By usual standards the Cab was an average sized deep space habitat. The disk-shaped structure was about one hundred meters in diameter and thirty-six meters tall. With the shields inflated it gained thirty meters in overall length and seventy meters in height, becoming almost spherical. Obviously, most of that internal volume didn’t have life support, but the Cab held enough space for a team of five to live comfortably, and Kyot was only one. So, while it didn’t look like much from the outside, it was a fairly large structure on a human scale. But the real advantage of the Cab was in UMN design philosophy.
They built all their space-borne equipment around two principles: durability and practicality. Everything was overengineered to take a beating and simple enough to be printable. Most of the tech used on their Cabs was public domain too, so there were no concerns about licenses or other legal restrictions. The basic crew cabin itself came as a sturdy landing vehicle, or LV, onto which other sections were printed and attached as needed. They even provided the software to do it. A simple drag-and-drop UI. Literally, a child could handle it. That’s why UMN crew cabin designs were known to get a little crazy.
There were stories about UMN cabins expanding continuously for decades until they became whole cities. Others were used as mobile platforms, moving around on massive treads or legs. All the laboratories, fabricators, power and life support, and other sensitive equipment were stored internally, and UMN software handled the mass-balancing issues and utilities layout, so almost anything was possible.
However, UMN Cabs were never specifically designed to fly. Or crash land.
Because of that little oversight, Kyot prayed to any god that may have been listening as he spun around in freefall, bathed in red emergency lights, and patiently waiting to smash against the surface of BR-4. But then he opened his eyes and realized that everything was still. No more spinning or falling, just dark stillness, the quiet hum of the Cab’s life support, and the stink of his own dry sweat and filth. His unwashed garmie clung to his skin, itching all over.
“I think I shit myself,” Kyot groaned. “Again, I mean. After we landed.”
“Should’ve worn the overtime diaper,” Agi said from somewhere below the access shaft of the Command pod.
“Yeah.”
Kyot unbuckled himself and stumbled out of his seat, fighting his exhaustion, the sickness of abusing stimmies, and the unfamiliar gravity of BR-4. From the edge of the access shaft he saw hundreds of little machines crawling in and out of various sections of the Cab, which itself had mostly been cleared of crash foam. One little bot with a microphone and speaker waited below the Command Pod.
“We’re alive?” Kyot asked the bot.
“Nah, we died,” his cobot companion answered, with a sarcastic smile audible in his voice.
“We landed hours ago. Cab shields took the brunt of it and the frame held together. The underside shielding blew up on impact but otherwise, we’re good. Battery power, life support, lab sections and all onboard equipment are working. Even the SIM room is operational. I'm almost done eating through the crash foam and my other drones are setting up equipment outside.”
“Outside?” Kyot asked. “We’re on the surface?”
“Oh yeah, we’re on the surface. There’s a lot to fill you in on, but for now, just know that your stupid-ass plan to blow up the payment pile actually worked.”
Kyot grunted, both content and surprised, and a little unsure how to feel about anything. He was a free man with a mountain of raw material resources at his disposal. The possibilities were endless. Kyot’s potential: limitless.
“I’m a fuckin’ God,” he mumbled.
“Not yet,” Agi said. “Get yourself cleaned up and get back in an EVA suit when you can. You really need to see what’s out there.”
But Kyot had already fallen asleep, hanging off the edge of the Command Pod access shaft. Agi decided to leave him as he was. There was too much going on and the cobot didn’t have time to babysit. Because, if the initial data reports from the surface of BR-4 were accurate, then they were both in deep, deep shit, the horribly smelly and chunky kind. Not even the regular rat shit. Pure human filth, mixed with bits of lost space contractors who ventured too far into the unknown.
---------- ---------- ----------
As soon as Kyot woke he dove for his old personal cabin to clean up and change into a new garmie. The cabin was a tiny living space built into the lowest and most shielded part of the LV, right at the bottom of the Command Pod access shaft. Kyot hadn’t used it since he first touched down on BR-4 and started work on the Cab. He instead preferred to sleep in a SIM-room or in the lab, so it was weird being back in such compact quarters. It reminded Kyot of his personal cabin back on the starship. Or his capsule in Galilee.
“I want a big living space,” Kyot said to himself as he washed in the cramped scrub tube. “A massive, empty structure like a hangar bay, but with a bed tucked into the corner. A real bed, not a plastic cot. Soft and made of organic fibers.”
“First, we need organics,” one of Agi’s bots reminded him from somewhere outside the cabin. “For now, we should focus on the Mjolnir Reactor. So, are you done yet? We have a lot of shit to take care of.”
“Heading out, now.”
A few seconds later, Kyot pulled a work visor over his eyes and jumped out of his old cabin, hopping to the primary airlock as he skimmed over the data that Agi collected on BR-4. Yet even at a glance, it was obvious that their situation was more complicated than previously assumed. Kyot just didn’t know how to make sense of his satellite moon. Not only had the gravity increased, meaning that the mass of the satellite moon had also increased, somehow, but the surface was also now habitable. Somehow.
Initial scans from the Cab’s remaining external sensors and instrumentation on the cobots indicated that the environment resembled the Antarctic region of old Earth. A dry, frozen wasteland. Yet, the air was breathable, matched the average atmospheric pressure of a standard habitat, and the usual storm of radiation blasting the surface had been significantly reduced. It seemed that BR-4 had been terraformed, which raised a lot of complicated questions.
Dumping Kyot’s payment onto the moon and organizing it into a rubble mound was a ridiculous waste of energy but not a complicated feat from an engineering perspective. Deep space work often involved lifting and dropping massive cargo loads in and out of gravity wells, especially around complex planetary systems like Big Red. But terraforming was something else entirely. That kind of planet-scale engineering had never been successful in Kyot and Agi’s time, not once in the centuries-long history of human spaceflight. It was just too big. The energy and time requirements were impractical.
Yet here it is, Kyot thought to himself as he reviewed data and looked through the sensors of Agi's cobots, scanning the frozen expanse outside the Cab. An Earth-like environment off Earth. Lightyears away from Earth. Incredible.
Kyot and Agi were still in a hopeless situation, alone in deep space and displaced in time by thousands of years without the possibility of rescue, but the modifications to BR-4 gave them a real chance at long-term survival. The atmosphere alone was a huge resource that offered wind power, oxygen and hydrogen fuel, radiation shielding, and life support. The satellite moon also appeared to be sterile, which was great. That meant one less thing to worry about. Nothing to threaten the organics Kyot had stored away in the lab section of the Cab, or the spaceman himself.
Just need to set up the Mjolnir Reactor and find the cargo jumpers. They must be somewhere around this crater.
“That was way more than five kilotons,” Kyot noted as he studied images of the wreckage around the Cab. The blast had thrown them straight up and gravity brought them straight down. At the moment, the Cab rested at an angle along the shallow slope of a massive crater.
Agi grunted a laugh at Kyot’s understatement.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“The air is dry now, but the payment pile released a lot of water vapor in the hours following our… landing. There must’ve been water all around us. And we don’t know how much of the pile had already corroded away into pockets of reactive gas, waiting to explode. Of course, our math could have been wrong too. Those were m-pods, man.”
“Yeah. How much is left?”
“You used a fourth of what we had. So, assuming we find the cargo jumpers intact, that leaves thirty-six m-OX and m-H2 fuel pods left.”
“Assuming we find them,” Kyot grumbled. “Intact.”
“Oh, there out there, somewhere,” Agi assured. “I was talking out of my ass about the durability of the Cab, but m-pods are stupidly strong. Stargod shit, you know?”
“Mhmm.”
Kyot didn’t know the details about m-pods but he understood the basics, like how to sabotage the release valve and make the indestructible spheres go boom. It was the same with all space contractors and the advanced technology they worked with. Knowing how to use stargod tech was more important than understanding how it actually worked, “stargod” itself being a catch-all term for when common mathematics and physics needed help from advanced AI. Mostly, it involved Nova reactors, the unnatural, ultra-superheavy elements they produced, and any related tech, such as m-H2 and m-OX pods.
They were balls of compressed hydrogen and oxygen, mixed in with other alloys of superheavy elements, which, after being subjected to enough pressure, became superconducting. A current was then forced into the metallic-ish fluid to form specific EM fields, and the whole superconducting mass simultaneously cooled, at least as much as something like that can be, before being charged up to its limit. The result was an indestructible ball of superconducting death held together by its own power that was then insulated and shielded with other fancy alloys of superheavy elements and then tapped as needed with special release valves called “interrupters”, that were made with even more superheavy alloys.
It was all very complicated and expensive, but it made planetary operations easier when there wasn’t an elevator.
Kyot’s instructors at the Galilean Space Institute explained it to him like this: The magnetic ball turns loose bolts into bullets, living people into dead people, and stations into slag. DON’T TOUCH. Also, it’s worth more than your whole bloodline. And it fucks with your nervous system so don’t stand too close either.
I was practically sitting on top of them when I was building the bombs, Kyot thought to himself as he reviewed hazy memories of gluing mounds of metal dust, high explosives and m-pods together with vacuum sealant. Luckily, I’m all organic… and a little plastic, I guess.
“They’ll be easy to find, right?” Kyot asked. This time, Agi mhmm’ed.
“If they’re on or near the surface, yeah. If the cargo jumpers got blown deep into the payment pile, then all that metal is gonna shield them.”
“Then let’s hope that didn’t happen.”
“Let’s hope.”
Without anything else to say, Kyot and Agi continued their work in silence. The spaceman skimmed through data on his work visor as airlock bots sealed him into an EVA suit. Agi did everything else. He scanned the environment, made repairs, cleaned things up, and even rigged up a hoist on the outside of the primary airlock for Kyot, since the lift wasn’t assembled. It was a little reckless maybe, as opposed to waiting for the lift to be built, but it did allow for an unobscured view from the primary airlock.
The hatch slid opened, and a wave of dense atmosphere hit the little spaceman full in the chest, almost knocking him over.
No, not just atmosphere, he thought. That’s wind. Real wind.
Kyot took a hesitant step forward, flexing his gloved fingers and testing BR-4's new pressure and temperature though his suit. The airlock had matched the outside environment but stepping out into it was something else entirely. It was an overwhelming experience. And loud.
Holy shit, I can hear the wind blowing against the suit. That's so weird.
Kyot froze in place as he adjusted to his new surroundings. It was dark, and over the edge of the airlock was a wide, almost void-black crater. In the distance, he saw an endless expanse of dark-blue snow covering the rest of the payment pile. But the darkness of the outside world only hid its enormity, which began to throw Kyot off balance as he increased the brightness on his work visor and the visor on his EVA suit. The only things he’d ever seen that compared in scale were his starship, the Little Star Hopper, and his own home station in Galilea, having spent most of his life inside cramped compartments and corridors.
What he saw outside the airlock overwhelmed his mind.
“It looks fake,” he whispered. Agi laughed through their commlink.
“A lot of spaceborn people say that when they land on Earth. It looks like a big SIM-room, right, or like an inverted ring station?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s all real, little human. Everything you see out there is real.”
Kyot stumbled forward and dropped to a knee right at the edge of the airlock, then fell to his chest and gripped the surface beneath him as the universe spun around. He looked down over the edge of the airlock at an abyss. Although he knew the surface was only ten meters down, it seemed to stretch on for much farther.
“You okay?” Agi asked through their commlink. Kyot noticed that every bot in the dark metallic crater below froze as the mind of his cobot companion focused only on him. It helped the spaceman compose himself, both because he had something sensible to concentrate on and because he didn’t want to seem weak.
“Yeah,” Kyot breathed. He put a hand against the deck of the airlock and pushed himself up, forcing himself to remember how to move in the increased gravity. “I don’t know what that was. Got dizzy. I’ve been in big atmospheres before, but this one threw me off.”
“Maybe you should go back inside. This could be related to the long-term storage.”
“I did a full evaluation.”
“Could have missed something.”
“Could have. But I’m not going back inside at this point.”
Kyot grabbed onto the hoist, connected it to his suit and then jumped off the edge of the Cab.
“One small step,” Agi mumbled through the commlink.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Ancient history.”
Kyot stomped onto the surface of BR-4.
It was still a frozen rock, but now it was beautiful, even in the darkness, and much less windy down in the crater than up at the edge of the airlock. A cool blueish-purple sky stretched out in all directions overhead. Grey snow drifted on the wind, some of it already creeping over the edges of the crater. As for the payment pile itself, it rested beneath Kyot’s boots as densely packed gravel. And, based on the view he had from the Cab’s airlock, it looked like more than enough to build a starship. Maybe even a fleet of starships. He had barely been able to see over the edge of the crater but noticed that the payment pile was perfectly level all the way to the horizon.
Kyot took a minute to take in what he could with his simple human senses. Mostly, he was just imagining a great expanse of cold, dense air swirling around a pile of high-value metal, taller and wider than the diameter of an average ring station. Then, once he felt content in his understanding of the universe, the spaceman took in a deep breath and got ready to work.
“Alright, Agi. Tell me what’s out there.”
“On BR-4, or in the whole star system?”
“Everything.”
“Well, as you can see, BR-4 is now habitable. It’s an Earth-like environment. Breathable atmosphere. No life detected yet. Obviously, we don’t want you breathing it in though.”
“Obviously.”
“The payment pile itself seems to be a circular structure about forty-four kilometers in diameter, and about two hundred meters taller than the surrounding terrain. Despite deformations around the edge and the occasional steam vent, it appears to be a flat disk centered on our former base.”
"What about our assets in orbit? The scoutship and the satellites?"
"Gone. I see a shit ton of debris above us but no ships or sats. They could have deorbited too, after all this time. Either way, we don't have contact with anything beyond this crater."
Kyot closed his eyes and steadied his breath as the loss of his orbital infrastructure washed over him. The path forward didn't look good without an established presence in orbit. At the very least, it meant that he was stuck on BR-4, which, depending on the rest of Agi's report, could be bad or very, very bad.
Just push through, the spaceman told himself. That's the only way forward.
“Tell me more about BR-4," he said. "Why does the gravity feel stronger?”
Agi sighed through the commlink, sounding genuinely aggravated.
“The mass seems to have increased, and the satellite moon has gotten bigger. I have no idea how. Oh and, in case you haven’t noticed, we can no longer see Big Red. Which is kind of a big deal since we were tidally locked to it.”
Kyot leaned back to stare into the darkening, blueish-purple sky.
“Yeah, I noticed. Got any idea how that happened?”
“None. Whatever happened put us in a higher orbit around Big Red. Anything powerful enough to move a planetoid like that should have vaporized the surface and us along with it. Although, a rogue star or planet could have moved things around Big Red, but I honestly have no idea. The atmosphere is also much brighter than it should be, with our back turned to Big Red, but again, I have no idea why.”
“Okay. Okay. What about the star system?”
“It’s not good.”
“Just tell me.”
Agi took a moment to respond, either revising his report to be less mentally distressing or because he was still disconnected from the central computer cluster and his single nanocluster unit needed a moment.
Still need to figure out what’s going on with that, Kyot thought as he added another task to his mental to-do list. Not that he needed to, or could even remember everything on the list, but it still felt good to pretend to be in control.
“The star system shows evidence of a bug swarm infestation. There are massive but organized debris clouds around each planet, including Big Red. The inner most planet is mostly gone too, probably consumed for its resources, and there’s a swarm structure surrounding the star. It’s big. Big enough to dim the red dwarf.”
“An actual stellar array or just a swarm?”
“I don’t know. I hope it's just a swarm.”
“Yeah… yeah. Huh. Okay. Anything else?”
“Yes, but it’s a little concerning.”
“Well don’t keep me waiting in suspense.”
Agi took another moment to respond. This time, Kyot was grateful for the pause. He knew they needed to carefully talk things out and make a plan, despite the alarm sirens blaring in his head. Because, if there was a bug swarm in the star system, then there was a good chance they noticed his payment pile fart out an abnormally large amount of dust and water vapor. Kyot couldn’t imagine why the bugs hadn’t already taken it while he was in long term storage, but whatever the reason, his recent demolition work surely signaled to the bugs that something was alive on BR-4. Something they needed to kill.
Just the thought made Kyot want to grab a shovel and start digging while the printers pumped out as many defensive weapons as possible, but the spaceman forced himself to stand tall in his EVA suit. He reminded himself that, whatever happened now, he was a free man. Not a space contractor. A spaceman sitting on eight hundred billion metric tons of his own property. Whatever happened, he had already won.
I’m already a God, he thought.
But then Agi had to go and ruin it all.
“There are things moving in interstellar space. Starships, I think. But they are really fucking fast and are, obviously, very powerful.”
“Describe fast and powerful.”
“Sensors are picking up objects moving at near lightspeed. They’re creating atmospheric pressure from the interstellar medium and leaving relativistic waves in their wake. There are thousands of them, at least. Bright enough to look like stars smeared across space, just beams of light, sometimes emitting pure gamma, and other times emitting weird signals that don’t make sense. And most of them are so far away that I can’t even tell where they are in the galaxy, or where they jumped from.
I don’t know how to explain it. Even after five thousand years, the technological know-how to do what I’m seeing doesn’t seem possible. It goes farther than even stargod shit. That's on top of the fact that everything I'm seeing is many years old. Some of it, centuries old.”
Kyot didn't say anything for a while. He just marveled at the pretty dark blue sky up above and the symmetrical little crater beneath his boots.
“Okay. That’s okay.”
“You alright, man? Your heartrate is elevated.”
“Yeah. I’m just… thinking.”
I’m already a god, Kyot thought to himself, although he no longer believed it. Not really.
At the very least, Kyot now felt that there were levels to godhood. There were actual Gods that zoomed across the universe as beams of light, and then there were little gods that could build shitty outdated starships, if they were lucky, and jump from one star system to another at quaint velocities without blurring the lines between mass and energy. Kyot was one of the latter. Kind of. He didn’t even mind it, though. It was sensible. Appropriate.
At least for now.
“I’m still a god,” Kyot whispered. “And we’ve got work to do.”