It was a terribly long flight to the lighthouse, hour after hour, it grew bigger in the window. I set my radio to the standard frequency of hailing a station and waited to get pinged.

But hey, I knew why it was called the lighthouse now.

It was the warning lights spinning round and round in the dark.

It was quite a sight, Manfred was right, even if the planet itself was far more intimidating, held within the lighthouse’s confines by a barely noticeable barrier, much like the domes on Luna.

It made the sight even more applicable to how I felt and played into my expectation of the planet. It needed to have a barrier to hold it inside.

I eventually got pinged, relayed my stuff and was able to dock, drawing up next to the monolith of lonely steel girders and armour plates near a lonely tower with a swirling yellow light. But I decided to sleep instead of messing around. I could talk with the keeper tomorrow; I was just too exhausted from the fear of the planet.

It was a poor sleep. Shallow and nearly lucid. I was being hunted across the dark, bare surface of a grey, craggy planet. Hunted by shapeless things that hid in long shadows, skittering and laughing like the radio.

The woman was there, too, with her familiar features and accent.

I couldn’t remember what she told me in the dream. I couldn’t remember much of what happened, but when I woke up, I woke up fighting, throwing myself around in the wall-mounted sack that I hung inside and counted as my bed.

I was covered in a cold sweat, my heart thundering in my chest as I took deep, calming breaths. The best I could do, while I calmed myself in an attempt to recognize that it was just a dream, that this wasn’t a new place where I would be tormented, but that the torment was not real.

I washed up as well as I could, getting the fear of sweat off my skin and the lasting dirt and anything I could honestly. It wasn’t easy in the cramped ship, but I made do.

Then I got my stuff together, my away bag with the heater to cook with and cans of food I normally kept in reserve all of them went into a pack that I tucked away on my bike.

I made sure to double-check for my artifact and tucked it into a pocket in my coat.

I spent time making sure my ammunition was ready to go, as much as possible, tucked in pouches that I could manage.

I hadn’t gotten any explosive ammunition ready, unfortunately, but I had been able to get an old battery setup to recharge the coil gun, topped off with energy from my ship powerplant while the Junker was docked, and its load was low, I packed that away in another bag on my bike.

I got dressed properly after that, not just in normal clothes, but my chest piece and my sword, held in its scabbard at my hip, the weightless blade sat ready, like it could feel my tension and like it knew what we were about to do.

A faithful hound next to me, ready to defend its master from harm.

I strapped my coat on how I liked it, gun holsters ready on my belt, Righty and Lefty topped up with Plasma, ready to unload hellfire on whoever or whatever tried to stop me. The power of the sun in the palm of either hand, ready to be unloaded twelve times on predators, real or imagined. I fixed the coil gun, with its beautiful real wood and gorgeous metal, to my back on a sling, loaded with hard metal ammunition that would punch a hole in the wall of a station's habitation quarters.

I strapped ammunition to myself in pouches on my belt, so many I got a second belt to hold it all.

If I was going to go down to the surface of the most inhospitable planet in the system, I was going to go armed to the teeth.

I even packed away stings of gun putty and little igniters in case I had to make something explode, wound up like rope made from clay.

Then, I opened up the Junkers hold and stepped out into the lighthouse.

It was all the same, dark metal. The room itself was well-lit, enough to make out the six-sided room. A safe place. A door off to the side sat in the wall, circular of all things, like a porthole of the same black metal.

I walked down the ramp, clinking as I went. The moment I stepped onto the black metal, my footfalls fell away, totally noiseless as I moved to the door.

My eye caught, engraved into the wall, tiny hexagon panels. Checking the ground, it too was engraved with larger ones, the lines black on black, like a trick of sight.

I followed them to the door, walking ponderously along the lines. I felt somewhat childish, but it took a little fear from me, stealing it away into the six sides of the shapes.

I had always loved the hexagons, they were a sure sign of an artifact.

I wondered if that’s what the lighthouse was, one giant artifact cage to hold a cursed planet. A planet that seemed to go against all-natural law that radiated dread straight to my hindbrain.

I felt suddenly reassured here, in this station. I was walking just outside a cage, shielded by a truly ludicrous amount of protection. An amount of metal that would not be possible, unattainable from any stellar body. It probably had more mass than the planet it sounded.

It was strange, truly strange, truly bazaar the more I thought about it, the clearer my mind became, like a trick that got rid of my fear.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

How did such a massive object not cause Luna to crash into it? How did it stay spinning around the sun? How did Sol not gobble it up? It was like my sword, stuck in its sheath, weightless to everything unless I willed it to not be.

I wonder if the Keeper was like me if he controlled this massive station in the same way I controlled Bandit, inherited it from a forefather who was grown in a vat for the singular purpose of this station.

I got to the door, found its handle and opened it. A bolt clunked back, and it moved in with a push, and I made my way inside to a cavernously tall hallway.

It was industrial, no panelling covered what looked, unlike any modern ship. Girders of bare black metal, over other metal tubes and pipes, angular blocks of equipment that whirred sat in the walls. The floor was more like a normal station, thick blocks of stone-like material, the same dark colour, but veined with the hexagon's darker black lines marked the floor.

There was a genuine screen map displaying where I was and the areas around me in my segment, with a little button asking me to press for help.

The map was like looking at a cramped series of lines, and none of them would tell me where I needed to go.

I doubted the keeper was just pegged on the map, and I couldn’t find his office on the cluttered board, so I walked up and pressed the button.

There was a warbling ring that came from a hidden speaker, followed quickly by a voice.

“Lighthouse guidance desk, Segment two, how may I help you?” A board woman asked.

“Um, hello. I need to meet with someone called the Keeper.” I told her.

“The Keeper is a very busy man, miss,” she said venomously, “What is your reason for meeting with him? If you do not have a good enough reason, I am obliged to inform you that your meeting will be placed in a low-priority queue.”

“I have a chit, I’m supposed to meet with him before I go to the surface,” I told her, pushing as much boldness as I could into my voice.

Her voice halted for a moment.

“That would merit a priority queue,” she told me with a bit more energy. She spoke in a tone I could only describe as a ‘holy hell, that’s something I was not expecting’ voice.

“Thank you, mam, any chance you could tell me when or where I could meet the Keeper now?”

“Yes, mam, his office is located in segment one, Find your location on the map and to the left side the closest route to the segment interlock to segment one, You are scheduled to meet with him within three hours, and you will be given a guide at the interlock who will show you to his office.” She told me, her tone not changing from its prior inflection.

“Thank you, mam,” I told her, found my way on the map and walked off, down black corridors and found my way to a lift.

I pressed the call button and waited, looking over a wire fence at a pit with tacks in the corner. The car came up, lights spinning at the top to inform me of its proximity. I didn’t really need it; it screamed up the tracks and stopped at my level before the fence dropped, and I walked in. It was a massive freight lift, empty as it was, it was a giant smooth room. I walked it and checked for any other buttons and found a tiny panel with little buttons. I pressed the one for 631 (G) and stepped back, the button lighting up in a ring around it.

The fence came up, and the rig moved, the force quivering my legs as it picked up pace.

There was a little display reading 246 that ticked up and up.

The numbers of this place were too big, too big by far. The scope of it was so big that it went beyond what was practical for me to envision.

I rode up and up in the noisy lift for about ten minutes, slowing down fast enough I could feel my magnetic shoes holding me to the floor.

I exited, checked the closest map, and found my way to a platform.

It looked like a train platform, with a ticket booth sitting nearby, although there were no bars and no one in it. Much like all the hallways, it was barren, with the exception of one person.

She was dressed in a spiffy old dark blue naval uniform with a billed cap. The symbol of two opposite-facing arrows was emblazed on the front of her cap, with one of those towers with the lights from outside on the steep collar of her jacket.

She was hideous by my sensibilities, like me. Straight dark hair tucked mostly under her hat, with little in the way of any genetic shows. Two brown eyes with small bags under them and a deep tan complexion. A bit shorter than me, maybe 5’ 4”.

She looked almost human.

Whatever her changes were, they must be hidden under her coat. I doubted I would bump into one of them, they were extinct as far as I knew.

No point in getting down on her, though, I tipped my hat to her.

“Are you my guide?” I asked her, not letting my thoughts hit my face.

She stood with military precision, black dress shoes snapping into place soundlessly on the artifact flooring. She took off her cap and held it to her average chest, and gave a curt nod.

“Indeed, right this way, mam,” she told me, totally clockwork.

I had expected anyone to look at me, decked tip to toe with guns, bullets, and my snazzy hat and at least blink, but she was utterly unperturbed. If she was bothered, she hid it well, very well.

I nodded and followed, falling into pace with her as we turned a few corners and boarded a rail car. It was smooth, more a metal tube than the smooth, brick shape of most of the cars used on and around Gabriel.

We stepped onto the one car at the station labelled Emergency Rapid Transit.

I might have underestimated just how serious this whole going down to the surface thing was to them. I had assumed it would be somewhat important not to confiscate a personal rail car and get a military escort. Assuming she was military, I had no idea if there were civilians.

I assumed there was, but I had no idea. I certainly hadn’t seen a civilian, all the people, more so the one person I had seen was certainly some kind of military-esc personal.

We sat down across from one another, she returned her cap to her head and stared straight forward. She did not blink; she did not look away.

There was a weight to her that was not normal, something about her expression, something in her eyes, or the set of her jaw, maybe her mouth, held as it was in the most straight-laced expression I had ever seen. It radiated both intimidation and fuck around and find out rolled into one package.

She had no weapon, not a slug-throwing hand cannon, no lazgun, I couldn’t even see if she had a knife, but I could feel scrutiny radiating off of her and got an urge in the back of my mind not to go for a weapon.

Not unless she drew on me.

She changed her demeanour slightly; she must have seen something on my face.

I really had to get a good, steady face, I must have had some kind of tick or twitch, I felt like I was too easy to read. Maybe they had a class on it, maybe I could sign up for resting bitch face classes.

Her eye twitched.

I decided to try and strike up a conversation, “So. This seems to be a lot bigger of a deal than I thought it was. Do you mind filling me in on this?”

She didn’t answer, she didn’t even move, not an inch.

“Ok, not a talker either, got it. How long do we have until we leave the station? And how long till we get there?” I asked, aiming for congenial and landing a bit long for awkward.

She pointed at a timer above me, and I craned my head to check it: four minutes till departure and an hour and a half till we arrived.

I groaned.

This was going to be way, way longer than I wanted to deal with, especially with someone like my guide being a stick in the mud with supernatural skills at reading people.

It was somewhat intimidating, somewhat spooky, somewhat annoying… And if I were totally honest a bit hot. Maybe that was because she was intimidating, even though she was like 4/10, I also topped a 4/10, though I doubted she cared for me. The longer the silence went on, the more peeved she looked.

I really needed to get some training to get rid of whatever facial tick I had because she was reading me like an open book.