“Constructing a station seems like an excellent way to make money, Ex. Amethyst! It’s the leadership and foresight of people like you that makes the Accord so prosperous! I don’t quite understand what you mean by ‘negotiate to allow PACNA employees to leave Canopy’? PACNA employees are certainly free to buy tickets to visit another PACNA station, and you are likewise free to buy those tickets for them!”

“Oh, I see! I think I must have misunderstood the purpose of renunciation fees. If I can give people tickets to allow people to come to the station, that’s totally fine,” she replies. “Thank you for your help.”

With the possibility of non-fixity transport to and from the yet-to-be-built station, she recomputes her timeline. She still wants to get fixity fields over Canopy. But if she can start ferrying people into a smaller volume by other means, that means she can start helping some of these people faster than her original 12-hour timeline.

She spins out the skeleton of a new station that fits within the radius she’s built up so far, picked out in glittering diamondoid alloys. This station has no need to waste space with spin gravity, so it can pack things in more densely than Canopy does. And anyway, it’s only temporary until she builds out enough infrastructure.

She fills it with plants, and waterfalls, and art. She builds cozy sleeping nooks and little places to sit and eat into the walls. She sets up some adaptive sound management, so that people can get calm background music, natural sound, or silence, as they prefer.

In the meantime, PACNA issues an orbital advisory to all nearby ships:

“This is PACNA. Advise that the following orbital zone is now rented by Ex. Amethyst; maintain clearance.”

And to the Cosmic Navy ship: 

“TCN Indomitable Victory, adjust course orbit 15 km starboard to remove yourself from restricted space. Make way for Ex. Amethyst.”

“Alright. I would also like to purchase a shuttle,” she informs PACNA. “Whichever is closest. Could you give me directions to get there?”

If she can get a scan of whatever it is that generates the artificial gravity here, that puts her a lot farther towards figuring out how they work. And will let her accelerate quickly back and forth between Canopy and her new station without filling their orbit with rocket exhaust.

They’re on what has become an increasingly risky mission to purchase new supplies for the war when they get the message from PACNA:

“TCN Indomitable Victory, lower your orbit 15 km to remove yourself from restricted space. Make way for Ex. Amethyst.”

Nearby Canopy and previously not visible, a second odd station is in the process of being constructed.

He sits at a grimy metal bridge, not unlike those depicted in the old space operas, then endlessly remixed later by the algorithmic entertainment companies. Unlike the dark loneliness of the “closets” that most non-military personnel enjoy, the TCN prides itself on real human connection – it’s one of the last places you can get it in the Accord. Around him are seated his trusted officers, manning communication, weapons, navigation, and engineering.  

“Did PACNA just say that there’s an Executive here?! And who the hell is Amethyst? – Comms, confirm the course correction, and hail PACNA.”

“PACNA, can you say more about Ex. Amethyst? What company is she an Executive of?”

“Ex. Amethyst is an executive officer of PACNA.”

The comms officer gasps. Everyone on the bridge is momentarily silent.

“There hasn’t been an Executive for PACNA in over 50 years…. Alright my friends, I don’t know what’s going on but this is clearly more important than the supply run. What do you think is happening here?”

“Maybe there’s something to the idea of 'Secret Executives' and we just happened to run into PACNA’s?” 

“Isn’t this a good thing?” the navigator asks once they have adjusted the ship’s course. “We came here hoping for resupply; having an Executive will make that easier.”

Cpt. Androse smiles at Lukas avuncularly:

“Lukas, you’re such a damn good pilot, I sometimes forget you’re not actually from a corpo. world. Executives aren’t the kind of people you just happen to run into on a half-built resort station! This is really serious business. Lukas, do you know why the Supreme Commander is the Supreme Commander?"

“Uh, no sir. Talent and hard work?” Lukas responds, idly re-checking their vector.

A few of the crew chuckle. Lukas may be a clueless swamprat but he’s THEIR swamprat.

“Heh! That’s a good one. No, our Supreme Commander is one of the last Executives of FRIGOMEK, descended from a long line of FRIGO executives before him. They pass it down the family line, you know. The executives aren’t like everyone else; they have some kind of sweetheart deal, back from the real early days, and they have more money than God Himself. This ship, and half of the Cosmic Navy besides is all funded from his personal account. That’s why our “resupply check” is signed by him personally.”

“I had the honor of meeting him once. He invited me to the victory celebration over the Rinans.”

“I never knew you actually met the Supreme Commander. What’s he like?”, she asks, reverently.

“It’s never been relevant before. They’re not gods, just people with a lot more money than sense. He was a weird guy, but he’s alright. He wants what’s best for the species. That makes him alright in my book.”

“But it’s also why this situation is so odd! It doesn’t make sense! There’s only 6 Executives, period, and last time I checked, ‘Amethyst’ isn’t one of them…."

“Perhaps COMMS is right about there being a secret Executive. Or maybe PACNA finally tracked down the heir of its last Executive, and told them about their secret heritage,” he suggests.

“Captain, look at this – It looks like … some kind of skeletal balloon. I can’t get a good scan of the interior, but it looks like there are several probable-docking-hangers that could accommodate the ship”?

The station is quite different from anything OPS has seen before. Where Terran Accord stations have a certain brutalist, cost-saving aesthetic, Amethyst’s station looks like a spherical honeycomb of open sections spinning itself out of fine silver threads. The superstructure is almost ridiculously thin compared to the volume the station is engulfing, but it also isn’t spinning or otherwise under gravitational stress, so the materials don’t need to be that strong to support it.

The TCN ship can’t see the interior very well, but brief glimpses through various windows and half-built walls suggest a design that is optimized to use every bit of space — not to make the interior cramped, but rather to make as many usable open areas as possible. The interior quite clearly does not have a preferred gravitational orientation.

The lighting of the finished sections visible through some windows is golden and silver and altogether more like sunlight and moonlight than the harsh fluorescents common in Terran architecture. 

“It’s been marked by PACNA as the 'latest destination in their exclusive resort lineup’”. 

“Alright, hail PACNA, and ask whether this new station is courtesy of our erstwhile executive.”

“Ex. Amethyst, you have an inquiry from the TCN ship, they’re asking about the station. How would you like to respond?”

Amethyst looks up from her notes.

“Oh, good. Please patch me through to them, and also send me a copy of the radio encryption standard you use so I can answer direct hails in the future,” she requests. “I’d like to explain that they’re welcome to dock or send shuttlecraft over, and explain some of the amenities I’m putting in.”

“I’ve autopurchased the PACNA radio app for you directly to your SmartSet, Ex. Amethyst. Channel open to TCN Captain Androse.”