=Prometheus= 
**Posted by:** Mimiko Green, Firewall Informant <__Info__ __Msg__ __Rep__>
One of the minor inner moons of [[Saturn]], Prometheus is home to the [[Titanian Commonwealth|Commonwealth]] industrial colony of Marseilles. It is elongated in shape, measuring roughly 136 x 79 x 59 kilometers.
==Marseilles== 
**Station Type:** [[Beehives|Beehive]]
**Allegiance**: Autonomist Alliance (Titanian Commonwealth)
**Primary Languages:** French, Skandinavíska, Vietnamese
**Population:** 800,000
Marseilles was constructed similar to many other beehives built on icy moons and asteroids throughout the solar system: by melting tunnels and chambers into the ice and then insulating them. Since Prometheus is an exceptionally porous body of loosely packed snow mixed with small amounts of rock and metal, however, its interior is ﬁlled with large caverns. The major parts of Marseilles were constructed by enlarging these caverns and strengthening them by melting the snow to form a shell of ice between 50 and 100 meters thick. After insulating this shell, the cavernous interiors were built up with a maze of corridors and rooms.
Not all of the caverns are fully developed habitat space. The Ice Gardens are a series of only partly insulated caves kept at a cool 5 C to keep the ice stable. Genehackers from Profunda were hired to populate these Gardens with cold- and micrograv-tolerant plants and smart animals. These cold but wonderful parks are ﬁlled with conifers, snow monkeys, furry snakes, and white owls, and all of the animals are tame enough to be pets. Outsiders mostly haven’t had much experience with large micrograv gardens, and so it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s impressively lovely
Marseilles is home to some 80,000. A significant portion of these work in the large surface reﬁneries, converting the volatiles gathered by the Commonwealth’s gas mining skimmer ﬂeets. The locals are nice people and fairly well off, however, it can be a somewhat odd place to live due to a pervasive air of secrecy. Everyone knows that the Commonwealth almost certainly has an antimatter factory here, but no one will confirm this fact. Approximately one eighth of the population has a high security clearance and works in a well-guarded deep cavern called Maxwell.
===Maxwell Cavern=== 
Maxwell is only accessible via a pair of ultra-secure maglev lines. To get into the train station, much less on either of these trains, your data needs to be on ﬁle, and they don’t just rely on mesh data either. You get a blood sample to check your morph and a brain scan to check your ego just to get into that train station. The whole procedure only takes 30 seconds per person, but everyone working in Maxwell must prick their ﬁnger and put the circlet on their head every trip. If either one doesn’t match, they are detained until everything is ﬁgured out.
The station is built away from the rest of the habitable space and has no access from the surface; you must pass through the entire main habitat to get there, and most of the locals are on watch for strangers acting suspiciously. The actual engineers, scientists, and security personnel who work at the Maxwell site are a remarkably secretive bunch. While they visit local shops, nightclubs, and restaurants, they mostly only go there in the company of other high-ranking Commonwealth personnel, and they rarely talk to outsiders in anything but the most casual fashion. The locals who aren’t employed at Maxwell are understanding of the high security around the facility, especially since the Commonwealth spends heavily to keep Marseilles in top condition, but there is still a bit of resentment at how much of a distance the Maxwell employees keep.
I believe the rumored antimatter factory is only part of what’s happening here, and that it’s largely an open secret because it is the only project that the Commonwealth isn’t keeping well hidden. It makes an excellent cover for whatever else is going on here. You don’t have to believe me, but if you hang around the main docks, there’s a hell of a lot of propulsion and fabrication technology arriving that quickly disappears down the Maxwell rabbit hole. You add this up with all the security they deal with on a daily basis,and it’s easy to see that there’s way more than an antimatter factory going on in that cavern.
We’re dealing with rumors, but people occasionally let things slip and with the type of tech getting shipped into that cavern—or caverns; who’s to say there is only one? I think it’s safe to say they’re working on some sort of next generation propulsion technology. If it weren’t for the Factors, I’d say that reactionless drives were a fool’s game, but they exist, and some of the gear and scientists the Commonwealth has here might ﬁt that proﬁle. The other idea that works is weapons research. The next step after making antimatter is either tweaking matter so it ﬂips over into antimatter or creating anti-particles out of the quantum foam. Do that at range, even a fairly short range, and you’ve got a very deadly weapon. There’s no proof of any of this; the Commonwealth doesn’t seem interested in allowing any to get out. I’ve heard that people who get too interested in the Maxwell Cavern tend to vanish, sometimes reappearing with a lot less interest in what’s going on here.

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