Chapter 20 - Malabo

“Adventure is somebody else in deep shit, far, far away,”

—David Drake

The motorcade rolled through the palm-lined boulevard toward the Palacio Presidencial de Malabo, its white colonial façade glowing beneath floodlights. Anderson could feel the heat before the door opened, thick and clinging even after sunset, carrying salt and diesel from the port beyond the trees.

President James Anderson adjusted the collar of his lightweight coat, sweat slicking his back as his interface pulsed in the corner of his vision.

[Mission Objective Update: 'Consolidation' - Progress: 82.7%]

Consolidate Humanity under unified governance.

Reward: Planetary Control Tower

Another two percent, Anderson thought grimly. The bar sat at 82.7% now, up two points, which meant 17.3% still stood between him and that Control Tower. With it, he could finally bring order to the chaos, control the portals, regulate spawns, and quarantine Overflows before they turned cities into hellscapes. No more firefighting or more praying that regional governors could hold the line. It would open up new governing structures.

His phone rang.

“Mr. President,” Director Okonjo’s voice cut through the static, each word flat and measured. “We have Bangladesh. Provisional elections are underway in Dhaka. The insurrection in the Chittagong corridor was contained with minimal casualties.”

Anderson stepped from the armored car, the courtyard tiles still damp from a brief evening squall. Two Secret Service agents flanked him as he climbed the wide steps toward the palace’s grand colonnade, where golden uplights flickered against fluted pillars.

“How minimal?” he asked, his voice low as a delegation of Equatoguinean officials bowed slightly in greeting.

“Forty-three dead, sir. Mostly militia.” The line went quiet. “One child.”

Anderson closed his eyes for half a breath, the image of a child’s face flashing through his mind. “Have our security teams moved in?”

“They’re en route. Coming in from India and Russia.” Okonjo hesitated, the unspoken question hanging in the air. “It’s progress."

“Thank you, Director. Keep me posted.” Anderson replied, his shoulders sagging.

He ended the call. The night air buzzed with insects, the hum broken by the occasional wail of a distant siren in the port district. Across the courtyard, a group of protestors clustered behind police barricades, their chants faint beneath the steady thrum of Malabo’s nightlife. Placards read “Humanity First, Not Mars” and “Heal the Cradle, Not the Cosmos.”

Humidity clung to Anderson’s hair and shoulders as another notification slid into his vision.

[Mission Objective Update: 'Stake your Claim' - Progress: 6%]

Establish outposts and industrial nodes within your home system.

Reward: Industrial Orbital Blueprint Set

Another base on Venus, he thought bitterly. So much money wasted, resources poured into the void, while so much hunger remained here on Earth.

He passed through the security checkpoint, nodding to the local guards in crisp uniforms. Inside, the palace’s polished stone floors gleamed under soft lighting. High ceilings and carved mahogany walls gave the space a cool elegance, though Anderson barely noticed.

Everyone was tired, worn down by the relentless pressure. The System had given them miracles, from instant diagnostics to technologies no one had dreamed of. But every miracle came paired with chaos, and the first month alone had cost millions of lives in riots and power struggles. And now it wanted expansion too.

The orbital blueprint was a tempting reward, especially if the Genesis Platform met its end of the Shuttle contract. More industry in space meant less pollution on Earth, a small victory in a losing war.

As he thought the interface was done, a final notification appeared:

[Mission Objective Update: 'Expansion Across the Cosmos' - Progress: 20%]

Checkpoint 1: Successfully send a crew beyond the Solar System [Complete]
Checkpoint 2: Identify and scan a compatible planet [Pending]
Checkpoint 3: First footfall on alien terrain [Pending]
Checkpoint 4: Secure a beachhead [Pending]
Checkpoint 5: Establish a permanent colony [Pending]

Reward: Star System Control Tower

At the top of the stairs, a pair of aides bowed him toward the reception hall. He paused under a vaulted arch, water from the earlier storm dripping off the hem of his coat onto the marble floor.

They had taken one step. Just one tenuous step toward the stars. Now, the System expected a march, a relentless advance into the unknown. He looked skyward, through stone and steel and weather, to where the Triumph of Darron streaked through the cold interstellar dark, carrying the hopes and fears of a fractured world.

A Star System Control Tower. He didn’t know what it meant. No one did. But if it was anything like the Regional Control Towers... if it could stabilize a star system the way a City Tower stabilized a region, then it would truly open the Solar System. It would make it manageable.

“So it begins,” he murmured, the words barely audible above the distant hum of the city. “God help them out there.”

---

Karen’s office sat near the top floor of Dome One, its sweeping glass arc overlooking the grey, scarred surface of the Moon. Earth hung low on the horizon, blue and impossibly far from the reality she managed every day.

The glow of the lunar sunrise filtered through the IFC headquarters, casting pale light over Karen Stevens’ cluttered desk.

Before the System, she was just a housewife managing petty HOA politics. Now she oversaw thousands of lives, contracts worth millions, and the future of humanity’s expansion into the stars. Sometimes she still woke up expecting to pack lunchboxes and chase neighborhood kids off the lawn.

She scrolled through line items on her monitor without even blinking.

Helium-3 exports, essential for fusion drive production, were down 2% from Luna, threatening delays across three propulsion contracts. Ore deliveries from Valles Marineris were already forty-eight hours late, Kuiper Belt shipments hadn’t even left their extraction hubs, held up by broken loaders and missing pilots and every other kind of miscoordination imaginable. The Genesis Platform’s forge plants were running lean, and without a steady feed, they’d be forced to idle; a disaster, considering it was still the only functioning shipyard in the system.

Subcontracting could bridge the gap, but only if they had more mining ships, more gas scoopers, more long-range haulers. Yet right now, Genesis was the only shipyard capable of building them. Transport subsidies remained frozen under the UER budget review, leaving cargo capacity maxed and scheduling a daily war.

Karen scrolled past a dozen budget deviation alerts, the screen mostly red with a little orange scattered in. The opportunities were staggering. But her own adventuring company, the Interstellar Frontier Company, massive as it was, stood bottlenecked. There weren’t enough hands or ships to chase everything the System had made possible, and never enough hours in the day.

Karen rubbed her temples and leaned back, exhaling. Her husband, Michael Stevens, stood across the office, sitting at his own desk and watching her with his usual quiet concern.

“You’ve been at this since 4 am,” he said.

“I’m trying to stop three different subsidiaries from suing each other over launch window conflicts,” Karen muttered. “Starlight’s biomedical launch got bumped by Horizon’s resupply drop. Now I’ve got a screaming match on LunaComm and a mediation team in orbit trying not to throw each other out of an airlock.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “So… a normal Tuesday.”

Before she could answer, her interface dinged.

[Mission Objective Update: 'Alpha Centauri Survey Expedition Charter']

Checkpoint 1: Depart Sol System with a qualified crew [Completed]
Checkpoint 2: Arrive in Alpha Centauri - [Pending]
Checkpoint 3: Map all planetary bodies and major asteroid fields - [Pending]
Checkpoint 4: Conduct surface surveys on habitable-zone planets - [Pending]
Checkpoint 5: Return with verifiable data - [Pending]

Reward: See Mission Compensation Table

For a long moment, Karen just stared at it. Then she quietly said, “Goddamn kids really did it.”

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.

“The FTL drive worked. They’re on their way,” she said. Beyond reach, beyond sabotage.

Michael stepped forward, his voice low. “Are they safe?”

Karen opened her Adventuring Company interface with a flick and scrolled down the list of subsidiaries.

[Company Overview - Triumph Initiative]
Level: 1
Designation: Survey and Exploration
Membership: 7 / 100
Contribution Points: 14,310 / 600,000
Relationship: Independent Subsidiary

“They’re all accounted for,” she replied as she focused on the membership.

Company Leader: Luca Rossi – Level 60 – Starship Commander

The rest followed: Emily, Zoe, Danny, Joey, Chris, Ryan.

They were her crew, too young and too bold, with more ambition than anyone had the right to, which made them just perfect.

Michael watched her, the lines around his eyes softening.

“You didn’t hesitate when Athan pitched this mission. Not once.”

“No,” Karen said, standing now. “Because I knew what they were. Ambitious and genuinely good. You can find talent anywhere. Finding people who actually give a damn? That's rare. And we need it more than ever.”

She paused as she focused back on the crew, her kids. “Earth’s already losing itself again. The UER talks unity but governs like it’s still playing Risk, with too many flags and too many closed doors. We can do better than that, we should be better than that.”

She closed the Triumph Initiative overlay, then one by one dismissed the rest: the funding requests, the raw material disputes, the orbital launch schedules. For the first time in weeks, she allowed herself to step back from the storm.

“We need to go to Genesis. Call Athan.”

Michael smiled, already turning to make the call.

Karen picked up her coat and paused at the door. There were still no answers about the sabotage, no confirmation of who’d tampered with the launch of the ship. But whoever it was had failed.

And her kids were beyond their reach now.

---

From the Command Center's top tier, Athan could see the full breadth of the construction yards through the panoramic windows. Industrial cranes swung modular parts into place while haulers crawled between the steel frames of half-built ships, their scaffolding steaming in the cold.

Below him, the drydocks hummed with ceaseless motion. Twenty-five sleek shuttles, wrapped in scaffolding and vapor, were queued for final delivery as part of the latest UER order. Workers in armored suits moved between the scaffolding, their mag-boots keeping them anchored to girders that hadn't been welded closed yet.

Athan sipped his espresso, lukewarm and bitter by now.

His interface pulsed.

[Mission Complete: 'Opening the Stars']
Successfully launch an FTL-capable starship and achieve Faster-Than-Light Speed.
Reward Unlocked: Blueprint Set: Pioneer Workshop

As the update on his interface faded, a new one popped up.

[New Mission: 'Founders of the Fleet' - Progress 5.5% ]
Establish Pioneer Workshop on Genesis Platform and manufacture 18 scout-class vessels over 40 months - Progress: 1/18

Reward: Unlocks Farmstead Expansion

He stared at the alert, and whatever had been wound tight in him finally went still.

Luca had done it.

They’d solved it. The oscillation harmonics, the Reality Anchor Field stabilization, every engineering nightmare they had wrestled with for months in simulators. The FTL drive had held, and The Triumph of Darron was gone. Beyond the solar system now.

He leaned back in his chair, resting his cup on the console. Through the window, a new mining ship frame began to rotate, as its grapplers shifted it into launch alignment.

He could almost hear Maddie’s voice in his head. “Knew he could do it. Just wish I could’ve been there to see it."

Something in his chest unlocked.

Maddie would’ve been proud. She would’ve cried and cheered at the same time.

Matteo was back on the Moon, leading his team near Mare Tranquillitatis. The fool boy had leveled up again and sent Athan a blurry selfie with a blood-splattered pickaxe, grinning like a lunatic beside a collapsed obsidian behemoth.

While Alessio had just touched down in New Hampshire, off to start school with Maddie’s parents, he hadn’t said much on the call. Sixteen now, quiet and sharp. There was a lot of Maddie in him, too much sometimes.

Athan had wanted to call Luca, but the new comms relay had gone up just as the Triumph initialized its Vanguard Drive. Too late to matter now anyway. He hadn’t said goodbye. Hadn’t said how proud he was.

The buzz of the Command Center roared back into focus. A junior engineer called out adjustments to fabrication queue 22. Someone else flagged a parts shortage from Deimos. One of the orbital tugs needed recalibration on its grav-hooks. He could hear it all, and none of it.

His sons were out there. Luca was breaking the edge of space while Matteo clawed through monster-infested tunnels chasing his next level-up. And back in New Hampshire, Alessio watched the sky with his mother’s eyes.

Athan, meanwhile, was building the ships, laying the roads while keeping the lights on.

Because Maddie had believed in something, and so did he. That Genesis wasn’t just a space platform or a yard, it was a seed. That one day, when Earth was no longer burning, Athan would be ready with fuel, ships, and a way forward.

“Push the next four haulers to the priority queue,” he said softly to his assistant. “And spin up the scout-class lines. I want prototypes ready before the end of the quarter.” They'd learned a lot from building the Triumph, and now they had to build seventeen more. None of them would have Luca's touch.

He looked back out to the stars, faint motes beyond the glare of industrial floodlights.

“Be safe, Luca,” he said, low and rough. “And make something worth the cost.”

With a final sip of bitter coffee, Athan Rossi turned back to his station.

The next fleet wouldn’t build itself.