Gate Transit Disappearances

missing ships · gate disappearances · the gate anomaly

Naomi's predicted gate-space wake consumes the Pella and fourteen Free Navy warships at the Sol gate, proving the phenomenon can be triggered but not understood.

Story so far

Scattered ships have vanished during Ring transit across colony, Free Navy, and stolen Martian routes. Naomi's analysis of Medina records found a consistent five-variable pattern involving prior traffic's mass and energy, the next ship's mass and energy, and elapsed time. She proposed that a sufficiently amplified transit could create a temporary wake dangerous to the following ships.

The converted carrier Giambattista passes through the Arcadia gate with added mass, a stressed reactor, and overloaded internal systems, beginning the predicted decaying window. Marco responds to Medina's capture by bringing the Pella and fourteen warships through the Sol gate in a closely packed high-energy formation. Their passage lands in the active range of Naomi's model.

For Marco aboard the Pella, ordinary sensory boundaries dissolve into photons, molecules, and an approaching darkness. For the Roci crew, the gate's brilliant enemy plumes simply flicker out. The result confirms the model's awful practical value: a gate condition can be deliberately produced that removes whole ships without a visible battle. It does not reveal where the ships have gone, what acted on them, or whether anyone aboard survived.

Appearance

A Ring gate bright with tightly clustered braking plumes, then abruptly empty; inside the experience of an affected ship, matter and perception fracture into raw light, molecular detail, and an encroaching darkness.

Role

The anomaly is now a proven weapon-like hazard, saving Medina while opening an unresolved question about its victims and the force behind it.

Relationships

[[Naomi Nagata]] — Her unverified model successfully predicts the conditions that remove Marco's fleet, leaving her with relief inseparable from fear for Filip.

[[Giambattista]] — Its overloaded Arcadia transit deliberately creates the short-lived wake the later formation encounters.

[[Pella]] — The flagship leads the precisely timed fifteen-ship transit that vanishes from the Sol gate.

Sources — 2 recorded facts, by chapter

Chapter 50

Scattered ship vanishings during Ring transits become a measurable hazard when Naomi finds a five-variable pattern that predicts the dangerous conditions.

Chapter 52

Naomi's predicted gate-space wake consumes the Pella and fourteen Free Navy warships at the Sol gate, proving the phenomenon can be triggered but not understood.