Chapter 8: TYCHO STATION
The transport was a cargo hauler called the Gideon's Wake, and it smelled like recycled air and industrial lubricant. I shared a cramped passenger compartment with three other travelers—two miners heading for work contracts and a woman who never gave her name and spent the entire journey staring at the bulkhead like it owed her money.
Ceres shrank in the viewport until it was just another point of light among millions. I watched it disappear and felt something loosen in my chest. Not relief, exactly. More like the release of a held breath.
My first home in this universe, vanishing behind me. Three weeks of violence, discovery, and desperate survival, reduced to a fading dot against the black.
Good riddance.
Tycho Station announced itself long before we docked.
The Nauvoo dominated everything—a massive generation ship under construction, its skeletal frame surrounded by scaffolding and work pods like insects swarming a carcass. Even unfinished, it dwarfed every other vessel in the system. The Mormons had commissioned it to carry their faithful to the stars, a journey of generations across the void.
I knew what that ship would become. The Behemoth, eventually. The first human vessel to enter the Ring gate. A piece of history that didn't know it yet.
For now, it was just a construction project that employed half the station.
Tycho itself was different from Ceres—cleaner, more organized, with the peculiar energy of a place that had purpose beyond mere survival. The OPA's fingerprints were everywhere, but it was a different kind of OPA than the warehouse thugs I'd fought. Fred Johnson's faction. Political, ambitious, working toward something larger than protection rackets and smuggling routes.
I kept my head down through customs, my Kwame identity passing without incident. Ceres was a long way away. Whatever reputation I'd built there hadn't followed me here.
The employment office assigned me to secondary maintenance—unglamorous work on the station's outer systems, far from the Nauvoo construction and the important people who ran things. Perfect.
My supervisor was a tired-looking Earther named Pryce who'd clearly drawn the short straw when it came to managing new hires. He handed me a work tablet, pointed me toward the equipment lockers, and lost interest before I'd finished asking questions.
"Just fix what's broken and don't break anything new," he said. "Shift's twelve hours. Pay's deposited weekly. Don't be late."
I wasn't late.
The first week was orientation. Learning the station's systems, which were similar enough to Ceres that I could adapt quickly. Finding the rhythm of shift rotations, meal breaks, sleep cycles. Mapping the corridors in my head until I could navigate blindfolded.
The second week, I started watching.
Fred Johnson appeared during a shift change—a stocky Earther with the bearing of a man who'd commanded soldiers and now commanded something larger. The Butcher of Anderson Station, they called him. The man who'd ordered marines to fire on civilians, then switched sides when the guilt became too heavy.
I kept my distance. Johnson noticed things. Noticed people. Getting on his radar this early would be a mistake.
Camina Drummer was harder to avoid. She ran a cargo crew with brutal efficiency, her voice cutting through the docking bay like a blade. Hard-faced, sharp-eyed, with OPA tattoos visible at her collar and the particular economy of motion that marked someone who'd survived the Belt's worst.
I liked her immediately, which was a problem. Liking people meant wanting to help them. Wanting to help them meant getting involved. Getting involved meant attention.
I stayed invisible instead.
Off-shift, I found an abandoned cargo bay in the station's lower levels. Scheduled for renovation, according to the work orders. Currently empty, forgotten, perfect.
I started testing my body.
The strength I'd discovered on Ceres wasn't a fluke. Two months of recovery and then chaos hadn't given me time to understand it, but now I could experiment systematically. Lifting exercises with progressively heavier cargo containers. Speed drills through the cramped corridors. Reflex training against improvised targets.
The results exceeded expectations.
I was stronger than I'd been on Ceres. Faster. More coordinated. The body I'd inherited from Kwame had always been lean, built for low-G work rather than combat, but something was changing. The muscles responded differently than they should. Movements that had required conscious effort became instinctive.
After a week of training, I could lift containers that should have required mechanical assistance.
After two weeks, I could move through obstacle courses faster than my eyes could track.
After a month, I stopped being able to find training partners who could keep up.
The stars from Tycho looked different than from Ceres.
I found a quiet observation point near the cargo processing center—a small alcove with a viewport that faced away from the Nauvoo's construction lights. Off-shift, when the corridors emptied and the station settled into its night cycle, I'd sit there and watch the universe spin slowly past.
My old life surfaced sometimes. Fragments of Baltimore, of Earth, of the person I'd been before waking up in a body that wasn't mine. The memories felt distant now, like scenes from a movie I'd watched years ago. Important once, but fading.
That person was dead. The pressure accident that killed Kwame had killed whatever I'd been before too. What remained was something new—a soldier's training in a Belter's body, with abilities that neither life could explain.
I let the memories go. Watched them drift away like debris in vacuum.
This was my life now. These stars, this station, the ship I planned to board in four months.
I had work to do.
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