The tour began with the one thing every military analyst and energy minister in the group actually cared about: power.
We didn't take them down into the heavy radiation shielding of the reactor core itself, Instead, Sarah stopped the group on the wide observation gallery overlooking the primary engineering spine. Below us, behind thick panes of transparent aluminum, the central fusion assembly hummed with a low, steady vibration you could feel in the soles of your shoes.
"Earth's orbital infrastructure relies on fragile solar arrays that degrade over time," Sarah explained, her voice carrying clearly through sixty-five earpieces via C.O.R.E.'s translation matrix. "Anchor Station is powered by a closed-loop helium-3 and deuterium fusion core. At current baseline, it generates four gigawatts of continuous thermal and electrical output, operating at less than twelve percent capacity."
I watched a senior Chinese energy official stare down at the compact magnetic containment rings, his eyes narrowing as he calculated the power density. Four gigawatts was enough to power a medium-sized terrestrial city, and we were treating it like an idling car engine.
From engineering, we walked directly into the humid, sunlit expanse of the hydroponics atrium.
The transition was deliberate. Going from cold fusion hardware straight into a lush, multi-tiered forest of green vines, dwarf orchards, and vertical grain towers hit the delegates like a physical wave. The air smelled of damp soil, crushed mint, and blooming citrus.
Rey stepped to the front of the group, looking completely in his element as his sister walked quietly beside him, still marveling at the artificial sky overhead.
"We don't recycle freeze-dried rations up here," Rey told the delegates, gesturing toward the automated harvesting drones gliding silently along the upper trellises. "This bay is a fully self-sustaining biosphere. We cultivate forty-two varieties of high-yield vegetables, grains, and fruits, supplemented by aquaculture tanks on the lower deck for protein. Our water and oxygen loops run at ninety-nine point eight percent recovery. Even if we sealed the outer blast doors today and never received another gram of matter from the outside, Anchor could feed and oxygenate three hundred people indefinitely."
The message wasn't subtle, and the diplomats didn't miss it. You cannot sanction, blockade, or starve out a station that grows its own oranges and burns asteroid ice for power.
We moved on into the Research Ring.
Naturally, I had instructed C.O.R.E. to seal off Sector 7, where Dr. Reig and his team were currently analyzing the sensor logs of the Alpha Centauri artifact. Humanity's leaders were barely handling the existence of a three-kilometer Stargate; dropping an indestructible alien sphere into their laps on day one would have given the Pentagon delegates a collective stroke.
Even without the artifact, the open laboratories left our five independent guest scientists practically breathless. As we passed the materials science bay and the zero-kelvin superconductor foundry, Dr. Rostova and her four university colleagues kept stopping to press their hands against the viewing glass, watching our researchers manipulate magnetic fields and exotic isotopes without a single bureaucratic safety committee or funding board looking over their shoulders.
"They have no resource caps," one of the guests, a condensed-matter physicist from MIT, whispered to Rostova. "Look at the purity of that yttrium-barium substrate. I fought the Department of Energy for three years just to get four grams of that, and they are extruding it in sheets."
"Which brings us to the question the Deputy Secretary asked in the cafeteria," I said, leading the group out of the laboratory sector and into the wide, curved promenade of the residential ring. "How do a hundred people build a megastructure without fifty years of orbital labor?"
The residential ring looked nothing like a space station. The corridors were wide, lined with warm indirect lighting, brushed metal panels, and small seating alcoves planted with real ferns from Rey's greenhouse.
"On the International Space Station, astronauts sleep in phone-booth-sized bags strapped to a wall," I said as we walked. "You can do that for a six-month rotation. You cannot build a civilization like that. Every researcher on Anchor has a private, soundproofed apartment with full artificial gravity, running water, and customizable environmental controls."
I stopped in front of Door 42B.
Standing just outside the door were Dr. Marcus Vance (no relation to the General), the acoustic physicist whose call I had overheard three days ago, along with his wife and their eight-year-old son. The boy was still holding his father's hand like he was afraid the man might vanish again if he let go.
"Marcus," I said, nodding to him. "Do you mind if we use your place as a classroom for a minute?"
"Go right ahead, Surgrim," Marcus smiled, wrapping an arm around his wife's shoulders.
I keyed the door open and gestured for the senior delegates to step into the main living area, while the rest watched through the wide entryway and the corridor holoscreens.
It was a comfortable, fifty-square-meter flat with a living room, a compact kitchen, a bathroom, and a single bedroom.
"This unit was configured for one person," I explained to the watching politicians. "Obviously, with Marcus's wife and son arriving today, it is a little cramped. On Earth, expanding a pressurized orbital habitat requires launching a new module on a heavy rocket, scheduling three spacewalks, and spending six months bolting bulkheads together."
I looked up at the ceiling sensor. "C.O.R.E., initiate residential expansion protocol on Unit 42B. Annex the adjacent unallocated structural bay and configure a secondary bedroom for an eight-year-old child, plus expanded living space. Standard domestic template."
"Acknowledged, Surgrim," C.O.R.E. replied. "Deploying localized construction swarm. Estimated completion time: two minutes and forty seconds."
The delegates tensed as the far wall of the living room suddenly began to shimmer.
From the microscopic seams along the floor and ceiling, a dense, flowing curtain of silver-grey nanites emerged, spreading across the solid titanium-composite bulkhead like liquid mercury. There was no deafening noise of jackhammers, no sparks, and no dust. There was only a soft, harmonic hum that vibrated gently in the air.
The American Deputy Secretary took an involuntary step back as the solid wall simply dissolved into a swirling silver mist.
Before the delegates' eyes, the nanite swarm ate through the bulkhead, exposing the raw, unallocated structural bay next door. Instantly, the silver tide surged into the dark space, moving with breathtaking, mathematical precision.
The swarm flowed across the bare deck plates, molecularly extruding warm, wood-textured composite flooring. Billions of microscopic machines climbed the walls, weaving superconducting power conduits, air ventilation ducts, and ambient lighting strips directly into the structure as they built it. In the corner of the new room, a wave of nanites rose up from the floor like a time-lapse video played at a thousand times normal speed, solidifying into a sturdy bed frame, a desk, and built-in shelving. Another wave wove carbon and polymer fibers into a soft mattress and bedding in a matter of seconds.
Within two minutes, the silver mist receded, flowing neatly back into the floor seams and vanishing completely.
Where a solid metal wall had stood less than three minutes ago, there was now an open doorway leading into a bright, warm bedroom, complete with a glowing star-map projection hovering softly near the ceiling.
The corridor was dead silent.
The eight-year-old boy let go of his father's hand, walked slowly across the threshold, and touched the surface of the new desk. It was solid, smooth, and warm to the touch.
"Cool," the boy whispered.
I turned back to look at the American Deputy Secretary, the EU Commissioner, and the Chinese delegates. Every single one of them looked like they had just watched a magic trick that broke the laws of physics.
"We don't bolt metal together with wrenches," I said quietly. "Our Mules harvest raw asteroid ore. Our foundries separate it into pure elements. And our nanite swarms assemble matter at the molecular level, guided by C.O.R.E. and Archi. What you just watched happen in two minutes is happening right now outside the hangar on a three-kilometer scale. That is how we build the Gate."
We didn't drag the summit out after that. There was no point.
Once the politicians had seen the fusion reactor, the self-sustaining farms, and a bedroom printed out of thin air in a hundred and sixty seconds, all the carefully prepared talking points and diplomatic demands they had brought from Earth were completely useless. You cannot threaten or leverage people who can build a city out of a rock in an afternoon.
An hour later, after a brief, remarkably polite final briefing in the assembly hall, we escorted the four government delegations back to the hangar bay.
"We will maintain an open communication channel with the United Nations," I told the Secretary-General at the base of Taxi One's ramp. "When the first Gate is operational, we will discuss transit protocols and resource allocation frameworks. Until then, keep your satellites at a respectful distance outside our defense perimeter."
"You have given us... a great deal to report back to our capitals, Mr. Surgrim," the Secretary-General said, shaking my hand with both of his. "Try not to move too fast for us to keep up."
"No promises," I smiled.
Within twenty minutes, Taxis One through Four lifted off the deck, slipped back out through the blue containment fields between the hangar ribs, and accelerated toward Earth.
Taxi Five, however, remained sitting quietly on the pad, its engines cold.
When I walked back into the assembly hall, the ten family members were already heading toward the residential ring with Rey, Marcus, and the other researchers to see their new quarters.
Sitting alone at one of the front tables were Dr. Elena Rostova and the four other independent scientists we had invited from MIT, CERN, Zurich, and Tokyo. None of them had touched their coats.
I pulled out a chair, straddling it backward as I rested my arms on the backrest.
"Your shuttle is fueled whenever you're ready to head back to Frankfurt, Doctors," I said casually. "Unless there is a problem."
Dr. Rostova looked at her four colleagues, then back at me. She took off her glasses and set them on the table.
"Mr. Surgrim," Rostova said, her voice deadly serious. "Two years ago, when your drones dropped those comet samples on my roof at Oxford, military intelligence officers kicked down my laboratory door within four hours. They took the ice, they seized my hard drives, and they threatened me with twenty years in a military prison if I ever published the spectrometer readings."
"I know," I said grimly. "I watched the feeds."
"If the five of us board that shuttle and land in Frankfurt tonight," the MIT physicist said, leaning forward, "General Vance and his European counterparts will have us in an undisclosed debriefing facility before our feet touch the pavement. They will spend the next six months interrogating us about every bolt, wire, and nanite we saw up here today."
"And more importantly," Rostova added, glancing toward the doors leading to the Research Ring, "even if they let us go back to our universities... how are any of us supposed to go back to begging bureaucrats for grant money to look through a telescope, when we know you are building a fourteen-hour bridge to Alpha Centauri right outside that window?"
I looked across the five of them, hiding a small smile. I had wondered how long it would take them to reach that conclusion.
"You didn't pack very big bags for a permanent relocation," I noted.
"You just printed a child's bedroom out of a wall in two minutes," Rostova replied dryly. "I think we can manage without our winter coats. Do you have five open laboratories on this station, or not?"
I stood up and tapped my comm badge. "Judy, scratch the return flight plan for Taxi Five. Put it back in the hangar rotation. And tell C.O.R.E. to prep five more apartments in Sector 3."
"Already prepped, Surgrim," Judy's amused voice came back instantly over the link. "Sarah and I had a bet on whether any of them would actually get back on that shuttle. You just won me twenty credits."
I looked back at Rostova and extended my hand.
"Welcome to Anchor Station, Doctors," I said. "Once you're settled in, I have a forty-meter anomaly in Sector 7 that I think you're going to want to look at."