Intergalactic Summit

A recent Scope broadcast ticker mentioned the ORE mining platform Kubera being relocated to Anoikis, which is to say wormhole space.

For those following along at home, the Kubera, weighing in at approximately 8,000,000,000,000 kg, is about the weight of some ridiculous number of Ragnarok-class Titans. Eight billion tons, while a Ragnarok masses at two million tons-- so, 4,000 Titans, approximately?

What black magic does ORE have that allowed them to locate and traverse a wormhole with that beast? And where even is this location?

Sure, but-- imagine even the difficulty in shipping the components for a titan into a C6 wormhole, using freighters. Now multiply that by a few thousand.

Magic. Most likely of the demonic nature.

Just supposing some of the low-key research that recently came to light was not limited to zombified Drifter domes, but further still into their techno toolbox. Like, for instance, the relationship with the chaotically configured constructs and the correlated convergence phenomena. Wouldn't that be a thing if these precocious bastards had presently busted that puzzle box?

...but perhaps I'm being paranoid, bemused, probably both.

Given that the Sisters of Eve conducted a bunch of research in Thera, about wormhole traversing methodology, which was revealed with the unveiling of the Stratios et al, then it is quite feasible that other entities, such as ORE have also been investigating wormholes.

Certainly, for a business such as ORE, then manipulation of wormholes in order to move their mineral extraction equipment around at lower cost than freighters/jump freighters, would be a very attractive idea.

So, perhaps ORE have a wormhole speculum device, that can enlarge a naturally occurring wormhole, to prodigious dimension.

Such a device would be very coveted by certain groups.

So expect there to be several entities staging raids against ORE in the coming months.

well, no, hold on. If I fly a battleship through a wormhole, I add a hundred million kilograms of transit mass. If I repackage that same battleship and carry it through the wormhole in a Bustard's fleet hangar, then I only add twenty million kilograms, the mass of the Bustard.

So, we know that the Planck Field generators present in any starship's hold - you know, the ones that let you do things like increase a hauler's capacity by 25% with the right skills - also do a decent job of buffering the wormhole from the mass of the cargo. If they didn't, we'd have found some inexpensive high-density cargo commodity and we'd be using haulers or even travel 'ceptors full of that commodity for rolling, rather than expensive battleships with Higgs anchor rigs.

That same mass negation effect stops Interceptors from being made sluggish by the weight of their own ammunition.

So in fact, that eighty billion tonnes might even have made it through in a single shipment, if it was carefully nano-disassembled down using the same Upwell tech that lets us carry Keepstars in an industrial... and let's face it, the moons of New Caldari Prime are physically smaller than a Keepstar.

ALXVP relied on that effect to get our Fortizar built, after all. A Fortizar's mass is far more than will pass through any of the wormholes we've ever seen in Origin, but we were able to import it just fine.

So for all we know, the actual transport op was a single tricked-out Bowhead under heavy Mordu's escort.

It probably took a lot of time and work. But that is not as glamorous as someone having a wormhole generator capable of massing the completed platform. Not as interesting as "black magic."

An alternative explanation is that when it was stated that the Kubera massed "8 billion tons" what was meant was 8*10^9 tons, not 8*10^12 tons (both 10^9 and 10^12 being alternate definitions of "billion"). This would put it as about one sixth as massive as a Keepstar.

8*10^9 tonnes is 8*10^12 Kg. We've been working in kilograms here.

So.

Here's an idea.

The Drifter Hives that appeared associated with the research facility strikes-- they weren't built on site, and I very much doubt they'd been there long, given the unstable nature of the Nexus anomaly associated with each one.

What if ORE took a chance and attempted to traverse a Nexus anomaly? It'd certainly explain some of the guncam footage that's starting to leak from Kubera's personnel!