Eyeball stood at the boarding ramp in the cargo bay, looking around at the gathered crew. "Alright, folks. We use the buddy system here. Unknown station, unknown threats. We've got a few people here who can probably handle whatever threat they throw at us. Spike, you're in charge of team Alpha. RC, assign a crewman to go with him for intel purposes, and if we have any other crew who want to see whats going on, that's probably the safest team; just do what Spike says and stay out of the way of the one actually on the job."

He tapped his own shoulder. "I'll be leading team Beta. I suspect you'll also be fairly safe if you come with me, but we'll be mostly a distraction team. Myself and Kezia.." He nodded towards the Romani girl; wearing what looked to be a suit of sleek purple combat-armor, complete with helmet. "Will be talking trade. We'll mostly be looking for things that might be useful on this trip, but we won't want to be too suspicious, so we'll also be looking for anything useful for earth. Kezia could lead a team herself, but apparently she's the second physically strongest on the team, and will be carrying the Neutronium sample."

She smiled, nodding; and patted the cylinder attached to her hip. The flake of Neutronium inside was barely visible, but weighed over two tons in its container. Eyeball himself could carry it, but barely; while Kezia seemed to be comfortable and walking about normally, for him it would be... a struggle. He'd need to drag it, after any reasonable walk.

"Team Charlie will be led by Ripper and RC. This one will be a bit riskier, but also the most important. If anyone's dumb enough to ambush you, Ripper can kill them, but it's the most dangerous one; he can't kill them before they attack like me, or take a bullet for you like Spike. RC is in charge of Charlie; she'll be using her implants for intel gathering."

He glanced around. "One of Moreau's marines will be with each team. Helmets stay closed, and if you sample local food, test it first. And thoroughly. Loki warned me that some dishes have layers; think of it like a pie that might have a chocolate shell surrounding neurotoxin. I'll do my damndest, including destroying this station and collecting you from the wreckage if I have to, to get you all back to the Lady Dark if things go hostile, but if one of you decides to try alien ramen and dies from it that's your problem."

He rolled his shoulders for a moment. "We're almost there. Remember. Job one is to locate the Emperor and his itinerary. Job two is looking for any intel or gear that can help us do the job. Job three is pretending to be ridiculously advanced, but foreign, possibly naive, traders. If you can determine whether the Empire knows Cronos is dead, that would be handy information as well; but if all we do here is learn where the Emperor is, we've done well. If we can't do that, we'll have to head to another stop, further in."

He turned around, facing the doors. One of Moreau's marines; a Corporal Pelletier; settled in beside him; the tall, powerfully built frenchman gave an appreciative nod at both Kezia and Dax; Dax being yet another of Engineer's cyborgs, looking like a small, unassuming scientist. Dax smiled back, winking at the marine; while Kezia instead studied Dax, frowning.

Eyeball chuckled. If these people had any idea who this 'elite Eyetech engineering team' really was, he wasn't sure if they would have come along willingly. Still. From his experience, Ascension was completely reliable. Considering this job had the future of humanity at stake, he suspected that the pretend-hispanic girl cyborg would consider getting this mission done more important than her own.. 'life' or that of anyone else on the ship. Which... was a good thing, as far as he was concerned.

As Pelletier and Dax started flirting and joking, he wondered for a moment... how far were these cyborgs going? Were they forming relationships with the crew? How independent were they? Did this 'Dax' cyborg really identify as a female? Perhaps he should ask RC later. Most of the Ascension cyborgs so far looked to be shorter, slimmer, women. Was it a calculated move to pose less of a visible threat? Or was Ascension's original brain, the one it was copied off of, actually a woman?

Did it matter? Not in the slightest, but he still wanted to find out.

***

Moreau studied the docking ports of Avris station closely. The central hub was an enormous wheel-shaped structure with 'spokes' pointing out every few meters; of a hundred of them, most of them covered with hundreds of the tiny local craft. The only 'vulnerable' part of the Jeanne was the engines mounted to her back, as there were gaps in the armor for the thrust nozzles; but even that was ridiculously durable by any local standards.

As the ship approached, it slowly flipped around; pointing those engines at the station itself; and slowly moved closer. Amusingly enough, thanks to being built based on modified Jotun standards, the cargo bay hatch, which doubled as a landing ramp for surface outings, would actually match easily up to the connectors; though they didn't use the station-based power or environmental connections.

Traffic around the station was growing increasingly snarled; swarms of tiny vessels moving every which way, constantly making adjustments. He frowned. Numerous changes had been made without any apparent reason, more of them as the Jeanne grew closer.

He turned to the replacement engineer; a young woman, asian, who had been part of the Eyetech engineering team he'd met with. All of their credentials were immaculate, they all seemed friendly, competent... but there was just something off about some of them. "Ahh... Miss... Weber. We're about to be trapped in place. All this altered traffic... anything we need to worry about?"

The woman gave a radiant smile as she tapped a few buttons; and raised a display. "The Jeanne is actually much heavier than the station itself by mass; if you walk on her outer hull, you don't actually need mag-boots if you go slow enough; she generates a slight but real gravity. Suddenly all of those ships are having to compensate for flying into and out of a gravity well centered on the station. Most of them are automated, and can handle it easily... but from what I can tell, numerous individuals are handling things manually instead, and doing what they think should work... only suddenly doesn't. I anticipate quite a few accidents in the near future."

Moreau blinked. "...How the hell did Eyeball manage to build this thing!?"

"It took tens of thousands of hours by an elite engineering team to get the job done; but the most pivotal employee was Butcher, who mostly just sat there for hundreds of hours over the course of two years, first squeezing cables as they passed through a machine, then using a neutronium machine to compress raw material with force that no-one outside of him and his mother can replicate. I understand he spent most of the time watching tv shows, listening to a podcast about historical generals and battles hosted by an actual general who was revived during Ragnarok, watching Arena matches, and arguing with his girlfriend."

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She chuckled. "The neutronium we'll be trading are the scraps.. millions of tons of scraps... leftover from building the machine that made our armor plating. A machine that has a hand-crank. For all our technology, our greatest protection was hand-built using centuries-old tools... just made from impossibly tough material."

The ship settled into place. He could hear a faint click sound through the hull as they attached; but the expected shaking never occurred. "Well then. Tell the shore party they are go for departure, but keep weapons and engines ready. I doubt they can even tell, with this hull, but I want to be ready to go at a moment's notice."

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the display, and the vast swarm of ships moving in every direction. And this was the frontier? What were the actual Imperial worlds like?

***

The cargo bay had an enormous airlock; large enough for the entire shore party, all three teams, to comfortably stand in their groups; with Spike having acquired a cylinder of neutronium of his own as they waited.

Spike looked down at the cylinder on his hip. In theory, he could make this sort of thing himself, given time and effort; but he'd need to do it in orbit. If he tried to do it on earth... well. Maybe he should try it out himself, on the outer edge of the solar system. He and Dis could take a cruise out to Pluto, and he could see whether or not turning into a singularity-level gravity source for a while could convert the whole thing. Walk around for a bit, shape some with his hands, see what happened. He glanced over at Ripper, considering his odds if he had to take the man down.

Not too good. It had never been tried; but Thomes and others at the higher ranks of the DMA had generally believed Ripper could even kill Valkyrie, if it came down to it.

He looked at Eyeball as well for a moment... and of course, the.. villain? Could he be called that now? Apparently was confident in his ability to kill Ripper. Which, considering he could see the future, was likely correct.

Rock, paper, scissors. A living and breathing manifestation of it right here in the cargo bay. He chuckled as the door started to open; and a ... fat, six-legged, tentacle-armed golden crab greeted them; surrounded by a veritable swarm of much smaller, orange crab-like creatures.

Brshjet raised her limbs and let out a shriek. "Hello, strangers! My sensors tell me your vessel is creating an artificial gravity well; it is confusing local traffic, and we must insist you deactivate it. You have Neutronium for me, yes? Samples?"

Eyeball stepped forward, and nodded at Kezia, who raisedd a cylinder. "I'd like to sell this to get a bit of walking around money. I don't have any local currency. And... the ship isn't creating an artificial gravity well. That's just how much it weighs." The Jotun currency was, of course, the Jotun. Spoken with a slightly different accent and scent than the king's name, or the species name. Lunatics. They called Imperial money 'Chits'; just meaning valueless things a government said had value, as Jotun coins were all solid metals, while Imperials used electronic currency. Loki called them 'Fairy Pennies' in his own notes; because they were like coins, but illusory, unreal. He was about ninety percent certain that Ascension was going to label these things credits.

The crab reached down; and tried to lift the cylinder. There was an abrupt, awful bang when it slammed into the deck plating; and Brshjet stared at it for a moment, and turned to one of the smaller, orange crabs. "Test it and weigh it." She rose back upright, studying Eyeball. If the creature wasn't lying, the ship massed more than her entire fleet.

As a few of the creatures gathered together, rolling the cylinder onto a cart and pressing a device against the side, Brshjet chittered. "If you'll give us just a moment to test it, I can issue you an allotment of credits for this initial offer."

Eyeball chuckled. "You can make the offer. If I like it, I'll make the deal. We have two of these cylinders here, almost precisely the same mass." He nodded at the one Spike was holding; which Spike extended; though none of the crabs moved to take it. They seemed to have learned their lesson.

Brshjet studied the way the softskinned creature held out the tube. If it was similar in mass... then weight she would have to drag across the floor was a casual one-handed lift for him, just like the female across from her.

One of the rusties looked up. "System administrator. It is ~1.9873 tons~ of pure neutronium. Not just that, but...the ship's hull... it is reading as over 10% neutronium." The strange, discordant way that the translator interjected human units into the alien speech was a bit off-putting; but it was fine.

The alien nodded slowly. "Test the other. I will offer five five hundred twenty thousand credits for this one."

Eyeball turned to look at RC; the woman made a show of checking her tablet; and nodded. This was in line with what the value of Neutronium should be; if they were being cheated, the cost of Neutronium must have gone up. At this rate, they should have over a million credits; enough to buy a decent-sized starship. "I accept. If you could have your servants issue us a few credit chits.." He looked at the size of his team. seventeen people on the boarding team, with Ripper's two-man one-cyborg trio being the smallest. "Say, 25,000 each. The rest keep on a single chit."

Brshjet chittered in confusion for a moment; before nodding, as her servants placed the small cart beneath Spike's outstretched arm; and he settled the device into the cart. "Are you familiar with Imperial law, softshell?"

Softshell... ahh. Someone without an exoskeleton. "Somewhat. What I know is from old wreckage we've studied, many years out of date."

Brshjet extended a small device, not much bigger than the tip of one of her numerous tentacles. "Here. Current Imperial law codex. Normally one credit. Will toss it in." She chittered once more. Eyeball nodded; and turned to RC; who shook her head in apparent amusement and accepted the codex.

Brshjet nodded. These creatures knew how things should work. The superior might accept the offering, but actually doing the work was for the inferiors. Undoubtedly he would have this lesser study the law briefly before entering the station. One of the rusties scurried up to her, bowing; the claws at the ends of his forelimbs tapping on the ground. "System administrator. The second sample is also pure neutronium. ~1.863 tons~ of it."

"Excellent. Have eighteen credit chits issued. Seventeen for twenty-five thousand, one for five hundred seventy-five thousand.... if that is acceptable" She studied Eyeball. "Are you looking to trade more?"

"That will do for these samples. As for more.... Perhaps. First, we need information. We have more neutronium... and our homeworld has the ability to produce more.. but we'd like to see if there's anything here worth trading for. We may also need to request an audience with the Emperor; as I understand it, we're from what you call the 'Forbidden zone', and that may create complications."

The golden crab shrank in on herself for a moment. Interfering with sentients inside the Forbidden Zone was punishable by immediate execution; straying through without interference, usually a lengthy, terrible sentence. Dealing with subjects -from- the Forbidden Zone? "I... I'll need to contact my superiors." She practically soiled herself as she fled from the docks, racing away; leaving a confused scattering of Rusties who simply carried out her last directives; paying the 'Soft-shells' and carting away the neutronium.