The mining station still glowed faintly across the cracked plateau of the Eternal/Vibranium world. Refinery stacks hissed as they vented heat, and the vault-like silos brimmed with neatly pressed ingots waiting for transport. Months of automation had turned the once raw ore veins into treasure that could topple economies.
Liam stood at the foot of the Atlas M2, arms crossed, watching handler robots march in rows up the ramp. Each unit carried a crate stacked with ingots — silver-blue Eternal that shimmered faintly under the floodlights, and darker Vibranium that seemed to swallow the glow.
"Load it tight, no wasted space," Liam said.
(Acknowledged,) Iris answered. (Projected capacity: four hundred standard crates. Estimated value: incalculable, but sufficient to make you a target system-wide.)
"Which is why no one can know."
Crate after crate vanished into the M2's belly. Hydraulic locks snapped into place, magnetic clamps hummed. By the end of the cycle, the bay was packed wall to wall with sealed cargo. Liam stood there for a long moment, breathing in the weight of it. More than half a million tons of wealth.
"Now," he said quietly, "we need a hiding place."
The Astralis scouted ahead while the Atlas cruised behind, both ships leaping from point to point along Iris's calculated routes. For weeks, they pushed through empty space, each jump stretching them farther from the familiar lanes of Erevos.
Iris processed thousands of planetary scans, dismissing system after system. Too much atmosphere. Too many trace metals. One with ancient ruins. Another crawling with dormant satellites.
Until finally—
(Found one,) Iris reported. (Outer coordinates. Class II terrestrial. No biosignatures. Crust analysis: basaltic. Atmosphere: negligible. Strategic value: zero.)
Liam leaned forward, studying the data scrolling across his console. No water. No life. Not even orbiting debris worth charting. Just a silent, forgotten rock adrift in nothing.
A grin tugged at his lips. "A dead husk no one would ever care about. Perfect."
The Atlas and Astralis descended together, breaking through a thin veil of dust storms. Below stretched endless plains of cracked stone, broken only by jagged ridges that jutted like the spines of some long-dead giant. No cities. No history. Just emptiness.
Liam brought the Atlas down on a flat basalt plateau. The landing gear hissed, hydraulics biting into soil untouched for millennia. Dust plumed into the thin air and settled again as though nothing had disturbed it.
Behind him, the twenty handler robots marched out in perfect unison, followed by the bulky construction unit, drills gleaming under the floodlights.
"All right," Liam said, tugging his helmet into place. "One kilometer straight down. Big enough to swallow all of this."
(Understood,) Iris replied. (Projecting schematic.)
A pale-blue hologram appeared, showing a vertical canal shaft plunging deep into the crust, branching into a cavern vault reinforced with layered alloys.
Liam stared at it for a long moment. "Looks more like a fortress than a vault."
(If you intend to hoard more wealth than most governments, adequate defenses are prudent.)
"Cold as ever," he muttered, though his smile lingered.
The construction robot lumbered forward and drove its drills into the crust. Sparks flared, dust plumed, and the basalt screamed as it cracked under the machine's hydraulic fury. Handler units swept in behind it, hauling debris out and scattering it kilometers away.
Hours bled into days. The shaft plunged deeper, smooth walls left behind by cutting beams.
On the fifth day, Liam peered down into the kilometer-deep throat of the planet. The bunker chamber yawned wide at the bottom, floodlit by drones. Reinforcement plates already gleamed faintly along the walls.
(Primary excavation complete,) Iris said. (Capacity: 2.4 million metric tons. Reinforcement integrity: 97%. Invisible to standard planetary scans.)
Liam's pulse quickened as he imagined the chamber filled with rows of ingots, sealed and silent, far beneath the planet's crust.
"Let's unload the first haul."
The first haul took two days to unload.
The Atlas' cavernous bay hissed open, revealing rows of ingots stacked like bricks of frozen light. The handler robots worked in silence, pistons pumping as they carried crate after crate into the freight elevators. Liam followed them down once, boots echoing in the freshly carved shaft, and stepped into the vault chamber itself.
Floodlights cut through the dark, illuminating walls lined with alloy bracing. The first rows of ingots gleamed back at him, Eternal silver-blue shimmering against darker Vibranium.
He stood there for a long time, visor reflecting the light, chest tight with awe. "This… this is enough to build empires."
Iris' voice filtered through his helmet. (Correction: this is enough to build a ship. Your ship. Nothing more, nothing less.)
Liam laughed softly, shaking his head. "And people say you don't know how to inspire."
The second trip came faster. The mining station had worked tirelessly in his absence, refining more ore into neat stacks of ingots. The Atlas groaned under the weight, but the ship's reinforced frame handled the load without complaint.
Then came the third, fourth, and fifth trips.
Time blurred into a rhythm — long jumps across the void, the endless loading and unloading, the echo of robots clanking in the shaft, and the vault chamber slowly filling with walls of gleaming wealth.
By the sixth and final haul, Liam could barely recognize the vault. The chamber stretched out like a cathedral of metal, crates stacked in endless rows, floodlights reflecting off surfaces so bright they hurt his eyes.
He stood on a gantry, staring down at what he had built. His chest rose and fell, slower, steadier than before. He wasn't the same boy who had started this six months ago.
Closer to sixteen now, shoulders broader, eyes harder. The childish grin came less often, but when it did, it was sharper, hungrier.
(I observe increased efficiency in your movements,) Iris noted one evening as he sealed the last vault door. (Perhaps this is what approaching your sixteenth year looks like.)
Liam snorted. "Leave it to you to turn growing up into a statistical report."
They lifted off the barren planet at last. The Atlas rose through the dusty skies, leaving the vault sealed beneath kilometers of basalt. No sensor could pierce it, no stray scan would mark it. To anyone else, the planet was worthless stone.
Liam leaned back in his chair, exhaustion written in the slump of his shoulders. "It's done. Finally."
(Clarification: the vault is functional. Completion is a matter of perspective. You will return when it's time to build the Odyssey.)
He allowed himself a small smile. "Yeah. One day."
The barren world shrank in the viewport, turning into a speck of gray against the black. Silence filled the cockpit, save for the hum of the engines.
Then Iris' tone shifted, colder, precise. (Unusual emission detected.)
Liam sat up straight. "From where?"
(Forty million kilometers off the starboard bow. Residual warp trail, faint. Likely weeks old, possibly months.)
Liam's heart thudded. "This system's supposed to be dead."
(Correct. Probability of accidental drift: 0.03%. Probability of deliberate entry: 18%.)
He stared into the void, jaw tight. "Eighteen percent's too high."
For a long moment, neither spoke. Then Iris added quietly: (Statistical probability of direct threat remains minimal. Still… noteworthy.)
Liam didn't answer. His gaze lingered on the shrinking world in the viewport, and on the invisible vault hidden beneath its surface.
A fortune was buried there. His fortune.
And maybe—just maybe—someone else wasn't as far away as he thought.
The thought clung to him during the long burn away from the barren world. Hours turned into days, and days into weeks as the Atlas slipped into the endless dark. Iris charted the most efficient course toward Aurelion, the Federation's capital planet, and for the first time in months the ship's holds were empty. No more crates. No more vault doors sealing shut behind him. Just silence and the weight of what he had left behind.
Time lost meaning. The first three months blurred into a cycle of jumps, calibrations, and silent meals taken in the glow of the cockpit. By the seventh month, the Atlas felt less like a ship and more like a drifting coffin with engines, Liam's world reduced to hums of machinery and Iris' cool voice. By the eleventh, even the patterns of distant stars seemed etched into his memory, every corridor of the void familiar and wearying.
At last, Iris broke the silence. (Approaching slipstream corridor to Aurelion. Estimated emergence: three weeks.)
Liam straightened in his seat, adjusting the harness across his chest. The Federation capital — the beating heart of politics, commerce, and ambition. If Erevos was a frontier star, Aurelion was the sun around which empires revolved.
He took a slow breath, jaw tight with anticipation. This was where the next chapter of his life would begin. Not with hidden vaults or secret metals — but with knowledge, blueprints, and the tools to shape the Odyssey.
The viewport rippled as the slipstream opened ahead, light bending into a tunnel of shimmering silver. The Atlas surged forward, engines howling, and the stars stretched into rivers of light.
For a long moment, Liam sat there in silence, hands steady on the controls. Then, just before the slipstream fully engulfed them, Iris' voice whispered one last reminder:
(The emission remains unexplained.)
Liam didn't answer. The tunnel swallowed them whole, carrying them toward Aurelion — and toward whatever waited next.