The Lodge

They gave me a room.

It's on the upper floor of the Lodge — that's what they call it, Constellation's headquarters, this old building in the middle of New Atlantis that somehow smells like a used bookstore and bad coffee, which is the most comforting thing I've encountered since I woke up on Vectera, even though I rarely read books and never drank coffee.

My room has a window. When I woke up this morning I lay there for a while just looking at the light coming in, coming to terms with... everything.

I'm still working on it. But it's progress.

I should back up, because a lot has happened since I last wrote.

VASCO — Barrett's robot, who has been my co-pilot and my only consistent companion for the past few days — navigated us to Kreet before we made the jump to New Atlantis. According to the star map aboard the Frontier it's a moon in the Narion system, cold and ugly, thin atmosphere that makes everything feel slightly wrong. The Crimson Fleet had a base there, and apparently they were the reason we'd need to clear it before making the jump safely. I'm still not entirely sure how "clear a pirate base" was added to my to-do list in the middle of all of this, but here we are.

I'd be lying if I said part of me wasn't excited.

VASCO mentioned, almost in passing as we made our way inside, that the facility hadn't been built by the Crimson Fleet — it was an old "United Colonies" research base. Apparently that was interesting because this is "Freestar Collective" space, meaning this is some kind of secret base likely established during a war between these two factions. It was abandoned at some point after the war and then repurposed by whoever needed somewhere cold and remote and off the maps. I didn't exactly understand his explanation on a deep level, but I could wrap my head around what he was describing. War... War never changes.

The inside of the facility was larger than it looked from the approach — rooms feeding into corridors feeding into more rooms, the UC signage still stenciled on the walls under a decade or more of grime and Crimson Fleet graffiti. The pirates were spread through it in small groups, two or three at a time, which actually worked in my favor. I'd find a corner, get a read on where they were, and move before I'd finished deciding to. My body moved before my mind had the chance to react — same as the cutter on Vectera, same as the dogfight — and I'd be through the initial strike before I'd consciously caught up with it. Then VASCO would move in behind me to cover what I'd missed, and we'd hold for a moment, and then push on to the next room.

It wasn't clean. There were a few times I found cover and just stayed there longer than strictly necessary, waiting for my hands to stop shaking. But we worked through the whole facility that way, room by room, until we'd reached the roof access and there was nobody left between us and the top.

On the roof were three of them, including the man in charge. He'd heard me coming, obviously, and he had the look of someone who'd already done the math but wanted to hear what I had to say before he committed to anything. So I talked.

Here's what I found out: they were never after the artifact. They were after the Frontier. Apparently Barrett's ship has a reputation — stories that have been circulating long enough and traveled far enough that the Crimson Fleet had decided boarding it was worth their time and resources. Stories about rare cargo, valuable finds, the kind of haul that makes careers. Someone, somewhere, had started a rumor about that ship, and this crew had followed it all the way to Vectera and Kreet and lost people for it.

What I had in my favor was the truth. The Frontier doesn't have any of that. I walked him through it — what's actually in the hold, what the ship actually is, what Barrett actually uses it for. I let him be angry, because he'd earned it and trying to talk anyone out of anger never works. I just kept pointing at the facts until the anger had somewhere real to land, which was on whoever had fed him the bad information in the first place. By the end he was furious, but he believed me, and he let me walk back down those stairs.

And on wobbling legs, I did just that.

New Atlantis.

Landing at the spaceport, a technician came out to meet the Frontier before I'd even finished powering down. She recognized the ship immediately — looked it over, looked at me, then Turned to VASCO and said "No Barrett? Indigo Protocol again?" in the tone of someone who has asked this question before and fully expects a non-answer. I told her Barrett had stayed behind on Vectera. She nodded like that tracked, made a note on her slate, and waved me through without another word.

I recalled, vaguely, that Barrett had told VASCO to use this "Indigo Protocol" when I was leaving Vectera. I didn't ask then, Because I'd assumed it was just Constellation Jargon. But now this random Technician was aware of it, and I found myself wondering if this is more common that I realized. Regardless, I filed it away and walked into the spaceport.

I had credits in my pocket from Kreet, thanks to the sheer quantity of now-dead pirates I had to wade through, and I found the bar and sat down and ordered something without knowing what I was ordering. Fortunately, there aren't many alcohols I dislike at this point in my life. I sat there for a while just letting the noise of the place wash over me — it was busy, the spaceport, people moving through with purpose in every direction — and I was somewhere in my second drink when I noticed him.

Full spacesuit, matte black all the way through. No markings, no faction insignia, the helmet completely opaque — I couldn't see his face at all, had no way to read his expression or even confirm he was looking at me. He was just... leaning against the wall at the end of the bar some 6 feet away, and something about how still he was made him impossible not to notice once you had. He wasn't drinking. He wasn't waiting for anyone, or if he was, it wasn't visibly. He was just there.

I said something to him — I don't even remember what exactly, just something offhand, the kind of thing you say to someone sitting near you at a bar when the silence feels pointed. He turned toward me, or I think he did, it was impossible to tell with the helmet, and said that it wasn't often someone approached him for conversation. The way he said it wasn't a complaint. It was closer to an observation about the nature of things.

What followed was one of the stranger conversations I've had since I got here, which is saying something. He had a worldview — that came through immediately — and it was bleak in a very calm, settled way, the way a person is bleak when they stopped being upset about it a long time ago. His general position was that people don't help each other. Not really. Everyone is operating in their own interest, always, and what looks like generosity or kindness is just self-interest wearing a more socially acceptable coat.

I told him that sounded like a whole philosophy he'd built up. He paused at that — something shifted, not in any way I could see, but in the quality of his attention — and I got the impression he found it faintly amusing that I'd named it so plainly.

I said I preferred to be optimistic about people, even when it cost me. He made a sound that wasn't quite a scoff and wasn't quite a laugh. Called it foolish. But then he added — and this is the part I keep turning over — that at least I wasn't naive enough to think hope alone was going to carry me through anything. That I seemed to understand the difference between expecting the best and just waiting for it to happen.

I'm not sure I do understand that. But I didn't say so.

What I can't fully articulate is why that conversation left me with the same feeling Barrett had given me on Vectera — that flicker, that sense of being assessed rather than spoken to. The man had no face I could read. No eyes I could track. But something in how precisely he engaged, the way certain things I said landed with a weight that suggested he was measuring them against something I wasn't aware of, made me feel observed in a way that went past the conversation itself. Like he was looking at a version of me that didn't quite line up with what I appeared to be, and had quietly noted the discrepancy.

He stopped engaging after that, in a way that made clear we were done without him having to say so. I finished my drink and walked out into New Atlantis.

The city is something I don't have words for yet, or I have too many and none of them feel right. It's built up the side of a mountain on a planet that has no business supporting a city, and it's enormous and clean in the way things are clean when someone has put serious thought into infrastructure — transit lines, districts, a whole underground level called the Well. More people than I've seen in one place since I got here, all of them moving like people who have never once had to think about where they are.

I kept stopping. Just stopping in the middle of walking somewhere and looking at things. Ships in orbit visible from the surface. The scale of the skyline. A transit platform with a viewport that shows the curve of the planet and everyone on it thinking about where they're going next. I did it probably three times on that first walk, and each time someone would flow around me and keep moving and eventually I'd start moving again too.

I'm getting faster at recovering. That feels like progress.

Constellation is the group Barrett had mentioned, and the Lodge is their headquarters, and they are — genuinely, I think — some of the most interesting people I've met since I got here. The woman who seems to run things day-to-day is named Sarah, and she has the precise energy of someone who could have been very successful doing anything she chose, and still chose this, which you have to respect. She gave me a speech about exploration and curiosity and the unknown that I would have been cynical a few days ago and now I couldn't find the cynicism if I tried.

They took a vote, of sorts. They weren't even all present, don't think there was any kind of official procedure for this. Either way, I'm in. A Full member of Constellation, with a room in the Lodge and access to their research archives and an ongoing expectation that I'll help track down the rest of whatever those artifacts are.

I said yes because what else was I going to say? I woke up on Vectera a few days ago with no idea where I was, and Constellation is the first thing that's pointed at an actual direction and said: go there, find out what's happening, it matters. The artifact matters. Whatever it showed me matters. I have no idea how to get home, or whether home is something that's available to me anymore, and in the meantime I might as well be doing something that means something.

I keep thinking about her, and whether she'd find that reasoning convincing. Even if she did, I doubt she'd be happy about it.

Maybe it's both.