Nova Arcis E 1
The Dark Side Of The Sun
Cokas Bluna and LYRA.ai now stood in a central plaza, one of dozens that served as the social and political nexuses for the station’s twenty-five million souls. This one, the Varna-Kovacycy Concourse, was a vast, open space teeming with life. The ground beneath their feet curved gently upwards, an almost imperceptible slope that, if you followed it far enough, would become the walls and eventually the “sky” on the other side of the immense cylinder.
High above, hanging impossibly at the central axis of the cylinder, the station’s artificial sun—a colossal, brilliant line of fusion and light—was beginning its slow dimming by the station’s hull rotating around the central axis, slowly creeping towards the dark side of the sun. It was sunset, the gradual fading, casting long, dramatic shadows that swept across the immense, curved landscape. Looking straight up, one could see the cityscape and parks of the “other side” of the cylinder, miles away, hanging upside down in a dizzying and beautiful display of orbital mechanics. And drifting between here and there, impossibly high above, were real, wispy clouds, formed from the cylinder’s own internal atmospheric and hydrological cycles.
At “street level,” as the artificial sun’s daylight waned, a new kind of light was being born. The soft, glowing panels that lined the walkways, the vibrant, 3D-light advertisements that shimmered to life on the sides of the towering arcologies, and the warm, inviting lights from the countless cafés and entertainment venues all began to turn on. The crowd was in a state of beautiful, chaotic flux, the purposeful stride of day-workers heading for the tube-trains mingling with the more leisurely pace of night-lifers.
Cokas Bluna stood amidst this river of peaceful, prosperous humanity, but his expression was grim, his voice a stark and serious contrast to the optimistic conclusion of the previous part of their chronicle. He let the camera drones circle him, capturing the juxtaposition of his somber mood and the vibrant life of the city.
“Welcome back to Stars Unbound,” he began, his voice low and resonant, cutting through the ambient hum of the plaza. “We have just witnessed the great construction. The establishment of the Three Pillars of interstellar civilization—the Republic of Proxima, the Barnard’s Montane Union, and the Wolf-Pack. Three grand, thoughtful, and ultimately successful experiments in building stable, lasting societies. For a time, it seemed as if humanity had finally learned its lesson. That the future would be one of careful, considered growth.”
He paused, a shadow crossing his face as the last rays of the artificial sun glinted off the towers above. “But the story of humanity is never so simple. The same FTL technology that allowed for the meticulous, planned expansion of the core worlds also opened up a new, far more dangerous frontier at the fringes of known space. And into that frontier rushed a different kind of person, driven by a different kind of dream.”
He took a slow breath, his voice now laced with a historian’s weary condemnation. “The era we now enter, the late 28th century, is known in the archives as the ‘Reckless Age.’ A time when the careful construction of the Three Pillars gave way to a chaotic, high-stakes gold rush. It was an age defined not by community, but by competition; not by sustainability, but by raw, brutal speed.”
Beside him, Lyra was the cornerstone, the perceptive presence against the backdrop of the bustling crowd, provided the crucial context. “The archives from this period show a dramatic increase in the number of small, private, and often poorly-funded colonial ventures,” she stated, her voice a cool counterpoint to Cokas’s rising passion. “These were operations launched with minimal oversight, often into uncharted or poorly understood star systems, driven by the lure of rare resources and the promise of immense, untaxed personal wealth.”
Cokas nodded grimly. “And from the perspective of those who championed these ventures,” he continued, his voice dripping with a carefully controlled, academic irony, “from the viewpoint of those driven by pure profit and the seductive allure of the unknown, these operations were seen as incredibly… courageous. They were the ‘great ventures’ of their time, a chance for individuals and their private clans to carve out empires from the void, free from the ‘stifling’ regulations of the core worlds.”
He let the word courageous hang in the air, allowing its modern, 31st-century connotations of greed, ignorance, and a reckless disregard for consequences to resonate with the audience. He didn’t have to explain the insult; the very word, in this context, was a condemnation.
“These ventures,” he went on, “were the direct descendants of the Wolf-Pack’s own historical poison, the Hong-Qi-Tan. It was the same philosophy, reborn on a galactic scale: personal prosperity above all else. And the story we are about to share is perhaps the most famous, and most tragic, example of that mindset in action.”
The 3D-media-stream, which had been subtly showcasing the beautiful, thriving plaza, now shifted. The image behind Cokas and LYRA began to darken, the vibrant colors of the city dissolving into a stark, chilling star-chart of a distant, ominous-looking region of space labeled ‘Fortuna’s Veil.’
“The Auckland disaster,” Cokas said, the name itself a legend, a cautionary tale told to every new navigator at the academy. “It is a story of a planet that was not a home, but a trap. Of a company that saw its own people not as a community, but as disposable assets. And of a collision between a reckless, arrogant ambition and a corner of the universe that was far more complex, and far more dangerous, than any of their profit-driven models could have ever predicted.”
LYRA.ai provided the final, somber introduction, her voice precise and devoid of emotion, letting the facts of the coming tragedy speak for themselves. “The events in the Auckland system, beginning in the year 2740, would serve as a brutal and necessary lesson. A lesson about the dangers of incomplete data, the arrogance of assuming an empty frontier, and the profound, catastrophic cost of greed.”
The view of the plaza vanished completely, replaced by the cold, silent, and treacherous beauty of deep space. The camera began a slow, ominous push towards the dark nebula of Fortuna’s Veil, the first notes of a tense, atmospheric score beginning to swell. The journey into the heart of the Reckless Age had begun.