Lost Colony
Freed from Target Control but deeply contaminated, the colony becomes the subject of a race between corporate reclamation, university aid, and Preservation law.
Story so far
The lost colony combines Adamantine’s terraformed settlement with a much older Pre-CR installation built around an alien-remnant site. Target Control spreads through colonists, systems, implants, ships, and agricultural infrastructure until Murderbot and its copy destroy the central network and ART’s pathfinder eliminates the protected human host.
The surviving population is no longer under active central control, but alien code, altered bodies, contaminated soil, and hidden remnant technology make ordinary rescue impossible. ART’s crew debates whether the settlement can be decontaminated in place or whether everyone must be moved. University specialist teams will be needed, and ART itself cannot safely enter a wormhole while residue remains on its drive.
Contamination also invalidates the university’s prepared legal case for a straightforward resident charter. Barish-Estranza still claims reclamation rights and has sent for reinforcements, while ART’s crew calls its university and Preservation arrives first with Pin-Lee’s contract expertise. The colony ends free of its controlling intelligence but suspended between medical emergency, self-determination, and corporate seizure.
Appearance
A storm-prone terraformed plateau of fields, lake, docks, lift tower, and ribbed ancient structures above a vast contaminated stone installation, marked by pathfinder craters and scattered dead drones.
Role
The lost colony is the unresolved beneficiary of the rescue. Saving its people now requires medicine, decontamination, law, and political protection rather than another battle.
Relationships
Sources — 7 recorded facts, by chapter
- An isolated, supposedly abandoned colony system holds signs of habitation, ART's missing crew, and the unanswered catastrophe that enabled the takeover.
- Two abandoned settlements overlap in one hidden system where surviving colonists may face alien contamination, corporate reclamation, and the loss of ART's crew.
- The hidden system now holds forty-three missing days, a compromised corporate explorer, and mounting evidence that old human machinery was adapted around alien power.
- The hidden system now contains a crippled support ship, a missing armed explorer, and proof that an unremembered battle followed the first compromise.
- The colony’s storm-wrapped planet, prisonlike lift tower, and powered orbital dock become the next forensic scene after the explorer vanishes again.
- The colony’s ambitious abandoned infrastructure now shelters fleeing university crew, while its surface becomes the next battlefield beneath an orbital ship fight.
- Freed from Target Control but deeply contaminated, the colony becomes the subject of a race between corporate reclamation, university aid, and Preservation law.