The Traxati    

The USS Coronado has uncovered almost nothing about the Traxati themselves.  What they look like and their culture is a complete mystery.  The USS Coronado's crew thinks they are not humanoid, but has absolutely no evidence of the Traxati as a lifeform -- we don't know a thing.  The only thing we've encountered of them so far is their technology, which is quite advanced, but has gone in a COMPLETELY different direction than any of the established Trek races.      

Even in their technology, we haven't seen very much.  So far, we've encountered two examples of it: the Traxati "hypergate" and their probes.  First, basic descriptions of both.     

A Traxati hypergate is a ring or torus between 10,000km and 25,000km in diameter and 1km in cross section.  The ring is made of nearly pure neutronium and as such, Traxati hypergates are incredibly massive objects with distinct and powerful gravity fields.  A Traxati hypergate spins (much like a tire) at 0.95C -- so fast that to a casual observer, it doesn't appear to move at all.  Each hypergate spins at a precisely calculated speed near 0.95C but not exactly at it.  Two gates spinning at the exact same speed are linked, no matter how far apart they are.  Passing through a gate spinning at 0.9531C will send the traveller hurtling across the cosmos to reappear at another gate spinning at that speed.      

Each gate is controlled by dozens of gravimetric drives mounted on their outside surfaces.  These drives respond to transmissions on a specific frequency.  Sending the correct transmission to the drives will cause them to accelerate or decellerate the spin of the gate.  This takes anywhere from several minutes to several hours depending on the change ordered, but will result in linking that gate to another in the cosmos with the new speed.  One could theoretically explore and pinpoint the locations all of the connected gates by using a base gate, passing through, recording the location you emerge, passing back through, adjusting the speed of the base gate slightly, passing through again, recording the new location, etc., over and over until you had an "address book" of the other gates.      

Hypergates only operate when spinning at speeds within 5% of 0.95C.  If the spin of the gate is changed to faster or slower than this range by transmitting the appropriate signals to the drives, the gate will be rendered inoperative until it is returned to the operational range.  The gates can be closed permanently by shifting their spin outside of this range and then destroying the gravimetric drives themselves.  

The other Traxati technology that the USS Coronado has encountered is their probes.  Probes are self-replicating machines anywhere from 20 meters to 75 meters in length.  They are not made of neutronium -- they can be destroyed by standard weaponry.  The USS Coronado managed to capture a damaged probe but couldn't understand much of the technology in it.  Probes are extremely difficult to capture because they have two defense mechanisms.      

First, a probe can convert any matter it touches into either neutronium (to construct the hypergates) or antineutronium (used to power the gravimetric drives on the gates). 

Second and related, a probe can touch a bit of matter, converting it to a neutronium needle approximately a quarter-meter long and 2cm in diameter and then "launch" this needle at an attacker.  Several probes working in concert can thus make it extremely uncomfortable for an attacker, either converting parts of the attacking ship into anti-neutronium or launching "clouds" of neutronium needles at them.  Since neutronium is denser than just about anything, it will pass through virtually any material as if it were very thin air.  Starships facing such a neutronium needle cloud will be riddled with tiny holes through all manner of critical systems and crew members.      

Several probes working together can also construct two enormous needles, one of neutronium, one of anti-neutronium.  These two needles are approximately 1000 meters long and 10 meters in diameter, weighing approximately 200 million tonnes each.  The probes will then launch these two needles at a planet, where, after several days, they will meet in the planet's core, mutually annihilating each other and causing a massive explosion at the center of the planet.  The planet's destruction is usually the result of such an attack.  The raw material from such a cataclysm is then used to construct a hypergate.      

The primary purpose of the probes seems to be the construction of the hypergates.  The probes do not possess hyperlight drive of any kind -- they arrive in a target system at speeds near C, use some sort of gravimetric drive and a slingshot manuever around the target star to slow to a normal speed.  They then proceed with the construction of a gate.  Once the gate is complete, it is assumed that the Traxati use it to explore that part of the galaxy.  The secondary purpose of the probes is to maintain and defend the gates once they're constructed.  A working gate will be attended by nywhere from two to twenty probes.      

Such a gate is under construction in the Zadar system.  The probes used the neutronium/antineutronium needle combination to destroy Zadar 3 (and most of the planet's 825 million inhabitants), then began construction using the planet's rubble as raw material. the USS Coronado's crew estimates it will take several years, if not decades to break up the planets in the system, convert the raw material to neutronium, build the gate and attach the drives, and spin the gate up to 0.95C.  In the meantime, the USS Coronado has encounterd another, finished gate in the Iju system, and has evidence of at least two other finished gates in nearby systems.