Centuries turned beneath Archeon's orange sky—season after season unspooling in the orbit of silent catastrophe. Life, stubborn and scarred, clawed back inch by inch from the shadow of Betelgeuse's ruin. Every generation carried the mark of that blaze: the faint radiation-glint in the upper atmosphere, the old warning tales muttered through crackling nightfires, the subtle warp of the land and sky.
Yet existence seeded itself anew each cycle. Settlements rose amid salvage, domed farmland pearls gleamed across once-dead plains, and what technology survived was remade—twisted by necessity into unique, living forms. High above, the Betelgeuse nebula stretched wider, a shimmering veil painting Archeon's nights in deepening hues of violet and rose, a cosmic wound made beautiful over time — silent, immense, impossible to forget.
The first survivors had only bunkers and desperation. Later generations stitched those scraps into a rugged civilization. Trade routes, winding like lifelines, threaded enclaves together by fragile airship. The story of near-extinction bound them more surely than any law. Over centuries, roots deepened. The faint tinges in the night sky—just a blush, early on—swelled to radiant banners overhead. A constant memorial. A test passed and passing still.
On lands once scorched sterile, engineered crops now thrived. Hardy wheat strains, crossbred with stubborn native flora; nutrient-rich tubers swelling beneath glass domes or, slowly, in cleansed open fields. Detoxification took decades—soil healed by chemists-turned-horticulturalists, blending scraps of lost Federation science with their own grit. Under that alien sky, these crops stood as proof they could reclaim even poisoned earth. Generations learned the skill with dirt-encrusted hands—feeding the future with every harvest.
In time, the Axiom's husk decayed in orbit, then caught in atmosphere turbulence. Pulled lower by drag, she gutted Archeon's atmosphere, fire-streaked scars tearing open sky at dawn. Her bulk slammed into the far desert—no survivors, just a twisted hull riddled with scavengers' tunnels, scarred as legend.
But her battered hearts still pulsed below ground—broken angel's cores, stripped from dying stars —a legacy of courage beating in the dark.
Above ground, city-states sprouted from those early rough shelters.
Frontier City, the de facto capital, crackled with trade, its skyline bristling with docked ships rigged to spires. Other towns clung instead to scraps of past order—preserved faded Federation ranks amid communal halls and sacred archived logs. Still others leaned into independence, ruled by barter and bond alone. Disagreements ran fierce, but something deeper bound them—survival's kinship. Memories of almost-annihilation made foolish conflict rare, fleeting.
Collective endurance wrote their true law: cooperate or fail again. Children grew up knowing no other sky, no other lore; the nova's mark became foundational myth, carved into everyday lessons beneath that shimmering nebula shroud.
Their technology adapted, evolved — never by choice, but through hard reinvention. The reactors lit workshops and fields, but with Earth's supply chains severed, no one could rebuild starships or quantum drives. Exotic alloys corroded into legend. Instead, they refined what was salvageable, pieced together equations from corrupted Federation data, rebuilt one working—as opposed to elegant—tech base.
Above them, real flight belonged not to quantum-tunneling vessels but to atmospheric craft: cargo haulers bobbing under patched domes, their hulls rough but sturdy, ferrying food and ore between settlements; swift couriers powered by scavenged turbines or hydrogen cells, darting beneath stormfronts. These ships had become Archeon's signature—pieced together from scrap plating, polished brass fittings, reinforced local hardwood; rugged, beautiful because they worked, because they told a story in design forged entirely by need.
A retro-future patchwork, born of innovation amid disaster, woven tight with stubborn grace. Not starships, no, but living proof that life here—Archeon-born—was not just survival, but the seedbed of a new civilization, stubborn as the nebula that watched over it.
By the early 2890s, Archeon had become a world stitched tight by sky-lanes and fierce resilience. Frontier City throbbed with restless energy—sky docks alive with clattering footsteps, shouting traders bargaining over gears, grain, or refined metals amid the mingled scents of turbine exhaust, baking bread, and crisp, wind-swept air. From platforms perched atop slender towers, one glimpsed a city in motion beneath the seething orange sky: patchwork workshops sprawled flat among narrow alleys, sheer walls dense with hydroponic crops climbing sunward, wind turbines spinning steady along distant ridgelines. Around all of it, a slow swirl of airships—haulers and couriers alike—glinted as they arrived and departed without pause. And above everything, like an endless mural, the Betelgeuse nebula ruled the heavens, a colossal drift of glowing gas and dust—violet and rose flames frozen on a cosmic canvas—a silent, permanent witness to Archeon's endurance in splendid, lonely exile.
Any true hope for rescue from Earth had long since faded into half-remembered myth. The dark between stars remained hauntingly silent, save for rare, stubborn pulses of code broadcast into the void by guilds of comm techs behind dusty consoles—rituals born more of stubborn pride than real expectation. Their signals vanished unanswered into that infinite hush. Life below instead turned inward, anchored on daily persistence rather than distant dreams.
This was the world into which the summer's Grand Exposition crackled to life. Piers and sky bridges thrummed with anticipation. New haulers flexed armored gasbags and reinforced gondolas amid cheers; sleek courier ships zipped past like steel-finned swallows. Each design debuted was its own small miracle: turbines spun faster or cleaner, alloys mixed with care from scavenged ore, navigation arrays tuned by night after night of calibration. Fortunes were wagered on displays of lift and maneuvering. Brightly painted banners snapped high above the steel, splashes of blue, crimson, and gold flashing in the wind. Below, booths overflowed with gear-laced trinkets and sugar-dusted pastries; dulcimer songs and quick laughter braided through engine purr and vendor calls, a lively counterpoint to the steady industrial hum.
That spring, a major airship expo drew crowds to Frontier City. Sky piers buzzed with newly debuted craft, from blocky cargo haulers humming low to nimble personal flyers darting like insects. Technicians boasted of incremental gains in thruster efficiency, breakthroughs in hull alloys scraped from salvaged ores. Banners of bright cloth snapped between mooring towers, vibrant against the metallic lattice. Below, street vendors hawked everything from sugar-laced pastries crisp from portable ovens to miniature gear-driven trinkets spinning on display pads. Music from hammered dulcimers and resonant string ensembles drifted through the boulevards, weaving through the steady hum of idling turbines.
On one such busy morning, amid the expo's full swing, a hush rippled across the largest docking platform. Heads tilted upward. From the hazy horizon, a majestic airship approached—a wedge-shaped craft bearing a stylized insignia hinting at old Freedman designs. Its hull plates, patched and worn but meticulously maintained, gleamed under the climbing sun, revealing the texture of distinctive brass rivets and the clean lines of curved reinforcement struts.
At the prow stood Anna Freedman, barely into her early twenties, posture keen and assured. A faint morning wind tugged at her long, golden-blond hair as it flowed in waves past her waist, loose strands framing her face. Her signature goggles—brass-toned aviator lenses set in a sturdy metal band—rested high on her forehead. Below them, bright, grayish-blue eyes swept the bustling docks, missing little, alive with spirited curiosity. Despite any tension lingering over Archeon's skies, the faint smile touching her lips suggested an eagerness to embrace whatever challenge might come next.
Her outfit fused function with a certain flair, a blend of salvaged practicality and Archeon ingenuity. A fitted white blouse with billowy sleeves, cuffs and collar trimmed in deep maroon, layered beneath a snug leather corset cinched tight, its brass rivets and buckles catching the sun. Fingerless leather gauntlets protected her forearms, stitched with reinforcing seams and bearing small, almost ornamental loops and gear-like details that spoke of hands familiar with grease and machinery. A deep red scarf snaked from her neck, catching the wind like a banner. Below the corset, the dark fabric of her sturdy trousers tucked into well-worn boots braced beneath her. Earth hues and stubborn reds, punctuated by brass—her palette fit this world of salvage and resilience.
Her blond hair, sun-touched waves against the brisk morning air, whipped around her face. When she lifted her gaze, scanning the surroundings, her bright blue-gray eyes held a quiet determination. Stories followed her across the settlements—whispers of an innate knack for mechanical problem-solving, a skill born from countless hours immersed in old workshops, piecing together function from half-intact records found in wreckage or traded in dusty markets. Whether the rumors held truth, she let results speak for themselves.
The airship moved with an uncanny grace under her touch—an extension of her will. Even when unexpected gusts buffeted the hull, she stood poised, unflinching, balance instinctive. Expo whispers claimed she'd earned this composure through long nights of trial and error—adjusting thrust ratios by feel, testing homemade flight components under harsh conditions. That history showed in the unwavering line of her posture, the steady calm of her hand near the controls. Those watching sensed she was someone who relied on her own hands, her own skill, to keep a craft aloft.
As the vessel drifted into its mooring slot with a gentle hiss of thrusters, onlookers edged closer, curiosity lighting their faces. She hopped down, boots ringing sharp on the metal deck plating, goggles still perched high above her brow. A small cloud of dust swirled around her feet, caught gold in the angled morning sun.
"Check the intake nozzles," she called to a teenage deckhand scrambling near, her voice brisk but not unkind. Catching the curious eyes watching her, she offered a faint, easy smile. "All good, folks. Just letting her cool down after the run."
Whispers of admiration followed. Some recognized her as the resourceful pilot often seen scouring outland scrap heaps for hidden mechanical gems. Others appreciated the way she looked entirely at ease on the expo's busiest platform. She acknowledged compliments only with a nod, focus already returning to the task at hand: tightening the ship's anchor lines, pressing a palm flat against the hull plating until the engine's hum quieted from a growl to a gentle thrum beneath her boots.
All around her, the expo bustled. Vendors hawked everything from recalibrated micro-fusion cells gleaned from ancient wrecks to gleaming decorative brass gauges destined for smaller flyers. Musicians roamed between stalls, their rough-carved instruments stringing delicate tunes across the ambient drone of turbines and the clang of hammers from nearby repair bays. Airships of every stripe crowded the docks—fat freighters settling low on their moorings, long-range couriers radiating latent heat, fragile prospectors held together with mismatched bolts and stubborn hope. Amid this tapestry, Anna moved with calm certainty—a skilled gear among gears, never losing focus on her craft amid the chaos.
Within the cargo hold, mechanics eased out crates heavy with specialized parts salvaged from desert wrecks. Anna exchanged brief words with them, checking the manifest against the crate markings, her tone quick, courteous. Snatches of conversation drifted on the breeze: mention of a refined hull-lattice structure, excited speculation about experimental suborbital flight modules. She shrugged off the more outlandish praise aimed her way—some insisted she'd unlocked forgotten Federation tech in her hidden workshop, but she dismissed the gossip. She was a pilot and a tinkerer; her improvements came from trying, failing, then trying again until something worked.
By late afternoon, she wandered the expo aisles herself, pausing at booths that caught her eye. One displayed intricately carved wooden dashboard panels, fitted with intricate steam dials and bundled wiring harnesses. Another showcased partial-fusion thruster prototypes, their casings thick with layered metal plating. She stopped before one complex apparatus, running a gloved hand over its surface, brows knitting in focused consideration. Then she moved on with a satisfied nod, a new idea perhaps sparking behind her steady gaze. Her scouting was clear—learning from what others had produced, seeing if it might mesh with her own evolving designs.
As evening neared, the sky over Frontier City softened, gold bleeding into hues of pink and muted orange. The crowd's edge melted into more relaxed currents. Street performers settled into corners, instruments sighing soft melodies. The rich scent of grilled root vegetables and spiced flatbread drifted from the food stalls, weaving warm against the cooling air. Overhead, a handful of smaller flyers crisscrossed in lazy arcs, ferrying last-minute arrivals or departing visitors through the deepening haze.
She drifted toward a vantage railing at the platform's edge, peering across the layered rooftops towards the horizon. In the distance, farmland domes shimmered under the last light, while towering skeletons of old starship hulls—once mighty Federation frames, now repurposed as watchtowers or mooring masts—stood sentinel, reminding everyone how this colony had endured centuries of challenges. Even now, fragments of that lost era's technology cropped up across Archeon, reimagined, rebuilt, kept alive by necessity.
A gentle breeze teased at her loose blond waves. Leaning on the railing, goggles now hanging easy in one hand, her gaze followed the slow change in the sky—fiery at first, now deepening velvet. One by one, the first stars emerged: faint, scattered sparks glimpsed between engine backwash and the city's rising lights. Amid the expo bustle, she paused—a single figure watching the universe spin silent overhead.
For a moment, Anna was witness to Archeon's improbable survival. This scarred world, abandoned and shocked silent by the supernova, yet stubbornly alive: cobbled from debris, singing in salvage and smoke. Whether lost Federation fleets would ever return hardly mattered right then. Archeon had carved its own fragile orbit, reclaiming life from slag heap and radiation zone.
Around her, tired pilots and craftsfolk shared nods and quiet words—part of the unbroken chain of those who fought sky, dust, and distance each day. Anna nodded back, a faint warmth prickling beneath her jacket despite the evening chill. The familiar tang of earth, grease, charred woodsmoke filled her breath. Repairs awaited, salvage runs beckoned, stormfronts loomed beyond the horizon; but tonight, she let herself simply be, part of the stubborn pulse that kept this battered city breathing.
As the last light bled away, lanterns flickered bright along corded poles, throwing ropey shadows past docked ships and silent stalls. Fusion lamps cast their steady watchful glow from high towers. Against the growing dark, vessels became silhouettes etched in gray metal and faint brass glints. Anna straightened, sliding her goggles back to rest high on her brow, steps sure as she turned towards her vessel once more.
Even here—part of the expo crowd, facing the void—she stood out: a scavenger turned sky-captain, a mechanic whose skill had become quiet legend. She carried her inheritance, shoulders squared by quiet grit, gaze lifted to whatever challenge dawn might bring. Wind teased dust across her boots as she strode back toward her airship, coat snapping sharp behind her, heart steady. Archeon's story—and hers—still far from written, the horizon waiting.