The little white star fell behind them until it was only a memory and a set of coordinates Iris had salted with lies. The Astralis slipped into the long night between maps, engines tuned to patience, charts plotted in modest steps. Liam let the quiet stack around him the way good blankets do—layer by layer until sound felt optional and time felt like something you chewed instead of counted.
[Course nominal,] Iris said. [Fuel margins optimal. You will be bored, statistically.]
"Bored is fine," he said, and meant it. The furnaces on the slate-gray world were already doing their work without him, chewing ore and casting ingots in neat rows. He didn't need to watch them. He needed a bigger mouth to carry what they made.
The first month passed in careful burns and cautious jumps. Liam learned the exact sound of the fabricator's idle hum and the way the Ravel-9 clicked once in its cradle before pretending to sleep. He wrote lists: what a real hauler must endure, how a cargo grid should flex when weight shifts, where a turret must live to scare off the kind of trouble that liked to test slow ships for softness.
[You have revised your hauler requirements seven times,] Iris observed on the fifty-ninth day.
"Eighth time's the charm," he said. "I want bracing rated for ingots the density of regret. I want factory hardpoints for turrets I won't brag about. I want cargo floors that don't sigh under mountains."
[Noted,] she said. [Also: you should sleep.]
"I will when we dock."
Months bled. Stars changed dialects. At the end of the seventh month he shaved in a steel mirror and didn't recognize the angle his jaw made with the future. By the ninth month the Astralis smelled faintly of machine oil and the lemony wipes he rationed like treasure. He practiced docking routines on empty beacons because it felt good to arrive, even if he hadn't yet.
[Approach to industrial corridor K-76 approved,] Iris said on a morning that felt like any other until it wasn't. [Nearest market with suitable inventory: Stella Dynamics / Branch: Kestris Shipworks. Reputation: excellent. Inventory: heavy haulers with security options in stock.]
"Kestris," he repeated, tasting the syllables. Not Erevos. Not home. A place that sold big things to people who didn't ask for parades. "Book us a berth."
[Booked. I have flagged our profile as discreet contractor. No fanfare. No escorts. No sales "experiences."]
He grinned. "Thank you."
Kestris filled the canopy like a deliberate thought: blue storms coiling around continents whose edges were lit with ports and factories. The orbital ribbon was a crown of docks and shipyards that didn't bother to be pretty; they moved mass, and beauty was a bonus. The Astralis rode the inbound lane with a hundred other ships that smelled like work.
The Stella Dynamics complex at Kestris Shipworks was a cathedral of cranes. Girders crossed overhead like a forest made of math. Dockhands in orange exos drifted in disciplined arcs, and the air tasted of ozone and heated alloy. It felt like someone else's money being turned into shape.
They met the sales rep in a high gallery with a viewport that made ships look like toys. The rep did not try to sell him anything. He asked what Liam intended to do, and Liam told him the truth that would not hurt him to say: long cargo hauls, heavy slabs, dangerous routes, discretion.
"Then you're not here for a ranger or a courier," the rep said. "You're here for a M2."
Liam's throat tightened—a little flicker of recognition, as if the word had always been sitting behind his teeth, waiting for the rest of his life to catch up.
They took him down to see it.
The Atlas M2 waited on a mid-bay dais like a fact. It wasn't elegant. It was inevitable: a wide-backed, deep-bellied hauler with braced ribs and a cargo grid that looked like a chessboard built to hold comets. Its bridge sat forward and slightly high, where a pilot could see decisions coming. Along the spine, factory mounts for turrets were capped in neat armor cones; the dorsal and ventral housings promised teeth without boasting about them. The cargo doors—huge, slabbed, and precisely hinged—were the kind of thing a person dreamed about after stacking crates for twelve hours.
Iris ran through specs in his ear, cool and clean.
[Cargo capacity: meets your projections. Structural bracing: exceeds. Shield nodes: upgraded to military-grade lattice. Factory kit available: two heavy point-defense turrets, four remote rail housings, expanded countermeasures. Signature: low for size; not stealth, but respectable. Crew comforts: borderline austere.]
"Good," Liam said. "I don't want it to look rich. I want it to look tired and mean."
The rep's mouth twitched. "We can do tired. "Mean" costs extra."
They walked the belly. Liam knelt and ran a gloved hand along the grid where clamps would bite. He imagined rows and rows of silver-blue bars, dark gleaming slabs—work so dense it made gravity notice. He imagined braking hard under fire and not hearing the stomach-turning slide of cargo becoming shrapnel.
"How many clamps per row?" he asked.
"Six, standard. Twelve with our security lattice."
"Twelve," Liam said. He didn't haggle. He didn't want the kind of savings that break cargo spines.
They toured the systems. Cooling matrices that would keep heat signatures boring; armored conduits that wouldn't twitch when a pirate threw a tantrum; a comms suite that didn't scream wealth but refused to be deaf. Liam said yes where it mattered and no where vanity was the only winner. The rep quoted the number Iris had already pulled down from the catalog.
[Configured hull with factory security suite and bracing: 25,000,000 credits,] she said in his ear. [This is the price we expected.]
He looked at the ship again, not because he doubted the math, but because he wanted to feel the weight of the choice in his bones. The number on his wristband had been his favorite tool for months; it would be smaller after this—not gone, just less loud.
"Do it," he said.
The transfer took less than a minute. Credits evaporated like frost on hot stone. The Atlas M2 became his in a sheet of code and a dull thump as the pier's mag-locks acknowledged a change of masters.
[Transaction processed,] Iris said. [Previous balance: 41,238,000. Purchase: -25,000,000. New balance: 16,238,000 credits.]
Liam let a breath leak out slow. He hadn't lost anything. He'd converted numbers into a ship that could move a future.
"Now the hands," he said. "I want cargo brains that don't sleep."
The rep nodded, already calling up catalogs. "Heavy handler units. We have twenty in stock, military refurb to factory spec. Dual-mag palms, piston legs with smart stabilization, low center of mass for bad ramps, and dumb enough to be reliable."
Liam almost smiled. "Price?"
"Five hundred sixty-one nine per unit," the rep said without blinking. "They're priced to move because the yard wants the floor space."
Iris didn't bother making a sound of warning. She liked the number.
[Twenty units = 11,238,000 credits. With spares and a six-month maintenance crate included at no charge if you close today. Remaining balance will be 5,000,000 credits.]
"Today," Liam said. "Add spare actuators. And I want cradle kits so they ship neatly in the Atlas when they're off duty."
They shook hands. Crates arrived on a crawler like a parade of coffins, matte black and respectful. Dockhands cracked them with handheld torches; the first handler unit blinked awake and unfolded like an insect learning that it owned a body. Status rings glowed green. They paired to his wristband with the clean, obedient sound of new machines accepting a name.
He put them through drills in the bay while the Atlas's belly lights came up one row at a time. The handlers ran pallets, stacked test weights, braked on command. One slipped on purpose when he asked for a hard stop; its magnets caught and saved the load and the robot chirped once—apology or pride, he couldn't tell.
[Note: Unit 14 favors left bias under abrupt load changes,] Iris said. [I have flagged it for recalibration.]
"Good catch," he said. He felt silly for being proud of a robot's manners. He also felt right.
They installed the factory turrets without drama. The dorsal mounts took their heavy point-defense barrels with a kind of quiet contempt for smaller guns. The ventral housings accepted rail pods that made Liam think of knuckles and arguments. None of it would win a war. All of it could end an ambush before it got expensive.
[Security suite configured,] Iris said. [Turret control integrated with your weave. Countermeasures online. Comms hardened. Cargo grid braced to your requested density. Manifest locks bound to your biometric key and my authorization. Any attempt to break a seal will notify me—and break a few fingers.]
"Figuratively," he said.
[Yes,] she said, without promising it would remain figurative.
They went over the Atlas end to end. He learned which panel hid the manual override for the belly doors. He learned how the emergency lighting slashed along the floor so even a panicking crew could run straight. He learned the sound the big ship made when the mag-locks released and gravity's argument became temporarily interesting.
When the last crate was bolted into the cargo bay and the last signature pinged green, the rep returned with a pad and a look that understood the kind of buyer Liam was: particular, not fond of speeches, too young to have learned to pretend otherwise.
"You'll want insurance on the hull and a maintenance slot in six months," the rep said.
"I'll take the maintenance slot," Liam said. "I'll insure it myself."
The rep didn't argue. Men who carried their own risk wore it obviously. "Then I'll say this: you bought a truck that will not apologize for itself. Keep it fed and it will not surprise you."
"Perfect," Liam said. He shook the man's hand, then walked back into the belly, where the robots stood like a quiet platoon and the grid waited for work.
Iris dimmed the bay lights to something softer. [Final ledger update: 5,000,000 credits remaining. Liquidity at prudent minimum. Recommend restraint.]
"Restraint's all I have left," he said, and snorted at himself for the joke.
[Next: we depart Kestris within the hour. I will file a simple contractor route. No announcements. No needless corridor chatter. Objective: return to the hidden system, then onward to the vault world you selected. Six trips.]
He stood on the cargo floor and pictured it full. Not theoretical full—real full. Stacked to the ring lights with bars that could buy governments. Each trip a month one way. Six trips to move a secret into a hole no one would dig unless they thought like him. The thought made his skin feel one size too small and exactly right.
"We'll need a camouflage story if anyone asks," he said.
[We haul industrial forgings from a private yard to a decommissioned node,] Iris said immediately. [Boring is safe. I will arrange ping traffic that suggests underpaid boredom.]
"Perfect."
A chime rang through the Atlas: pre-flight clearance, pier release in ten. The handler units rolled into their cradles and locked in with magnetic shoulders. The Astralis slept one bay over; she had earned it. The Atlas woke—systems warming, big bones remembering they were allowed to move.
He sat the new bridge for the first time. It felt wrong because it was new, and then right because the wrongness was only a matter of memory. The forward vista framed the dock like a promise. On the overhead, Kestris rotated and pretended none of this mattered. Maybe it didn't. Maybe only the work counted.
[Departure window open,] Iris said. [Manifest obfuscated. Ghost transit protocols engaged. No need to be clever. Only need to be competent.]
He smiled. "Story of my life."
They eased out on thrusters, then pushed. The Atlas took acceleration like a creature that had been raised on it—no flinch, no complaint, a hint of satisfaction in the way the hull sang. Dock lights became a bracelet behind them; the shipyard became a city in a snow globe; Kestris shrank to a polite idea.
[You are fifteen,] Iris said, voice cool and somehow kind. [You have purchased a hauler designed to move mountains and hired twenty tireless hands. You have five million in liquid funds and a plan that will spend time instead of cash for a while. This is acceptable.]
"Only acceptable?"
[You enjoy being underrated,] she said. [It will keep you alive.]
He watched the lane rise to meet them. The Atlas's autopilot held the center with the kind of arrogance only well-built machines can afford. He felt the itch in his hands that meant he needed to make something happen soon, or else he would start trying to make art out of the cargo schedule.
"When we get back," he said, "we load until the grid groans. We run the first haul to the vault world. We dig the throat and lay the bunker. We'll do it six times, then leave that planet as quiet as we found it."
[Affirmative. I have a shortlist of lifeless candidates within one month of the seam. I will bias for geology that hides heat signatures and swallows sound.]
"Pick the ugliest."
[Done.]
He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at his hands. They shook, just a little, with the kind of excitement that would look like fear to anyone else. He pressed them together until the tremor became a throb. The ship hummed. The robots slept in neat rows. The future took a number and waited.
He thought of the Odyssey—the word, not the ship, because the ship did not exist yet except as a secret and a series of ingots cooling under another sky. He thought of the plating that would lie about what lived underneath, and the core that would not care what lies people told.
[We will need libraries,] Iris reminded him, as if reading the place his head had gone. [Engines. Hull loads. Weapons integration. You will trade labor for knowledge on Aurelion when the vault is secure.]
"First the vault," he said. "Then the libraries. Then the long build."
[Understood.]
The Atlas crossed the threshold where traffic control stopped nagging and the black began to look like freedom again. The jump point pulsed once, docile as a sleeping cat. Liam let his lungs fill; he let the rush peak and ebb.
"Take us home," he said.
[Home is complicated,] Iris replied, and engaged the drive.
The stars tore politely. The Atlas leaned into the dark like a creature that had always planned to live there. Kestris fell away, a good place that sold him the thing he needed most. Ahead, somewhere between months and the edge of patience, a silent world waited to become a vault, and a secret seam kept making bars of a future he could carry.
He was fifteen, with five million credits, a ship built to move mountains, and twenty iron-backed hands that never rested. It didn't feel like luck. It felt like work.
And the work had finally begun.