Cathcart

Astronomically speaking, Cathcart is basically void: a star with no true planets and only a loosely defined chain of asteroids and worldlets orbiting far from the theoretical green band. In theory, there is no reason anyone should ever have lived here. What is now known as the galaxy’s junkyard came from humble beginnings.. The system was first charted roughly five centuries ago and almost immediately abandoned. It was initially listed as a Class C military restricted system, with plans to construct a listening post complex … but rapid advancements in scanning technology meant that large-scale orbital listening posts no longer needed to be built so far from the core worlds. The Navy abandoned the partially constructed habitat platform structure to the void … little realizing where it would lead.

Then, the system spent almost two hundred years as a government dumping ground Seeking to create a series of spatial ‘boneyards,’ the UEE selected Cathcart as an ideal (if distant) location for storing decommissioned spacecraft. The reasoning was simple: without planets or other major bodies, spacecraft would be easily stored in the void of Cathcart’s deep space.Craft stored there, far from most environmental influences, could be easily reactivated in times of crisis. A pair of pre-fab processing factories were towed in-system and for decades the system began collecting all varieties of obsolete military spacecraft: fighters “parked” in space, end to end for hundreds of kilometers; abandoned destroyers, cruisers, frigates and carriers; all stripped of various needed or classified systems, berthed together as far as the eye could see.

But Cathcart was out of sight and out of mind from the UEE command structure. Spacecraft decommissioned from the nearby frontier could easily be left there … but without access to the homeworlds’ supply chain, they were too expensive to effectively scrap and too difficult to re-crew or maintain for crisis .As galactic expansion moved beyond the Cathcart region, the UEE effectively abandoned the area. Eventually, the spacecraft salvage rights were sold off to the highest bidder and the entire system was reclassified as private industry.