Freelance
Traveller
069-526 (Ley 0721) BAAA630-7 Ni Wa 103 Im M4 V K8 D
Class B starport, 1.25g, exotic atmosphere, ~100% surface water, one million inhabitants, government by self-perpetuating oligarchy, no laws, mass tech level is 7 (e.g. hovercraft, solar power, assault rifles, composite fibre materials).
The planet known to astrographers as 069-526 is the main world of the binary Kleister system. Kleister Alpha is a dim red main sequence star and the distant white dwarf is Kleister Beta. The Beta system is uninhabited and consists of a gas giant, an iceball planet and miscellaneous rocks. The Alpha system has three gas giants and several rockball planets to keep its main world 069-526 company.
069-526 is known unofficially as "Fonnein" to its million inhabitants. It's a large, cold world which is almost entirely covered with water, much of it frozen. The land area is negligible, and the atmosphere is deadly to humans anyway. The world was colonised in 922 to exploit the rich sea life and minerals, using outside technology and resources. Fonnein does not have the manufacturing technology base to sustain itself without trade.
About two thirds of the inhabitants have live in underwater cities, with the remainder in smaller outlying installations. Each city has a spaceport on a tower poking above the waves (which can be closed by bad weather), as well as extensive submarine docks and cargo handling. These spaceports transfer to the orbital starport for off-world traffic.
Fonnein is administered by a hereditary leadership caste, descended from the colonists' original elected leaders, who live amongst the normal citizens and get on just fine with them. The extremely dangerous underwater environment seems to instill a tendency to rational co-operation amongst the populace, and they live without any laws or much in the way of politics. Visitors who witness Fonnein society have been known to joke about mind-affecting drugs in the air-reprocessing system.
There are some archaeological mysteries on Fonnein – what appear to be dolphin skeletons have been found in sediments around one hundred thousand years old. Dolphins only left Terra 3-4000 years ago, and they could not breathe Fonnein's surface atmosphere.
Fonnein Orbital is one of the uglier starports in charted space. It was made by welding two defunct freighter hulls to a gantry structure and adding assorted docks, gantries, boatyards and accommodation at convenient points. It's a bit of a warren, but runs a successful business. The yards have a good reputation for quick and cheap refits to small merchant ships.
Elsewhere in the Kleister Alpha system, the Imperial megacorporation Sternmetal Horizons LIC maintains a mining operation on Estorr, a moon of the gas giant Praimen. Around twenty thousand employees mine radioactives, with some petrochemical skimming operations just getting underway. Non-company ships are not normally permitted to approach.