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Kestevan 79 Magnetar 23,000 LY from Terra November 2014 (Terran Calendar) Why are we here? It was a hard question not to ask as the Praetorians' starship approached the world Moon-Moth had designated as the next target of the Communion. Kestevan 79, and its companion magnetar were a long-dead supernova remnant - the nebula, the neutron star inside, and its magentar companion both had been classified as navigational hazards by the Delaztri and generally avoided by their fleets, something that as far as they could tell had remained the same for Lor and Grue both. After all, what could possibly live in the wash of gases and X-Rays produced by nebula and burning magnetar alike? But there was, as far as the Curator had been able to tell, life on the sole world orbiting Beta Kestevan - life that was by all accounts a target for the Communion. For his part, Solar Sentinel found conditions equally grim as he headed out into the remote space near the Kestevan system, a system so remote and so irradiated that it had remained largely unclaimed in all the space wars he had ever heard of. There was no debris in the system, no asteroids or other planets - just the invisible at this distance neutron star that was Beta Kestevan (for all that it howled like a dead god on the radio) and the single white orb beneath the brilliantly burning shape of the Kestevan nova that floated over the system like the ghost of a dead star. Kestevan I - the only life-bearing world for light-years. Kestevan I; the next target of the Communion. A small collection of older, disreputable-looking starships were in orbit as Sentinel and Praetorians took up their positions in the vast depths of space; the wash of radiation in the system making whatever signals they might be sending to each other impossible to read. The planet was cold and desolate even from space, frozen nearly from pole to pole. Down below, on the icy surface of Kestevan I, a small handful of city lights twinkled at the equator, the planet's only source of free water. They had no idea what was coming.

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