Space-Devils

"Of all the missing vessels across the galaxy, there has to be at least one that was so unfortunate to hit a space-devil. But probably just one..."   -Captain Lo Huang, Cargo Vessel Probability

  One of the first hurdles of interplanetary - and eventually intersystem - space travel was how to shield humans from ionizing radiation without the protection of Earth's magnetic field. The ionizing radiation comes from two main sources; from stars which occasionally flare and release bursts of energy, also known as stellar wind, and from intergalactic sources such as supernovae. Humanities answer was to create a magnetic shield on a vessel using a large electromagnet. But even this shield can struggle against a large blast of radiation, an extremely rare phenomena space-goers have come to call space-devils.

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Sources

The main source of space-devils are pulsars and magnetars which are known soft gamma repeaters, releasing large bursts of radiation at irregular intervals. Larger bursts, cause by starquakes on pulsars, can also be generated but are extremely rare, predicted to occur only a few times within a galaxy every million years.

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Dangers

While mostly unpredictable, few people wander close enough to pulsars and magnetars for space-devils to be immediately dangerous, it is after warping where most dangers lie. Without sensors at the location of the warp, it is impossible to tell if a burst is present or not. While there have been no reported instances of a vessel jumping into a space-devil, most captains choose to follow the heavily monitored warp-trails to avoid unnecessary risk.