Chapter 268 - Intake

The habitation module came online at 1147.

Luca stood at the threshold with Emily at his shoulder, Athan two steps behind. The morning's recruits were two corridors back in a Genesis lounge, drinking platform coffee while Emily ran through the agenda.

The new habitation module, now attached to the platform, drew power, and the lights dimmed for a moment as the Genesis Platform's power flow readjusted. The doors from the neighboring module slid open, and for half a second nothing happened. Then the new module flickered and hummed, its floor lights came up in sequence. Air handlers flicked once and caught. A low white fog rolled along the empty corridor, thin and cold, clinging to the bare deck plates before the circulation system pushed it apart.

"Quantum nanites," Eleanor whispered beside him, sitting on her wheelchair so she could join the team for the breakouts.

"Is that a fact?" asked Danny.

"That's the theory," she replied. "Pulling mass from somewhere."

Luca stepped through and left them to their discussion. Emily and Athan came with him.

Before the furniture, before the plants, before any soil or trees or benches or doors closed on private apartments, the module was all structure. Four open decks of terraced apartments rose on either side of a central corridor, clean balconies stacked above clean balconies, every surface pale and hard and untouched. Luca had seen modules like this since day one. In a month or two, techs would start softening it with planters, young trees, flowering vines, and benches where people could sit, transforming it from a habitation module into a home. .

Athan sighed. "Now we furnish it," he said.

Genesis techs were already pushing in cots, modular tables, privacy screens, storage lockers, and temporary furniture to make the place livable for three weeks. The candidates would sleep in apartments, eat in the topside cafeteria, and train on a floor that still held the sterile chill of System fabrication.

The module was separated from the Genesis by design, with two airlocks, one shuttle bay and no casual corridor traffic. Their crew would live here, eat here, train here, and be evaluated here. The Triumph would sit five kilometers off the station, out of reach until the roster locked.

Emily liked the module. He could see it in her shoulders, the way she ticked items off her tablet. She had been working on the schedules and had wanted no wandering or distractions. She had designed half this plan on the principle that a recruit you had to chase down was a recruit you couldn't put on a ship, and Genesis security had given her exactly the box she'd asked for.

Luca looked toward the far side of the module and thought about what was five kilometers away. The Triumph carried the Forge, the Cartography Array, and eight Vanguard bundles installed across its decks. Beyond that waited a Vault four light-years out, a thousand Varnathi in stasis, a fragment of a megastructure, and seven stars that had stopped existing in eighteen months.

Ninety-six people were going to walk into this module and sign on for an expedition that wasn't an expedition, and the ship was going to stay out of reach until the last possible day. That was the deal.

"It's working," Athan said.

"Looks like it."

"Don't let them feel caged." Athan said. "They'll behave like prisoners if you treat them like prisoners. Treat them like a class on the first day of school, and they'll behave like that instead."

Emily nodded once without looking up. "Already in the orientation script."

Athan made a small sound that was probably approval. Luca took the win.

The class on the first day of school. Yeah. That part was true too. In about three hours, his future crew was going to walk into this module believing they had been chosen for the best thing anyone had ever offered them, and his job was to keep that belief alive. Normal captain work. Apparently.

Erik was on the training floor at 1245.

Luca went down because he wanted to see the room before the candidates did. The lights were on full, the mats were laid out in a pattern he didn't recognize, and Erik was standing in the middle of it with his hands in his pockets, looking like he'd built a problem and wanted it to confess.

"Captain."

"What is it today?"

"A scenario." Erik nodded at the mats without taking his hands out of his pockets. "Mixed teams. Four-person extraction and an injured operator. Two minutes to brief, six minutes to execute, no take-backs."

"What are you watching for?"

"Whether your team leads will follow an order they don't agree with, and whether the rest of the team holds when their lead breaks. By Friday, I will know which leads will run a mission for you and which will run a mission for themselves." He looked up. "You can have either kind on the ship."

Luca looked at the mats.

"I'll watch from the back wall," he said.

"Good. Don't watch the team leaders. Watch their seconds. The leads know they're being evaluated, so they'll perform. The seconds tell you the truth. If the second backs the leader's calls, then, the leader is real. If the second is doing the actual work while the lead postures, promote the second."

Emily's intake machine ate its first candidates at 1330.

Karen had arrived the day before with two teams of psychologists, three medical specialists, and a clipboard that made Emily's tablet look casual. Sabine ran the psych side. A woman named Dr. Mehta ran the medical side under Joey.

Emily had the master schedule projected onto the common-area wall, with Psych, Medical, Department breakouts, and Combat running as four separate columns. Every candidate routed through all four, with department placement sessions stacked into the afternoons.

Luca looked at the schedule and wondered how many of these people would still be alive in two years.

He didn't have that number. He wouldn't have it for two years. Midnight Veil had taught him what useful dread felt like. You didn't bring it to officer meetings. You didn't dwell on it. You let it stand in the corner and keep its mouth shut unless it had something actionable. Some of these people weren't coming home. He didn't know which. Neither did they.

The afternoon arrivals started at 1500. Desert Sparks came through first, Gabriela already asking Ryan questions before she'd cleared the airlock.

Guerreiros do Sol came in behind them and brought the volume up by about forty decibels.

Gabriel was at the front with both hands raised in greeting, calling something to Joey across the lounge before he'd cleared the seal, and the rest of the Rio team was right behind him laughing at whatever it was. Maria came through last with her bag over one shoulder and her eyes on Joey from the moment she crossed the threshold.

Maria walked across the lounge, set her bag down, and put a hand on his arm. The touch was brief and entirely visible. She said something low that Luca chose not listen to and Joey said something back. They didn't kiss or hug. She picked her bag up again and went to stand with Gabriel.

Luca caught it and kept his face neutral, because apparently he was a mature adult now, it was a terrible development.

"Restrained," Emily said under her breath.

"Very."

"For Maria."

"Sure."

Joey refused eye contact for the next ten minutes, which, while not entirely rare, likely meant something.

The Argonauts came in third, exuding southern Italian charm. Marco had rehearsed the arrival and it showed. He shook every officer's hand individually and remembered every name. His accent landed on Luca's ear like home, the same vowels his uncles used at the dinner table, and Luca had to remind himself that being charmed was the point.

Then the Sunwalkers were the last through, and the lounge got louder in the one way Luca did not mind.

Paco came off the shuttle first with a guitar case in each hand and a grin that took up most of his face. Carmen was right behind him with her own case. Lucia brought a ukulele. Three more cases came out on the cart behind them. The Sunwalkers had brought, by Luca's quick count, more stringed instruments than weapons.

"Captain," Paco said, setting one case down to shake Luca's hand. "Hello. We are very happy to be here."

"Welcome, Paco."

"The module," Paco said, looking around with frank delight, "is beautiful."

"Genesis built it."

"Then Genesis is also beautiful." He turned and shook Athan's hand without missing a step. "Sir."

Athan almost smiled.

Paco was twenty-two. Carmen was nineteen. They had brought guitars because they thought they were going on the best adventure of their lives, and they were. They knew what adventures cost. That part wasn't lost on him.

He watched Paco laugh and was glad he'd invited them.

The evening shuttle brought four more teams.

The Soñadores came in first, all seven of them, half would join the engineering team and the other half trying to figure out which of Danny's papers they wanted to ask him about first. Their lead, Camila, made a beeline for Ryan with a folder of schematics. Ryan was visibly pleased. Sabrina, at Ryan's elbow, introduced herself.

Furia Andina came off the second airlock with Rodrigo at the front and a giant bird strutting behind him.

Luca had known Plumitas was coming. He had read the brief. He had, in fact, signed off on the brief.

The team even had a pool going on the bird. Furia Andina was a Venezuelan team operating out of Chile, and the brief had said only "avian companion." Joey had put his money on a parrot. Danny had taken macaw. Luca had backed toucan with real conviction, on the logic that a Venezuelan team would bring something colorful and ridiculous, and he had been looking forward to it.

None of that prepared him for the experience of an Andean condor staring at him across a Genesis Platform receiving lounge from approximately three meters away.

A normal Andean condor stood about three to four feet tall. Plumitas cleared seven. The System had done something to her, the way the System had done something to the jaguars and the mustangs and Davar, and the result was a bird that walked behind Rodrigo on her own two feet at roughly eye level with most of the team. Black feathers. White ruff. Yellow eyes that assessed Luca and conditionally spared him.

Davar, on Arash's shoulder fifteen meters back, fixed Plumitas with one amber eye and did not move.

Plumitas fixed Davar with one yellow eye and did not move.

"¿Eso qué es?" Sabrina said from across the lounge, not quietly at all. "¿Están locos?"

"We are going to need a logistics meeting," Emily said, quietly.

"Yeah."

Carla stepped up beside Rodrigo and answered the question before anyone asked it, in the tone of a woman who had answered it a hundred times. Plumitas had her own System-fitted armor, plated across the chest and shoulders, talons sheathed when she wasn't working. She had also, Carla added, accounted for more confirmed monster kills in the last eighteen months than half the team standing behind her. While technically reassuring, it was also a thing Luca would believe when he saw it.

Plumitas was beautiful, in that dangerous predatory way that something can be beautiful but can also kill you. She was also seven feet of logistics with wings, knives for feet, and an apparent interest in judging him. Davar and Plumitas brought the zoo up another notch, on top of the jaguars and Pixel and the mustangs. The list of things on the Triumph that watched him was getting longer.

Die Stürmer came in third, smiling and loose-limbed, six of them spilling through the airlock already mid-conversation. Klaus was telling Anke a story with both hands. Sven had his jacket unzipped and was carrying somebody else's bag. Petra and Steffi came through together laughing about something. Lena was at the back, hair down, grinning at whatever Petra had just said.

The recognition rolled across the lounge in a wave. Klaus spotted Ryan first and let out a "Ryan!" that carried, and then they were all on him, hugs and shoulder claps, Anke kissing his cheek, Sven asking when they were going clubbing again. Ryan was laughing and saying next time, next time and shaking hands and making the round.

Lena came last and hugged him, said something low that Luca couldn't hear, and stepped back.

Ryan's cheeks went red.

Not embarrassed-red. Caught-red. The specific shade of a man whose body had remembered something his face had not yet caught up to.

Luca, professional captain that he was, did not laugh.

Sabrina, standing about ten feet away with the Soñadores folder still in her hand, did not laugh either. She just watched Ryan's face do its thing, took a small breath through her nose, and went back to whatever Camila was saying without changing her expression. Camila kept talking at exactly the same pace, which was, Luca thought, kind of her.

Ryan finished the round, handed Lena off to Emily for the orientation walk, and made it to the corridor before he pulled Luca aside.

"Two months ago," Ryan said.

"I know."

"Munich."

"I know."

"It's fine. We're fine. She's fine."

"I know."

"I'm just telling you."

"I appreciate it."

"Sabrina saw."

"Oh yeah, she did."

Ryan exhaled, shook out his hands once, and went back to work. Luca watched him go and made a note to put Lena on a different department interview slot than Ryan, and moved on.

The Yakuza team came off the fourth airlock and the lounge went quiet for about three seconds. Luca would need to get their official team name at some point. Aiko came first, she didn't bow, just a straight handshake and a smile. Sato and Kenta followed her. Takashi and Aya came next, with Rina at the back. The yakuza tattoos were not visible under the travel clothes, but everyone in the lounge already knew they were there.

"Captain Rossi," Aiko said. "Thank you. For letting us come."

"Welcome aboard, Aiko."

"We were not on your list."

"You earned the slot."

"We will earn it again." The smile was small and entirely serious. Behind her, Sato had not moved, but Kenta dipped his head once at Luca, the smallest acknowledgement, and Rina at the back did the same without looking up from her bag. Six people who had inserted themselves into a closed roster and who now, visibly, intended to spend the next two years proving the captain right.

"I know you will," Luca said. "It's good to have you."