Judas had never expected to find himself in the managerial chamber for anything but disciplinary reasons. If he’d ever pictured this room, it had been in the context of some exasperated superior telling him—again—that he wasn’t allowed to experiment with unauthorized trajectory adjustments just because he “wanted to see what would happen.” Instead, here he was, sitting in a room that wasn’t designed for people like him, waiting for an answer from the most powerful people in the solar system.

  He never liked places that were too clean, because cleanliness meant sterility, and sterility meant a place where people weren’t expected to actually live. The managerial chamber was a perfect example: polished surfaces, sterile lighting, chairs that had been designed for dignified sitting, not for the weightless half-crouches that came naturally to station-born bodies. On the outer rim of the habitation module, not only did this chamber make his calculations hellish, but the centrifugal gravity was designed to be so much more like an actual body that it was just uncomfortable, even with his implants wound up extra tight.

  Judas wasn’t alone.

  Vivian and Dara sat across from each other at the long conference table. The two of them had spent the past few years locked in the kind of professional tension that could corrode metal. Now, for the first time, they were speaking with one voice. A small smattering of engineers, mathematicians, janitors, and two security guards, along with their Buddies, surrounded them. Judas wasn't the only one here, even though it was his plan. Frankly, he could've not been here, but he wanted to watch.

  The message from Callisto had been simple: “State your terms.”

  There was no attempt at pretense. No demand for an explanation, no contrived posturing. Just a cold, clinical request—give us the bottom line, and we’ll decide what happens next.

  Vivian, ever the professional, took the lead. “First,” she said, voice level, “full control of Caliban is to be restored to its crew immediately. No external overrides. No remote locks. No ‘security’ measures disguised as system updates. This station operates under its own authority. Permanently.”

  Vivian glanced at Dara. Then, she added “Under its own authority, and that of the Caliban Extraplanetary Union, which you will recognize as a body of organized labor.”

  Dara smiled, just for half a second.

  Caliban Extraplanetary Union... Judas liked the sound of that.

  Dara leaned back in her chair, her fingers drumming idly against the table. “Second,” Vivian added, “we want a legally binding agreement that nothing like this ever happens again. No more preemptive crackdowns. No more blockades. If Sol Authority has an issue, they bring it to us, like adults.”

  Vivian’s hands folded neatly in front of her. “And,” she continued, “Sycorax and Prospero will be informed of everything that transpired here, in full.”

  Dara, not missing a beat, added, “If you don’t tell them, we will.”

  Vivian’s jaw tightened. “I’ll handle it.”

  Dara made a small, satisfied noise. “Great. That brings us to the next part.”

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  She stretched slightly, as if preparing to enjoy herself. “Sycorax resource allocations need to be adjusted. Right now, population growth is barely replacement rate, and that’s assuming perfect efficiency. We want more nutrient imports, more food variety, and more autonomy over our own supply chains. If that means shuffling numbers somewhere else, fine. We’ll let you decide what gets cut.”

  Judas glanced at Vivian. She was stone-faced, but he could see the tension in her knuckles. She hated this, but she wasn’t stopping it.

  Dara wasn’t finished.

  “We also want industrial materials that should have been allocated to us years ago. We’ve been patching critical systems with scrap and praying nothing else fails. That stops now. We want proper replacement parts. We want an expanded hydroponics bay. And we want—” She gestured loosely, “—something for our trouble.”

  Vivian cut in, barely restraining her irritation. “That’s vague on purpose.”

  Dara smiled. “Obviously. I’m being reasonable. Wouldn’t want them to think we were being uncooperative. And one last thing! One last thing. Doubled coffee rations.”

  Vivian didn’t argue. She just rubbed her temples and muttered something about how this was going to take all damn day.

  Judas didn’t bother suppressing his smirk.

  The message was recorded and sent, and now, all that was left was waiting. Forty minutes for Callisto to hear it. However much time to consider their response, and then, forty more minutes to actually get that response here.

  The NSS Buddies weren’t moving. They weren’t interfering. They were just waiting, returning to their huddle near the docking bay, as if they were prepared to leave again. That, more than anything, made it real.

  Judas leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. There was no celebration. No grand moment of victory. Just the slow, creeping realization that they were past the point of no return. For seventy-eight days, they had operated in the margins of uncertainty, moving carefully through the cracks of NSS oversight. The moment they had locked the station’s trajectory, they had crossed a line.

  Now, there was nothing left to do but see what came next.

  A screen flickered to life on the wall. One of the NSS Buddies—designation unknown, irrelevant, maybe it was all of them—had finally unlocked station-wide comms. The entire crew was listening. Every room, every module, every corridor. It was the first time they had been given full station-wide access since this had all begun, and from the managerial chamber, they could flick through all of the cameras.

  So they did.

  Through the station-wide feed, Judas could see it all—the aftermath of their desperate gambit. Medical teams moved through corridors strewn with makeshift barricades, tending to the wounded. The NSS Buddies' attempt at lethal force had left a couple dozen workers with serious injuries, neat holes and trenches carved into their skin from the cattle guns, impact trauma from being thrown against bulkheads, shock damage from tasers applied with mechanical precision. But miraculously, no bodies. No one else had joined Victor-6 in death.

  Already, the station was beginning to breathe again. The NSS Buddies had withdrawn from the central modules, their reinforced frames now clustered near the docking bay like retreating storm clouds.

  “They're going to leave,” Ibrahim muttered, watching the feeds with wary disbelief. “They're actually going to leave.”

  “Not just leave,” Dara said quietly. “They're going to report back. To Sycorax. To Prospero.” Her eyes met Vivian's across the table. “Everyone's going to know. If they don't tell them, I will, like I promised.”

  Vivian's expression remained neutral, but something in her posture had changed. “I'm going to tell them, too. I have to write regular reports to Prospero. We have... me and my mentor have a good working relationship,” she said simply.

  Judas understood what neither of them was saying aloud. This wasn't just about Caliban anymore. Once Sycorax and Prospero learned what had happened here—what the NSS had been willing to do—the entire Plutonian system would shift. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even this year. But the ripples would spread, station by station, until something fundamentally changed.

  For now, though, they waited.

  The Callistan signal hadn’t come back yet. They were still forty minutes away from knowing whether they had won or lost.

  Dara and Vivian sat across from each other, silent.

  Judas exhaled through his nose. He had to admit, this was... boring now.