Chapter 27 - Welcome to Alpha Centauri

The ship's vibration deepened as the Triumph of Darron decelerated into Alpha Centauri, the FTL drive winding down around them. Luca gripped the armrests of the captain's chair and pretended that was a normal thing to do, arriving in another star system. His stomach disagreed. Everyone sat at their stations, doing a much better job of looking like they belonged here.

[Entering Alpha Centauri]

His interface lit up:

[Mission: Alpha Centauri Survey Expedition - Progress: 40% ]
Checkpoint 1: Depart Sol System with a qualified crew - [Complete]
Checkpoint 2: Arrive in Alpha Centauri - [Complete]
Checkpoint 3: Map all planetary bodies and major asteroid fields - [0/? Mapped]
Checkpoint 4: Conduct surface surveys on habitable zone planet - [0/? Mapped]
Checkpoint 5: Return with verifiable data - [Pending]
Reward: See Mission Compensation Table.

"Anything on the signal?" Luca asked.

Zoe didn't look up from her display. "Nothing since that ripple two days ago." She paused. "But that doesn't mean it's gone."

"I'm telling you," Ryan said. "It was probably just an anomaly. Nothing could have gotten through the shielding."

Luca leaned back in the captain’s chair, one leg crossed over the other, projecting an ease he was nowhere close to feeling. The edge of the next frontier, right outside that viewport, and he felt like he might vibrate right out of his skin.

All that waiting, all that prep, and now they were here. Fear hit harder than excitement. He'd pictured this moment differently. But they had made it. No fiery explosions, no getting lost in the Oort Cloud. That had to count for something.

He stared past the main viewport where the stars of Alpha Centauri sat against the dark, distant and small. Proxima Centauri hung as a lonely red dot, and Alpha Centauri A and B were pinpricks separated by distances his brain refused to process, which was deeply underwhelming.

No fireworks. No dramatic color show. Just pinpricks of light at distances his brain kept refusing to calculate. Still, they were the first humans to see this with their own eyes.

Then Joey's voice broke across the bridge. "Finally, some real stars!"

Always the dramatics with that guy. Luca almost told him they were pinpricks on a screen and to calm down, but Joey was already doing his arms-spread thing, so there was no stopping it.

The energy caught fire around the bridge. Zoe exhaled and unbuckled herself from her chair. "Holy shit, we're here," she said, running a hand through her dreadlocks.

She spun around, spotted Ryan still glued to his screen like the nerd he was, and threw her arms around him before he could react. "Ryan!" she practically screamed.

"We made it, Ry," she said, her words muffled against his shoulder. Ryan hesitated for a second before wrapping an arm around her, a grin crossing his face.

Before Luca could react, Emily was out of her chair, arms around him. He could feel her trembling.

"We actually did it," she said against his ear. Her breath was warm on his neck.

For a moment, the bridge chaos faded. Luca's arms came up automatically, holding her close, then she pulled back slightly, tilting her head up, close enough that he could count the freckles on her nose.

Luca didn’t move, couldn’t move. The space between them had vanished, every breath shared. Her eyes flicked down to his lips, then back up.

One inch closer and they’d fall into it.

Joey's voice cut through their moment. "Alright, you two, get a room! Some of us are trying to make history over here!"

Emily pulled back, laughing despite the tears in her eyes, her hands lingering on his shoulders before she stepped back.

His pulse hadn't settled, and he could still feel the warmth where she'd touched him. Right there on the bridge, in front of everyone.

He watched her return to her station, catching the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She only did that when flustered. She'd probably been waiting for him to figure it out for longer than he cared to admit.

He knew what that was. She knew what that was. But they were in the middle of a bridge full of people, in another star system, and his brain had apparently decided now was the time to be an idiot about it, which was cool, very helpful, and absolutely something he'd probably figure out later.

As the celebration ebbed, the crew drifted back to their stations. Over 800 AUs from Proxima Centauri, and far further from Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman, the three stars were little more than points of light. They had known this, but knowing and seeing were two different things.

“Danny,” Luca called over his shoulder. “Let’s get the sensors up. Time to see what we’re working with.”

He got nothing. He twisted in his chair, eyebrows raised. “Danny?”

Danny jerked like he’d been caught stealing cookies from the jar, his datapad clutched in his hands. His eyes snapped from Ryan and Zoe back to Luca, wide and panicked. “What? Oh, yeah, sorry. On it,” he stammered, fumbling to bring the interface online.

Luca caught Danny’s eyes lingering on Zoe a second too long, the pink creeping up his neck. He’d been watching her and Ryan lean into each other, and he looked like he’d been caught watching something he shouldn’t. That made it so much better.

“Focus, Danny,” Luca said, smirking despite himself. “We’re not here to sightsee.”

“Right. Got it,” Danny mumbled, his voice a little higher than usual as he began the deployment sequence. “Ryan, I need you on the primary array extension.”

Ryan immediately shifted from his moment with Zoe, all business now. “Got it, starting primary deployment.” A vibration rolled through the hull as mechanical systems came to life. Luca had no idea what half those systems did, but they sounded expensive.

“Telescopic arrays extending,” Ryan reported. “Port and starboard sensor masts deploying. Full extension in thirty seconds.”

Danny was hunched over his station now. “Main dish first, then secondary calibration. The gravitational lensing from the subspace exit might have thrown off our baseline readings. I want to re-anchor before we trust anything the array gives us.”

Luca understood maybe sixty percent of that. He nodded like he understood all of it.

Ryan glanced at his readout. “Main dish is locked. Signal’s clean, no interference from drive residuals.”

“Good. Activating primary sweep.” Danny’s hands moved across the console. The viewport remained dark for a moment, then lines and markers blinked to life, outlining the positions of Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri A and B. Distance readings and orbital data streamed in alongside each star marker.

“There we go,” Danny said. “Pretty much as expected from Earth-based observations, but now we’re getting real-time data.”

Luca squinted at the display. Still just dots. All that effort for a couple of damn dots on the screen.

The crew settled into their work, the chatter quieter now. The high was fading. The question none of them had said out loud yet was already sitting on the bridge.

He pulled up his interface. Level 60. The same number he’d been staring at for almost two years. No new class options. No quiet pulse from the System telling him the rules had changed.

But that was the problem. The interface always said Level 60. It said Level 60 back on Earth, too, where the cap was definitely active. There was no line that read “Cap: Active” or “Cap: Removed.” The System didn’t label its own walls. It just stopped giving you XP, and you figured out the rest.

Which meant he had no idea if anything had changed. None of them did.

“Hey,” Luca said, louder than he intended. “How do we check?”

The bridge went quiet. Everyone looked at him.

Emily frowned. “Check what?”

“The cap.” He gestured at his interface. “It looks exactly the same as it did in Sol. But it always looked like this. There’s no indicator. No toggle. The System doesn’t tell you you’re capped. It just stops letting you level.”

One by one, they pulled up their own interfaces, scrolling, searching for something that wasn’t there.

“He’s right,” Ryan said slowly. “There’s nothing. No status. No flag.”

“So we don’t know,” Zoe said.

“We don’t know,” Luca confirmed. “The only way to find out is to gain XP. And the only way to gain XP is combat or kill-requirement missions. Neither of which we have access to eight hundred AUs from the nearest planet.”

Chris leaned back hard enough that his chair creaked. “You’re telling me we flew four light-years and we can’t even tell if it worked?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

So that was fun.

Luca turned in his chair. “Danny. Can you invent something? Discover something? You’re a scientist. Catalog a new star, do something the System might count as professional XP.”

Danny stared at him. “You want me to just... make a discovery.”

“Yes.”

“Right now.”

“Right now.”

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “It doesn’t work like that, Luca. Professional XP is real, but it’s not something I can force. It accumulates through sustained work. Breakthroughs, genuine ones, not me pointing a sensor at Proxima Centauri and going ‘look, a star.’ The System knows the difference.”

“How long would that take?” Luca asked. He already knew and was grasping at straws.

“Weeks. Months, maybe. Depends on what we find once we actually get to a planet and start real surveys. I need data I don’t have yet, problems I haven’t solved yet. You can’t shortcut that.”

“So we’re blind,” Joey said, because he could always be counted on to say the thing nobody wanted to hear. “We came all this way, and we literally cannot tell if the cap broke until Danny has a eureka moment or something tries to kill us.”

Luca wanted to punch him. Right in his stupid, pragmatic face. “Thanks, Joey.”

“He’s not wrong, though,” Emily said quietly.

That one landed. Because she was right, and Joey was right, and Luca hated both of those things equally.

The whole point of coming here, besides the surveying and getting paid, was to grow again. To get past the wall that had frozen every human on Earth for two years. To feel that pulse after a fight, that proof that they were getting stronger. The flatline where progress used to be had started to itch months ago. Now it burned.

Ryan looked back at his display, jaw hard. Zoe’s arms were crossed tight. Emily had gone still, her expression locked down.

The answer was out there. Past eight hundred AUs of empty space, on whatever world Proxima Centauri kept in its orbit. They just had to get there first, and hope that whatever tested them didn’t kill them before they got it.

Luca let his eyes drift back to the viewport. Proxima Centauri sat where it had been sitting for billions of years, not caring even a little that they'd shown up. They were the first humans in another star system.

That had to count for something. Even if the System wouldn’t confirm it.