Tecoma star collapse

“The enemy is here” —  Spoilers for Tiamat's Wrath follow.

A major event that happened during the Underground-Laconia Conflict in which the Tecoma system's neutron star collapsed and shot a gamma-ray burst into the slow zone, destroying two gates.

Event[]

Elvi Okoye leads a scientific mission for the Laconian Empire, on a ship specifically made for the mission, the Falcon. Elvi is tasked to fly around system to system doing scientific studies in the unexplored systems which may have Protomolecule Artifacts.^[1] The mission that Elvi does not know about is the Laconian's Military objective of finding a relatively sparse and uninhabited system to conduct a military weapons test. They eventually discover the Tecoma system, a system that is empty of any planets or space material.^[2] The only thing in the system is a neutron star and its oddly placed ring gate, which is much further from the system's star than normal and above it. The Falcon's study of the system is then used by Winston Duarte and the Laconian military to use this system to conduct a weapon test since the Tecoma system met their requirements of a sparse system.

The Falcon crew then gets the order from Duarte to send a ship filled with explosives into the Ring network with the Tecoma gate. When the test is conducted, the ship phases between the gates and explodes.^[3] The experiment then goes wrong when the Unknown aggressors destabilize the Tecoma system's neutron star. Fearing a possible gamma-ray burst hitting the Tecoma gate, the Falcon attempts to escape and retreats into the slow zone.

The test caused precipitation of free protons from virtual particles across the whole system. This added mass caused the neutron star, already in an unstable equilibrium, to collapse into a black hole and emit gamma-ray bursts of radiation from its poles. These jets hit the Tecoma gate and blast into the slow zone, as the gate was aligned along the spin axis of the star instead of its ecliptic. The jet hits the Ring Station, causing it to turn brighter than a star, and causing the slow zone's starless dark edges to light up with strange auroras of color. With the destruction of the Tecoma gate and Thanjavur gate, the Thanjavur colony is completely isolated from the rest of the Interstellar human community. This event is soon followed by an attack by the Unknown Aggressors that also destroys Medina station, and all ships in the slow zone at the time except for the Falcon (which escapes with heavy damage due to Elvi's actions).^[4]

References