Vivian had never particularly cared for her living quarters.
They were functional. They were efficient. They were exactly what she needed, no more, no less—a small cot against the far wall, a narrow desk covered in various other people's tablets, a shunt that delivered water pouches when required, a few photos that had been there long enough to blend into the bulkhead. The only real sign of life was the half-finished pouch of tea she’d forgotten about an hour ago, cap open, a small, spherical bubble forming on the tip.
It wasn’t home. But then, nothing on Caliban Station had ever felt like home to her. Home was Prospero Station, where she was trained in the fine art of managing the least ruly part of space, which, surprisingly, wasn't the micrometeors or the thousands and thousands of kilometers between you and a planetary body. No, it was where she was taught the fine art of managing people, and then shipped to the grimy blue-collar part of the Plutonian system like a leper.
And right now, Judas-12 was standing in the middle of her not-home, holding a sheet of paper like it was a live grenade. It almost was enough to make a girl start screaming. She didn’t offer him a velcro strap. Didn’t tell him to sit. Just crossed her arms and waited. “Alright,” she said, voice clipped. “Let’s hear it.”
Judas didn’t say anything. He just stepped forward and laid the sheet on the table. Vivian stared at it. Paper. Actual, physical, impossible-to-track paper.
The station had almost no use for paper—everything was logged digitally, calculated instantly, archived into a web of encrypted data. Nobody had used a pen for anything in years. The only places that stocked paper were administration storage rooms, and those weren’t exactly open access. Had he traded drugs for this? His useless little guitar?
She unfolded the sheet. Scanned the handwriting.
It took sixty seconds for her to understand what she was looking at. It took another thirty for the implications to sink in.
Vivian let out a low, humorless laugh. “Oh. Oh. You’re out of your goddamn mind.”
Judas didn’t blink. “That’s the plan.”
“You want to point the station at Sycorax.”
“Yes.”
“Just rotate your entire fucking home like a cannon and hope that makes NSS blink?”
“Yes.”
Vivian pressed a hand against her forehead. “Jesus Christ.”
“Who?” Judas asked.
She didn’t sit. Didn’t touch the tea pouch. Just folded the paper again, pressing the creases into sharp, even lines. “You know why I voted against the union?”
Judas didn’t answer. She didn’t expect him to.
She exhaled slowly. “I didn’t vote against it because I loved corporate oversight. I didn’t vote against it because I thought management had our best interests at heart. I voted against it because it was a waste of fucking time.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She gestured vaguely around them, at the room, at the station beyond it, at everything. “We’re on Pluto. Pluto. The only reason any of us are alive right now is because Earth still finds us useful. That’s it. That’s our whole leverage. And the union—” She shook her head. “The union wasn’t going to get us anything. No bargaining chips. No power. Just more meetings. More paperwork. More distractions. And you all still barely got it. Fifty-two to forty-eight. And I was willing to work with that! I was. Really!”
Judas’s expression didn’t change. It wasn't clear if he believed her or not.
“And what did that do?” she continued, voice tightening. “Nothing. We hadn’t even done anything yet, and NSS decided that every single person on this station was an existential threat, management included. They cut us off. They sabotaged our infrastructure. They planned to erase us. They're still going to.”
Her fingers curled around the edges of the paper. “And now you want to make it worse.”
Judas didn’t hesitate. “No. I want to make it matter.”
Vivian stilled.
Judas didn’t move. Didn’t back down. His voice was steady, deliberate, sharp as a razor’s edge. “We don’t have a choice anymore. NSS already made the decision for us. You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to be here?” He gestured at the station—the dying lights, the whispering vents, the empty hallways where people walked too fast and didn’t make eye contact. “We didn’t start this fight. NSS brought it to us. They just expected us to sit down and die quietly. I didn't care about the union either, if you'll recall, until the Sol Authority decided to make it my problem and fuck with my mass driver.”
Vivian sucked in pressurized air through her nostrils, and they flared against her will. “That's the only reason you care, isn't it? Because this is some intellectual exercise for you. The most impressive stunt ever pulled in space, holding an entire planetary system hostage with your beloved mathematics. Because you're fascinated by the problems here. Am I right, Judas-12 duo Samson?”
He didn't answer her, but he didn't look away, either.
She exhaled sharply and turned back to the paper. The math was clean. No hesitations, no wasted space, just raw, unfiltered precision. Fire the mass driver thirty degrees off its usual trajectory. If NSS refused to back down, if they tried to kill them anyway, if they held the line—the resulting debris field would make Pluto economically unusable. “You would love Arthur Conan Doyle. Old English author.”
He didn't respond.
She assessed the math again. They didn’t even have to hit anything. They just had to be in the wrong place. If the mass driver fired down, towards Pluto, the equal and opposite reaction would push any shrapnel that Caliban became out of orbit. It wouldn't be a problem for Sycorax or Prospero, and it would look like any other normal catastrophic failure. That's why they always had to compensate with hours, days of thrust after each launch - to nudge this impossibly large monster back into geosynchronous orbit with its compatriots.
So if it turned sideways, a thirty degree change in angle would send a disk of debris hurtling around the coplanar triangle, even if they missed Sycorax. They didn't even need to skim it - Kessler Syndrome would do the same to Pluto as it did to Venus. All it took was a big enough shard of Caliban floating around in just the right way to bite into one of the other two stations, and the unforgiving physics of orbit would do the rest.
A quiet, terrible thing settled in her chest. “This is a doomsday threat.”
Judas nodded once. “That’s the point.”
Vivian’s fingers tapped against the table, restless. This is real. This is happening. She was about to vomit.
She looked back at Judas. “How long do we wait?”
“Seventy-eight days.”
Seventy-eight days.
Seventy-eight days of walking past armed NSS Buddies, of pretending they weren’t planning something that would shake the entire Sol system. Seventy-eight days of acting like this wasn’t happening.
Vivian pressed her palm against her forehead. “Jesus Christ.”
Judas didn’t say anything. He just watched her, waiting.
And the worst part?
She was going to say yes. Because he was right. Because they had no other options. Because if they sat down and let NSS do this to them, if they just let it happen, then they deserved everything that came next.
“Fine. You win. Let's make it matter, you psychopath”