The Far Dark

Session 01 - The Ragged Edge of Space

The Thides system was the kind of place people ended up when they had nowhere else to go. Tucked away in Sector 7-G near the ragged edge of explored space, it orbited a gravitational void that swallowed light and defied navigation — a dark, massive nothing that nobody had ever successfully charted. MacMillian Mining and Extraction had once been a titan of industry, building sprawling processing stations and supplying the infrastructure that let wildcatters strike it rich across the Republic. But a decade of decline had left them with one aging jewel: MacMillian Station 4, a hulking, outdated hub in the Thides system that still processed ore and still kept its lights on, even if barely.

Rock Lavey and Shackleton Magellan arrived the way most desperate people did — frozen solid in cryostasis pods, shipped like cargo to save every credit they could. Rock was revived first, blinking awake in the passenger terminal of the station’s outer docking ring, where the air smelled of recycled atmosphere and hard labor. Through the terminal windows, automated bots crawled over the hulls of docked ships while massive conveyor belts hauled refined metal ingots into shipping containers, which were then tethered in long chains to a small but enormously-engined transport vessel waiting to drag the whole haul through hyperspace. Shackleton emerged shortly after, and the two took in the scene together — a narrow passenger walkway, a line of rough-looking miners with cybernetic limbs and helmet-mounted lights, and a security checkpoint that had once boasted ten active posts but now ran only two.

Six had taken a different approach entirely. He had shipped himself as frozen cargo in a standard crate, relying on his personal computer to wake him once the crate stopped moving. When he finally forced his way out — the crate having been shoved against a wall despite the bold “do not block” markings on its face — he found himself on the cargo level of the docking ring, surrounded by the industrial hum of routing conveyors and scanning droids. He activated his suit’s chameleon system, blending seamlessly into the appearance of a dock worker, and walked past two bored guards without a second glance. Once he found a camera blind spot, he switched the camouflage off, pulled up a station map on his wrist computer, and began navigating toward the security office through a series of stairwells whose access scanners had long since been tampered with by locals who had no patience for bureaucracy.

Rock and Shackleton, meanwhile, were escorted through the station’s entertainment district on their way to the security hub. The upper ring blazed with neon and noise — gambling dens, bars, and establishments of a more intimate nature all crammed together in a strip that smelled of spilled drink and opportunity. Station security guards patrolled the edges, but they watched with the practiced disinterest of men who had long ago decided that keeping things from boiling over was a more achievable goal than keeping things clean. The two new recruits were led past the Marshal’s office — marked with the official seal of the Federal Republic and separated from the corridor by laser security bars — and into the MacMillian Station Security headquarters, where a woman was waiting for them in Conference Room A. Six had already arrived, having navigated the back routes and talked his way past the front desk clerk, and was seated with the stillness of a man who had been waiting patiently for exactly as long as he needed to.

The woman introduced herself as Solveig Kaufer, General Secretary of the station and assistant to Station Manager Wilton Agramunt, who was, she explained with careful neutrality, occupied with important personal business. She was precise, methodical, and thorough — the kind of person who followed every step in the correct order and expected others to do the same. She walked them through a dated orientation video, issued each of them a MacMillan company card that served as both a bank account and a security access key, and informed them that the security force was running at roughly half strength — fifty-two personnel out of a required one hundred and six. A fourth recruit, Ronin Sanchez, had not yet arrived. As she departed, she was overheard quietly calling Security Chief Holger Graeme to report that certain station protocols had already been violated — a list, apparently, that Six had handed her on his way in, detailing every infraction he had personally witnessed during his walk through the station.

The tour that followed was efficient and informative. Solveig showed them the four levels of the station: the public entertainment and hotel district at the top, the station personnel level below it, the cargo and warehouse level beneath that, and the processing units at the bottom — of which only units three and four were still operational. She showed them the mess hall and the station store on level 2-3, where auto-prepared meals and two-decade-old MacMillan-branded supplies were available at an employee discount. Their quarters on level 2-5 were modest — a small common area with a worn couch and a kitchenette, a bunk room with six stacked berths and private lockers, and a bathroom with a free vibro-shower and a paid water shower that ran on treated, non-potable recycled water. Six immediately claimed the bunk nearest the door and cranked the thermostat to eighty degrees. Shackleton, without a word, later hacked the environmental controls and locked the temperature at a more reasonable seventy-two.

The next morning began at five o’clock sharp, courtesy of Six’s alarm, which was not quiet. The crew stumbled through their morning routines — Six observing and mentally logging every step the others took before replicating them with mechanical precision — and made their way to the mess hall for breakfast before heading up to Conference Room A for their six o’clock briefing. Holger Graeme walked in exactly on time, told them to immediately forget everything Solveig Kaufer had said, and proceeded to explain how things actually worked. His rules were simple: don’t escalate, don’t go into a fight you can’t finish, call for backup, and don’t make problems where there aren’t any. He outlined the station’s levels, the decommissioned processing sectors, and the fact that Processing I had become an unofficial residence for the station’s more undesirable population — a place security patrolled just enough to show a presence and no more. Six asked a series of increasingly granular questions about station protocols until Graeme’s patience visibly frayed and he dismissed the team.

Ronin Sanchez arrived mid-briefing, escorted in by a guard after being processed through the security gate. He had declared his weapons without hesitation, collected his basic supplies, and walked into the conference room with the easy confidence of a man who had been late to worse things. Graeme finished his briefing with a rundown of key figures and threats: Samina Ventura of the Silk Abbey was a high-priority client who paid for top-tier security support; the Nova Nexus gambling establishment was suspected of ties to the Serene Syndicate, with a dangerous muscle named Asher Bhattacharya and an assassin named Plen Hong operating in its orbit. The Rusted Blades were a piratical scavenger group causing trouble in the asteroid belt, and a scavenger named Thandeka Dahl and her ship, the Beloved Valley, had been caught near the restricted Thides I on more than one occasion. Somewhere in the Thides Belt, a hidden smuggler base was operating with connections on the station itself — and nobody had been able to find it yet.

The team’s first official shift was at Security Gate 1, screening incoming travelers for contraband. It was routine work — a few forgotten knives sent back to ships, a handful of minor violations processed through the station’s automated legal system. The most notable arrival was a woman named Daniela Akkermans, who passed through with three companions, all of them carrying honorable discharge papers from the Federal Marines. Her service record was long but almost entirely redacted — decades of official documentation that said nothing beyond the fact that she had served. The shift ended with a satisfying chime of credits deposited to their cards, and the team was cut loose for the evening.

Ronin declared that there was a ninety percent chance of having a good time that night, and Six — treating this as a mission objective with the same operational seriousness he applied to everything else — fell in behind him. Their first stop was the Comet’s Tail, a bar that had once been the finest establishment on the station and now wore its better days like a faded tattoo. The bartender, Roland Mohamed, had two cybernetic arms and a scowl that kept the rowdiest patrons in line without a word. He recognized the new security crew immediately and put drinks on the house, then shared what he knew about the local ecosystem of smuggling and protection rackets while repurposed industrial mining bots delivered plates of lobster, steak, and pasta to their table. Six experienced both alcohol and a gourmet meal for the first time that evening, ripping the shell off his lobster with his bare hands and chewing with a slowing, wide-eyed wonder that Ronin found deeply satisfying to witness.

While the others ate and drank, Shackleton quietly maneuvered one of the service bots toward a corner table where a woman sat with a group of men wearing matching bandanas — the mark of the Rusted Blades. The woman was Leocadia Zavia, their leader, and she had two of her crew escort a captive miner to her table, where she leaned in close and extracted coordinates from him in a low, unhurried voice. Just as the miner began to respond, Ronin shouted at the bot to clear the table, cutting the feed at the worst possible moment. Roland later confirmed what Shackleton had already suspected: Leocadia Zavia ran the Rusted Blades out of Processing I, and she was not someone who made requests twice.

The Silk Abbey was their next stop, and it was nicer on the inside than its exterior suggested — draped in warm light and a Middle Eastern aesthetic, with a high-roller upper level where the real money moved. It was there that the party spotted Station Manager Wilton Agramunt, the man from the orientation video, seated comfortably with two women at his sides while Solveig Kaufer stood nearby, pressing documents toward him for signature. He signed them without looking, waving her off between sips of his drink. The madam of the establishment greeted the security crew warmly and offered each of them a complimentary service — a gesture the team recognized, after a moment’s reflection, as the same kind of quiet kickback they had seen operating throughout the entertainment district all evening. Rock observed patrons discreetly using illicit substances — mostly libido enhancers, though a few were taking something closer to an amphetamine that could turn dangerous at higher doses. Nobody on staff seemed concerned. Nobody in security seemed to notice.

The Nova Nexus was their final destination, and the house greeted them with two hundred credits in chips before they had even placed a bet. Shackleton noticed almost immediately that the roulette dealer was using a low-tech physical mechanism beneath the table to flip the ball toward black whenever the party had money riding on it — a deliberately clumsy cheat designed to stay below the radar of any automated security system. He said nothing and let it ride. Six and Rock drifted toward the holographic boxing pit, where a three-dimensional projection of two fighters played out above a circular viewing area. Rock’s knowledge of the local fighting scene told him the veteran champion, a man called Clubber, was being set up for an easy win against a young newcomer before a much bigger match in the coming weeks. Six assessed the fighters’ techniques with cold precision and reached the same conclusion. Ronin bet on the kid anyway. The veteran put the newcomer down in the third round, and the party cashed out their winnings — each walking away with several hundred credits more than they had started with.

The weeks that followed settled into a rhythm. The crew ran patrols, processed arrests, and learned the unspoken rules of MacMillian Station 4. Six began systematically issuing citations for every infraction he could identify, testing which actions generated pay and which did not — and quickly discovered that the station’s automated legal system was a black box that dismissed charges against connected individuals while penalizing independent miners for identical offenses. Certain groups were untouchable. Certain businesses operated with impunity. The security guards who had been there longest seemed to understand this intuitively, and the kickbacks — free meals, free drinks, free evenings at the Silk Abbey — kept the understanding comfortable and unspoken. The party had arrived at the edge of explored space looking for a fresh start, and what they had found instead was a system of quiet corruption held together by mutual benefit and deliberate blindness. Whether they would go along with it, push against it, or find some third path entirely was a question that the station had not yet forced them to answer.