Edited News Reports from the Triad Alliance News Corp.

Special Report: Triad Science Group Speculates on VOX Origins

One of the oldest life forms in the known Galaxy. The VOX's first victims, and its progenitor, walked among the Galaxy core stars a million years before the civilizations now populating the arms of the galaxy. 

The VOX Project was the desperate genetic attempt to extend the life of a dying race, the Brak. The Brak's home worlds circled the brightest star in the constellation Trianguli Australis. During testing of the mutagen, the Brak's Sun, Trianguli Australis Alpha, which had entered a praticularly unstable period, released an intense gamma burst and went nova. 

The Brak died, but their creation, bombarded by the intense radiation, mutated and became "aware". The plague, was spread outward on the debris of the dead worlds and star. 

When a lifeform is infected by the VOX, it loses its individuality and is overpowered by an empathic link to the VOX presence, called the Hive. The Hive has grown into billions of chemically and psychologically altered minds across a quarter of the Galaxy. Any contact, be it by skin, spacesuit, even the surface of a space ship-means infection due to the highly adaptive nature of the VOX to infect its victims. 

Gestation for the infection is usually about 24 Earth Standard hours for most life forms. A ship's systems are usually compromised after one hour. Resistance to the mutagen is usually brutally subdued. Rumors have that on a ship that has been infected and its systems compromised, life support is removed, causing a coma-like state for its inhabitants. When the occupants regain their consciousness, they are VOX. 

The only known deterrant is the use of antimatter weaponry-reducing the host, ship, planet and the VOX to cinder. The Vox mutagen has evolved into an almost between state of matter and energy-a seriously tough nut to attack or defend against. 

Fortunately, in its natural state, it is unable to generate motion by itself-it must have a host that is mobile. Another weakness for the mutagen is field physics. When the VOX is in fold space, it loses its connection with the Hive-and its orientation. Therefore, in a battle, or when the VOX ship comes out of the fold into normal space, they are vulnerable for approximately five Earth Standard minutes. 

With this discovery, thousands of VOX-infected ships and millions of life forms have died amidst a firestorm of antimatter blasts. But after two million years of awareness and slow but steady progress outwards from the Galatic Core, millions of ships, thousands of planets, and billions of VOX carriers present the grimmest of threats to life in the Galaxy and beyond.-S. Hayhurst-Terra