Tanya spent the first morning back on Eden-Five doing some housekeeping. She reestablished her workshop in its original location beneath the island. The dimensional space expanded with familiar ease as Sage placed the workshop into its old spot. She was keen to see what level 3 of the workshop could do, but that would have to wait.
//Defensive perimeter established,// Sage announced as the vortex storm materialised around Eden-Five's vortex space. The storm would prevent any unwanted visitors while she planned the next moves. Unlike previous storms, this one was fully under their control, which allowed them to create a checkpoint.
"Amara's coordinating all traffic through the checkpoint," Cameron reported, reviewing the security protocols they had established. "Each entry requires dimensional window generation and escort protocols."
"It's temporary," Tanya said, studying the power requirements for maintaining the storm barrier. "But it gives us time to establish proper orbital defences if we decide to make this permanent."
The question of permanence hung over everything as they began addressing the practical challenges of housing twenty-eight thousand refugees on a world that had never supported more than a few hundred thousand residents.
"We need shelter fabrication immediately," Janet said, reviewing the overcrowding reports from Genesis. "The ship's life support is stable, but psychological stress is increasing. People need space, privacy, the ability to establish routines that don't involve sleeping in shifts."
The Gamma-5s volunteered for construction projects with enthusiasm that surprised Tanya. After decades of building weapons and fortifications, they approached civilian architecture with the focused intensity of people rediscovering their original purpose.
"The challenge is materials and locations," explained Torres, the former coastal federation leader who had become their unofficial construction coordinator. "This world has abundant organic resources but limited metal extraction infrastructure. We can build, but we'll need to adapt our techniques."
She was looking over possible locations to build the site; nearly every square meter of Eden-Five was spoken for. It was either a natural habitat or farm land. There was one large swath of land that was brown and dead. Tanya knew that land intimately as it was her old home, the farm land she grew up on.
//It appears that the land has been poisoned.// State Sage, without much emotion. But Tanya could barely contain her emotions.
She had known there might be retaliation for her actions, but seeing the vindictive destruction of land her parents had spent decades cultivating felt like a personal violation. She took in some deep breaths and forced herself to calm down. There was nothing she could do now, but she would remember it.
One of the Beta-2 evacuees, a former mountain scientist named Keller, studied the environmental reports with professional interest. "The contamination is severe but not permanent. With proper remediation techniques and enhanced soil processing, the site could be restored. More importantly, the destroyed infrastructure provides justification for complete rebuilding using modern methods."
"You want to establish a settlement there?"
"We want to establish a research facility," Keller corrected. "The lack of advanced technology on this world presents opportunities for controlled development. We could build a model community that demonstrates integration between enhanced humans and baseline populations."
Tanya understood the appeal—turning the site of vindictive destruction into proof that their people could build rather than destroy. But she wouldn't approve anything without consulting the planet's existing residents.
Her parents organised the community meeting as a traditional cookout, the kind of gathering that had been settling disputes on frontier worlds for generations. Tables appeared in the community field as if by magic, loaded with food that represented every cultural tradition Eden-Five had accumulated over the decades.
Tanya found her brothers near the main fire pit, their wives having already claimed strategic positions for optimal gossip circulation. Marcus spotted her first and swept her into a bear hug that lifted her clean off the ground, his strength unchanged despite the grey threading through his hair. She guessed her disappearance had been stressful.
"There's our famous sister," he announced loudly enough for half the gathering to hear. "David owes me money, he said you wouldn't show up until later."
"I said she would make a dramatic entrance before her speech," David protested, appearing with his own embrace and a grin that carried decades of sibling rivalry. "Flying down in that monster ship doesn't count as showing up quietly." His wife, Sarah, materialised beside him, her smile just as mischievous as Tanya remembered. "We've been taking bets on how long before you returned. It's nice you see you healthy."
They fell back into familiar habits. She declined the offered drinks, knowing she needed complete clarity for what she was about to ask. Tanya found out that, other than poisoning the farm, the government had no luck finding them. Red had hidden them well, and the community had rallied around to protect them.
While catching up with her family, she noticed that people kept glancing at Genesis's lights visible in the night sky; it was an unmistakable symbol that something significant had come to the insignificant world.
When the time came for her to address the gathering found herself standing before several hundred people who represented the closest thing to government on the planet, and she saw as a true family.
"Most of you knew me before I left," she began, her voice carrying across the gathering without electronic amplification. "I was the girl who wanted to build better farming equipment and maybe explore some nearby systems. The one with the dream to build spaceships. Some even remember my models crashing into their chicken shed."
Scattered chuckles from people who remembered her childhood ambitions and antics.
"I'm sure we have all noticed the ship in the sky, and are keen to know everything. Sadly, I don't have time to regale you with my story. But what I can tell you is that I've found something that changed everything. There is a threat coming that will affect all of humanity. Not just our system, not just our worlds, but every human settlement across the galaxy."
Someone in the back called out, "You sure you h"aven't been drinking?" which earned a few laughs until others hushed them.
"I wish," said Tanya before continuing
"Look at the ship I came home in, look at what happen to my parents farm,look at the people I brought with me. Ask yourself whether someone comes home like that for imaginary problems."
The laughter died as people considered the associations of a research vessel that dwarfed their orbital stations and carried refugees from a civilisation they'd never heard of.
"I want to use Eden-Five as the foundation for something unprecedented, a network of worlds dedicated to building evacuation fleets for when the crisis comes. I need food production on a scale that only an agricultural world can provide. I need industrial capacity that doesn't exist yet but can be built. I need people who understand that building for the future sometimes means accepting changes in the present."
She paused, looking at faces that showed everything from scepticism to fear to cautious interest.
"I'm not asking you to join a war you didn't choose. I'm asking you to help me build the tools that might prevent that war from destroying everything we care about. The people I brought with me are different, but they need a home, and I couldn't think of a better home than my own."
"What are you asking for, specifically?" called out Maria Santos, one of the agricultural coordinators Tanya had worked with years ago.
"I'm asking for permission to establish permanent facilities on Eden-Five. Research centres and population centres. I'm asking you to supply my system with food. To leave the empire and become part of my world."
"And if we say no?" asked another voice.
"Then I'll find another world," Tanya replied honestly. "But I'll stay here long enough to ensure my people have somewhere safe while I find the next place. Either way, Eden-Five benefits from the technology and infrastructure we'll build. The question is whether you want to be partners in shaping how that development happens."
The gathering broke up into smaller conversations that would continue long into the night. Tomorrow, there would be a formal vote, but Tanya could already sense the community's inclinations. These were people who'd chosen frontier life because they believed in building something better. The scale she was proposing was unprecedented, but the principle was familiar.
Walking home through familiar streets under unfamiliar stars, Tanya reflected on how much had changed since she'd left Eden-Five as an ambitious engineer with dreams of building better ships.
Now she was proposing to transform her home world into the foundation of humanity's survival infrastructure.
Whether that represented growth or corruption of her original dreams remained to be seen. Tomorrow, Eden-Five would decide whether to become part of humanity's answer to existential threats.
Tonight, she was just someone walking home through a community that still believed the future held more promise than peril.
For a few hours, that was enough.