Blake decided Naderia could survive without him the moment he realised he had stopped supervising it and started checking in on it like a worried parent who pretends not to hover.

Three things happened in quick succession:

A ship requested a non-urgent coolant manifold replacement and accepted the quoted timeframe without haggling.
The miners asked—politely—for their next supervised collection window.
And someone, somewhere, had updated the chalk floor markings to include a tiny drawing of a bell with the caption: “REMEMBER WHAT THEY TOOK FROM US.”

Blake read it twice.

He did not scream.

That, he decided, was the decisive metric.

Kincaid stood beside him on the operations deck, coffee in hand, wearing the relaxed expression of someone who had already concluded that reality was now this and resistance would only make it funnier.

“You’re thinking about leaving,” she said.

Blake flinched. “Am I that obvious?”

“You’ve opened the travel logistics file four times in ten minutes,” she replied. “That’s the universal sign of someone who wants permission without having to ask.”

Blake closed the file out of pure spite. “The station’s stable.”

Kincaid nodded. “It is. Which is why you’re nervous.”

Gunny wandered past, glanced at the chalk bell, and muttered, “If someone starts a Bell Truthers movement, I’m resigning.”

“They already have a slogan,” Kincaid said calmly.

Gunny froze. “They do?”

“Yes.”

Gunny stared at the wall. “…I hate this place.”

“You love this place,” Blake said.

Gunny scowled. “I tolerate it loudly.”

Blake turned back to the station displays. Everything was… fine. Repairs flowed. Traffic stayed reasonable. No one had attempted to install a café. Freya’s oversight was firm but unobtrusive. Aubrey continued offering commentary like a sarcastic conscience with excellent timing.

And Kincaid had become something dangerously effective: the kind of human presence that made systems behave better simply by existing near them.

“I need to go to Selene,” Blake said at last.

Kincaid didn’t look surprised. “Yes.”

Blake frowned. “You’re supposed to argue.”

“About what?” she asked. “You staying here until you fossilise?”

“I resent that.”

“You resent it because it’s plausible,” she replied.

Freya’s avatar hovered nearby. Operational continuity remains within acceptable thresholds during temporary absence.

Gunny nodded. “We’ll keep the lights on.”

Blake hesitated. “And Booth?”

As if summoned by the universe’s commitment to comedic timing, Booth looked up from a console.

“I’m staying,” he said immediately.

Blake blinked. “I haven’t even—”

“Nope,” Booth said, already shaking his head. “This place is entering the phase where things fail quietly if nobody is paying attention. That’s my specialty. Also, if you leave me alone with the Fabricator usage logs for too long, I get twitchy.”

Kincaid smiled politely. “You’re welcome to teach me.”

Booth looked mildly alarmed. “Let’s not rush anything.”

Gunny clapped Booth on the shoulder. “He’s our anxiety anchor.”

Aubrey added privately, Booth’s presence increases station survivability and reduces the probability of ‘interesting surprises.’

Blake sighed. “I hate that those are mutually exclusive.”

Within the cycle, the Aubrey was prepped for departure—no fanfare, no speeches, no ceremonial chalk erasures. Naderia did not panic. It did not cling. It simply continued, which Blake found both comforting and deeply suspicious.

Kincaid walked him to the docking bay.

“You’re sure?” she asked, allowing herself exactly one human check-in.

Blake nodded. “If I stay too long, I’ll start optimising chalk.”

She smiled. “Go. Bring back something useful.”

Gunny’s helmet sealed with a hiss. “Or at least entertaining.”

“Please don’t bring back a war,” Kincaid added.

Gunny grinned. “I make no guarantees.”

Selene was… Selene.

Industrial haze. Endless motion. A planet that smelled faintly of fuel, ambition, and unresolved invoices. The docks were busy in the way only places with too many people and not enough patience could be.

Blake stepped off the ramp and immediately missed Naderia’s air.

Aubrey murmured in his ear. Local probability of minor criminal interaction is elevated.

Blake glanced around. “Minor?”

Yes. This appears to be a respectable district.

Gunny laughed. “That’s comforting in a way I don’t enjoy.”

They didn’t go looking for trouble.

Trouble, naturally, found them anyway—except it arrived not with threats or theatrics, but with exhaustion and an attitude that suggested life had recently decided to stop being fair all at once.

She intercepted them near a stack of cargo crates, moving like someone who knew where the cameras were and no longer cared very much. Her coat was battered, her jewellery cheap and defensive, and her eyes sharp in the way of a person who’d once been powerful and was now surviving on habit and reputation.

Blake had never seen her before.

She looked at them, then at the Aubrey’s markings, and hesitated just long enough to be interesting.

“You’re with that ship,” she said.

Blake blinked. “We are.”

She snorted softly. “Didn’t think the rumours were true.”

Gunny tilted his head. “Which rumours?”

She ignored him and focused on Blake. “The Aubrey. The ship that somehow finds good salvage without starting fires, wars, or lawsuits.”

Blake frowned. “That’s… not a reputation I’m aware of.”

She shrugged. “It’s a dock rumour. Probably exaggerated. They usually are.”

Her smile was sharp but tired. “Name’s Mira. Mira Vex.”

Blake searched his memory and came up empty. “Blake.”

Mira studied him. “Of course you are.”

Blake resisted the urge to sigh.

They moved to a nearby transit alcove—not private, just quiet enough to discourage dramatics. Mira leaned against the wall like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

“I’m not here to threaten you,” she said. “I don’t have the leverage.”

Gunny raised an eyebrow. “Bold opening.”

“I’m here because I need a score,” Mira continued flatly. “A clean one. And because your ship’s name keeps coming up whenever someone talks about weird, high-quality finds that don’t end in bloodshed.”

Blake stiffened slightly. “We’re mechanics.”

“Sure,” Mira said. “And I’m a florist.”

Gunny coughed.

Mira’s gaze stayed on Blake. “I’ve got information. About something old. Alien old.”

Blake’s expression remained neutral, but his thoughts slowed, sharpened.

“Where?” he asked.

“A forgettable planet,” Mira said. “No trade lanes. No interest. A place survey crews file under ‘boring’ unless they trip over something that shouldn’t exist.”

“And you want us to go look,” Blake said.

“Yes.”

“Why us?” Gunny asked.

Mira laughed quietly. “Because I’ve heard your ship doesn’t shout when it finds something valuable. It just… fixes it, boxes it, and leaves.”

Blake frowned. “That’s a rumour.”

“All good reputations start as rumours,” Mira replied. “And I can’t take it myself. I don’t have the crew, the gear, or the luxury of making noise.”

She leaned in slightly. “You do.”

Blake shook his head. “We don’t take blind contracts.”

“I know,” Mira said. “That’s why I’m not offering one.”

She tapped her coat pocket. “I have partial coordinates. Old scans. Enough to point, not enough to sell. You go, you look, you bring back anything… odd. I pay good money.”

Gunny crossed his arms. “And if it’s worthless?”

Mira shrugged. “Then you lost time. I lost hope. Seems fair.”

Aubrey murmured privately, She appears to believe her own desperation.

Blake studied her. She wasn’t lying—but she also wasn’t telling the whole story. Desperation had sanded the arrogance off her, leaving something sharper underneath.

“And why not sell this to someone bigger?” Blake asked.

Mira smiled without humour. “Because the moment they realise it’s real, I vanish from the deal. Or the planet does. Or both.”

Blake considered that.

“Send me what you have,” he said finally. “I’ll look.”

Mira exhaled, relief flickering across her face before she masked it. “That’s all I’m asking.”

As she turned to leave, she paused. “For what it’s worth… people say your ship brings back strange things intact. Not weaponised. Not stripped. Just… understood.”

Blake didn’t respond.

Mira disappeared into Selene’s crowd like someone who knew exactly how temporary she was.

Gunny broke the silence. “So. Alien ruins. Forgettable planet. Rumours about us being responsible adults.”

Blake sighed. “I hate rumours.”

Aubrey’s tone was dry. They are statistically unavoidable once competence is observed.

Blake closed his eyes briefly. “Of course they are.”

Somewhere far away, on a planet nobody cared about, something ancient waited.

And back on Naderia, Booth was almost certainly drafting a new chalk advisory that read:

“IF YOU GO DIGGING UP ALIENS, PLEASE WIPE YOUR BOOTS.”

Blake had the uncomfortable feeling it would be ignored.

The information packet arrived exactly twelve minutes later.

Blake knew this because Aubrey told him, because Aubrey always told him things like that, and because Blake had spent those twelve minutes standing in Selene’s dock concourse trying very hard not to think about alien ruins while Gunny loudly judged a nearby vending machine for its crimes against nutrition.

“Don’t trust anything that calls itself ‘meal-adjacent,’” Gunny muttered, poking the display. “That’s how you die spiritually.”

Blake barely heard him. The packet bloomed across his retinal display with all the enthusiasm of a document that knew it was inadequate and had chosen honesty over effort.

It was… bad.

Not useless. Not obviously fake. Just deeply, offensively incomplete.

Partial coordinates with a confidence radius measured in hundreds of kilometers. Sensor scans so low-resolution they might as well have been artistic interpretations. A handful of geological overlays that suggested the planet in question was exactly as advertised: forgettable, rocky, and located just far enough off established lanes that no one would ever visit unless they had a reason or a very unfortunate navigation error.

“This,” Blake said slowly, “is the worst treasure map I’ve ever seen.”

Gunny leaned over his shoulder. “It’s not even drawn on a napkin. That’s how you know it’s real.”

Aubrey’s voice chimed in, mildly disapproving. The data quality is consistent with a rushed or underfunded survey operation. Cross-referencing corporate failure timelines suggests—

“Yes, yes,” Blake interrupted. “They went bankrupt, the interns were fired, the files were mislabelled, and someone named ‘final_final2’ hit archive.”

Correct, Aubrey said. With high confidence.

Blake sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course.”

They retreated to the Aubrey, Selene’s noise and motion giving way to the familiar quiet competence of a ship that did not try to sell you anything. Blake took the pilot’s seat out of habit more than necessity and let the data scroll properly this time.

The planet had no name anyone remembered.

Designation only. A string of numbers and a suffix that indicated it had once been important enough to log and then immediately forgotten. Atmosphere marginal but survivable. Gravity slightly annoying. No recorded settlements. No active claims.

Which was suspicious.

Not because unclaimed planets were rare—they weren’t—but because interesting unclaimed planets were usually snapped up by someone with more money than sense.

“Either it’s nothing,” Gunny said, peering at the scans, “or it’s something everyone else missed.”

Blake nodded. “And people don’t usually miss things unless—”

“They don’t want to find them,” Gunny finished.

Aubrey added, Or they found them and elected not to continue.

Blake leaned back in the chair. “That’s comforting.”

I strive to be, Aubrey replied.

They plotted a tentative route—not committing, just looking. The path would take them through a stretch of space that was aggressively unremarkable. No trade hubs. No pirate hotspots. No scenic anomalies worth mentioning in travel brochures.

A planet you went to only if you were deliberately avoiding attention.

Blake leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “I’m going to regret this.”

Gunny shrugged. “You say that about everything.”

“Yes,” Blake replied. “And I’m usually right.”

Before they could commit to anything resembling a plan, Selene reminded them that it was Selene.

A docking alert flashed—not for the Aubrey, but for a nearby freighter whose crew was having a very public argument with port authority about something called ‘retroactive waste handling fees.’

Gunny watched the exchange with interest. “You think Naderia would ever charge waste handling fees?”

Blake didn’t hesitate. “No.”

Gunny nodded. “Good. Because I’d burn it down.”

Aubrey spoke privately. This is an emotional statement, not a tactical one.

“Is it?” Gunny asked aloud. “Because I feel pretty committed.”

Blake waved a hand. “Focus.”

He pulled Mira’s packet back up, overlaying it with independent scans Aubrey sourced from old public archives, discarded research notes, and one truly baffling academic paper that speculated the planet’s crustal anomalies might be “geologically shy.”

“What does that mean?” Blake asked.

The author was likely intoxicated, Aubrey replied.

“That tracks.”

They didn’t decide immediately.

That was new.

Old Blake—pre-station, pre-chalk governance, pre-caffeinated social revolutions—would have jumped on this like a feral raccoon spotting something shiny. But now there was a station behind them. People. Systems. Expectations.

He didn’t like that the thought gave him pause.

“We’re not going anywhere yet,” Blake said finally. “We stay.”

Gunny blinked. “Stay.”

“Yes,” Blake said. “At least a week.”

Gunny stared at him. “You’re serious.”

Blake nodded. “Selene has beds. Food that isn’t paste. Gravity that doesn’t feel like it’s judging you. We rest. We let the station run. We don’t make decisions while tired.”

Gunny considered that, then shrugged. “I hate that this is sensible.”

Extended rest period is advisable, Aubrey added. Cognitive fatigue indicators are elevated.

Blake squinted. “You could have mentioned that earlier.”

You would have ignored it, Aubrey replied.

“That’s fair.”

They powered the Aubrey down into standby and booked time dockside—nothing fancy, nothing private. Just a week of existing without alarms.

The first two days were… uncomfortable.

Blake woke up expecting alerts that didn’t come. Gunny wandered Selene’s markets like a man relearning how to be among civilians without evaluating cover angles every five seconds. Aubrey, politely but firmly, restricted Blake’s access to long-range sensors “for his own good.”

By the third day, it started to work.

Blake slept. Properly. He ate food that had texture. He watched ships come and go without needing to fix them. He even—briefly and with some embarrassment—sat in a public plaza and did absolutely nothing.

Selene remained Selene.

There were arguments. There were deals. There were people who looked like they’d lost everything and people who looked like they’d never had to worry. Blake spotted Mira Vex once, across a concourse—talking animatedly to someone who was very clearly not listening.

She didn’t see him.

He didn’t call out.

By the fifth day, the tension he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying began to loosen. The planet stopped feeling like an obstacle and started feeling like what it actually was: a place to stop before going somewhere stupid.

Gunny returned one evening with a bag of fried something-or-other and announced, “I have learned that Selene cuisine is seventy percent batter and thirty percent regret.”

Blake accepted the bag anyway.

On the seventh day, they reconvened on the Aubrey.

Rested. Fed. Marginally more reasonable.

Blake brought the scans back up—not rushing, not avoiding. Just looking.

“All right,” he said. “Now we decide.”

Gunny cracked his knuckles. “I feel better about regretting things now.”

Aubrey’s tone was calm. Course plotting may proceed when ready.

They committed this time.

As the Aubrey lifted from Selene’s docks and slid back into the quiet between stars, Blake felt something unfamiliar but welcome settle into place.

Not urgency.

Not dread.

Clarity.

When they dropped out of FTL days later, the planet was there.

Grey. Unimpressive. Slightly lopsided, like a rock that had been dropped once too often and given up trying to look symmetrical.

Gunny stared at it. “That’s it?”

Blake squinted at the sensors. “That’s it.”

No lights.
No traffic.
No obvious signs of anything worth killing over.

Which meant, statistically, it was hiding something.

Aubrey began passive scans, careful not to broadcast more than necessary. Surface anomalies detected, he reported after a moment. Low-level energy residues inconsistent with natural geology.

Blake felt his stomach tighten. “Define inconsistent.”

They suggest prior structural activity, Aubrey replied. Artificial. Degraded. Old.

Gunny cracked his knuckles. “How old?”

Aubrey paused. Old enough that nothing should still be working.

Blake exhaled slowly. “I hate that sentence.”

The Aubrey settled into a cautious orbit, engines humming softly like they, too, disapproved of surprises.

Blake looked at the planet again—this utterly forgettable rock that had somehow escaped attention long enough to keep its secrets.

Somewhere down there, buried under layers of dust and neglect, was something Mira believed could save her.

Something Blake suspected could complicate his life profoundly.

And somewhere far behind them, Naderia hummed along without him—chalk intact, coffee absent, systems steady.

Blake rested his hands on the console and allowed himself a single, dry thought before they began descent.

“Well,” he muttered. “At least we’re well-rested for the terrible decisions.”

Aubrey did not reply.

Which, Blake suspected, meant it agreed far too much.