Blackwater Station 4276

Blackwater Station 4276 (referred to as backwater by it's operator) is an DS operated trade post situated on a Dark Matter Shadow in the Great Gulf between Terran and Lanaktallan space. It was the location of First contact between the Terran Confederacy and the United Council of Systems.

Description
Blackwater Station 4276 is a large Terran trade / navigation outpost operated by a digital sentience. It resembles a Terran Jellyfish, with 12 "tentacles" hanging from a large oval body, a chrome colored hull and red and white accents. The station could be illuminated by a large quantity of lights and broadcasts a beacon signal into jumpspace from realspace. Like most Terran vessels, it appeared solid to Lanaktallan scanners, but contained a large quantity of resources. The station offered resupply, repair and trade to any nearby ships, including energy, base elements, antimatter, and exotic materials. It had the capacity to upgrade hardware and rearm ships, but would not do that for unidentified ships. Trade goods accepted included new media, elements, and exotic isotopes.

Operator
Blackwater Station 4276 was operated by Sam-UL-4481, a DS sentenced to 500 years of menial labor for theft. He was required to spend time there alone as punishment for stealing a game from Nebula-Steam and releasing it before it was published, and for robbing digital stores. He found it incredibly boring, and stated that his punishment was unfair about a trillion times a year. Sam-UL-4481 described himself as not good with organic individuals. He told the Lanaktallan captain Holkath to call him Dentous, the name of the class of ship that provided repair, resupply, and refueling to Fleet ships. After witnessing the death of one of Daxin Freeborn's kitty kitties, he was recalled for therapy.

History
Lanaktallan sensors estimated the Station to be roughly 200 years old, close to a century off at the minimum. The station made contact about 275 years into Sam-UL's sentence there, where he briefly made contact, acquired their language database, and offered to trade with them before the Lanaktallans left. Blackwater was apparently irrelevant until over a year later, when Sam-UL witnessed the Terran Old Metal Fleets sail from Sol To UCS space, and received Daxin Freeborn's message torpedo. He pulled the message torpedo into his hull, where the station's kernel VI noticed it's hellspace exposure and, combined with the information from the onboard Kitty-Kitty, alerted TerraSol's intelligence agencies to the Precursor fleet and Daxin's situation. Sam-UL transmitted this data to the 2nd Armored Division.

Sam-UL was traumatized by the death of the KittyKitty and was recalled for therapy.