Previously: After rebooting the long-silent Bastion lander and syncing with its orbital probes, the SAR team discovered a debris field that periodically plunges the planet into deadly cold. With the first storm front already forming, Garfield and his crew must win over a wary village council and turn the Bastion into a shared lifeboat before the darkness fully arrives.

Characters:
Search and Rescue: Jack Garfield, Alba Reyes, Rios, Henley, Dr. Nakamura.
Villagers: Mira, Eric, Elari, Griggs

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“We have been here for decades, and nothing like that has ever happened. Ice-cold winters, yes, but this is something we can handle. I assur—”

“I assure you, this is not something you can handle with cabins and goodwill, Griggs. The occlu—”

Mira raised her hand and cleared her throat. It only paused Reyes for half a second before she pressed on, her voice now raised.

“The occlusion event is cyclical and only happens every—”

Reyes felt Garfield’s hand on her arm. She looked down before flicking her eyes back up at him.

He hadn’t seen that piercing, furious look since the Ring near Proxima Centauri, the night she’d started to say something that had been on her mind, and he’d dodged it with a joke.

Mira took a beat, then stood up. “A brief recess is in order. Back when the dial faces up.”

“What was that? Are you—” Reyes stopped when Mira walked over.

Mira faced Reyes but addressed Garfield. “Captain, I understand your team members aren’t barristers, but a minimum of decorum is not asking for too much now, is it?” She didn’t wait for a reply and moved toward her chambers.

“Can you believe these people… and I can’t believe you!” Reyes poked her finger into Garfield’s chest. “These peop—”

“They wi—,” he’d started, but the rest didn’t make it out.

“You shou—”

“Alba.” Jack now raised his voice, “Alba, you are right.” He paused for just a beat, “but you are losing them.”

“But—”

“No buts. This is not the Genius Corps; these are not hyper-rational engineers. We have to speak their language.”

Rios leaned in. “Reyes, these are people who did not just build a city. They built a home, and they are proud of it. Let them come to the conclusion themselves. Show the printouts, make it factual. Tell them we are here to help.”

Reyes looked at Garfield and Rios in front of her, leaned sideways, and saw Henley behind them nodding, while Nakamura gave her the thumbs up.

“You got this, Alba.” Jack put his hand on her shoulder. “I trust you. Go for Rios’ approach.”

Mira’s gavel got the murmuring to quiet down.

She looked toward Reyes. “Let’s take this from the top. Why don’t you help us understand what you have to say?”

Reyes breathed in, stood up, and cleared her throat.

“We have successfully rebooted the Bastion, and—”

“Without consulting us, as I might—” Elari jumped up but sat down after Mira banged her gavel. “Continue, Miss Reyes, please.”

“We established contact with the orbital assets in the system and determin—”

Rios’ cough interrupted her.

“…we, ehm, found out that there is a debris field, ehm basically asteroids, circling this system. Every twenty-seven years, give or take a few months, they pass between the star and the planet, causing a sudden and aggressive cool-down of the planet.”

The council hall was quiet now.

“We may have crashed here, but we are Search and Rescue. We are here to help. The Bastion needs cleanup, but it is built to withstand cold spells and storms. We can’t do it alone, though. For starters, it doesn’t have a food supply. Working together gives us the best chance.”

---

“Sandankai kaisendon.”

“What’s that?” Henley didn’t look up from the crate of medical supplies he was inventorying.

“It’s a dish I wish I’d eaten again before we freeze or starve here.”

He now looked up. “You’re not usually that fatalistic, Nak. You alright?”

“It’s just, I’ve been away too many cycles.” Nakamura took a beat. “But I don’t have to tell you that. How many cycles have you been out?”

Henley smirked. “The only thing that counts is my little farm waiting for me when I retire next cycle.” His thoughts lingered, then snapped back. “Tell me about that sanda-what-you-said, kaizen-thing?”

Nakamura smiled. “It’s the best thing. When I was little, my ojiichan, my grandpa, took me to Tsukiji outer market before sunrise. He’d park me at a counter and order sandankai kaisendon. At first, it’s just raw fish and warm rice, then wasabi and nori get mixed in. At the end, when only scattered fish and rice are left, the itamae would pour hot dashi and turn it into this salty little soup. Tengoku!”

Henley stood up and walked over. “You know, I believe we may have some fish here. The rice we might have to replace with these things.” He pointed at a bag with a local vegetable in the corner.

Nakamura smiled. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’m not a trained itamae, but I’ll give it a shot.”

Nakamura laughed, a short, genuine burst that fogged in the cold air.

A shadow crossed the doorway. Garfield leaned in, one hand on the frame. “Oh man, a comedy show? Here? And nobody got me a ticket?”

Reyes appeared over his shoulder, mug in hand. “Don’t encourage them, Jack. If Henley gets a crowd, he’ll start doing tight five-minute sets on lower-back pain and union pensions.”

Henley put a hand to his chest, feigning shock with a smile.

“Ah, the power duo has opinions.” Nakamura rolled her eyes with a smile and turned back to the medical rack.

“Seriously though. Good news, the council made its decision. We’re officially partners.”

Henley jerked his chin up. “Great job, never had a doubt, kid.”

Reyes just smirked into her mug. “Come on, Captain. We’ve got to head over to the Bastion.” She gave Henley a two-finger salute, and the pair moved on down the corridor, boots fading in the distance.

Henley watched them go, then glanced back at Nakamura. “Power duo, huh?”

“Rios and I have got a little bet going on.”

Henley smirked but didn’t say anything.

“Rios thinks Jack’s oblivious. I think her sexual energy scares him. Where are you on that, Henley?”

“Well, he could just be a good guy, trying to be respectful, and…”

“Come. On. Henley.” Nakamura sighed. “Literally stranded on a remote planet. I don’t really want the inevitable drama, but they’d make beautiful babies, don’t you think?”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough gossip for me. Let’s get back to inventory.”

“Henley!”

“Yes, yes, okay, they would. Happy now?”

---

Work never really stopped after the council’s decision. The Bastion’s dead corridors gradually filled with the noise of two worlds colliding; villagers moved their households into small quarters and bunks, Rios and Henley warned people away from cables, while kids darted under cargo nets until someone barked at them.

Outside, each day the sun’s light dimmed a little more under the growing occlusion, and the temperature dropped in a way everyone could feel in their bones.

The villagers’ lives, their tools, seed stock, even a wooden boat were labeled and stored in the main cargo bay. Adjacent to it, a makeshift town center had formed. A place where villagers assembled before the night, complained about cramped quarters, and shared stories about shadows in the tree line.

Nakamura was halfway down the central corridor, walking toward Med Bay C with a medical crate, when two children cannoned out of a hatch, eyes wide and half-crying.

“Hey, whoa, slow down, you’re not supposed to be up here.” She caught the smaller one by the shoulder. “What happened?”

“There’s a demon in there!” the older blurted in heavily accented English. “It woke up!”

Behind them, from inside the Med Bay, came the screeching sound of something heavy scraping against metal, followed by sharp clatter, and finally silence.

Nakamura thumbed her radio. “Reyes, this is Doc. Do we have anyone in Med Bay C?”

A wash of static and a high, whining undertone was the only reply.

“Of course,” she muttered to herself.

She nudged the kids toward the corridor. “Back to your parents. Now!” When they hesitated, she softened it. “Go tell them Doc said everything’s fine, and to send Rios.”

Another scrape came from the dark doorway. Nakamura put the crate on the deck, unholstered her sidearm, and slowly moved closer to the door.

Out of the dark, a metal hand grabbed onto the bulkhead in an unnaturally quick and jerky motion.

A scream escaped Nakamura as she lifted her weapon to the 6ft 5 metal android emerging from the dark room. Its eyes glowed a flat, clinical green, and scanned Nakamura’s nametag.

“Shindan kanryō,” it said in precise Japanese. “Anata wa yoi te no naka ni imasu.”

The words hit some deep, old part of her brain. Proper textbook Japanese, the kind her teachers used, not the messy family mix she’d grown up with. Relief rushed in so fast, her muscles unclenched.

“Soko de tomatte!”

The android froze mid-step.

“Set new language preference. English.”

A series of clicks sounded from somewhere in its chest before it replied, “New language setting accepted.”

Nakamura squinted at the android. “Name. Function. Status.”

A stern but not unfriendly mechanical voice responded at once. “Seikai Cybernetics Emergency Surgery Droid 0029 Series. Ready to support. You are in good hands.”

“How are you awake?”

“Responding to the presence of two humans who require medical attention. Further analysis through automated internal sensors revealed thirty-seven other individuals who require treatment for mild injuries. I can make a sche—”

“Stop. Return to charging cradle.”

“But Doctor Nakamura, there are—”

“To the charging cradle. Now.”

The android paused for a heartbeat, then lurched back into its charging cradle.

---

“Knock knock.” Rios popped his head through the door of Med Bay C. “Some kids told me you were fighting a devil?”

Nakamura chuckled without turning her head. “You know how it goes. New, scary environment with dark corners and buttons that activate the med droids. They saw the big guy in the cradle over there and got scared.”

“Big guy?”

Nakamura turned. “Shit! It was right there. I told it to charge.”

“What was it?”

“Medical droid,” Nakamura said. “One of those older, robust ones like on Trappist-1e.”

“Never been.” Rios breathed in, then continued, “Is it dangerous?”

“Don’t think so. It said something about people needing care, but we probably don’t need it going around scaring the villagers.”

Rios tapped his radio but only got static. “There’s a working intercom on the next deck. Let’s go call the tower.”

“Thanks, Rios, you—”

“We, Nakamura, we.”

“Come on, you’re a big guy, you can handle—”

“It’s a big android that hasn’t been recalibrated in twenty years. We are sticking together.”

Nakamura didn’t protest. She picked up her flashlight and followed Rios into the corridor.

---

Garfield stood at the control tower viewport, staring past the village lights to where a band of clouds was dragging itself over the far ridge, thin flurries already blanketing the higher slopes.

Reyes’s cursing pulled him out of his thoughts.

“What’s wrong, Alba?”

“This damn systems architecture. It keeps booting all sorts of random subsystems.”

Garfield leaned over the ops station next to her. “What kind of systems?”

Reyes looked up. “Up close and personal, Jack? Funny, I thought ‘personal’ was something you ran from.”

“Just micro-managing, Lieutenant. What’s that indicator?”

Reyes scrubbed the expression off her face, eyes back on the display. “Internal scanners in the mess hall just switched on.” She tapped them off. “They’re all random systems. Air filtration scrubbers, waste cyclers, water filtration… all on decks we don’t even occupy.”

She tapped through the rest of the list, killing subsystems one by one. “This is straining the power grid, and we haven’t even checked it fully yet.”

“Alba.”

She paused and looked up at Garfield. A fleeting thought told him she looked exhausted, overworked from getting the Bastion operational.

“I see you. It’s not that I’m runn—”

“Garfield, Reyes, come in,” Rios’s voice cut across the channel. “Reyes, we’ve got a little problem down here.”

---

“Subsystems and now a medbot on the loose? Do you think it’s—”

“Connected,” Reyes finished Garfield’s question. “Yes, I do.”

She walked over to another ops station and tapped a search screen. “Let’s do a non-human mass check.”

The console tweeped, automatically flipping through schematics until it pinpointed a moving mechanical mass on deck twenty-three.

“Gotcha.”

“Okay, what now?”

“There should be a recall command.” She thumbed the intercom. “Rios, he’s on twenty-three, subsection D-63. I’ll send a return command. Intercept him at the Med Bay he came from.”

Reyes sighed. “Issue twenty-three of the day solved…well, contained,” she said with a quick smile. “You were about to say something, Captain.”

Garfield looked at her, smiled… then glanced past her to the viewport, and stepped forward without thinking. “It’ll have to wait, Lieutenant. Give them the signal. They have to get in now.”

The storm was no longer hanging over the ridge; it was pouring into the valley, a white curtain of snow spilling down the slopes toward them.

To be Continued in Parts IV and V

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Previous Chapter

Notes & Translations

Ojiichan Japanese: Grandfather
Tengoku Japanese: Heaven or Paradise
Itamae Japanese: A highly skilled chef
Shindan kanryō Japanese: diagnosis complete
Anata wa yoi te no naka ni imasu Japanese: You are in good hands
Soko de tomatte Japanese: Stop right there

Sandankai kaisendon: A Japanese fish-based dish, served in three different variations.
Tsukiji outer market: A fish market in Tokyo

Trappist-1e: A real rocky Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone around the dwarf star Trappist-1

Welcome to the Mélusine, a heavily modified transport ship currently en route to a salvage operation in the outer reaches of the galaxy, an opportunity that might bring in some much-needed credits.

Technical notes, translations, and images at the end.

---

“Eight minutes to Real Space, Captain.”

Lucci’s voice snapped Veyrac back. He acknowledged her with a grunt but kept his gaze on the elongated stars around the Mélusine.

“Thinking about her?” She floated through the hatch, caught the rail, and pulled herself beside him, “We’ll get enough this time.”

“We always say that.” He gave her the smallest smile as he unlocked his magboots and pushed off the rail.

“D’accord. Inform the others.” Veyrac drifted through the hatch, caught a handhold, and pushed off again. “On y va.”

---

Belts clicked shut as the crew strapped in, but without the usual banter.

“Lucci,” Veyrac raised his voice just enough for everyone on the bridge to hear. “Remind me... Who’s the best pilot in The Known Systems? That one-eyed guy on Ganymede… or you?”

“Definitely me, Captain. Hold on, everyone. Dropping out in three… two… one…”

The Alcubierre corridor collapsed. Light streaks snapped back into points. The Mélusine shuddered hard as the hyperdrive module disengaged. Panels rattled, a relay popped somewhere behind them, and dozens of warning lights and system alarms sprang to life.

“How’s my ship, Lucci?”

“In one piece, Captain,” she yelled over the alarms, keeping her hands on the flight controls.

Veyrac turned toward navigation. “Ortega. Are we where we’re supposed to be?”

“Hard to say.” Ortega tapped the screen, eyes narrowed. “Gas giants are throwing noise all over the board. Computer’s checking the star charts.”

“Komarov,” Veyrac radioed, “Switch over to fusion reactors.”

Ortega leaned closer to his console, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Still interference… but I’m getting a ping from the System Buoy. Looks like we dropped right in its CTR space.”

“They can bill us,” Veyrac muttered. “Distance to the Buoy?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Good. Lucci, bring us into its docking pattern. Have the computer negotiate a recharge for the Alcubierre.”

As the fusion reactor spooled up, a low vibration ran through the hull. Veyrac unstrapped, floated aft, and caught a handhold by Komarov’s engineering station.

“Talk to me, Alexei.”

Komarov didn’t look up from the diagnostic screen. “This jump was punishing. Mélusine’s fine, but the Alcubierre is essentially toast. Three coils dead. Without those… Two more jumps, maybe three left in her. I don’t need to remind you that if it cuts out, we’ll be lucky if they even find our bodies; we could be floating forever.”

“You don’t have to, and yet you do,” Veyrac smirked. “Do your magic, Alexei.”

“Magic?” Komarov snorted. “We need new coils. Our client better come through. You checked his credit, right?”

Lucci’s voice crackled over the radio. “Captain, we’re in the pattern and ready for recharge if Alexei’s good.”

Veyrac looked at his engineer. “New coils or not. Can she recharge?”

Komarov sighed, then flipped the comms switch. “She’s good. Detach and recharge. You know the drill.”

A series of clanks moved through the hull.

“I’ll get you those coils as soon as I can, miracle man,” Veyrac said, pushing off and floating back toward the bridge.

Ortega’s voice came over the shipwide. “Freeman, you’re cleared to leave the passenger compartment.”

---

“About time,” Freeman’s voice trembled as he pushed out of the compartment with a bit too much force. He bumped straight into the handhold behind the captain’s chair and needed Veyrac to lock his magboots.

“Captain,” he said, all sugar, and held out a sealed packet. “Your assignment.”

Veyrac didn’t hide the sigh. He pulled a data disk from the packet and sent it drifting toward Ortega, who caught it one-handed and clicked it into the onboard computer. The nav screen lit up, rendering waypoints and vectors.

“The waypoints are on there,” Freeman continued. “Our prize is on the far side of that gas giant. As agreed, you get half of the credits when we retrieve my cargo, and anything you can keep…” He paused, searching for the words. “Whatever you can snatch and grab. The remaining credits will be transferred when you drop me off safely. Make sure your loadmaster brings lifting drones.”

“Let’s save fuel,” Veyrac said. “Prograde vector. Single burn, long coast. Keep us behind that gas giant for as long as possible. Charge the cloak when we’re coasting. Ortega, passive listening only. No active pings.”

“Eight-hour trip one way,” Lucci murmured while scribbling in her notepad, double-checking the math. “Captain, that puts the flip at eighty percent of the way. Hard retro burn. Correct and slow down as we come around the giant and pick up the target.”

“Bon. Make it happen… and call before the flip this time, Lucci. No more gravity-shift injuries.”

“Indeed… indeed,” Ortega muttered under his breath, not bothering to look when Lucci chuckled.

Veyrac pushed off toward the cargo hold. The corridor told its own story: hairline cracks along a panel seam, a flicker in the overhead light strips, a socket spitting sparks as he passed.

He steadied himself at the cargo hold and locked his magboots while looking down, “Reid! Client needs lifting drones. Get them ready.”

Callum Reid glanced up from behind a crate. “Aye. I’ll fetch your fancy floatin’ toys, Capt’n.”

---

The bridge lights were dimmed while coasting. Freeman was half asleep in a chair when Lucci’s voice came over the shipwide. “We’re about to flip. Strap in.”

Veyrac caught a handhold and locked his magboots, eyes fixated on the nav overlay.

“Captain.” Ortega didn’t look up, “We’re flipping blind. Sorry.” His voice jittered, “Magnetosphere interference, plasma tails, ring dust. The passive is useless. We should…”

“Pareil pour quiconque dans le système,” Veyrac interrupted. “Let’s not broadcast our position. You’ll get used to it, kid.”

The ship rolled, nose to stern, engine toward the gas giant, and initiated a long, hard burn. Loose tools and cabinet doors rattled until the glide vector lined up.

“Final adjustments,” Lucci trimmed the stick with just her fingertips. “We’ll have a smooth coast to…”

“Contact,” Ortega blurted. “Bearing zero-six-two by thirty by fifteen. Lost in the parallax until we moved clear of the giant. Multiple returns.”

His face went pale. “Oh no, Collegium signatures. Captain, we’re inside their weapons envelope.”

“Espèce de connard, Freeman, tu nous as vendus.” Veyrac’s lips curled back, just a second. “Prep for course correction. Cloak on. Full burn down along the pole. Ride the giant’s pull and sling us clear. Stay low in the magnetosphere until…”

“Belay that,” Freeman didn’t raise his voice. “Belay that. All of it. Look at those readings again.”

Ortega swallowed, fingers trembling above the screen. “They’re all over… scattered heat points everywhere.”

“Exactly,” Freeman nodded once. “That’s our derelict. Are we being hailed?”

Sweat trickled down Ortega’s temple, “No.”

“No tracking beams. No railgun spikes either,” Lucci added. “Power levels are negligible.”

“They’re dead,” Freeman announced, almost with pride in his voice.

“Alors, Lucci, cloak on. Ortega, watch for power spikes when we enter their Keep-Out Zone.”

Veyrac met Freeman’s gaze, “You. I don’t like surprises. We don’t need attention from the Collegium.”

“I’m paying you. You do as I say.” Freeman didn’t wait for an answer. He silently flipped open his tablet, and a reflection of blueprints flickered across his face.

---

Ortega loosened his straps and drifted toward the bridge’s aft-facing window. Their target was finally visible to the naked eye. He didn’t look away as he thumbed the comm. “Alexei, you should come have a look at this.”

A reflection in the glass revealed Freeman floating beside him, also watching the derelict. “Welcome to the CSIV Carthage, one of the Senate’s interstellar cruisers. The Lagrange point behind the giant is its final resting place.”

The Carthage hung in debris, partly shrouded in dust. Its artificial gravity rotunda still spun, but the occasional plasma flares, exposed ribs, and contorted bulkheads revealed it for what it was: a ruin.

A hand grabbed the handrail beside them. Komarov leaned in, “Vot tebe i na.” He narrowed his eyes at the slow rotation outside. “Still rotating, maybe 0.3 g’s?”

Silence returned until Freeman finally turned away. “Our package is in the forward loading yard.”

“Lucci,” Veyrac paused, locked into a sensor screen, “find us a docking point. Looks like a hull breach ahead of the rotunda.”

“I see it,” she murmured, easing the stick a hair. “Spine’s warped, but there’s enough metal for a cable and a mag-clamp.”

Veyrac tapped the intercom. “Reid, rear-port view. Talk us in. Hold fifteen meters, and hook a cable.”

Static fuzzed as Callum’s voice came through the bridge speakers. “Copy. Closing to twenty… eighteen… fifteen. Give me three degrees starboard… steady… you’re bleeding spin. Correct point-four rpm.”

“Countering roll.” Lucci whispered, barely above her breath.

The static deepened, but one last phrase broke through: “Keep her here.” That was all Veyrac needed to push off toward the cargo hold.

---

Lucci held the Mélusine in station keeping, tiny against the fuselage of the Carthage. Frozen debris floated past the cockpit windows, each piece tumbling at its own rhythm in eerie silence.

The outer door parted, revealing the torn plating and warped spine of the Carthage. Callum was the first to lean out, bracing against the frame. He aimed the tether-gun, exhaled once, and fired. The line floated across the gulf until the magnetized clamps kissed the hull.

“Hard lock,” Callum said when the indicator on the gun flickered green.

Veyrac flashed a half-smile through his visor. “Alright, ragtag gang of badasses, let’s get our dinner. And maybe a new set of coils.”

They clipped onto the tether and pushed off the Mélusine in sequence, drifting through the void onto the Carthage’s hull. Boots hit metal with small, dull thuds; each locking magnetically on impact.

Freeman knelt by a narrow auxiliary hatch and brushed frost off the outer access panel. A dead touchscreen stared back at him, black and unresponsive. “No power.” He released an emergency crank from the panel and swung until the screen blinked on.

His override disk clicked into place with a gentle push. The display showed numbers, letters, and symbols in rapid sequence until the hatch grudgingly unlatched. One by one, they stepped inside and waited for Callum to pilot their drones carrying equipment from the Mélusine through the open hatch.

“Loading bay’s this way.” Freeman pointed left, down the dark passageway.

“Entendu. Komarov, Ortega, engineering’s aft. See if they’re feeling generous with spare parts. Coils for the Alcubierre are the priority. I’ll take Callum and Freeman forward.”

They moved through the forward section where a hull breach opened a direct view into the storms of the gas giant, washing blue light over the interior walls.

“We’re looking for containers 17-X-21-D and Echo-13,” Freeman reminded them. “One’s small, about the size of your mobile generator. The big one’s about 15 meters long.”

They split up, weaving around loose straps and drifting debris. Twenty minutes passed before Callum Reid’s voice came through comms. “Found them. Both intact. They look reinforced.”

Veyrac opened a channel to the aft team. “Ortega, Komarov, status?”

“Found some replacement parts.” Alexei’s voice was barely distinguishable over the static. “We’ll check the armory next.”

Callum crouched by a maintenance panel. “I can bypass the electropermanent mag-locks, but they’re clamped as well. I’ll need to power the loading bay’s subsystem to override.”

Veyrac nodded. “Get to it. We’ll prep the drones.”

The drones anchored their arms automatically when Veyrac and Freeman held them to the container’s flanks. Their amber lights started rotating, signaling they were ready to pull the units through zero-g.

A deep thunk reverberated through the bay floor when Callum reversed the polarity on the electropermanents. “Captain, the mags are disengaged, but the clamps are under a security lockout. I’ll have to cut them manually.”

Freeman held up a hand. “No need.” He slowly moved to the screen and entered a coded sequence. The clamps released in a slow, measured motion. Callum and Veyrac exchanged a glance. Quiet, but understood.

“D’accord. Let’s get paid. Reid, no need to rush. One-meter offset, guide the drones through the breach.”

The drones pushed the containers across open space with careful precision. They drifted out of the cruiser’s cracked hull and toward the open bay of the Mélusine.

By the time Callum had their cargo secured, Komarov and Ortega had stripped every extra part worth taking. Coils, weapons, data cores, anything worth a credit.

“On a connu pire.” Veyrac smirked while surveying the haul, “Rig charges. We don’t leave fingerprints.”

Ortega and Komarov moved off without a word. They planted detonators at strategic points on the Carthage and pushed off its hull one last time, signaling Lucci to take distance.

Moments later, faint flickers crawled across the Carthage’s surface. The first hints of a chain reaction nudging the cruiser slowly into the giant’s pull.

“Course back to the Buoy, six hours,” Lucci reported from the pilot seat.

Veyrac strapped in. “Make it shorter. I don’t want to get caught with my pants down next to a dead talonneuse. Heavy burn. Keep the cloak on.”

With its thrusters spooled, the Mélusine lurched into motion while behind them, the Carthage continued its quiet fall toward oblivion.

---

The Mélusine was over halfway back to the recharging Buoy when a sharp, metallic alarm erupted from the cargo hold.

Veyrac was out of his harness before the second pulse. Freeman and Komarov followed closely, pushing off bulkheads toward the cargo hold.

At the far end of the bay, Ortega stood rigid beside the larger container. Sweat ran down his temple. His face was red. “I… I just touched the seals. Sorry.”

Freeman didn’t think; he moved on instinct, pressing his access chip against the panel. The alarm choked mid-blare.

The silence hadn’t even settled when Veyrac’s pistol was up.

“Codes,” he said flatly. “Access. Collegium cruisers. Chips. Who are you working for?”

Freeman raised both hands, his calm and friendly mask cracked clean through. “You’re making a mistake. I don’t know what it is. Blind drop. Retrieve only.”

“Komarov, open the small one.” Veyrac didn’t blink. “Callum. Cuff Freeman to that pipe. I want him where we can see him.”

Ortega barely had time to flinch before a hand pushed him hard into the wall. Veyrac’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous rasp. “Putain, Ortega. Grow up. We do not touch a client’s cargo. Ever.”

Lucci’s voice over the shipwide cut through the moment. “Get ready for the flip.”

A moment later, the ship pitched gently as Lucci rotated the Mélusine. Thrusters hissed and popped in controlled bursts while she executed a smooth flip-and-retro burn toward the Buoy.

---

It took about an hour, but Komarov finally called a meeting in the mess. The room was dim, lit mostly by the hydroponics box that washed the table in a soft green hue. Freeman sat cuffed to a handrail, while Veyrac, Callum, and Lucci gathered around the prints and decrypted files Komarov had clipped to the table.

On the bridge, Ortega prepared for the reattachment sequence at the Buoy while listening in through the shipwide comms.

“Logs reference something called the Null Vector Drive.”

Lucci let out a low laugh. “Sci-fi pipe-dreams!”

Komarov continued, “Rumors said the Collegium was trying to revolutionize interstellar travel. No more faction-controlled FTL Rings. No more linear Alcubierre tunnels or dangerous course corrections. One pop and you jump to your destination.”

He held up a file. “The other one’s the Synapse Array. They tried merging quantum data processing with uploaded human cognition.”

Freeman’s head lifted slightly.

“Dozens of minds,” Komarov went on. “Scientists, strategists, mathematicians. All uploaded into a unified neural network. Logic, memory, intuition, and creativity blended together.”

“Alexei” Veyrac nodded to the smaller unit. “Are those minds still… in there? Are they alive? Conscious?”

“I don’t know. The notes say only one prototype maintained coherence. Designation A-1: Conscious Core.”

“Digital Slavery,” Callum whispered while looking outside the port window.

“Alexei, why are these two together?” Veyrac didn’t shift his look away from Freeman.

“The Null Vector Drive doesn’t warp or tunnel space like our drive. It identifies a quantum state where the vessel already occupies the target coordinates, then forces synchronization with that state. The computational requirements would be, well, frankly unthinkable. That’s where the Synapse Array comes into play.”

“You’re saying the Synapse Array calculates, while the drive drops you right there…” Lucci paused, “Don’t pass by start, don’t pay the ring guild. Just drop in right. Behind. Enemy. Lines.”

“Putain de merde!” Veyrac slammed his hand on the table. “We’re carrying something every power in The Known Systems will kill for. Collegium, the Guild, private militias, warlords… anyone with a ship and ambition.”

Freeman shook his head frantically. “I didn’t know. I was told to retrieve and deliver. Nothing else.”

“Boys!” Lucci’s voice cooled to steel. “Space it. Destroy it. Anyone who has this becomes a target. Anyone who can operate it becomes a god.”

“Well, you won’t like the next thing then.” Alexei hesitated, then added, “There was a homing beacon inside the container. Went live when Ortega opened it.”

Veyrac’s gaze slowly shifted upward, and he let out a drawn-out sigh.

“Signal’s weak but steady.” Komarov took a pen and drew. “It’ll travel Buoy-to-Buoy until it hits a controlled net. Hours, maybe days.”

“No. It’ll be faster.” Freeman’s face drained. “You don’t understand. That beacon triggers an intervention. Once it transmits, they send a retrieval crew.”

Veyrac didn’t turn around. “And the retrieval crew is?”

“Guild Black-ops retrieval. They wanted plausible deniability if the contractors got caught in a Collegium cruiser, but the Guild owns the buoys; they will know we’ve opened it.”

Callum shook his head. “We’re never walking away from that.”

“We can fix this.” Freeman wiped away a pearl of sweat on his brow. “Just give them the cargo. I’ll explain.”

“Those black-ops boys won’t care,” Callum added quietly. “They’ll kill every single one of us.”

---

‘They’ll kill every single one of us.’ The words bounced around in Ortega’s head.

His hand hovered inches above the flight controls, fingers trembling with the urge to do something, anything, other than wait.

“They’ll send someone,” he whispered to no one but the console. “Not to talk. To clean up.”

A soft tone cut off his thoughts. Arrival at the Buoy. He swallowed hard, steadied his voice, and announced over the shipwide, “Beginning reattachment of the Alcubierre section.”

Down in the mess, Veyrac straightened, reclaiming the center of the room. “Three options,” he said. “Deliver, hide, or destroy.”

He raised a finger. “Deliver… and we hand ourselves to the Guild. Big gamble.”

Second finger. “Hide… and we spend the rest of our lives running from every faction with ambition.”

Third. “Destroy it and hope they leave us alone.” He paused. “They won’t.”

Silence thickened the room. Lucci and Komarov exchanged a fraught, sidelong look, an unspoken conversation about the credits they could earn weighed against what The Guild may do with the tech.

Cuffs rattled softly as Freeman shifted. “Let’s just hand it over, man.”

Somewhere above them, metal clanked: deep, resonant locking of the Alcubierre section returning to its housing, followed by systems whining in the walls.

Veyrac frowned. “Ortega,” he said into the intercom, “Why is the drive spooling?”

A long beat followed. When Ortega answered, he could no longer hide the panic in his voice. “I’m dead if we wait, Captain. I opened it. They’ll come for me. I’m sorry.”

Veyrac didn’t argue. He merely nodded to Lucci. She pushed off toward the ladder and against the grating, but when she reached the bridge, the door was sealed.

Warning tones built, and an automated voice counted down. The deck vibrated when the Alcubierre drive locked, primed, and ignited.

“He’s right about one thing, Captain,” Freeman whispered. “They’re coming. And nothing we do now can change that.”

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Orbital Night

Notes & Translations

Real space / Alcubierre corridor
Interstellar-capable ships are equipped with a hyperdrive that generates a linear Alcubierre tunnel, allowing faster-than-light travel without time dilation. Most ships do not have enough power to create a tunnel on their own and rely on Ring Stations to generate them. On long routes, ships “hop” in straight lines from one Ring to the next. Smaller vessels have detachable hyperdrive modules that can be recharged separately while the ship maneuvers within a system.

The flip
Ships must rotate their engines toward their destination to execute controlled burns that slow them down or allow them to enter planetary/lunar orbits. It is a precise maneuver, typically handled by onboard navigation systems.

The Known Systems
The mapped and partially colonized star systems currently accessible to humans. Several political entities exist within it: the Collegium, the Ring-controlling Guild, independent colonies (such as the one in Orbital Night), warlords, and other factions.

System Buoy / CTR space
In remote regions with no Rings, ships rely on charging buoys. These provide enough power for a short Alcubierre hop in areas where no FTL infrastructure exists. It is taxing and far less reliable than using a Ring. Each buoy has a CTR, a spherical controlled zone that can only be entered with clearance. Ship computers negotiate recharge prices automatically.

Magboots
Artificial gravity is rare and difficult. Most crews rely on magnetic boots and on acceleration-based gravity. Larger ships, such as the Carthage, use rotundas to generate centrifugal gravity.

CSIV
Collegium Senate Interstellar Vessel. The designation for interstellar ships operated by the Collegium.

Null Vector Drive & Synapse Array
Two components of an experimental FTL system. The Null Vector Drive uses superposition to synchronize a ship with a quantum state in which it already occupies the target coordinates. The Synapse Array provides calculations by using an uploaded network of human intelligence and intuition. Together, they could allow a vessel to travel instantaneously. A battleship, for example, could appear behind enemy lines with no warning.

Translations

On y va. French: Let’s go.
D’accord. French: Okay/Alright.
Pareil pour quiconque dans le système. French: Same for anyone else in the system.
Espèce de connard, Freeman, tu nous as vendus. French: You piece of shit, Freeman, you sold us out (idiomatic).
Entendu. French: Understood/Okay.
On a connu pire. French: We’ve seen worse (idiomatic)
Talonneuse. French: Slang for prostitute.
Putain/Putain de merde. French: Fuck/Fucking hell (idiomatic). Whore/shitty whore (literal)
Vot tebe i na. Russian: There you have it.

Images

Previously: A Search And Rescue team crash-landed on a remote planet, far from their intended destination. While cut off from communications, they found a silent colony lander and a village of survivors who had made this world their home.

Technical notes, illustrations, and translations at the end.

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It was a hiss that woke Nakamura. For a moment, she thought it was the sound of a leaky seal. Muscle memory got her on her feet until she realized it was only a kettle over the hearth.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and yawned. Rios was crouched next to her, coaxing the flame. Steam curled along the roof of the longhouse, carrying the earthy smell of whatever substitute the colonists used for coffee.

“Morning, Doc.” Rios smiled. “Still cryo-hungover, or does last night’s cider have anything to do with it?” He chuckled at his own joke.

Nakamura pulled on her jacket, still half-dreaming. “Laugh it up, big boy, laugh it up.”

He poured two tin cups and handed her one. “Colonist blend. Don’t ask.”

She took a sip and grimaced. “Ugh. What in the elements is that? Tastes worse than the synthetic sludge we get on the Ring.”

Laughter drifted in from outside, accompanied by the scraping of shovels and the crunching of boots on gravel paths. Morning had started without them, and curiosity carried them out of the longhouse.

Rios swirled his drink. “You think Garfield slept at all?”

“Doubt it.”

“He better approach the town leaders differently than that woman he tried chatting up on the Ring.”

Nakamura laughed into her cup. “And Reyes’ face…” She shook her head.

“Do you think they realize how obvious their flirting is?”

She smirked. “We’re stuck on this planet. Hope they keep a lid on it.”

The kettle hissed again, louder through a thin whistle on the warped spout.

When they stepped back inside, the rest of the team was up and moving. Henley had claimed a bench by the door, Garfield was lacing his boots, and Reyes was arguing with her AI assistant over another failed satellite link when three villagers entered, led by an older woman.

“Eat,” she said, setting down a wooden plate piled with something that resembled potatoes and a handful of greens. “The council would like to discuss the rules when you are ready.”

---

Inside a timber hall warmed by a central stove, benches had been arranged in a semicircle. A woman in her fifties, with silver hair tied back, introduced herself as Mira with a steady voice. “We don’t turn away visitors. You’re welcome to stay here. But everyone contributes.”

She nodded toward a board beside the stove, it had organized rows of handwritten notes with names, chores, supplies, and tallies of labor hours.

“There’s no set rotation,” she took a note from the board. “Take a task, finish it. Ask for help if you need to. We survive by meeting needs, not by keeping schedules.”

Garfield exchanged a glance with Reyes, who was already scanning the board.

“Agile,” Henley whispered.

“We understand,” Garfield nodded. “We’ll pull our weight.”

Once outside, the team huddled near the supply hut. Henley had copied the activities onto his pad, “All right. Classic divide and suffer.”

Rios grinned. “I will check out the animals’ pen.”

“Figures,” Nakamura said. “I’ll find the infirmary.”

Reyes pointed at one of the lower entries. “Fix the fence. That’ll put us close to the Bastion.”

Garfield smiled. “You read my mind.”

“Yes, Captain, I did. I’m glad you were thinking I’m brilliant. Fully agreed.”

Henley glanced between them, a smirk tugging at his mouth. “Fine. So, you two go play engineer. I’ll help Nakamura at the infirmary.”

Garfield exhaled through his nose, “Alright, campers. Let’s get to work.”

They split up without another word, boots crunching leaves and twigs, breath misting in the morning air.

---

From the village, the Bastion was just a geometric shape behind the fog. As they drew closer, the Bastion emerged, sheathed in hoarfrost and silence, its hull growing with every step.

Reyes opened the side-access panel and took the emergency crank. She set it in the socket above the panel and gave it a few hard turns. The screen blinked awake:

 系统离线

She flipped open the maintenance panel. Inside sat a second larger crank, its rim corroded green, “The manual method,” she pointed at the crank, “Good news: no power required. Bad news: you’re the power.”

Garfield gripped the crank and forced it counterclockwise. The metal groaned as he turned, the hatch inching wider open with each crank.

“Come on,” he muttered through his teeth.

With one last push, the hatch was wide enough for both to slip through. The ship was shrouded in blackness: no emergency lights, no nav trail, only a long corridor lined with sealed access panels.

“This isn’t just hibernation mode.” Reyes flipped on her flashlight, “This is a blackout. Even ships in maintenance carry a base load. This thing... it’s dead.”

Garfield tapped his palm. “Mark our path. I don’t want to get turned around in here.”

A flicker of blue light blinked from his palm projector. The small, humanoid AI avatar appeared, its voice calm, “Of course, Sir, enabling local path tracking and navigation.”

They followed a central corridor until they found wayfinding signage pointing to Control and Reactor, each in opposite directions.

“Control won’t have anything useful without power. I need you to look at the reactor, Reyes.”

Reyes agreed and ordered her palm AI to keep track of radiation, “Of course, Lieutenant, currently no radiation detected.”

Garfield stepped through a hoarfrost-rimmed arch of the reactor room and stopped. “Tell me this isn’t normal.”

“It’s not,” Reyes answered, examining the consoles with her light. “Power conduits are cold all the way through. Emergency power banks are flat.” She wiped the reactor control screen with her glove. “Main DHT reactor’s offline.”

Garfield crouched beside a conduit junction. “And these things need a massive burst of power to start, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “At least a sharp, strong burst to feed the containment fields and ignite fusion.”

“Remind me to write a report recommending portable jumpstart reactors for basic loadout.”

Reyes tilted her head, thinking. “Well, batteries would really be enough.”

Her words hung between them for a beat, then their eyes met, “RTGs,” they spoke aloud in unison.

Reyes eagerly nodded, eyes bright. “Those things decay slowly; they might still hold a charge.”

“Best chance is where? Auxiliary comms unit?”

She caught on quickly, “Probably also the med bay and engineering storage.”

Garfield straightened, “Guess we’re going shopping before we bring the dead back to life.”

---

They found the first RTG unit beneath the med bay floor panels, “Still warm, casing intact,” Garfield murmured.

“I found three in the pods, and one near the external comms dish,” Reyes snapped, already unspooling cable from a storage locker. “All still hot. These babies have been waiting quietly for Reactor Doctor Reyes to do surgery.”

Garfield watched her string power lines like webbing between compartments. She anchored couplings to exposed brackets, tied them into a central charge controller, then pried open the interface panel and flicked the bypass switch.

A low electrical hum started underfoot as she split the feed: one line routed to the smaller buffer, the other to the main bank.

The screen blinked:

Kondensatorladung gestartet
Kondensator 1: Geschätzte Bereitschaft: 57 Min
Kondensator 2: Geschätzte Bereitschaft: 7 Std 42 Min

“German,” Reyes muttered. “Jack, I’ll need your translation powers.”

Garfield raised an eyebrow and clapped her on the back, “We’ll have to wait 8 hours. Not bad for field surgery… Reactor Doctor Reyes.”

Reyes brushed her hand along the frost-covered bulkhead. “Before we relax, I need to check the housing. If that is fractured, all of this has been for nothing.”

“Okay, get that going. I’ll head back outside and radio the team.” Garfield turned back before leaving the room and forced a German accent, “I’ll be back.”

Reyes rolled her eyes, “No tourism, Garfield. The full charge might be 8 hours, but we should be able to bring the pre-ignition bus and coolant pumps online sooner.”

---

The AI’s voice startled Reyes, “Lieutenant, the first capacitor should be charged enough for pre-ignition.”

The pre-ignition bus came alive when Reyes connected the first capacitor. A single light flickered across the control stand.

“Auxiliary pumps in reach,” she murmured. Coolant loops began to draw their first trickle of power while the console spat out a string of German diagnostics.

VAKUUM: GRÜN
BRENNSTOFFDRUCK: OK
KÜHLMITTEL: NIEDRIG

She flipped the main switch, and somewhere in the depths of the reactor, a pump coughed, then settled into a low, uneven hum while the coolant gauge climbed from red to amber.

Garfield stepped back into the chamber, voice carrying over the hum. “You got her spinning again!”

“We’re not there yet; this is just the cooling system spooling up.”

---

The room had warmed by a few degrees. Frost dripped from the conduit seams when the capacitor pad blinked.

KONDENSATORBANK: BEREIT 100 %

Reyes reached for the manual safety lever that bridged the second capacitor to the ignition grid. It resisted at first, then gave with a dull clang.

“Circuit closed. Ready?”

Garfield stepped back, arms folded, and gave her a single nod.

With a slight hesitation, Reyes hit the discharge button. It took three seconds before the capacitor dumped raw energy into the grid, lighting up the reactor control panels.

She crossed to the control board, set her boot on the dead-man pedal, and held it down as she turned the brass key. A burst of clipped German followed through the speakers, claxons and system voices overlapping:

MAGNETFELD: ETABLIERT
REAKTOR BEREIT

Reyes held her breath and flipped the ignition toggle, eyes half-lidded.

Heavy whomping rolled through the hull, and frost shook loose from the ceiling, falling in white dust.

The vibration leveled out, and auxiliary pumps handed off to the mains. The coolant lines throbbed, indicators shifted from amber to green, and system voices provided updates:

REAKTORZÜNDUNG: ERFOLGREICH
MAGNETFELD: STABIL
KÜHLMITTELFLUSS: NOMINAL
PRIMARSTROM VERBUNDEN

Reyes wiped her glove against the panel, and let the silence close back in.
“Containment’s holding,” she exclaimed, “She’s alive!”

Garfield didn’t say anything, just stuck out his fist. She looked at him, chuckled, and bumped into it with a little too much energy.

Floodlights flared across the Bastion’s hull, beams cutting into the fog. Wall panels blinked awake, and a new system voice blurted

安全模式啟動。主電網現已啟用。

Garfield flinched at the change of tone. Reyes put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s the safe mode of the electrical grid. You should make your way to the control tower to boot the operating system. I’ll stay here to keep an eye on the reactor.”

---

Garfield jogged the last stretch to the control tower, breath fogging in the cold air. He tapped the elevator pad repeatedly, but it remained unresponsive.

“Reyes,” he called over comms, while catching his breath. “Elevators are still offline.”

“Not part of safe mode.” Static cracked between words. “You’ll have to take the maintenance shaft.”

“Of course,” he muttered, prying the hatch open. “Why would the miracle power-up include elevators?”

He started climbing, “Could have had a nice Terra Gratia dinner, but no, volunteering on the other side of the known universe is so much more exciting.”

When Garfield finally reached the control center on top, a prompt blinked on the middle screen:

CORE SYSTEM INITIALIZATION – Y/N?

“Garfield,” Reyes’ voice crackled through the comm. “It should be asking you to initialize the operating system. Press yes when you get there.”

The system whirred as soon as he pressed Y. The fans slowly shook off dust. One by one, the displays blinked awake, filling the tower with pale-blue light. Behind the noise, processes came online in layers: sensors, grids, comms, satellite positioning, all trying to speak at once. The ship was breathing again, waking up after years of sleep.

A single chime sounded. The AI spoke, cool and clear: “Welcome. Core systems awaiting input.”

Reyes joined him a few minutes later via the elevator, wiping her gloves on her jacket. Her hair was damp from sweat, face streaked with oil. “You owe me lunch. Place is lighting up like Christmas on Enceladus.”

“Maybe after the 462 errors are resolved.” Garfield jabbed. Reyes met his smile with feigned annoyance when her eyes fell on a new system prompt. She leaned over the console.

INITIATE ACTIVE SENSOR ARRAY?

He glanced at her. “That’s helpful.”

Reyes raised a hand. “Not yet. Let it stabilize before we use something with a heavy drain, like sensors, before…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

Garfield stepped back and glanced at the blinking lights on the control board.

---

Outside, the village stirred. Floodlights cut through the fog like veins of sunlight, diffused and unnatural. Children stood in doorways, wide-eyed, while a few adults stepped cautiously toward the ridge.

A small group broke away and approached the Bastion, meeting Garfield and Reyes at the entrance hatch. Mira led, flanked by Elari and an older man named Griggs, “You should’ve told us.”

“I know, I know,” Garfield replied. “It wasn’t meant to be secret, but we had to know if it still worked.”

“It is so old, if it goes wrong…”

“It won’t,” Reyes said. “Containment is active. No radiation. You should be happy it works again. Well, almost. It will take time before it’s fully operational, but...”

Garfield stepped forward, easing Reyes’ rant. He gestured toward the open hatch. “Let us show you.”

The group walked the corridors in silence. They passed supply lockers, food storage, and a dimly lit medical bay where a young villager stopped to ask, half-jokingly, if it could fix his aching tooth.

Garfield’s palm AI flickered awake. “Connection established with two orbital assets. Designations: meteorological satellite and surveyor probe. Sync and data transfer initiated.” He dismissed the notification quickly and suggested Mira organize medical checkups for every villager.

They entered the elevator and rode up to the control room. The monitors displayed mostly endless error logs, status warnings, and maintenance queues. As Garfield explained what they were seeing, his palm AI interrupted again: “Excuse me, sir. I’ve connected with the Bastion’s artificial intelligence.” It paused. “I’ve got something you need to see.”

Garfield reached to dismiss until his eyes caught a screen in the back. His face went pale.

“Is that…” he said.

Reyes leaned in and frowned, “…a stormfront?”

The AI spoke up, neutrally and emotionally detached. “Data from the surveyor probe has mapped a rotating debris field in this system. Every 27.6 years, this causes an occlusion of the sun and triggers a unique season. An Orbital Night when blizzards and surface temperatures drop below survivable temperatures for humans.”

Outside, the wind began to rise.

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Previous Chapter

Notes & Translations

Different languages
In this far future, the geopolitical (or galactopolitical) landscape has changed significantly. In chapter one, characters mentioned at least two factions: The Collegium, and the Others.

The Bastion lander was built by a multinational consortium, with each subsystem designed by a different nation. As a result, its underlying architecture is multilingual, while the primary Operating System runs in English. More on this in later chapters.

DHT Reactor
A German-built heavy-industry hybrid power system. The first unit runs on Deuterium–Tritium fusion, using fuel both carried aboard in starter reserves and produced after landing (Deuterium from local water, Tritium from lithium).
The second reactor provides clean, long-term energy from helium-3, sourced partly from stored tritium decay and partly refined from local materials.

RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator)
A type of nuclear battery that converts the heat from radioactive decay into electricity. It has no moving parts and is ideal and reliable in harsh environments. Today it’s already commonly used in space probes and satellites.

Palm AI
A near-sentient artificial intelligence assistant embedded in the user’s glove interface. Usually reserved for specialist operators.

The Ring
A type of orbital station. Details to be revealed in later stories.

Terra Gratia
A Future holiday

Translations

系统离线 Mandarin: System offline
KONDENSATORLADUNG GESTARTED German: Capacitor charging started
KONDENSATORBANK BEREIT 100 % German: Capacitor bank 100% charged
MAGNETFELD ETABLIERT German: Magnetic field established
REAKTOR BEREIT German: Reactor ready
REAKTORZÜNDUNG ERFOLGREICH German: Reactor ignition successful
MAGNETFELD STABIL German: Magnetic field stable
KÜHLMITTELFLUSS NOMINAL German: Coolant flow nominal
PRIMARSTROM VERBUNDEN German: Primary power connected
安全模式啟動。主電網現已啟用。Mandarin: Safety mode activated. Main power grid is now operational

The System of Orbital Night

ESOI-83: Extra Sol Object of Interest 83

> 切换到自定义模式*
> Vitals critical.
> Resuscitation complete.
> Cardiopulmonary function stabilized.
> Cryo sequence terminated.

Jack Garfield pried his eyelids open. For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming, until a burning sensation in his ribs set in as two paddles retracted automatically.

A revolving amber glow crawled across the glass in front of him. Jack squinted, the hatch of the cryo-pod was split by hairline cracks. The internal status screen was fractured, and Red/green LEDs flickered inconsistently.

The thumping returned, closer now. Rhythmic pounding against the outside of the pod. His limbs felt like lead. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t respond. Instead of fighting it, he just listened.

Something slammed against the hatch more aggressively now, causing the pod to jerk until the latches popped. The cryo-lid creaked open, and a burst of frigid air punched into his lungs. Hands pulled at him fast, and roughly, but efficiently.

Jack tumbled forward, landing hard on his knees in the wet grass. His hands trembled, and breath plumed white in the cold.

“Captain.” A voice cut through. A hand steadied his shoulder while another held a scanner to his neck.

“Nakamura?” he grunted.

Her pulse scanner lit blue in her gloved hand. Her eyes were rimmed red. She was focused, even through the cryo-sleep hangover.

“You almost didn’t make it,” she said. “Pod descent control systems failed, lucky life-support didn’t, because you flatlined for seven seconds, and we had to pull you manually.”

She grabbed his jaw and checked Jack’s pupil reaction. “You’ll feel burned ribs, dizziness, nausea…standard after resus. It means you’re alive.”

Jack tried to speak, failed, then rasped, “What the fuck?”

She didn’t respond to the tone, instead finished the scan. “You’re lead now,” she said firmly. “Renzich wasn’t so lucky.”

Another shape moved past them, carrying a field pack. Rios, already geared. Behind him, Garfield saw four more pods, all open, all steaming faintly in the cold.

Lead now. The phrase dug in deeper than the ache in his ribs. He signed up for Search and Rescue because it was safe, for easy recoveries. Not to inherit responsibility.

---

They had come down in a world of autumn reds and browns, cold, and strangely still. Fog hung low over dense black conifers. No sun. No shadows. No birdsong. Only breathing and the dry cracking of boots on fallen leaves and sticks.

The others were already moving. Reyes had her kit cracked open. Henley was unstrapping a hard case containing the drone survey gear. No one talked. They were trained, experienced, and poised. But a search and rescue team wasn’t reconnaissance, and behind their composure, questions gnawed.

Garfield forced himself upright. His knees were shaky, but held. He turned to Reyes. “Position? Comms?”

She didn’t look up. “Local transmitter’s active. Let’s find out if we landed in a nice neighborhood.”

Reyes opened her hand. A flicker of soft blue light blinked on from her palm. A humanoid AI assistant rose up, looking at her with a neutral expression.

Reyes issued the request flatly: “Attempt positional fix. Celestial triangulation. Begin nav sync.”

The AI hovered silently for a beat, shook its head, and responded in its neutral and metallic tone:

-Sorry Lieutenant, I’m unable to process that request.
-No satellite handshake detected.
-Unable to correlate celestial data.
-Optical star visibility below 12%.
-Atmospheric interference present.
-Navigation sync aborted.

“Let’s try that again later,” Garfield turned around, “Equipment check!”

Rios muttered as he passed by, ticking items off with his fingers.
“Three medkits. Ultrasound. Thermal blankets. One survey drone. Cutting torch. Holo-slate. Life-sign tracker. Four sidearms. One rifle. Box of atmosphere seals. Rations for a week. Tent kit… incomplete. Suits all intact but not fully charged. No spare batteries either, it’ll get chilly quickly.”

Henley stepped up beside them, unfolding the mapping drone. Its arms extended with a mechanical click. The unit launched with a soft whine and vanished upward into
the fog.

Henley watched the signal rise, then glanced at Garfield.

“Shape detected,” he paused while absorbing the initial telemetry, “West. Large. Three klicks. Could be natural. Could be wreckage. Drone’s still scanning but the fog isn’t helping.”

Garfield exhaled, long and slow. He looked around, at the fog, the tree line, the clouds above them, and the four people that he was now responsible for, “Where the fuck are we?”

Reyes didn’t look up. “No idea, Captain.”

---

Leaves cracked under their boots, brittle stems snapping with each step. The fog had thickened again, curling low over brush and trees, veiling the gray rock. The drone’s beacon blinked softly above them, half-swallowed by the cloud cover.

They moved west in silence. Garfield set the pace, Reyes close at his shoulder. Nakamura watched for posture and breath, the small tells of fatigue. Rios at the rear bore his weight without complaint.

Henley broke the quiet first. “No buildings. No roads. No ads. Maybe I could retire here.”

“Such a dad move”, Reyes muttered.

The group chuckled.

After three hours, the fog began to part. Not fully, just enough to reveal a silhouette of a steel cathedral, cut diagonally through the terrain ahead. They’d all seen colony landers in diagrams, but being confronted with its sheer size was awe-inspiring.

The scale hit Jack harder than he expected, like standing in front of the Great Pyramid, a relic of bygone majesty.

Reyes dropped to a knee and raised her scanner. “Thermal’s flat. Minimal power. No residual heat. EM field’s dead. It’s inert.”

Nakamura exhaled behind them, “Is it ours or theirs?”

“Only one way to find out,” Garfield responded, and motioned to the group to
move forward.

Brush crowded until they approached the clearance. At some point, the natural slope blurred into plating. Their boots crunched once on leaves, then again on steel.

Nakamura fell in step beside Garfield, voice low. “We need shelter. Cryo recovery takes energy, and without batteries, these suits won’t keep us warm for long.”

Garfield glanced at the fog pressing close around them. She wasn’t exaggerating. If they stayed exposed, they’d freeze before morning.

---

Reyes ran her glove along a protruding hull panel, brushing away dust. Her light caught a faded stamp.

“This is a Bastion-class deep lander. Designed for one descent, then integration. Power comes from dual DTH fusion reactors, meant to supply a colony for decades.” She paused and turned to Henley, “They haven’t launched these in what….?”

“25 years, I reckon.” Henley’s gaze followed along the observation tower, its outline partly blurred by the fog, “These were built on Mars.”

“Ours or theirs, Henley?” Garfield’s gaze mimicked the motion, tracking the spine of the observation tower.

“Hard to tell, these were built by The Collegium, everyone used this class back then.”

They walked single file on the side of the ship in silence, finding no movement or lights. They passed a sealed airlock rimed with vines. The emergency panel unresponsive.

Reyes opened the side-access panel and took the emergency crank. She set it in the socket above the panel and gave it a few hard turns. The screen blinked awake:

> 系统离线*

A breeze rolled in, an undertone smelling like burned wood and earth, faint but unmistakable. Reyes stepped back from the panel.

Ahead, the terrain dropped away. They gathered at the edge of a ledge formed by rock and collapsed plating. Below, in the valley stretching out behind the lander, a warm glow cut through the cold. Orange sparks drifted upward.

Rios clicked down the goggles on his helmet “Fire pits. Multiple sources. Controlled burns.”

Lights strung between cabins, faint reflections on glass hothouses. Rows of log cabins: thick-walled, steep-roofed, hand-built. Smoke curled upward from nearly every chimney. Gravel paths lined between the houses.

People moved slowly, but comfortably. One carried a crate. Another was lighting a lantern. A group of three in yellow coats ran between two cabins before vanishing indoors.

The team crouched, watching from the ridge.

“They’re alive,” a note of surprise slipped through Nakamura’s voice, “Thriving.”

Garfield stared down the ridge, “They built all this.”

Rios zoomed in and continued his report. “Pattern’s regular. No defensive perimeter. Movement’s loose, possibly civilian. If they’re armed, they don’t expect to use it.”

“Or don’t need to,” Reyes murmured.

They observed for another minute before spotting a structure larger than the rest, rectangular, with smoke pouring from a wide chimney.

“Community hall, storage maybe?” Rios guessed.

Henley shrugged: “Drone shows it’s warm in there, but no distinguishable signatures, those walls are dense, whatever they are made of.”

“So… bodies, or equipment.” Garfield’s eyes narrowed on the structure.

Reyes adjusted the resolution on her goggles and stiffened her lips, “Maybe both.”

The burden of command was a weight Garfield hadn’t prepared for, but it was his. “Either way, we freeze if we stay out here. We get inside. Quiet. Figure it out then.”

---

They moved with practiced coordination, looping around the cabins to box the structure in. Reyes and Nakamura took the front. Rios circled wide with Garfield. Henley set up on the ledge for overwatch.

They stacked on the door. Weapons low, eyes up. Garfield raised three fingers.

Two.

One.

He kicked the door open.

The room froze with them. Fifty people, maybe more. Tables shoved aside, lanterns swaying overhead. Scarves braided with colored threads. Coats patched and embroidered like formalwear.

At the center, under a loop of old-fashioned lightbulbs, stood a couple holding hands. One with tears on her cheeks. The other laughed in surprise.

No screams, no panic, just silence, and an awkward clap from the back. A child peeked out from behind a leg and grinned.

Garfield stood in the doorway, chest still heaving. His sidearm suddenly felt absurd in his hand.

Reyes lowered hers half an inch and broke the spell first. “Well,” she said flatly, “at least they’re not eating each other.”

Nakamura holstered fully, shooting Garfield a glance. “You want to take the lead, or should I ask for cake?” Two children darted past her, one giggling, the other clutching a paper flower.

A man stepped forward, mid-forties, wearing a jacket paired with a maroon bowtie. He didn’t have the presence of a statesman, but instead exuded the warmth of a caring father. He stopped just short of Garfield’s reach and offered a dented metal cup.

“Mulled wine,” he said. “From the east hothouse. Still has a kick.”

Garfield took it but didn’t drink. The radiating heat of the cup in his glove reminded him of the cold he’d been ignoring since he woke up.

Someone in the crowd whispered, “I didn’t know anyone was still out there.”
Another voice: “Did you think anyone would ever come?”

The tension broke. Not with applause, but with contact. A woman embraced Nakamura. A man clapped Rios on the shoulder, and the band picked up their song. Relief spread through the room, fragile but undeniable.

Garfield cleared his throat, voice low. “Your Bastion’s dead.
No fusion output. Nothing.”

“She never gave us much,” the man replied. “Landed in the wrong system, never fully deployed. Most of our equipment is still sitting in that tomb, so we built our
own home.”

Garfield’s jaw tightened. No injuries, no crisis, no need to act. He looked past the man, at the lanterns, the fireplace, cakes, and the paper flowers. “You don’t seem to be in a hurry to leave.”

The man shook his head once, lifted another cup. “Nobody’s getting out of here anytime soon, Captain.” His voice carried steadily, confidently, and unwaveringly. Then a laugh. “My name is Eric, and welcome to my daughter Jane and Kyler’s union. Shall we celebrate?”

Garfield didn’t answer, but he took a first sip.

Outside, the fog thickened again while the light of the fireplace danced in the windows.

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*Notes & Translations:

切换到自定义模式: Mandarin. Switch to custom mode.

系统离线: Mandarin. System Offline.

DTH Reactors: German-built heavy-industry hybrid power systems. The first unit runs on Deuterium–Tritium, with fuel both carried aboard in starter reserves and produced after landing (Deuterium from local water, Tritium from lithium). The second reactor provides clean, long-term energy from helium-3, sourced partly from stored tritium decay and partly manufactured from local resources.

Bastion-Class lander: