March 30, 11,957 CE

Outpost Iceball, Charon, moon of Pluto, Sol System…

Persephone groaned as she saw another request for an update report in her inbox. This was clearly not the glamorous role she had envisioned when she signed up to join the Union Intelligence Service.

She certainly hadn't expected to be stationed on a frozen hunk of rock at the farthest edges of the solar system, overseeing ice-mining and geologic surveys.

And if the boredom wasn't enough, Lindbergh, the UIS Station Chief based in Camp Tombaugh, the largest Union settlement on Pluto, kept asking her for progress reports. If they were going to post her in the middle of nowhere, they could've at least left her to watch Old World movies in peace.

As she began to type up another hated report, her superior, Overseer Strauss, opened the door from the drilling room, causing her to wince intensely.

The drilling room was the part of the facility where machinery was used to cut through Charon's icy surface. A giant mechanical drill, courtesy of the Research and Development Consortium churned constantly, as did the two Marx-class Goliath Machines slicing wide swaths through the ice to accommodate the drill. The entire mining operation was located inside the mobile outpost to both protect from the elements and to allow for speedy evacuation when the ice became too unstable.

"Foreman Ayariga says another ice collapse is likely to happen soon, so get the engines online, and ready to get us out of here if we need to bail," Strauss warned.

No sooner had the words left his mouth did the ground begin to shake. Out of the corner of her eye, Persephone could see the icy ground collapsing downward in the mining room.

"Damn the quakes!" Persphone cursed, and fired the engines. The entire Outpost took off, wobbling a bit, as it tore off the moon's surface.

But as the mobile outpost launched itself into a modest orbit, Persephone could clearly see that this time was different. "What the fuck- the entire planetary surface- I guess lunar surface- is falling apart!"

The thick layer of ice crust that covered Charon was crumbling away, whisked away as if into nothingness.

"Where is all that ice going?" Persephone stared in astonishment. "No way that's conservation of mass… by Mankind!"

The ice had now fully disappeared, revealing a gigantic, elongated artificial construct, with two rings spinning in the middle, orbiting a suspended, intensely-bright blue light. Smaller lights soon lit, running up and down the object's superstructure.

"What the hell is that? A starship of some sort? A space station?!"

"We did it…" Strauss muttered. "It's finally active…"

"Uh, what?" Persephone stared at Strauss in disbelief.

"I need you to relay Camp Tombaugh immediately!" Strauss ordered. "If you can't get a clear signal, bounce them off our relay beacons on Hydra-P1 and Nix-P2! They need to know immediately!"

"At once, sir!" Persephone immediately typed up a message and transmitted it, feeling oddly excited and yet nervous now that something, at least, was finally going on. A tiny outpost like Iceball certainly didn't have very effective transmission equipment, but Persephone knew that Camp Tombaugh had the heavy equipment needed to broadcast back to Earth.

"You seemed to know what's going on, Strauss," Persephone pointed out to her superior. "I'm guessing you knew this was here all along?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Strauss shrugged, admitting it rather frankly. "Director Serov and Lindbergh told me as much. So does Governor Jaroslaw, by the way." He referred to Governor Jaroslaw, the Union Governor of the Pluto system. "But we wanted to hold back on letting too many people know until we were sure."

"Well, why didn't you tell me?" Persephone exclaimed. "It would have made my work here a little less boring!"

"Well, I wasn't allowed to," Strauss snorted. "I did try to drop you a little hint here and there, but you weren't paying attention."

"I see… my bad," Persephone shook her head and smiled wryly. "So, what does this ginormous thing do, anyway?"

"Well…" Strauss hesitated seriously, as if wondering how much he was allowed to tell. Finally he said, "Well, we'll all find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you what I've heard."

"This… alien construct can propel ships at phenomenal speeds across the galaxy- far faster than even our current FTL drives. And it's said the entire galaxy is covered by an ancient network of such constructs, at least tens of thousands of years old, if not more."

"So… we could be meeting aliens soon enough," Persephone whistled. "Perhaps these will be more friendly than the ones who gave our ancestors a little visit thousands of years ago…"

"And if they're not, we'll be ready for them," Strauss vowed.

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Appendical Information:

-Ayariga- Android Member of Union Intelligence Service (UIS), Foreman on Outpost Iceball on Charon, named after Ghanian politician Hassan Ayariga (1972-) of the All People's Congress (APC)

-Jaroslaw- Union Governor of the Pluto system, named after the town of Jaroslaw in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship of the Republic of Poland

-Lindbergh- Union Intelligence Service (UIS) Station Chief in Camp Tombaugh, Pluto, named after famed American aviator Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)

-Persephone- Android Member of Union Intelligence Service (UIS), named after the Ancient Greek Goddess of the Underworld and Springtime, Persephone

-Strauss- Android Member of Union Intelligence Service (UIS), Overseer of Outpost Iceball on Charon, named after famed Austrian music composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)