"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever."
— Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
"You joined the IFC," Karen said, "so nobody could tell you what to do."
Luca breathed through his nose. His stomach had picked the silence to really commit to the nausea, and Karen had let it run long enough that his body had ford a full opinion about it. He breathed through it. He told himself he'd had worse. Mostly, he believed it.
Layla Benali was still standing.
"I'm not the UER," Karen said. "I'm not ordering you. I'm asking." She looked at Layla across the floor. "You can leave. Walk out today and go back to UER jurisdiction, UER recruitnt limits, and UER contracts on a planet that belongs to them. That's a choice."
Luca pressed his thumb into the inside of his palm and kept his face neutral.
"The UER governs what the System has already built. Everything I'm describing this morning is what it's building toward. Those aren't the sa mission, and only one of them matters in twenty years."
"I kept you free once. That was the first choice. Now I'm offering you the only freedom left on the board." She looked at Layla, not the windows. "Out there."
"Co with or don't," Karen said. "But understand what you're choosing."
Layla stood for three more seconds. Then she sat down.
Across the oval, Valentina Cruz had been holding herself apart since Karen's answer to her question about her people. Her chin had stayed in her hand and her eyes on Karen's face the entire ti Layla was standing.
Now she took her hand down.
She looked at Karen, and she took a breath.
"Condor is in."
Karen called a ten-minute recess, and the room breathed.
"Check in with your teams," she said.
Luca was on his feet before she finished.
Emily ca with him.
The ss hall was three doors down. The conference table sat in the center, and the windows ran the full length of the far wall. Earth filled most of the glass, blue and white and enormous, turning in the dark below them.
Luca stood at the window. He pressed two fingers to his temple and breathed through his nose. His stomach was making argunts he didn't want to hear, and none of them had anything to do with the party.
He'd been counting. His father, David, Emma, Izumi, the twelve directors with their seconds, all of them with a role in the machine Karen had spent the morning naming. Every one of them was planning around a date he hadn't set and a ship he hadn't committed and a person he hadn't been asked to be.
Emily stood beside him. She put her hand on his back and left it there.
The door opened behind them. He heard it close.
His father's footsteps crossed the room and stopped a few feet back. Luca kept his eyes on Earth. Athan said nothing for a mont.
"Luca." He kept his voice low. "What's going on?"
Luca breathed out.
"It's too much, Dad." He kept his voice even. "Everyone in that room has a problem they need to solve. Nobody asked if I wanted to carry it."
Athan was quiet.
"How do you do it?" Luca said.
Athan moved up beside him. He looked at Earth out the window.
"I'm not sure I always do," he said.
"I have been running that yard alone for years. I've held every line myself because I didn't know how to do it any other way." His father was quiet for a mont. "I'm not sure that was right."
Luca looked at him.
"You look like you think this is all sitting on your shoulders," Athan said. "Maybe so of it is. But you have people, Luca." He said it the sa way he said everything, like a fact that didn't need dressing up. "Trust them with it."
Luca looked back at Earth.
Emily's hand was still on his back.
Stolen novel; please report.
Athan crossed the room and stepped out.
Emily turned to face him before he could turn to her. She put one hand against his jaw and kissed him.
"I'm with you," she said. "Whatever you want," she said. "Just don't barf on , okay?"
He grabbed her, pulled her off the floor, and spun her once. She yelped, and he was already laughing too, with no idea where it ca from, and when he set her down, she was looking at him like he'd lost his mind, which was fair.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go back in."
Karen brought the projection back up and pointed at the first node on the arc.
"Starting today," she said. She looked around the oval. "I want every director in this room to begin filling their recruitnt rolls imdiately. Not next quarter. Today."
She looked at Athan.
"Athan. The Genesis Platform moves to full capacity now. Every bay. Every production line. Today."
His father set his coffee down. Luca had been watching his father for twenty years, and he'd never seen him set it down until he drained it.
"Here is why this works," Karen said. "Priya's Resource Guild moves on the outer moons. Jupiter's. Saturn's. Material nobody has touched because nobody has been able to hold the ground long enough to pull it. What Priya pulls, Athan builds with. More material in ans more ships out. Every ship Athan builds is a platform David can deploy. Every station David deploys gives Priya more extraction access. That expands Athan's material base. Which ans he builds more ships. Which ans David builds more stations." She held the room's eyes. "The cycle accelerates every ti it runs."
She looked at Henrik.
"Solvang. Advance teams go first. Before construction, before extraction equipnt moves, before David commits a platform, I need eyes on the ground. That is what Volkern is for."
Henrik nodded once.
"Ji-won coordinates directly with David's construction planning," Karen said. "We do not build blind. What our explorers find, Frontier Systems maps. What the maps show, David builds toward. The research divisions are not support. They are how the expansion stays coherent, the intelligence layer of the whole machine."
She paused.
"We are not abandoning Earth. Every node we establish out there makes the next one easier to reach. The Moon holdings beco a hub. The hub serves the belt. The belt feeds the Genesis Platform. The Genesis Platform builds the ships that carry everything further outward." She looked at the room. "We are not leaving the solar system."
She held it.
"We are building it."
"You have two years," Karen said. She said it without slowing down for it. "That is how long the Triumph's next mission takes. When Luca returns, I want the Genesis Platform fully staffed. I want every company in this room operating above the atmosphere. Because in two years, we're expanding into Alpha Centauri."
She looked around the room.
"We are not a governnt," Karen said. "We are not planting flags to administer territory. We are building the infrastructure. The asteroid belt. The Jovian moons. Every orbital between here and Alpha Centauri."
"So of it we will govern because we must. Most of it we will not need to. Anyone who moves through this system will do so on platforms we constructed."
She looked at the room.
"Humanity is going to the stars. We are building the road. And when you own the road, you don't need to control the cities."
She looked at the projection, at the last node and the dark beyond it.
"The IFC is a company in motion. Today it is Sol. Tomorrow it is Alpha Centauri. Then Luhman 16. Then Barnard's Star."
Luca leaned forward. Karen was naming his stars, in order, drawing a line from here to out there with the certainty of soone who knew where it ended.
She didn't know where it ended.
He did. Or rather, he had a number: one of 256, a fragnt of sothing the extrapolation data pegged at 600 to 800 kiloters in diater, currently sitting on Ryan's laptop back at the hotel in Geneva. That number said the line didn't stop at Barnard's Star. The line kept going, and they didn't yet know how far.
"The System is not asking us to stay," Karen said. "It is handing us the stars and waiting to see if we are serious enough to take them."
She looked at the room.
"I am not asking any of you to stay behind. I am asking you to co with ."
The academy announcent ca after.
She announced three campuses. The Moon would be first, operational within the year, close enough to pull from Earth's talent pool before anyone had to commit to the deep. Europa would be second, once extraction was established, for graduates who'd already worked frontier conditions before they arrived sowhere that had never been inhabited. Alpha Centauri would co eventually, when there was sothing to build a classroom around.
"The recruitnt unlock hands your companies room for three-and-a-half million people," Karen said. "The academy answers the question of what those people know when they show up."
Theo Baumann of Nova Tech had said nothing the entire eting. He had the manner of soone who'd sorted out his position before walking in and had been waiting for the right opening. He raised his hand now.
"The academy curriculum," he said. "Nova Tech can seed the technical training programs. Materials science, engineering pipeline, the research thodology your construction division will need. I'd like to be part of building what it teaches."
Karen looked at him. "I'd like that too."
Luca thought about the eleven teams he'd interviewed at Sandworth. Not one of them had been a drear. They'd each had a pitch and a resu and a list of what they could do, and none of them had the thing he was actually looking for. He'd have to co back to that conversation when the academy was real.
Emily's knee was warm against his. She'd stopped pressing, just staying there without asking anything from him.
"There's one more thing."
The room had been in motion for twenty minutes. Karen let it run a beat past where he expected her to cut it, and then she said the four words, and the room stilled again.
"I want to talk about House Stevens."
Luca's head ca up a degree.
"House Stevens is new," Karen said. She said it plainly. "Two months old. In practical terms, the System recognizes us as a noble house. We have the authority to grant titles. We have a structure with ranks and roles that unlock as the House grows." She paused. "What I can give you at House Level 1 is one title."
"I want to be honest with you about what that ans. As the House grows, as we establish infrastructure, as we accomplish what I've spent this morning describing, more titles unlock. I don't know the exact thresholds. The System doesn't brief in advance, and I'm still unsure what this all ans." She looked at the oval, not at any one person. "What I can tell you is that the people who build this with will not be forgotten when those thresholds are reached."
Her eyes moved to her children, once.
"I am not naming an heir today," she said. "That is not what this eting is for."
Luca watched David Stevens sit still, and his sister Emma Stevens not react. They both sat the way people sit when they already know what isn't going to be said. Luca had known both of them since he was nine years old, and they would never once make this awkward for Karen, which was probably why she'd trusted them with the companies she had.
"What I'm doing today," Karen said, "is using the one title I have, on the person whose mission makes everything else possible."
She said it straight ahead, to the room.
"Luca. Co up."
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