September 16, 2019. LEO to L5 Transit.
The heavy hydraulic doors of Ventral Bay One locked into place. The last of the Coast Guard's inflatable boats pulled away from the flooded concrete pad we had been resting on for the last two weeks, navigating through the debris-filled water back toward the military ships.
"All cargo bay doors closed. Energy barriers engaged," Archi reported.
"Bring us up," I said, leaning back in the command chair. "Let's get out of this political circus."
The Nomad fired her main drives. The ruined, flooded coast of Marsh Harbour fell away beneath us. Within minutes, the blue sky outside the viewports turned to the deep, silent black of space.
Mereel stretched in his seat, rubbing his neck and yawning loudly. "I don't think I've slept more than three hours straight since the storm hit."
"Then go get some sleep," I said, turning my chair to face him. "Both of you. We've got a four-hour transit ahead of us, and Archi knows the way home. There's no reason for us to stay awake."
"You don't have to tell me twice," Mereel muttered, unbuckling his harness and heading straight for the crew quarters.
"Archi, clean the cargo bays while we fly," I added. "Break down all the cots, the medbays, everything. Sterilize the decks. I want this ship looking like a spaceship again."
"Nanite reclamation protocols initiated," Archi replied. "I am also running a deep-sanitization protocol. The sheer amount of mud, saltwater, and biological contaminants left behind is... statistically displeasing."
"Just clean it up," I smiled.
I got up and walked over to the coffee machine. Judy was already there, scrolling through her datapad, ignoring my order to go to sleep.
"You look entirely too happy for someone who just spent two weeks running an emergency dispatch," I noted, pouring a mug.
"I'm looking at the Ledger metrics," Judy said, taking a sip of her own coffee. "General Vance is throwing a tantrum on the news, but the public isn't buying it. We have absolute credibility now. Which brings me to the Science Division."
"Are we starting the scouting phase?"
"Better. We're letting them scout themselves," Judy grinned, tapping her screen. "I didn't want to just send out emails. That leaves a trail, and people talk. Instead, I buried a puzzle deep in the source code of the Ledger. It's disguised as a server-load anomaly."
I raised an eyebrow. "A puzzle?"
"Like old video games, movies or shows" Judy explained, her eyes lighting up. "It's a highly complex, multi-layered cryptographic and theoretical physics problem. I seeded breadcrumbs on a few dark-web academic boards and MIT forums. Anyone who actually manages to crack the math gets a one-time, secure, encrypted handshake protocol directly to my console."
I couldn't help but laugh. "A nerd-trap. I love it. Any bites?"
"A lot of brute-force attempts from government IPs," Judy said dismissively. "They fail instantly. But I'll keep monitoring it. Get some sleep, Surgrim."
Four Hours Later. L5 Anchor Station.
The Nomad decelerated smoothly, coming to a halt in the center of Lagrange Point 5.
"Archi, give me a visual," I said, having returned to the bridge after a much-needed nap. Mereel walked in right behind me, looking significantly more human.
The main screen switched from tactical to optical. There it was. The Anchor. The massive, half-kilometer cylindrical ribcage of metal we had built before the storm. The blue forcefields between the spokes were still humming, holding the atmosphere perfectly inside.
"Home sweet home," Mereel grinned.
"Take us in, Archi."
The Nomad slid effortlessly through the open end of the hangar. The blue forcefields rippled around the hull, letting us pass. The magnetic clamps engaged with a heavy CLANK.
"Docking complete," Archi announced.
I unbuckled my harness. "Alright, break is over. We have a station to finish. Archi, what's our material status?"
"The raw ore we harvested in the Asteroid Belt prior to the storm is still safely stored," Archi reported. "We have 4.2 million tons of refined silicates, carbon, and nickel-iron ready."
Mereel was already at the holotable, pulling up the blueprints for Phase Two. "The Engineering Hub," he said, tapping the floating schematic. "We attach it directly to the dorsal spine of the hangar. It houses the primary life support, water recycling, and the main reactor."
"About that reactor," I said, walking over. "The Nomad runs on tech we barely understand. Are we just copying that?"
"Negative," Archi interjected. "The power core of the Nomad utilizes proprietary quantum mechanics that require exotic materials we currently do not possess. However, I have designed a highly efficient Deuterium-Helium-3 Fusion Reactor for the Anchor."
"Fusion," Mereel said, leaning closer to the holotable, his engineering brain instantly engaging. "Show me."
A highly detailed blueprint of a massive, sleek cylinder appeared on the table.
"It utilizes a magnetically confined plasma torus in a Stellarator configuration," Archi explained, his tone shifting into full technical lecture mode. "Unlike the crude, early-stage Tokamaks currently failing in Earth's research labs, this design uses room-temperature YBCO super-conductors to create a perfect magnetic bottle. Because we are using Helium-3, the reaction is aneutronic."
"No high-energy neutrons," I realized, staring at the intricate magnetic coils on the hologram. "So, no radioactive degradation of the reactor walls."
"Precisely," Archi said, sounding pleased that we were following along. "Furthermore, because the reaction produces charged protons instead of neutral particles, we do not need to boil water to spin archaic turbines. We capture the energy directly using a reversed cyclotron converter. It transforms the kinetic energy of the plasma directly into electricity at a ninety-two percent efficiency rate."
"That is... beautiful," Mereel whispered, staring at the floating schematic as if it were a masterpiece of art. "Direct energy conversion. It's so clean."
"Okay, boys, have fun with your plasma toys," Judy sighed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head with a faint smile. She turned away from the holotable. "I'm going to go check my puzzle logs. Try not to blow up the station."
"It has fourteen redundant safety interlocks," Archi informed her retreating back. "An explosion is mathematically impossible."
I looked at Mereel. "How long to build it?"
"With all ten Mules moving materials and Archi controlling the nanites?" Mereel swiped the holographic reactor into place on the station's spine. "Give me three days."
"Let's do it."
Three Days Later. The Anchor - Engineering Hub.
I floated in zero-G inside the newly printed Engineering Hub. The walls were thick, dark gray steel, lined with massive bundles of power conduits. In the center of the room floated the fusion reactor a massive, sleek black cylinder with glowing blue cooling fins.
Mereel floated next to a physical control console, holding a tablet.
"Diagnostics are green," Mereel said, tapping the screen. "Fuel lines are pressurized. Archi, how are the ignition lasers?"
"Aligned to a zero-point-zero-one percent margin of error," Archi confirmed. "Ready."
I grabbed a handhold on the wall to steady myself. "Light it up, Mereel."
Mereel pressed a heavy physical button on the console.
A deep, resonant THUMP vibrated through the steel walls, followed by a high-pitched whine that quickly settled into a smooth, powerful hum. The blue cooling fins on the reactor flared to life, casting a sharp azure glow across the room.
The lights in the hub, which had been running on the Nomad's umbilical cables, flickered once and then stabilized, burning brighter than before.
"Plasma ignition confirmed," Archi announced. "Containment fields are stable. We are generating positive net energy. Life support systems are coming online."
"Alright, let's stop floating around," I said. "Mereel, turn on the gravity."
Mereel grinned and adjusted a slider on his console.
A gentle, unseen force took hold of us. My boots drifted down and hit the dark gray deck plates with a solid thud. The artificial gravity localized at standard normal, one G. It felt incredibly grounding.
I took a deep breath. The air already smelled less like the inside of a spaceship and more crisp, freshly cycled through the station's own scrubbers.
"We did it," Mereel said, walking over to me. "The Anchor has a heartbeat."
I looked at the glowing reactor. We had a hangar, we had power, we had air, and now we had gravity.
"Good work," I said, tapping my comm-badge. "Judy, you copy?"
"Loud and clear," Judy's voice came through. "I'm seeing the power spikes on the monitors. Congratulations."
"Thanks," I said. "Any news on your nerd-trap?"
"Actually, yes," Judy sounded excited. "Most of the academic forum attempts failed at the third encryption layer. But about ten minutes ago, someone bypassed the fifth layer. They are actively solving the phase-delay equations right now. Whoever this is, they aren't a government brute-force bot. They're a genius."
"Keep an eye on them," I said, a smile spreading across my face. "We build the residential ring next. I have a feeling we're going to have company very soon."