Prologue: Mayflower Ascendant

Floodlights blazed across the station’s spine, catching the immense hull of the Mayflower Ascendant as she floated in her berth. Crews swarmed her flanks like ants over a cathedral, checking seals and bolting down plates that had taken decades to forge. Even from the observation deck, the noise carried, metal groaning, drills biting, the hiss of pressure vents bleeding air into the void.

“Hard to believe it’ll even hold together,” someone muttered nearby. No one answered. Their eyes stayed locked on the ship.

The Ascendant wasn’t elegant. She wasn’t meant to be. Her stern engines, fat with reinforced plating, were built to burn without rest for months. The rest of her rose in stacked decks and compartment towers, more fortress than vessel. She was built to endure.

And yet, the strain showed. Horizon Verse’s insignia gleamed fresh on her hull, but behind the shine everyone knew the truth: the company was running on fumes. This ship had cost them everything.

Rumors traveled faster than bulletins. That a flight academy called Skytrac was already drawing away Horizon’s best pilots. That a band of veteran officers had begun calling themselves Astra Command, dreaming of fleets instead of colonies. That scientists with fever-bright eyes, soon to be known as the Lumen Guild cared less for this one vessel and more for what waited beyond the next sector.

No one spoke it aloud, not here, not tonight. Tonight belonged to the Ascendant.

From the viewport, Earth curved beneath her like a jewel. Families pressed close to the glass, some clutching forms that would secure them passage aboard. Others just stared, lips parted, as if the sight alone was enough to fill their lungs.

For all the rumors, debts, and dangers, the Mayflower Ascendant was real. And in that moment, she looked unstoppable.