The colony looked worse from orbit than it had any right to.
Haven's Point clung to the surface of a grey-brown world like a scab that wouldn't heal. From the Fortune's viewport, the settlement was a cluster of prefab structures radiating outward from a central hub, surrounded by the open wounds of exhausted platinum mines. The atmospheric processor at the colony's northern edge trailed a plume of dirty vapor. Landing pads, three of them, two showing signs of disuse — cracked ferrocrete, weeds pushing through expansion joints.
"Charming," Demos muttered from the helm. His mandibles twitched with something between contempt and pity.
"Get us down," Okonkwo said. "Pad three, it's the one that looks least likely to collapse."
The descent was bumpy. Haven's Point had no orbital control — no traffic management, no approach beacons, no flight authority. Just an automated landing signal repeating coordinates on a loop. The Fortune shuddered through the thin atmosphere and touched down with a metallic groan that made Demos wince.
Through the viewport, the colony revealed itself in ground-level detail. Prefab walls streaked with mineral dust. Power conduits strung overhead between buildings like clotheslines, some sparking intermittently. A main street — if you could call packed dirt between structures a street — where a dozen people stopped to stare at the arriving ship with expressions ranging from hope to suspicion.
The cargo ramp lowered. Haven's Point's air hit him — thin, cold, carrying the chemical tang of overworked atmospheric processors. His lungs protested for the first three breaths before adjusting.
[LOCATION: HAVEN'S POINT COLONY — TERMINUS SYSTEMS]
[POPULATION: 2,137]
[CLASSIFICATION: INDEPENDENT MINING SETTLEMENT]
[STATUS: CRITICAL — RESOURCE DEPLETION, INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE, SUPPLY CHAIN SEVERED]
[TERRITORY CLAIM AVAILABLE: SETTLEMENT TIER — COST: 200 MP]
[CURRENT MP: 72/100]
[REQUIREMENTS: ADMINISTRATIVE AUTHORITY OR POPULATION LOYALTY THRESHOLD (60%)]
He dismissed the notification and followed Okonkwo down the ramp. The medical supplies — crates of medi-gel, antibiotics, surgical equipment — descended on the cargo lift behind them. A crowd was already forming. Not a rush, not a mob — these people were too tired for either. They gathered with the careful, energy-conserving movements of humans who'd been rationing everything for months.
A woman pushed through them. Mid-fifties, dark circles under bloodshot eyes, a colony administrator's uniform that had been washed too many times. She moved with the particular authority of someone who'd been holding everything together through sheer force of will and was running out of both.
"Captain Okonkwo."
"Administrator Vasquez."
They clasped hands. Not warmth — recognition. Two professionals who'd done business before under circumstances neither enjoyed.
"Six crates of medi-gel, four of broad-spectrum antibiotics, two of surgical grade equipment," Okonkwo said. "As contracted."
"You're three weeks late."
"Three convoys were destroyed before us. We barely made it ourselves."
Vasquez's eyes moved to the Fortune's hull. The scorch marks. The patched breaches. The twisted remains of the turret mount on the dorsal surface. Her jaw tightened.
"Pirates?"
"Organized. Frigate-class ships. They've set up a kill zone in the Nemean Abyss corridor. Anyone running supplies through there is a target."
"That's our only route."
"I know."
Vasquez processed this with the expression of someone adding one more impossible problem to a list that was already too long. She turned to the crowd.
"Marcos, Petyr — get these crates to medical. Careful with the surgical equipment, it's irreplaceable."
Two men stepped forward and began moving crates. The crowd thinned, but slowly — people lingered, watching the supplies move with a hunger that wasn't about food. It was about hope, and they were rationing that too.
---
[Haven's Point — Colony Interior, March 22, 2180, 14:20]
He walked the colony while Okonkwo handled payment.
Haven's Point had been a boomtown once. The bones of prosperity were everywhere — oversized power conduits designed for heavy mining operations, a warehouse district built for ten times the current throughput, residential blocks with vacancy rates that told their own story. Twenty years ago, this had been a place people came to get rich. Now it was a place people couldn't afford to leave.
The system interface catalogued everything he passed, unprompted. Annotations floating over buildings like a heads-up display from a strategy game — which, he supposed, it was.
[POWER RELAY — STATUS: FAILING. EFFICIENCY: 34%. ESTIMATED LIFESPAN: 4 MONTHS WITHOUT MAINTENANCE]
[WATER RECYCLER — STATUS: CRITICAL. OPERATING AT 41% CAPACITY. CONTAMINATION RISK: MODERATE]
[ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSOR — STATUS: DEGRADED. OUTPUT: 67% MINIMUM SAFE THRESHOLD]
[RESIDENTIAL BLOCK C — STATUS: ABANDONED. STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: 42%. SALVAGE VALUE: MODERATE]
Every building, every system, every piece of infrastructure screaming for attention it wasn't getting. The colony was dying from a thousand small failures, any one of which could cascade into a catastrophe.
He passed a group of children near the colony's central square. Six of them, ages ranging from maybe five to twelve, playing with a deactivated mining drone they'd turned into a makeshift toy. One kid sat on top, steering with imaginary controls. Another made engine noises with her mouth while pushing it along the ground. They laughed, and the sound was so jarringly wrong against the failing infrastructure that it made something tighten in his chest.
"Kids playing on a dying rock in the middle of nowhere. They don't know the power grid's failing. They don't know the water's going bad. They just know the drone is fun."
He kept walking.
The operations center was the colony's administrative hub — a two-story prefab with communications arrays on the roof and a tired VI assistant that greeted him by Webb's name and asked if he needed directions. Inside, it was exactly what he expected: screens showing resource projections in declining curves, maintenance logs with more red entries than green, and a desk buried under datapads that probably all said the same thing in different ways.
Vasquez stood in front of the primary display. Colony supply projections. Six trend lines — food, water, power, medical, building materials, population. All of them pointed down.
"Month six," she said without turning. "That's when the math stops working. Food reserves depleted, water recyclers fail, and the atmospheric processor drops below minimum output. Seventeen hundred people with nowhere to go and no ships to get there."
"Why haven't you evacuated?"
"To where? The mass relay corridor is a death trap. The nearest friendly port is six weeks at sublight. And half these people came here because everywhere else was worse." She turned from the display. "I've been sending distress signals for three months. You know who answered? Okonkwo. Once. With supplies that buy us maybe another four weeks."
She folded her arms. Studied him with the same assessment he'd seen from Okonkwo, from Harlow, from Kragen. Everyone looking at Marcus Webb and trying to figure out what they were actually seeing.
"You're not Alliance anymore."
"What makes you say that?"
"Alliance officers don't take escort jobs on garbage freighters. And Okonkwo told me about the thing on her hull."
"Thanks, Captain."
"What did she tell you?"
"That you built a weapons turret from nothing and saved her ship. She also told me she doesn't know how and doesn't want to. I'm less particular."
He sat down across from her desk. The chair protested — cheap material, too many prior occupants.
"I have certain... capabilities. Technology-related. Hard to explain without a demonstration. But what I can tell you is this: I can build things. Infrastructure, defenses, systems. I need materials and time, but the designs are in my head and they work."
Most of that was true. The system didn't need local materials — it generated structures from Mandate Points — but he wasn't ready to explain that. Not yet. Not until he knew whether Vasquez was the kind of desperate that cooperated or the kind that called authorities.
"And what do you want in return?"
"A position. Advisory capacity, minimum. Access to colony operations, authority to implement improvements. In exchange, I fix your power grid, your water recyclers, and your defense situation."
"You want to fix an entire colony's infrastructure."
"I want to try."
"Nobody does that for free, Webb. What's your angle?"
"I need a territory to claim, a base to build from, and a population to protect so I can save the galaxy from extinction machines. But saying that out loud seems counterproductive."
"I need somewhere that isn't Alliance space. You need someone who can keep this place running. The math works for both of us."
Vasquez leaned against the display console. Behind her, the projection lines continued their downward march. Two thousand people's futures measured in declining curves.
"I've been doing this job for six years," she said. "Six years of watching this colony shrink. Every quarter, fewer people. Every year, less money, less support, less reason to stay. I've written forty-seven requests for Colonial Development funding. Know how many got answered?"
"Zero."
"Three. All denied." She rubbed her eyes. They were red — not from crying, from exhaustion. The specific kind of exhaustion that came from carrying a weight long past the point where carrying it made sense.
"If I say yes — if I give you this advisory position — and you turn out to be a con artist or a pirate or some other brand of Terminus garbage, I've handed my colony to someone who'll strip it for parts. Give me one reason to trust you."
He thought about Webb. About forty-three civilians on a batarian slaver ship, and an officer who threw away his career to save them because the blockade was wrong and someone had to say so.
"Because I know what it's like to lose everything for doing the right thing. And I know what this colony looks like to the people trying to eat you alive. Right now, you're prey. I can make you something else."
Vasquez looked at him for a long time. The operations center hummed around them — servers processing data, the atmospheric processor's distant rumble, the VI assistant cycling through its idle routine.
She extended her hand.
"Probationary advisory position. Thirty-day review. You deliver results, we talk about making it permanent. You deliver problems, you're on the next ship out."
He took her hand. The handshake was firm — her grip stronger than expected, forged by years of holding things together.
The colony's main power relay chose that exact moment to flicker. Twice. The lights dimmed, recovered, dimmed again. The display console stuttered. Vasquez's grip tightened for half a second before releasing.
She didn't acknowledge the flicker. Neither did he. But they both knew what it meant.
"I'll need access to the engineering section," he said. "And a list of your most critical infrastructure failures, ranked by time-to-catastrophe."
"Kowalski's the chief engineer. He won't like you."
"Most engineers don't."
"Kowalski especially. He's been keeping this colony alive with spit and prayers for four years. A stranger walking in and claiming he can do better won't sit well."
"I'm not claiming I can do better. I'm claiming I can help."
"That distinction matters to you. Make sure it matters to him."
She turned back to the display. Pulled up a maintenance schedule. Red entries outnumbered green four to one.
"Water recyclers are the priority. We lose those, we lose everything in seventy-two hours."
He looked at the system interface hovering in his peripheral vision. 72 MP. He needed 200 to claim the territory. At one per hour, that was another five days of regeneration. But if he fixed the water recyclers the conventional way — or at least started — he'd build trust. Trust meant authority. Authority meant meeting the claim requirements without the MP threshold.
"Play the long game. Build trust. Fix what you can with your hands. Save the system for when it matters."
"Show me the recyclers."
Vasquez grabbed a jacket from the back of her chair and headed for the door.
"Keep up, Webb. I don't slow down for advisors."
He followed her out into Haven's Point's thin, chemical-tasting air. The children were still playing with their mining drone. One of them waved at Vasquez. She waved back — a small, automatic gesture that said I do this every day, and I will keep doing it until I can't.
The power relay flickered a third time. A fourth. Steadied.
The colony had four months of power. Six months of food. Seventy-two hours of water if the recyclers failed.
And one transmigrator with a kingdom-building system, seventy-two Mandate Points, and a plan held together with desperation and arithmetic.
His first morning here. A crowd had gathered around the recycler station — a pipe had burst overnight, flooding a maintenance corridor. Vasquez was already there, sleeves rolled up, barking orders at a maintenance crew that looked like they'd been up all night.
She looked at him. No words. Just a look that said: you offered to help. Start helping.
He rolled up his sleeves and walked toward the broken pipe.
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