After a harrowing flight fighting wind and rain, Luca and Emily found themselves in a glass-walled conference room overlooking Boston's Seaport district. Through the windows behind them, the design studio sprawled across the floor: scale models of buildings, fabric swatches pinned to boards, architectural renderings glowing on multiple screens. The aesthetic was nothing like Orion's sleek minimalism.
This was the kind of firm that designed university libraries and tech campuses, places where people actually lived and worked. They prioritized comfort and function over pure aesthetics.
Diana Hartwell sat across from them, silver-streaked hair pulled back in a sleek knot, a tablet displaying the Triumph's schematics. She had likely been handling wealthy clients since before Luca was born.
"Before we begin," Diana said, "I want to understand what you're actually building here."
"A ship—" Luca started.
"A ho," Emily said.
Diana's smile widened. "Exactly. A community. A place where a hundred people will live, work, and depend on each other for years at a ti, with no option to leave." She leaned forward. "Spaces that keep people sane when they're millions of miles from ho."
Luca glanced at Emily. She was watching Diana with that look she got when soone was saying sothing worth rembering.
"Show us," Emily said.
That was his Chief of Staff, cutting straight to the good part.
---
Diana pulled up a display showing a standard crew cabin: two twin beds with matching dressers and desks, a shared bathroom between them. The Amish furniture they'd already ordered was rendered in place, their warm wood tones against the bare bulkheads.
"Your furniture's excellent. We're building everything else around it." She gestured, and the display transford. "Flooring first. Composite wood-grain panels, warm underfoot, easy to clean. Wall paneling in complentary tones, with mounting points for shelves and hooks."
The cabin went from functional to inviting as she worked.
"Sound dampening is critical," Diana continued. "Your bulkheads are excellent for structural integrity but terrible for acoustics. We're recomnding fabric panels over acoustic foam. It softens the space visually and eliminates that hollow ring you get in tal corridors."
She added integrated lighting that shifted through day and night modes, privacy curtains for the sleeping area, and small hydroponic planters by the desk.
"Each cabin becos a personal sanctuary," Diana said. "Sowhere the crew can retreat and feel like they have control."
"What about warmth?" Emily asked. "Our old ship always felt cold. I spent half my ti wrapped in blankets."
"Built-in solutions," Diana said. "Window seats with storage underneath. Bookshelves that fra the bed. Reading nooks. The space itself invites you to settle in."
Emily's expression softened. Luca filed that away. He'd make sure her quarters felt like ho.
Luca thought about his own bedroom on the Triumph. Functional and clean, but completely devoid of personality. He hadn't thought about making it feel like sowhere he actually lived.
Emily caught him thinking and raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Nothing." He definitely wasn't imagining their quarters with better furniture. That would be presumptuous.
Her smile said she knew exactly what he was imagining.
---
The crew lounge occupied the ship's prow, spanning Decks 3 and 4.
"Two levels," Diana said, pulling up a new model. "Deck 4 is your quiet floor. Gaming tables and reading nooks, with bookshelves stocked full of board gas. Couches and chaises clustered around display stations for movie nights. Warm colors and dim lighting. The kind of space where people linger."
The rendering showed exactly that. Comfortable seating tucked into alcoves, soft lighting pooling in conversation areas.
"Deck 3 is your social floor." Diana rotated the model. "The bar dominates this wall. But the real centerpiece is the stage."
"The stage," Emily said, and her voice had that edge of excitent she usually reserved for tactical victories. "Talent shows. Plays. Whatever activities we want to organize."
"Exactly. Any excuse to get people together creates shared experiences. Those beco the social glue that holds a crew together."
Luca studied the layout. "What about capacity? If we're running events, can we fit the whole crew in here?"
"The furniture's modular." Diana pulled up another schematic. "For daily use, you have your conversation clusters and gaming areas. But for events, everything clears to the walls. Two hundred fifty to three hundred chairs, comfortable seating with good sightlines to the stage." She smiled. "I already have the configurations drawn up."
Emily turned to Luca, eyes bright. "Can you imagine? A real lounge with actual seating, people not crowded into soone's quarters?"
He could imagine it. The crew gathered with drinks in hand, laughing at sothing stupid Ryan said. Joey throwing popcorn at Danny. Zoe critiquing the film's physics while everyone ignored her.
"The officer lounge follows the sa principles," Diana continued. "Rich carpeting and leather furniture surrounding a smaller bar. Built-in bookcases and deep armchairs arranged around a fireplace." She smiled. "I can source the books too, if you'd like. Leather-bound, the kind that sll like libraries."
"A fireplace," Luca said. "We had one on the old Triumph. Digital, but still." He could almost sll the woodsmoke. New Hampshire winters, snow piling against the windows. "I'd want one here too."
"The psychological effect is the sa. Humans have gathered around fire for hundreds of thousands of years." Diana nodded like she understood exactly what he wasn't saying.
Emily's hand found his under the table. "Sowhere we can stop being officers."
"Exactly," Diana said, her gaze moving between Luca and Emily. "The crew lounge is where your people can relax without officers barging into their space. And the officer lounge is where you can breathe. Where you're allowed to be tired, or frustrated, or human."
She leaned back, folding her hands. "I've seen it ti and again. University campuses, corporate headquarters. Distinct spaces matter. Faculty don't eat in the student dining hall. Executives don't linger in the break room." Her eyes found Luca's. "Officers don't eat with the crew. Don't lounge with the crew. It sounds harsh, but it protects both sides. Your people need sowhere they can complain about you without worrying you'll overhear."
Luca had never thought about any of this before.
"Even the designs should be distinct," Diana continued. "When you invite crew mbers to dine with you, it should feel like a different experience. A privilege, not an intrusion. The officer ss should have nicer finishes, better lighting... a sense of occasion."
Emily was nodding slowly, and Luca realized she was filing all of this away.
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"Separate ss halls and lounges," Diana continued, pulling up another schematic. "Even separate gyms. For those spaces, rubber flooring throughout, mirrors positioned to avoid constant self-observation. The ss halls are designed for lingering, with family-style tables that encourage conversation."
Emily turned to Luca with an expression dangerously close to wonder. "We're designing our ho."
"Yeah," he said, and his voice ca out softer than he intended. "We are."
---
The final section caught Luca by surprise.
"Biophilic integration," Diana said, pulling up a ship-wide schematic.
Biophilic. Sounded like sothing Danny would say right before explaining photosynthesis for ten minutes. Luca kept his expression neutral.
"You have a substantial greenhouse on Deck 4. But what we're proposing goes beyond a single dedicated space."
The display lit up with green highlights throughout the ship, running through corridors and common areas, even extending to the bridge.
Luca's mouth fell open.
"Living walls in the main thoroughfares, with vertical gardens that purify air and provide visual variety. Potted plants integrated into lounge furniture and herb gardens in both ss halls, plus small planters in every cabin."
"You want to put plants everywhere," Luca managed.
"We want to bring the ship to life." Diana's voice was firm. "The ISS started a small garden as an experint. It beca one of the most valued spaces on the station. Astronauts fought over ti there. Not because they loved gardening, but because being surrounded by growing things reminded them they were still human."
The display showed specific installations: a living wall behind the officer lounge bar and hanging planters in the crew lounge's upper level, plus a small water feature in the ditation space surrounded by ferns.
Emily was staring at the schematic, and Luca watched sothing shift in her expression. Sothing unguarded. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her look quite like that before.
"The whole ship," she said quietly. "You want to make it feel alive."
"That's exactly what we want," Diana agreed. "This will save lives. Not from external threats, but from internal ones like isolation and the slow erosion of hope."
Luca looked at the numbers when Diana slid a tablet across the table. Substantial. But looking at Emily's face and the plans glowing on the screens?
Worth it.
"We'll take it," Luca said. "All of it."
Emily's smile could have lit up the entire ship.
"You'll have to assign soone to water all those plants," Luca told her as they stood to leave.
"I'll do it myself." Her dimples showed. "Every single one."
---
The rain had stopped by the ti they erged, and late afternoon light painted the wet streets gold. Emily held his hand as they walked, her grip warm and certain.
"That was incredible," she said.
"Better than incredible." He was still processing the circadian lighting and acoustic paneling, the life-sustaining power of houseplants. But mostly he was processing Emily, walking beside him, holding his hand, looking happier than he'd seen her in months.
"Best first Earth date ever," she said.
He stopped. "Wait, shopping for floorboards counts as a date?"
"When you do it in Boston with ?" She tugged him back into motion. "Yes. It counts."
He'd known for a while. But walking through Boston with her, planning their future together, seeing her light up over the promise of sothing permanent? This was the rest of his life, and he wanted every second of it.
---
The North End welcod them with narrow streets that slled like garlic and old brick. Emily pulled him through the crowds, past the tourist traps with their neon signs, until Luca spotted exactly the kind of place he'd been hoping for.
A pizzeria with grimy windows and a sign so faded he couldn't read the na. No line out front and no reviews posted in the window, just a door that looked like it hadn't been replaced since the seventies.
"This one," he said.
Emily studied the place. "You sure?"
"Dad used to talk about spots like this. The ones without websites. The ones where you pay cash and they look at you funny if you ask for a receipt."
The interior was dark and cramped, the kind of place that hadn't been cleaned properly since the nineties. Checkered tablecloths with mysterious stains and candles lted into wine bottles, the ceiling tiles having long since given up. Luca picked up his fork and found dried cheese crusted along the tines.
Perfect.
They ordered a large pepperoni and a carafe of house red. The guy behind the counter didn't recognize them, or if he did, he didn't care. He took their orders and went back to watching a hockey ga on a TV mounted in the corner.
Emily settled into the booth across from him. Her hair was still windswept from the walk, her cheeks flushed from the cold. She looked relaxed in a way he hadn't seen in weeks.
"This is nice," she said. "Almost feels normal."
"We used to be normal."
"Did we?" She raised an eyebrow. "When, exactly?"
He thought about it. Before the System, maybe.
"Fair point."
The pizza arrived, hot and greasy and exactly what he needed. They ate in silence for a while, watching the other patrons. They looked like normal people living normal lives.
Emily set down her slice and looked at him. Really looked at him, the way she did when she was about to say sothing important.
"You've been quiet since we left Diana's office."
"Just thinking."
"About?"
Luca wiped his hands on a napkin that was probably older than he was. The question had been building in his chest all day, and he wasn't sure he had the words for it yet.
"Geneva," he said finally. "We're flying there in two days."
Emily nodded. She knew what was waiting in Geneva. The scientific symposium and the Large Hadron Collider. The FTL drive the UER had locked underground and Karen's plan to get them close enough to scan it.
"Are you having second thoughts?"
"No. That's the problem." He pushed his plate aside. "I should be having second thoughts. We're about to break into a classified facility to steal technology that doesn't belong to us. That's not a small thing."
"It's not stealing. We're scanning it. They keep the drive."
"They don't know that. And even if they did, they'd still consider it espionage." Luca shook his head. "Karen pitched this like it was obvious. Like of course we'd help. And I said yes without really thinking about why."
Emily was quiet for a mont. A hockey ga was playing in the background, the announcer's voice rising and falling with the action.
"So think about it now," she said. "Why does Geneva matter?"
Emily picked up her wine glass. "I don't want to spend my twenties playing whack-a-mole for politicians." She swirled the wine, watching it catch the light. "We have one ship and then it would be seven people fighting overflows forever. We'd change nothing. But the FTL drive in Geneva changes everything. Without it, we're the only ship that can make the crossing. With it, humanity expands. Trade. Reinforcents. A real colony, not just an outpost." She set down her glass. "That's why Hyeon matters. I know you hate that we can't take them with us yet. But three hundred people who can move cargo and coordinate supply chains? Once they have ships that can travel, they beco the logistics backbone for everything we're building."
"I'm not trying to save Earth," Luca said. "I'm trying to wake a thousand people without killing them."
Emily went still.
"Alpha Centauri is just the first step. The Varnathi, the vault, figuring out why they're in our backyard. That's the imdiate mission. But there's sothing bigger going on."
Emily's eyes sharpened. "The Ship Maintenance Facility."
"The Ship Maintenance Facility and that asteroid base buried in the Midnight Veil. Whatever Orion is digging up on Mars." Luca shook his head. "The System keeps dropping hints. Alien infrastructure scattered across Alpha Centauri and technology that predates humanity, plus a thousand Varnathi in stasis four light-years away. It's all connected sohow."
"And we keep stumbling into pieces of it."
"Not stumbling." Luca set down his glass. "The System gave us those quests. It pointed us at the Midnight Veil. It sent us to Alpha Centauri. Whatever's happening, whoever the Varnathi are, the System wants us to find out."
Emily's expression flickered. Sothing darker crossed her face.
"Or we're arrogant enough to think we're special."
Luca's hand tightened around the glass.
"I an it." She wasn't smiling now. "What if we're just reading patterns that aren't there? What if we beco Orion? Convinced we're right, willing to do whatever it takes, and one day we wake up and realize we're the bad guys?"
The question hit hard. He'd thought about it too, usually around three in the morning.
"Then you tell ," he said. "That's your job. Chief of Staff. Keep honest."
"And if you don't listen?"
"Then you stop ."
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "Deal."
Luca finally picked up his wine glass and drank. The cheap red tasted surprisingly good. "Karen's not manipulating us. She's just been three steps ahead this whole ti, setting up the pieces we need."
"She's playing a longer ga than either of us realized."
"And now I understand why."
Emily reached across the table and took his hand. Her fingers were warm, still slightly greasy from the pizza.
"You know what I love about you?"
"My devastating good looks?"
She laughed. "Your ability to figure things out. Even when you take the long way around."
"I prefer to call it thorough analysis."
"You've had an epiphany over bad pizza."
"It's actually pretty good pizza."
She squeezed his hand. "Geneva's going to be dangerous."
"I know."
"Zoe and you, breaking into a classified facility. If sothing goes wrong, the UER could use it as justification to move against the IFC. Against Karen."
"I know that too." Luca t her eyes. "But we're not doing this for Karen. We're doing this because people can't live in a bubble. That's the whole point of what Diana was talking about today. Living walls and acoustic panels and spaces that feel like ho. We're not building an isolated outpost. We're building the first step of sothing bigger."
"And the first step needs to connect back."
"Alpha Centauri will have new materials. All those schematics we've been finding. Things we can't get here." He thought about the Varnathi vault, the technology waiting to be discovered. "Eventually, the fabrication lines start. Comrce and trade, people moving back and forth. That only works if ships can make the trip. And that ans FTL."
Emily was quiet for a mont.
"Okay," Emily said finally.
"Okay?"
"Okay, you've convinced . Not that I needed convincing." She smiled, and her dimples showed. "I just wanted to make sure you understood why we're doing this. For yourself, not because Karen asked."
"And now?"
"Now I know my captain has his head on straight." She stood and leaned across the table to kiss him. "Pay the man. Let's go ho."
Luca left cash on the table, more than the dubious hand-scrawled bill required, and followed her out into the Boston night. The streets still glead wet under the streetlights.
"Best Earth date," Emily said as they reached the landing pad.
"Best Earth date," he agreed.
She kissed him again.
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