Bentel Cascade

With the collapse of the Bentel society, its close orbit was unmanaged and eventually fell into a collisional cascade. The abandoned shipyards, along with the many derelicts left in orbit, have fueled decades of hazardous and ever-changing space debris surrounding the planet.

Navigation through the field is nearly impossible without a detailed computer model of the system. The Free Captains maintain a model on a supercomputer on the planet's surface and regularly tow in additional sources of debris to keep a deadly obstacle field.

Debris collisions are nearly constant through the cascade and paths through open and close in difficult-to-predict patterns. The passages are monitored by the B.O.C.C.E.M. supercomputer, and the Free Captains sell access to the planet with up-to-date navigational information.

Those attempting to navigate the field must rely on constant updates from the supercomputer, as collisions in the field can change trajectories instantly. Skilled pilots are required to traverse the field, and even veterans who have navigated it in the past have been killed while trying to cross. In addition, an inbound ship collision creates a period where the model is incorrect, so even the smallest deviation on approach is likely to lead to a cascading series of collisions in which the destruction of the errant ship is assured.

At the end of the Bentel Insurrection , the great shipyards were damaged beyond the point of repair and were left in orbit around the planet along with the ships destroyed in the battles. Few spaceworthy ships remained on the planet after the war, and most of those fled shortly thereafter. The people of Bentel lost the ability to leave the surface, and the planetary orbits soon fell into collisional cascading.

Within a decade, navigation around the planet had become nearly impossible. The planet was cut off from the rest of the galaxy for the next fifty years.

Eventually, the poles cleared enough for some smaller ships to pass to the surface of the planet, and Crichton Dein had his technological breakthrough that allowed for the creation of the B.O.C.C.E.M. . The Free Captains organization landed on the now nearly deserted planet and took control of the field. They used the system to track the field for clear paths and to know when and where to introduce additional debris to manipulate particular pathways.