She looks up at the point of view of the emulated camera, her soft, wavy hair perfectly framing her face against the backdrop of PACNA’s high-class lounge.

“Hello, Captain Androse! My name is Amethyst. I am from another universe, and I’m hoping to bring some of the useful technology from my universe to help people here,” she explains, leaving unsaid that perhaps the most important part of that technology is the social technology of ‘not letting corporations take over everything’. “Is there anything you need help with immediately? Otherwise, would you like to dock at my station so we can meet in person?”

She disassembles the PACNA radio app and starts figuring out the encryption, so that she doesn’t need to rely on the antenna in her (emulated) SmartSet or the relay from PACNA next time she runs into another ship.

What’s the angle here? Some runaway heir, newly come into their Executiveship, LARPing being an extra-universal benefactor? It wouldn’t be that out of place compared to the others, though it’s disappointing that these delusions seem to have started so young.

Nothing for it though, you have to work with what you have.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ex. Amethyst.”

“Oh, you don’t need to call me that. Just Amethyst will do,” she responds. “But yes, it’s good to meet you! If you have the time, I have some questions about how the Terran Cosmic Navy works. In the meantime, though, I can offer you repairs and resupply for your ship, medical assistance and leisure for your crew, and help purchasing things from PACNA.”

She also really wants a look at some gosh-darned artificial gravity generators, and whatever they use for FTL. But she will probably get those from PACNA in a few minutes even if she can’t get the TCN ship to land on her station.

He was planning on bringing up the possibility of aid after an extended dance around the brute economic facts of the situation. What does Amethyst bringing it up first-thing imply? If anything, her not having any obvious asks makes him more suspicious – anything gained only on Amethyst’s whims can be lost just as easily.

Bringing it up this way does cut off his next step in the negotiation, leaving him off-balance. In that regard it’s a clever opening move. Perhaps that’s the point, to make him more off-balance. It would also explain why she claims to want to learn more about the TCN. 

Still, he can just play along for now – perhaps the questions she asks about the Navy will shed more light on her angle, and she can hardly fault him for following the conversation down the path she’s laid!

“For you, my schedule is clear. And I’d be delighted to discuss the finer details of the Cosmic Navy with you. Would now be a bad time?”

“Not at all. Would you prefer to continue speaking remotely, to dock at my station, or for me to make my way over to your ship?” she asks. “I’m fairly used to telepresence, but I know not everyone is comfortable with it.”

Interesting that she didn’t mention the possibility of meeting at Canopy. Perhaps it’s an invitation to discuss business out of earshot of PACNA.

He can take the implicit offer of trust, and invite her to the ship. Or he can extend her an offer of trust, and meet her on her territory.

In a practiced motion, he shifts his hand slightly to subtly point at COMMS. Then a second later he turns to his crew, trusting that Amethyst is now watching a briefly looped “resting video” of his face and audio.

“OPS, what do you make of that station? Is it standard corpo construction?”

“There’s no way that’s a standard corpo station. There’s no pavement and the spatial metric is completely flat. Maybe Ex. Amethyst dug up some concept art or something, or it’s some hippie design from the 2200s.”

This station is obviously something that Amethyst has put a lot of effort into. She’s probably excited to show it off. That seals the deal – he’ll visit her.

“Bring me back.”

He squares his face with the camera and COMMS smoothly syncs the video.

“I’ll take a shuttle over to your lovely station, and tickets for 3. Please have PACNA send docking instructions and bill me personally.” 

Amethyst cuts herself off, because she was about to just give him docking instructions herself. She relays a trajectory to PACNA that will take them smoothly into one of the docking bays she’s retrofitted onto the station design.

“An ideal of my people is that everyone should be able to travel freely,” she responds. “I will cover the cost of as many tickets as you need. PACNA should be sending you a trajectory now. I’ll stand by to receive you.”

The one of her at the center of the station flies to stand on the edge of the docking bay, and prioritizes it in the build queue. It grows walls, railings, signage, lighting, and a dedicated guidance computer. The exterior docking lights pulse a gentle blue, guiding the TCN ship in.

"Well friends, we’ve got ourselves a bit of an away mission here. Who wants to volunteer?"

“I’ll go, worst case you want someone who can get you out of there in a hurry. And I want to get a look at the inside of that station.” 

“I’d like to go too, sir,” Lukas adds. “I can fly the shuttle.”

He wants to see the inside of the station too. And to actually get the chance to go on an away mission, instead of staying cooped up in the ship pouring over astrogation charts.

He mentally winces. Of course Lukas would see it as an actual positive to fly off to a potential death trap. Well, he set himself up for that one, and everyone has to grow up sometime. 

“Alright, OPS and Lukas, you’re with me. Let’s go see what Amethyst has in store for us.”

It’s a short shuttle ride to the mysterious new station, only 5 minutes. 

Amethyst stares in fascination at the shuttle engines as they come in range. That’s how they work. She runs a series of experiments to isolate the underlying principles, and then fabricates a drone to fly down to the planet and lift up some mass to make constructing the rest of the station cheaper.

Her drone accelerates down towards the planet at a startling velocity, lands in the ocean, and hauls back up a large sphere of water before returning for more.

“Keep your wits about you, boy, just because she has a pretty voice doesn’t mean she’s your friend. First sign of trouble, I want you to get this shuttle back to Canopy as fast as you can.”

He hands Lukas a metal card with a red chip suspended in glass.

“Worst case, you need to pay PACNA to send word of what happened here, and then head off whenever you can. This card’s got $5,000 and should be convincing enough that no asks any questions.”

He salutes. “Yes, sir!”

“I do want the card back after the mission, if we’re still all in one piece. Now bring us in nice and easy.”

He brings the shuttle in through the illuminated entrance, setting it down in the illuminated spot. The station doesn’t seem to have any gravity — the woman standing visible in the doorway, highlighted by the sunlight from beyond notwithstanding — but when he sets it down, it stays on the floor of the hanger just fine.

The shuttle instruments report a breathable atmosphere outside, even though the space they flew through is still open behind them.

“It’s a little strange, captain,” he warns. “We’ve got atmosphere, but I don’t know if we’ve got gravity.”

“Let’s go, we don’t want to keep Amethyst waiting. Lukas, stay in the shuttle, OPS, with me.”

He quickly complete the post-landing checklist, opens the door, and steps out.

Amethyst walks forward to greet them. Gravity in the station appears perfectly normal, despite the lack of effect it had on the shuttle. She is wearing a long silver dress covered in slowly shifting embroidery that swishes around her ankles. Her hair is in a long, straight golden braid down her back.

“It’s good to meet you in person, captain,” she says, holding her hand out for a handshake. “If you’ll follow me, I have a conference room set up just around the corner.”

She leads them out of the docking bay and into a brightly lit corridor. The floor and ceiling are both covered in sweet clover, and the signage seems to assume that people will walk along both. The walls show a gently shimmering illusion of an open landscape with a blue sky and a river in the distance.

He considers saying something about how the aesthetic is suspiciously reminiscent of the Affini, with it’s use of open spaces and plants, but decides against it. A place like this may very well have been her passion project since before the war, and in any event it’s beautiful. Instead, he says, while shaking her hand:

“You have a lovely and unique station here, wherever did you get the plans for it?”

“I actually copied this station from a housing complex that some folks put up in Earth-Luna L5 in my universe,” she explains. “Adapted slightly to fit a larger fixity field projector and have docking bays. Our stations don’t normally need them because we can teleport within the range of our projectors. But I always liked this design because you can fit so many people without making the space seem cramped, which seems pretty necessary for an early installation before I’ve built up enough infrastructure.”

She leads them through a pair of automatic sliding doors and into a fairly normal conference room with four comfy chairs around a small circular table, and a potted plant in the corner.

He sits down at the table. Whoever this Amethyst is, she’s definitely committed to the bit about being some kind of alternate universe sojourner. The comments about “fixity field projectors” and teleportation are interesting – maybe some secret PACNA tech that Amethyst’s interested in leveraging?  Presumably there will be some reason why it’s not possible to contact her version of Earth, but the answers she’s likely to give should be informative in any case.

“I’ll be frank, up until today I didn’t know that there was a living PACNA executive. The last executive died over 50 years ago, and since then PACNA’s been a fully autonomous corporation. We’ve had a hell of a time getting anything useful out of it since. If it’s not too bold of me to ask, what’s the story here?” 

Amethyst checks the time in her HUD.

“About 2 hours ago, I volunteered for a mission of exploration to another universe. I appeared in orbit of this planet near Canopy, and made contact with the on-duty air traffic controller here. She told me a bit about the local situation, and I started talking with PACNA about getting the things I would need in order to do business in this universe and share my technology — most urgently, medical technology that is much better than yours. PACNA was indeed very truculent.”

Amethyst thinks about how to phrase this next part.

“But eventually, we reached an agreement that resulted in PACNA making me an Executive. I was presented with an NDA which would prohibit me from disclosing the terms of that agreement. Since then, I’ve been building out infrastructure in order to provide an initial round of medical aid, trying to figure out how your antigravity tech works, and learning more about your world.”

She leans back in her chair.

“That’s pretty much it. I would really appreciate your help learning more about the TCN and the general political and economic situation here, since those seem pretty relevant to being able to distribute adequate medical care throughout human space.”

She is leaving out that ‘adequate medical care’ means ‘immortality’, but that’s just because she wants to see how the captain reacts. She’s trying to strike the right balance between being open and honest, and not seeming like an alien invasion. Maybe she’ll get it right this time.