Tanya stood beside the Nova Theseus, one hand resting on its hull, and felt the pang of departure. She knew it was time to leave, she needed more social interaction than an advanced AI that fused with her brain and inanimate objects within the workshop. Still, she wondered how much she could learn if she remained here and studied the ruins of these ancient aliens.
"Sage," she said finally, "can you get the ship outside? It is time we head off."
//Spatial displacement engaged. Please step clear of the vessel.//
The ship shimmered and vanished, leaving an empty space in the workshop that felt suddenly hollow.
"I know I have to go," Tanya said, looking around at the fabrication stations and design interfaces that had become so familiar. "But I'm going to miss this place."
//Your concern is unnecessary.//
"Why? Because I'm sentimental about a workshop?"
//You will understand shortly. Please exit the facility.//
Puzzled, Tanya gathered her few belongings and made her way outside. The Nova Theseus sat waiting outside the door. She walked toward it, then turned back for one last look at the workshop that had—
It was gone.
Where the facility had stood moments before, there was now only a perfectly circular hole, so deep she couldn't see the bottom. The edges were glass-smooth, as if the earth itself had been scooped away with surgical precision.
"Sage!" She spun around, scanning the empty landscape. "Did you do that?"
//Affirmative. The workshop has been transferred into your multitool's dimensional storage for secure transport.//
"Dimensional storage." Tanya stared at the impossible hole. "That's magic. You just made an entire building disappear with magic."
//Incorrect. Advanced dimensional science, not magic. The distinction is important.//
"Right, because there's such a huge difference between 'magic' and 'I can fold space to put buildings in my multitool.'" She shook her head.
//Dimensional storage is science and not magic. I will require specific spatial coordinates for manifestation. Additionally, extended storage has corrosive effects on objects contained within. The workshop must be deployed within seventy-two standard hours or suffer degradation.//
"So it's… mine?"
//Correct. The multitool's secondary function is as a binding key. By integrating the workshop's spatial signature, you now hold exclusive access rights.//
She looked down at the bracer, feeling it against her skin. The idea that the alien workspace was now bound to her was both thrilling and humbling.
Despite everything, Tanya found herself grinning. "You know what? I'm not even surprised anymore. This is just my life now."
She climbed into the Nova Theseus, settling into the pilot's seat that molded itself to her body with disturbing precision. The control interfaces came alive at her touch, holographic displays materialising in perfect ergonomic positions.
"Alright," she said, reaching for the autopilot controls, "let's see how this thing flies on—"
//Autopilot engagement inadvisable.//
Her hand paused over the controls. "Why? Is something wrong with the navigation systems?"
//Negative. Manual piloting provides superior educational value. Ship handling directly informs design understanding. Automated flight systems prevent proper learning synthesis.//
Tanya groaned. "Of course they do. God forbid I take the easy way for five minutes."
//Correct piloting technique is fundamental to advanced shipwright certification.//
"Fine." She flexed her arms before gripping the manual controls. "But if I crash this thing into a moon, I'm blaming you."
The Nova Theseus responded to her touch like a living thing. The engines spun up with ease and made the ship feel alive in a way that she felt in her bones, power flowing through systems she had built with her own hands. Control surfaces adjusted with fluid precision, responding to minute pressure changes on the flight stick.
It was beautiful.
"Okay," she admitted as they lifted smoothly away from the planet's surface, "this is actually pretty amazing."
The ascent was flawless. Every system performed exactly as designed, better even, and there was a coordination to the ship's operation that went beyond mere functionality. If this was only a C+ she couldn't wait to see what Sage rated as an A.
When they cleared the atmosphere, the vortex drive came back to life just as Sage had promised. Tanya felt the familiar tingle of exotic energy building in the ship's core, space-time beginning to bend around them in preparation for translation.
She looked back at the planet one final time and felt a strange disconnect. From orbit, it looked smaller than she'd expected—a blue-green marble dotted with clouds and continents, but empty of the vast cities she might have imagined. No orbital installations, no satellites, no signs that it had ever been anything more than a beautiful, abandoned world.
And yet… There was light. She had noticed while on the planet, but there was always a touch of light.
Her gaze drifted to the planet's night side, expecting the deep black of unlit wilderness. Instead, a faint radiance traced the horizon it was not scattered like city lights but uniform, like the glow of a lantern through frosted glass. The light wasn't coming from the surface at all. It was refracting around the entire world.
The planet was encased.
A shimmering veil hung across the void, almost invisible until she caught the right angle. Patterns rippled faintly through it, impossibly complex and shifting like a living thing.
"That's the barrier you mentioned earlier, isn't it?"
//Affirmative. Dimensional and atmospheric protective field.//
She stared at it, feeling her thoughts spin. A planetary-scale shield that could hold in an atmosphere, regulate temperature, and block an FTL drive. The technology so far beyond human capability it might as well be magic. The quiet beauty of it was almost as unnerving as its purpose. Whoever built it hadn't just wanted to protect the planet but had the power to make isolation absolute.
"Were there ever other settlements? Other cities like the ruins?"
//Information restricted.//
"Restricted by who? You're an AI teaching me their technology. What's the point of keeping secrets now?"
//By those who established the educational protocols. Some knowledge carries... consequences.//
Tanya felt a chill that had nothing to do with the vacuum outside. "What kind of consequences?"
//The kind that led to planetary abandonment.//
She wanted to push further, but something in Sage's tone suggested this was a door they wouldn't open. Instead, she focused on what she could see and that was the impossible barrier that turned an entire world into a carefully preserved museum.
"How long will it last?"
//Current projections suggest indefinite stability. The barrier draws power from quantum fluctuations in local space-time. It is, effectively, self-sustaining.//
"Forever." The word felt heavy in her mouth. "They built something to last forever and then just... left."
She thought about the workshop below, about the carefully preserved tools and materials, about the unfinished ship in the alcove. All of it waiting, like someone had expected to return but never did.
"Goodbye," she whispered to the barrier-wrapped world. "Thank you."
She wished she could record the planet's location, mark it somehow for a future return. But her instruments couldn't penetrate whatever navigation systems the vortex drive used, and if Sage had the capability, they weren't sharing.
"Eden-Five," she said, engaging the vortex drive. "Ready or not."
Space twisted around them, stars stretching into lines of light, and the Nova Theseus leapt forward into the vortex.
It was only a short trip by space travel standards. 9 hours later, the vortex drive released its grip on vortex space with a sensation like stepping off a moving walkway with a brief moment of disorientation as normal physics reasserted itself. Stars snapped back into points of light, and directly ahead, hanging like a blue-green jewel against the black, was Eden-Five.
Home.
Tanya's breath caught in her throat. Five years. Five years since she'd seen those familiar continents, those spiral cloud formations, the way the twin moons cast silver paths across the night-side oceans. It looked exactly the same and completely different all at once it was smaller from her new perspective, but more precious than she remembered.
"God," she whispered, her hands trembling slightly on the controls. "I forgot how beautiful it is."
//Eden-Five. Agricultural colony, population approximately three hundred thousand. Terraforming completion: ninety-seven percent. A small colony//
The casual statement made Tanya pause. How did Sage know about Hallow Empire operations? Was it reading her thoughts, accessing restricted databases, or drawing from some other source entirely? She was still flying blind with this system, trusting technology she didn't understand.
"It's not just a colony," Tanya said softly. "It's home."
As they approached the inner system, details resolved that made her heart race with excitement. The second space elevator, which was barely a framework when she'd left. Now stretched complete from surface to orbit, its carbon-fiber ribbon gleaming in the system's twin suns. Massive freight containers rode the elevator's length like beads on a string, carrying Eden-Five's agricultural bounty to the stars.
"They finished it," she breathed, watching a kilometer-long freighter dock with the orbital terminus. Mechanical arms began loading shipping containers with practised efficiency. She knew those shipping containers carried grain from the northern plains, fruit from the tropical zones, and more. "That's what I wanted to build. Ships like that one."
//Cargo vessels represent significant engineering challenges. Mass distribution, structural integrity under acceleration, and efficient loading systems. Designing one would be good for your education, especially with your specialisation, but fabrication would be difficult//
"It's not just the engineering." Tanya tracked the freighter as it completed docking and began its slow turn toward the vortex point. "It's what they represent. That ship is going to feed people on a dozen worlds. Maybe a hundred. Every time I saw one when I was a kid, I thought about all the families sitting down to dinner because someone built something that could carry food across the galaxy."
She fell silent, remembering herself at fifteen, pressed against the observation deck windows at the spaceport, watching the great ships come and go. That was the moment she had known, really known exactly what she wanted to do with her life.
A communication request chimed through the ship's systems, interrupting her reverie.
"Unidentified vessel, this is Eden-Five Traffic Control. Please transmit identification and state your business in-system."
The voice was familiar and gravelly, with the accent of someone who'd grown up in the outer settlements. Tanya's face split into a grin.
"Traffic Control, this is the Nova Theseus requesting approach clearance. Klein, is that you, you old bastard?"
A pause. Then: "Well, I'll be damned. Tanya Furrow? The big important Barth University student returns to grace us peasants with her presence?"
"Oh, shut up." She was laughing now, years of homesickness dissolving in the warmth of familiar banter. "How've you been, Klein?"
"Can't complain. Though I should mention had a taxi service file a missing person report on you about six months back. Something about a no-show for a pickup on... let me check... Barth Central Station? We figured you'd gotten yourself lost in some textbook until your message for your folks arrived.
Tanya's stomach dropped. Six months. She'd been gone six months, not the weeks she had imagined.
//The planet was moving at relativistic speed. Causing a slight time dilation//
Sage answered as if picking up on my confusion.
"Klein, that's... It's complicated. I'll contact the taxi service and sort it out. It was all a misunderstanding."
"I'm sure it was. You always were good at finding complicated ways to do simple things." His tone softened. "Permission granted for atmospheric entry, Tanya. Welcome home. Your folks are going to be over the moons, we all figured you'd forgotten about us little people."
"Never," she said quietly. "I could never forget."
As the Nova Theseus descended through Eden-Five's atmosphere, Sage spoke up:
//Suitable location identified for workshop deployment. Small uninhabited island, coordinates 23.7 degrees south, 157.2 degrees east. Approximately twelve kilometers from registered Furrow family agricultural holdings.//
Tanya checked the location on her navigation display. Crescent Isle. She remembered them from her childhood, a rocky outcrop just visible from their farm's eastern fields. Perfect.
"How deep can you bury it?" she asked.
//Complete subsurface installation possible. Workshop will be undetectable to standard scanning protocols.//
"Do it."
They set down on Crescent Isle with barely a whisper, the Nova Theseus settling onto the rocky surface like a bird coming to roost. The workshop deployment was as dramatic as its storage had been, with the ground opening like water, accepting the facility with smooth precision before closing seamlessly above it.
"Dimensional science," Tanya muttered, shaking her head. "Still looks like magic to me."
//Installation complete. Workshop accessible via standard transport protocols.//
"Good." She lifted off again, leaving the island looking exactly as it had for the past thousand years. "Time to face the music."
The Furrow farm spread across the coastal plains like a patchwork quilt with fields of golden grain, orchards heavy with fruit and livestock pastures dotted with the descendants of Earth cattle. The farmhouse sat on a low hill overlooking it all, exactly as she remembered: white walls, blue roof, the wraparound porch where she'd spent countless evenings watching the ships rise toward the stars before the space elevators became active.
She landed the Nova Theseus in the same field where she'd built her first model rockets as a child.
The walk to the house felt endless and instant all at once. Each step brought back memories of running through these fields with her brothers, helping with harvest, lying on her back in the grass and dreaming of the places those distant lights might take her.
The front door was unlocked, as always. She pushed it open and stepped inside, breathing in the familiar scents of home and of her mother's cooking.
"Sage, start recording these smells and tastes. I don't want to taste another one of those cubes ever again"
//Affirmative. Chemical analysis of food culture samples started.//
She continued and walked by her father's reading chair, taking in the faint sweetness of the flowers that grew wild around the foundation of the house.
"Mum? Dad?" she called out.
Footsteps from the kitchen, quick and light. Then her mother appeared in the doorway, flour-dusted apron still tied around her waist, and froze.
"Tanya?"
"Hi, Mum."
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then her mother was running, arms outstretched, and Tanya caught her in a hug that nearly lifted her off her feet.
"My baby," her mother whispered, and Tanya could hear tears in her voice. "My baby's home."
"I'm sorry," Tanya said, holding her tight. "I'm so sorry I was gone so long. I know you must have worried—"
"Shh." Her mother pulled back just enough to cup Tanya's face in her hands, studying her with the intensity only a parent could manage. "You're here now. That's all that matters."
Heavy footsteps on the stairs announced her father's arrival. He appeared at the top, took one look at the scene below, and broke into the kind of smile that transformed his entire face.
"Well," he said, coming down the stairs with careful dignity despite the obvious joy in his eyes, "look what the stellar winds blew in."
"Dad." She broke away from her mother to hug him, breathing in his familiar scent of soil and sunshine and honest work. "I missed you. I missed you both so much."
"We missed you too, sweetheart." He held her at arm's length, looking her over with a farmer's practical eye. "You look good. Older. But good."
"I feel older."
Her mother was already bustling toward the kitchen, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. "You must be starving. When did you eat last? I'll make your favourite—"
"Mum, you don't have to—"
"Nonsense. My daughter comes home after years of who-knows-what university food, I'm making a proper meal."
Even university food was better than those cubes I've had to endure for the last few weeks.
Tanya looked around the living room, taking in all the familiar details. Family photos on the mantelpiece, her father's engineering journals stacked beside his chair, the window that looked out over the fields toward the spaceport. Everything was exactly as she'd left it.
"It's good to be home," she said, and meant it with every fibre of her being.