The Key of Astrea

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People flocked to Lan Station with visions of striking it rich mining the asteroids. Others dreamed of touring the galaxy. The station's residents made their living providing food, drink, and pleasure to these entrepreneurs and tourists. Jack Spriggan knew all these people had one thing in common: they flew spaceships, and ships needed maintenance. So he'd done the logical thing and opened a repair shop.

Jack turned on a hot-water kettle and arranged a reusable filter over a glass urn. As a member of Lan Station's Coffee Enthusiast's Club, he had recently learned how to make a pour over. While he waited for the pot to heat, Jack looked out through the skylight of his loft. Hundreds of spaceships swarmed like insects inside the ring-shaped Terminal. Small black fighters escorted green cargo ships. White cruise ships carried tourists to faraway destinations. The control station configured them into a sphere to maximize the efficiency of each activation.

As Jack watched, the blue glow of the Terminal intensified. For a moment, everything in the workshop took on a blue hue. Then the Terminal climaxed in a flash of brilliant white. The ball of ships disappeared, and in its place, a massive pill-shaped warship appeared along with its strike group.

Jack recognized it as one of the ten Terminal Defenders. At a length of 1,914 meters and with a beam of 610 meters, it reached from one side of the station to the other. With crews of over ninety-six thousand each, the Defenders were cities unto themselves. These warships were impressive, but what truly made them formidable was their ability to teleport short distances through space on their own. They were the only ships capable of this feat, and it allowed them to jump behind their enemies, or away from projectiles, making them undefeated in battle. Terminals, however, were still required for traveling the thousands of light years between systems.

Jack turned from the skylight, lifted the kettle, and poured hot water over his ground coffee, careful to avoid the light spots where the coffee was blooming. He leaned over and inhaled the rich aroma as the brew dripped into a stained ceramic mug. Too bad the beans are flavorless crap, Jack thought. If I ever get planetside, the first thing I'm doing is buying my weight in gourmet coffee.

Lan Station's pods measured forty meters wide, twenty meters tall, and eighty meters long. They were attached by spokes strung to the outside of the station. With the Terminal being tidally locked, one side always faced the star, leaving the other in shadow.

Jack could only afford a pod on the dark side and considered it unsuitable for living. The situation was okay; he just used one-third of the pod for his shop and living space anyway. The other two-thirds remained in cold vacuum, perfect to house his ship.

Taking his steaming mug, Jack climbed down the stairs from his living quarters to his workshop. A narrow window to his left provided a glimpse into the hangar and the ship inside. It was a Harbinger. Back in his home system of Balt, harbingers were large birds of prey. Even before he'd enlisted as a pilot in the First Galactic War, Jack was in love with the mighty warcraft. Like the birds, the ships were known for their stealth. Their armor and shield technology absorbed and reflected radar and lidar signals. Active cooling systems concealed their heat signatures. Cloaking devices hid their electromagnetic radiation. Their hulls were capable of shifting color from white to black. With its thrusters off, his Harbinger was invisible to all forms of detection.

Jack had trained hard to become one of Balt's best pilots and had created a name for himself. He was proud to serve under fleet admiral Brigham Newton, who had led them to victory after victory. Piloting his ship into battle, confident of Admiral Newton's plans, Jack had felt alive in those days. But not even the invincible Newton could win against Tyr. After the war, Jack's home system, Balt, had been forced to retire its entire fleet. He'd pulled some strings, bought a Harbinger before it was scrapped, and named her the Celestial Strider.