The Curious Voyage of the Maria Theresa

Perhaps the greatest galactic mystery is that of the Maria Theresa.

One of the legendary Imperial Starcruisers, the Maria Theresa was a passenger-and-cargo liner of unprecedented luxury. At an overall length of 8,000 meters and a width of nearly 500, the Starcruiser was a spaceborne city that could carry well over a million passengers. Each of the 40 Starcruisers endlessly plied the circumference of the Galaxy, making stops at each of the Provincial Capitals and completing a circuit in 11 days.

In TE 233, during a maintenance layover at the Tep Kecor shipyards, the presumed-empty Maria Theresa fired up her engines and, eluding pursuit, entered tachyon phase and was never seen or heard from again.

Lost along with the Starcruiser were her full complement of ancillary craft, including five fifty-meter liners, five twenty-meter cargo carriers, and one hundred ten-person escape boats. The liners and cargo carriers, respectable starships themselves, had FTL capability and limited weapons.

In TE 243, the Maria Theresa was replaced by a newly-constructed sister ship, the Maj Thovold.

Theories of the Maria Theresa’s fate include human or nonhuman pirates, other aliens, time-travelers, and unexplained behavior by the cruiser’s onboard AI software.

In fact, it was discovered much later that the Maria Theresa was stolen by a thrill-seeker named Dram Alvaad. By 4000 CE, the ship was in a permanent spot near Ultrawave Relay Alpha, where it became the nucleus of a thriving community living in a number of linked artificial habitats.