Seventy-two hours was not a long time for Earth's governments to reorganize their entire geopolitical worldview, which was precisely why I had given them seventy-two hours.
In the Command Center of Anchor Station, the primary holotable displayed a high-resolution tactical projection of Low Earth Orbit. Five green icons sat in a clean orbital spacing four hundred kilometers above the planet's surface.
"The Taxis have dropped their phase-shift fields," Judy reported, her eyes tracking the sudden explosion of radar locks blooming across the terrestrial defense networks. "Every military tracking station from Colorado Springs to Beijing just lit up like a Christmas tree."
"Have they finalized the pickup coordinates?" I asked, leaning against the edge of the console with a mug of coffee in hand.
"After forty hours of arguing over airspace sovereignty, yes," Judy said dryly. "The United Nations delegation is waiting at Geneva Airport. The European Union selected a military airbase outside Brussels. The United States insisted on Joint Base Andrews, and China designated an airforce facility south of Beijing. The fifth shuttle has clearance for a civilian terminal in Frankfurt for our independent scientists and the first group of family members."
"Archi," I said. "Take them down. Keep the shields up until touchdown, and run full deep-spectrum scans on the boarding ramps."
"Acknowledged, Surgrim," Archi replied. "Initiating atmospheric entry protocols."
On the screen, the five green markers dipped out of orbit, slicing down through the atmosphere without the fiery plasma trails of conventional reentry. Thanks to their localized gravitational drives, they did not fall. They simply descended at a controlled, steady velocity that defied every aerodynamic model Earth's air forces relied on.
Twenty minutes later, five live optical feeds opened across the main display.
It was fascinating to watch how differently the five landing zones reacted. In Frankfurt, the families and the five university researchers we had invited stood in a tight, nervous cluster on the tarmac, staring up in quiet awe as the matte-black hull of Taxi Five settled onto the concrete without making a sound.
At Andrews Air Force Base and Beijing, the atmosphere was entirely different. Rings of armed soldiers, armored vehicles, and mobile radar units surrounded the landing pads at a cautious distance.
"General Vance isn't in the American lineup," Mabel noted, zooming in on the feed from Andrews. "Smart man. Sent a Deputy Secretary of Defense, two senators, and a pack of Pentagon analysts instead."
"He doesn't want to be out of reach of his command bunker," Mereel said. "Watch the ramps. Here we go."
At all five locations, the rear boarding ramps lowered simultaneously. At the base of each ramp, a faint blue plane of light projected across the concrete, forming Archi's molecular and electromagnetic inspection grid.
"Frankfurt is clean," Judy said, watching Rey's sister step through the blue light first, clutching a small overnight bag to her chest. Behind her, the researcher from the observation lounge, the father whose son had answered the phone three days ago, was waiting on the Anchor side of the feed, his hands gripping the back of a chair as he watched his wife and eight-year-old boy walk safely up the ramp.
"Geneva and Brussels are clean," Archi reported a moment later. "Purely diplomatic personnel. They adhered to the strip-search protocols before arriving at the tarmac."
Then the indicator for Taxi Two at Joint Base Andrews flashed amber.
On the video feed, the seventh member of the American delegation, a forty-something man in an expensive dark suit with the rigid posture of an intelligence officer, had just stepped onto the ramp. The blue scan line turned a sharp, unmistakable red.
"We have our first volunteer," Mabel grinned.
"Archi, what is he carrying?" I asked.
"Passenger Seven has a modified cardiac pacemaker housing implanted beneath his left collarbone," Archi stated. "However, the casing does not contain medical regulation hardware. It houses a miniaturized sub-millimeter spectrometer paired with a passive wideband RF recording array, shielded by a layer of lead-doped polymer. They assumed our scanners would ignore a medical implant."
"Cute," I muttered. "Put him on speaker. Let the whole tarmac hear it."
At Andrews Air Force Base, an invisible repulsive field snapped into existence across the ramp, physically stopping the intelligence officer in his tracks like he had walked into a wall of solid glass.
"Attention," Archi's calm, synthetic voice echoed across the military airfield, loud enough to be picked up by the microphones of the base personnel standing fifty meters away. "Passenger Seven is concealing a military-grade sub-millimeter spectrometer and broadband signal recorder inside a falsified medical implant. This is a direct violation of transport parameters. Passenger Seven is permanently barred from Anchor Station."
On the feed, the Deputy Secretary of Defense spun around, his face flushing crimson as he glared at the intelligence officer.
"The remaining fourteen delegates have three minutes to complete boarding," Archi continued smoothly. "If Passenger Seven does not step clear of the ramp within thirty seconds, this vessel will return to orbit empty."
The officer didn't argue. Looking thoroughly humiliated, he backed down the ramp onto the tarmac. The rest of the American delegation practically scrambled inside before the door could close on them.
"One down," Mereel chuckled. "Wait, look at Beijing."
On the fourth feed, the Chinese delegation was filing up the ramp in disciplined silence. They hadn't spent the last two years sitting on their hands; we knew from Judy's intercepts that Beijing had poured trillions into advanced materials and micro-robotics after the comet incident.
As a senior technical attaché stepped through the blue light carrying a leather document case, the scanner chimed softly.
"Detection," Archi announced. "The interior lining of the attaché's briefcase is woven with experimental piezoelectric fibers and approximately four thousand dormant micro-drones, each less than half a millimeter in diameter. They are designed to disperse through ventilation shafts via electrostatic adhesion."
"See?" Mabel pointed at the screen. "Now that is serious spycraft. Way more creative than a fake pacemaker."
"Should I bar the passenger?" Archi asked.
"No," I said, watching the attaché freeze on the ramp. "Let the man keep his seat. Just confiscate the toys. Make a point."
"Understood," Archi replied.
On the Beijing camera feed, the attaché stood motionless as a thin, shimmering ribbon of silver grey flowed out from a seam in the Taxi's ramp. A localized swarm of maintenance nanites glided up his shoe, up his trouser leg, and directly over the leather briefcase in his hand.
The nanites didn't tear the leather. They phased directly through the microscopic pores of the material. For two seconds, the briefcase vibrated with a faint, high-pitched hum. Then, a fine stream of inert grey dust poured out of the bottom seam of the bag, forming a neat little pyramid of raw carbon, silicon, and trace copper on the metal ramp between the man's feet.
The leather case itself was completely unharmed, just noticeably lighter.
"Your luggage has been cleared of unauthorized autonomous hardware," Archi informed the attaché. "You may proceed to your seat."
The attaché stared down at the pile of dust that had, three seconds ago, been fifty million dollars' worth of bleeding-edge state espionage technology. He swallowed hard, stepped over the dust, and walked into the cabin without saying a word.
"Message delivered," Judy smiled, closing the ground feeds as all five ramps sealed shut. "All Taxis are airborne. Estimated arrival at Anchor is ninety minutes."
Ninety minutes later, I stood on the deck of Anchor's primary hangar bay with Judy, Mereel, Mabel, and Rey. Behind a painted safety line thirty meters back, a dozen station researchers waited anxiously for the family members aboard Taxi Five.
While we waited for the shuttles to clear the outer approach, my gaze drifted past the sleek, black nose of the Nomad resting in her primary berth beside us. Looking out between the massive structural ribs of the hangar, directly through the pale-blue shimmer of the atmospheric containment fields, I had a clear view into the open vacuum. Out there in the dark, illuminated by harsh floodlights, the colossal gantry arms of the Class 3 drydock were already at work, maneuvering the first eighty-meter foundational segment of the Gate into position while streams of nanites welded the seams in silent bursts of blue light.
"Here they come," Mereel said, nodding toward the outer bay.
The five Taxis glided in from the dark in tight formation. One by one, they slipped through the blue forcefield between the hangar ribs, sending brief, concentric ripples of light across the barrier before settling onto the deck plates in unison.
The ramps dropped.
For the first ten seconds, nobody moved. The politicians, generals, and diplomats walked down the ramps and simply froze as their brains tried to process their surroundings. I watched a four-star American general stare up at the nine-hundred-meter Vantablack hull of the Nomad towering over the landing pads, then look left toward the raw vacuum of space held back only by the glowing containment field between the bay's structural ribs, and unconsciously grab the railing of the ramp.
The paralysis was broken by Taxi Five.
The eight-year-old boy didn't care about the Nomad, the open forcefields, or the geopolitical tension. He spotted his father standing behind the yellow safety line, dropped his backpack, and sprinted across the hangar deck.
"Dad!"
His father crossed the line in two strides, dropping to his knees to catch the boy, lifting him off the deck as his wife reached them a second later and wrapped her arms around both of them. Beside them, Rey stepped forward as his sister walked down the ramp, looking around at the massive hangar with wide, tear-filled eyes before pulling Rey into a tight embrace.
The effect on the delegations from the other four shuttles was immediate. You could practically see the aggressive, paranoid edge drain out of the diplomats' posture. They had arrived expecting a sterile military fortress run by cold technocrats. Instead, they were standing ten meters away from a crying father hugging his kid.
I stepped forward, stopping in front of the assembled delegations as Judy and two logistics assistants walked up beside me, carrying flat trays lined with small, matte-black earpieces.
"Welcome to Anchor Station," I said, my voice echoing slightly in the cavernous bay. "I am Surgrim. Before we proceed into the station, each of you will put on one of the acoustic transducers on these trays."
The head of the European Union delegation, a tall, silver-haired commissioner, frowned and glanced at the woman standing behind him. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Surgrim. We brought our own certified interpreters, as permitted in the manifest. Furthermore, our security directives strictly prohibit placing unverified electronic hardware against our heads."
A few murmurs of agreement rippled through the American and Chinese groups.
"Your human interpreters are welcome to enjoy the cafeteria," I replied evenly, not giving an inch. "But they don't have the vocabulary to translate subspace harmonics or Alcubierre metrics in real time. More importantly, on Earth, diplomats love to use translation ambiguities as leverage, arguing weeks later over what a word really meant in Mandarin, English, or French."
I tapped the small black piece in my own ear.
"These are passive bone-conduction speakers," I continued. "They have no microphones and no neural interfaces. They receive an encrypted audio stream directly from C.O.R.E., our station's central operating system. When I speak, or when any of you speak, C.O.R.E. translates the exact meaning and technical context into your native language with zero latency. We use them because it is the only way I can guarantee that you hear exactly what we mean, and that nothing gets lost or twisted in translation. Put them on, or you are welcome to sit in the Taxis until the tour is over."
For five seconds, the EU commissioner stared at me, testing my resolve. I just looked back at him, waiting.
Slowly, a senior Chinese delegate stepped forward, picked up an earpiece from Judy's tray, and clipped it over his ear. A moment later, the UN Secretary-General did the same, followed reluctantly by the Americans and the Europeans.
"Testing," I said casually. "Can everyone understand me clearly?"
Several surprised blinks went through the crowd as my voice registered in their ears in flawless, natural Mandarin, French, German, Russian, and Spanish simultaneously.
"Remarkable," the UN Secretary-General murmured, touching his ear. "There is no delay at all."
"Good," I said, turning toward the massive blast doors leading into the station's interior. "Follow me. Let's get some coffee, and I'll explain why you're here."
We led them through the main airlock and into the central assembly hall, which doubled as our primary cafeteria when we weren't hosting the leaders of Earth.
If the hangar had intimidated them with raw military-industrial scale, the assembly hall hit them with something much subtler: comfort. The room was warm, brightly lit, and smelled strongly of freshly roasted coffee, baked bread, and the damp, rich greenery of the adjacent hydroponics atrium. Rows of tables had been arranged facing a wide holographic stage, with side tables loaded with fresh fruit, pastries, and carafes of hot drinks.
While the families sat together at the back tables, talking quietly with the researchers, the sixty delegates and the five independent guest scientists took their seats near the front. I noticed several delegates staring intently at the fresh strawberries and tomatoes on the catering trays, probably doing the mental math on how much it cost to ship fresh produce to the ISS versus growing it effortlessly at L5.
I walked up to the front alongside Sarah, not bothering with a podium.
"C.O.R.E., dim the overheads and bring up the Gate schematic," I said.
The lights lowered, and a massive, three-dimensional hologram of the three-kilometer ring materialized in the air above the delegates' heads, rotating slowly.
"Most of you came up here today with one question," I began, looking across the faces of the politicians and generals. "You want to know what this structure is, and whether it represents a threat to Earth. The short answer is no. It isn't a weapon. It is a highway."
Sarah stepped forward, tapping her datapad to highlight the internal superconductor rings of the Gate.
"Over the last two years, the Nomad completed a successful round-trip voyage to the Alpha Centauri system, four point three lightyears from here," Sarah said, her voice clear and steady. "We proved that faster-than-light travel via an Alcubierre warp metric is possible. However, generating a warp bubble with a ship's onboard reactors creates massive subspace drag. That friction against the space-time continuum causes severe relativistic time dilation. Our first jump cost us eighteen months of objective Earth time for forty-five days of flight. Even after we upgraded our hull shielding, the return trip still carried a dilation factor of 2.47."
In the front row, one of the five independent scientists we had invited, Dr. Elena Rostova, a renowned astrophysicist from Oxford whose comet samples had been seized by military police two years ago, leaned forward, her eyes locked on the equations floating beside the ring.
"Time dilation makes a civilization impossible to maintain across star systems," I picked up, gesturing to the holographic ring. "You can't run trade, logistics, or rescue operations if every trip costs years back home. So we stopped trying to brute-force the problem with a ship, and decided to build stationary infrastructure instead."
"A stationary Phase Shift Lattice," Sarah explained, expanding the projection to show two linked rings, one at L5 and one orbiting a planet in Alpha Centauri. "By taking the warp field generators off the ship and scaling them up into a three-kilometer ring powered by dedicated fusion cores, we remove mass and cooling limits. Once this first Gate is finished, it will act as a gravitational slingshot, firing the Nomad back to Alpha Centauri with a minimal dilation factor of 1.07. And once we assemble the second Gate on the other side and synchronize both rings..."
Sarah tapped her pad. A smooth, glowing corridor of blue light connected the two rings in the hologram.
"The two Gates create a sealed subspace vacuum between Sol and Alpha Centauri," I said into the quiet room. "Zero spatial drag. The time dilation factor drops to exactly 1.000. One hour inside the tunnel equals one hour on Earth. And because there is no subspace friction pushing back against the hull, the Gates can accelerate a vessel to speeds an onboard drive could never reach."
I paused, letting them read the final number floating at the bottom of the projection.
"Transit time from here to Alpha Centauri will be fourteen hours."
A collective gasp rippled through the hall. It didn't come from the politicians first. It came from the five independent scientists.
Dr. Rostova stood up halfway out of her chair, her hand trembling slightly as she adjusted her glasses. "Fourteen hours?" she whispered, forgetting all diplomatic protocol. "Mr. Surgrim... Dr. Lin... do you realize what you are saying? For the entire history of human civilization, astrophysics has been archaeology. We look through telescopes at light that left distant stars years, centuries, or millennia ago. We only ever see the past."
She looked around at the stunned faces of the UN and government delegates, her voice rising with a mixture of disbelief and pure scientific euphoria.
"With a fourteen-hour, zero-dilation transit bridge, astronomy ceases to be passive observation," Rostova said, looking back at me. "You are talking about putting spectrometers, core drills, and human eyes inside another star system between breakfast and dinner. You haven't just built a fast ship. You've made the speed of light obsolete."
"That's the idea, Doctor," I smiled slightly.
The politicians, however, were doing a very different kind of math. I could see it in the tight jaws of the American defense officials and the rapid, whispered exchanges among the Chinese delegation. Fourteen hours meant an entire star system, with untold trillions of tons of resources and entire planets of real estate, was suddenly closer in travel time than a flight from New York to Tokyo. And Anchor Station held the only keys to the tollbooth.
"How?" the American Deputy Secretary finally spoke up, his voice tight. "A structure of that scale requires thousands of tons of refined super-alloys, zero-defect superconductors, and orbital construction capabilities that would take Earth's combined space agencies fifty years to assemble. How can a hundred people on a single station possibly build this?"
I turned off the hologram, letting the room return to full brightness.
"I'm glad you asked," I said, gesturing toward the wide interior doors at the far end of the hall. "Finish your coffee. I'm going to show you the rest of the station."