Ajaxian based Macrostuffed Corporation initially wrote small software applications and serviced computing devices. Without much in the way of real programming talent but with exceptional business skill the company rose rapidly to the top and totally dominated the operating system market for the vast majority of computers. With the discovery of space travel and the explosion in spaceship numbers that accompanied it, the corporation found a massive new market for it to explore and using it's capital leverage and business skill was soon dominating the operating system market for spacecraft computers also with the Orbital suite of products soon spreading to other legions and becoming the predominant operating system in the known universe.

Other legions, not familiar with Macrostuffed products soon began to complain about the lack of reliability that associated the operating systems. Ships would simply shut down in the middle of a battle, firing lasers would instead jettison the fuel tanks, sending messages to friendlies would be diverted to enemies or just never get sent at all, and in space the 'red screen of death' all too often translated to real death. Legions were convinced that the Ajaxians were deliberately introducing flaws into the products in order to give them an edge in battle and threatened to all unite against Planet Krilgore. When the Ajaxians demonstrated that in fact they too were subject to the same problems the tension subsided and all legions, although unhappy begrudgingly accepted that they were just going to have to put up with the risk of unnecessary death due to a shoddy operating system, because they had no other choice.

Macrostuffed continued to sit on Orbital doing absolutely nothing with it much to the chagrin of the now imprisoned S.T. Macintosh all the time accumulating greater and greater wealth from unwilling customers who simply had other options.

In 2203 with more credits than he knew what to do with, Slate Glib decided to hire some experts in corporate art to do some work on the Orbital Sector. The result saw the destruction of the unique Orbital systems within the sector as the 200 or so bodies were nudged off course using thermonuclear explosions and gigantic gravity drives. Several trillion credits later and the bulk of the 200 or so orbiting bodies had been smashed together into one big planet and a few remaining bodies moved into a close orbit around it. The big planet was designed to represent Slate Glib with the smaller Moons representing each member of the Board of Directors. Each body was then covered with terraforming equipment in an incredibly inefficient speed terraforming program took only 6 months to complete. The company then shifted headquarters and all operations to the sector and all the directors took up residence in their own little kingdoms with Slate Glib in the centre of it all.

This blatantly capitalistic and wasteful act was the straw that broke the camel's back amongst all the legions. It was decided that if Macrostuffed could afford to spend trillions upon trillion of credits upon such a pointless and trivial task, and do it so quickly, getting it right first time, then they could surely have spent that money long ago to produce operating systems that actually operated systems. For the first time in known history, in early 2204 all four legions gathered side by side in Dreadlar with a common purpose, a common enemy. Together they made the jump to Orbital, the largest united fleet ever seen, with just one purpose...vengeance. And immediately launched their attack.

However, unbeknownst to every single pilot was the fact that Macrostuffed had written in a back door to all their operating systems and upon detection of the attack immediately proceeded to nullify the threat. Attacking ships soon found their craft becoming totally unresponsive as the operating system simply refused to cooperate. Frustrated, some pilots tried to ram the planet, but even that was thwarted.

For several days, the powerless ships floated about bumping into each other aimlessly but as pilots began to run out of oxygen (due to the shutdown of life support) they grew desperate and in frustration ripped apart their ship computers and tried to jury rig their way around Macrostuffed operating system. Pilots soon found that the aircraft systems were actually surprisingly simple and barely needed a central computer at all, let alone some overly flashy operating system.

The majority of pilots figured it out themselves and then piloted carefully around so as to be able to be able to visually communicate to pilots who still drifted. Life support, weapons, repair, and communications systems all slowly blinked back on across the fleet. Once operational status was restored the fleet began it's attack for the second time and met very little resistance. Over two days the hard drive of the planet was formatted, bombed clean of everything that could possibly have anything to do with Macrostuffed Corporation. It was widely agreed that all galactic treaties did not apply in this case which led to the deployment of nuclear, genetic and chemical weapons, leading to massive pollution. In the commotion, Slate Glib tried to escape in a modified high speed cloaker but his operating system apparently suffered glitches and he was detected trying to run the gauntlet of the main fleet. A few shots managed to disable his craft, but rather than finish it off, it was decided to attach a homing beacon to it and let it drift in space forever.

Today, Orbital is all but deserted with just a few heavily mutated ex Macrostuffed workers and some brave miners scraping out a living on the polluted and radiated planet and moons. Orbital is still owned by the Glib Family Trust which, despite the Corporation's destruction, still has enough money to hold the rights. That's ok because no one else really wants them. So disgusted with the whole affair, no legion with any memory of events wants anything to do with the sector.

Slate Glib's disabled and frozen ship eventually became trapped in an orbit around the planet he created and every year tourists travel to the sector to see it and learn the tale of corporate evil gone crazy with it's fitting conclusion.

Strangely though, it seems that Slate Glib is getting the last laugh because even though his operating system has long since been removed from every single spaceship in the known universe all ships that travel in the sector seem to experience problems similar to if they still had the system. Whilst gravitational effects do play a part, it seems as if the effects are boosted by some form of Macrostuffed error inducing device. Attacks and repairs are significantly reduced.

It is suspected that Macrostuffed has some form of underground complex that is still operational and affects all ships in the sector somehow producing a ghost of the old operating system on the computers of the ship that enter the sector. Luckily the effects pass as soon as the ships hyper out but it's yet another reason why no one want to colonize the sector.