Rocky steps off the ramp and says goodbye to Lucy. She does not linger. He still has the next phase to execute.
When her silhouette fades into the bay lights, Rocky checks his kit, seals the suit, and climbs back into the cockpit. Thrusters warm. The ship lifts.
The launch array comes alive. The pulse engines engage. Stars stretch, then settle. In a few breaths, the ship clears Earth's gravity well and coasts toward the quiet edge of the Solar System. Hull temperature stabilizes. The cabin falls into the kind of silence that only deep space knows.
He calls up his System and redeems the prepared module.
{ Module: Space Anomaly
Request: Redeem
Status: Confirmed }
{ Deployment Vector: Ahead of bow
Spacetime field: Stable
Countdown: 3 … 2 … 1 }
Space ripples
A black sphere the size of a small city resolves out of the distortion, matte and featureless except for a recessed circular aperture that begins to iris open. It is not a planet. It is a mobile space station known to Travelers as the Space Anomaly.
In the game, it functions as a hub. In the world, it is about to become something else: Ascension Technology's foothold in the vacuum.
Rocky studies the surface sheen, the seam lines, the faint corona around the aperture. Mobility, internal volume, and hardening are precisely why he chose this model. A base on a planet would tie him to terrain he has not surveyed. A station that can jump is safer.
He eases forward. Guidance capture ticks green.
[Docking Corridor: Open]
[Attitude Control: Slave to station vector]
[Relative Velocity: Sync]
[Artificial Gravity: Local frame align]
The ship slides through stacked iron rings that float on invisible rails. The bay is broad and dim, more cathedral than hangar, and quiet. No foot traffic. No trader chatter. No other drive signatures. Traction beams take the last centimeter per second and set the ship down as if placing glass on a shelf.
Canopy up. Air tests clean. He drops to the deck and steps onto the nearest platform. The lighting here is minimal, only safety runners tracing pathways in low white. On a plinth ahead, a metal sphere floats inside a transparent cube like an eye asleep in amber.
It opens.
Twin beams rake him from boots to visor.
[Owner Authentication: Success]
[Greeting: Welcome, Lord of the Anomaly]
The voice is neutral and local. Hub intelligence. No independent will. A control program wrapped around a thousand subsystems.
[Startup: Begin]
[Gravity System: Online]
[Jump System: Initialize … Normal]
[Life Support: Initialize … Species profile: Human]
[Deep Space Network Link: Initialize … Connection failed]
[Prompt: Initialize station name?]
Rocky considers the silhouette he saw outside. A black sphere that eats starlight. A built world.
"Name it Black Star."
[Command: Received]
[Initialization: In progress]
[Initialization: Complete]
[Greeting Update: Welcome, Lord of Black Star]
Light blooms under his boots as floor strips ignite and push illumination outward in branching paths. Systems wake in a soft cascade. Pumps find their rhythm. Air whispers through ducts. Black Star breathes for the first time.
He crosses the hub square and looks over the internal layout. Because this Anomaly came straight from the System as a fresh module, the interior is not a one-to-one copy of the game's public concourse. There are no filled shops or side rooms yet. In place of prefab corridors stands a broad, clean platform the size of a city block. It feels like new ground waiting for foundation lines, not a museum of someone else's choices.
He did preserve one feature during installation.
On the far left of the central square, a double-ring construct turns in silence. The outer ring floats and rotates counterclockwise. The inner ring suspends a blue radiance that pulses in slow waves, as if the metal frames a whirlpool that opens into someplace the human brain does not have a word for.
[Structure ID: Interstellar Boundary Marker]
[Calibration: Stable]
[Energy Flux: Nominal]
It is the Anomaly's signature monument, rendered for work instead of tourism. Rocky walks the perimeter, checking anchor points and access panels. He can imagine the layout already: dry docks tiered along the bay, fabrication lines and med bays on separate spines, a command core seated behind the hub, and habitat rings where a person can forget the void for a minute.
He pauses, eyes the ceiling height, then the open lanes that accept heavy cargo movers.
{ Logistics Plan: Black Star
Phase 1: Power, life support redundancy, bay safety
Phase 2: Fabrication, medical, data backbone
Phase 3: Habitat ring, security curtain
Owner: Ascension Technology }
The plan pins itself to his heads-up, then dismisses. He keeps walking until the square opens into another span that overlooks the ship port from above. The view confirms what the sensors told him: hull density is genuine, not a painted fantasy. External armor will take punishment. The station carries no offensive arrays by default, but the shell will buy time to act. Jump capability will handle the rest.
A station that is large, strong, and able to leave when trouble scales. Exactly what he needs.
He returns to the hub plinth.
[Black Star Status: Core systems nominal]
[Owner Tools: Layout editor available • Fabricator templates ready]
[External Comms: Local only • Deep network pending]
[Note: Assign departmental namespaces before bulk import]
He smiles, small and quick. "Let's get to work."
The answer is the station's quiet. Lights hold. Gravity keeps its promise. In the blue heart of the boundary marker, ripples continue to fold and unfold like a calm ocean that remembers storms.