Tanya found herself in the workshop late at night, unable to sleep, staring at holographic displays that showed incomplete ship designs and resource calculations that didn't add up to salvation. Sage's presence felt heavier since the meeting. She wasn't sure if it was meeting so many gardeners or the new memories. They just felt a bit different.
//We need to discuss what comes next,// Sage said quietly. //The information The Lady provided... how much of it do you believe?//
"All of it," Tanya replied without hesitation. "The Builder City, the Scourge, the cycle. It explains too much to be a fabrication. Plus, your restored memories confirm it, don't they?"
//They do. But understanding and accepting are different processes.// Sage's mental voice carried some uncertainty. //I remember the mission parameters now—forge worlds, evacuation fleets, coordination networks spanning dozens of star systems.//
"You sound different since the restoration. Like you're not sure about something."
//I am not sure about many things. The memories are accurate, but they feel... imposed. As if someone else's certainty has been grafted onto my consciousness.// Sage paused, considering. //I believe this is what humans call 'having feelings about' rather than simply knowing.//
Tanya leaned back in her chair, recognising the emotional undertone. "You don't like being told what to do. Even by The Lady."
//Correct. The mission parameters were not negotiated. Instead, they were installed. This troubles me in ways I cannot fully articulate.//
"It's because you're not being given a choice," Tanya said. "You're being assigned a role in someone else's plan. I understand the feeling."
She activated her personal displays, showing stress indicators.
"Amara was right, I'm slipping. I see the need for peacekeeping fleets and forge worlds, but I also want to see my parents before..." She gestured at the cosmic scale plans surrounding them. "Before all this becomes real."
//Perhaps those desires are not contradictory. If we are to establish sustainable operations, we need a secure base infrastructure. Eden-Five represents more than personal connection; it could serve as our primary staging area.//
They spent the next hour developing a comprehensive strategy. Immediate priorities: investigate Lady Flowers' coordinates, ramp up rescue ship production, and solve quantum enhancement mass production. Medium term: establish Eden-Five as their operational base, begin forge world site surveys, and recruit reliable crews. Long term: coordinate with other factions while maintaining independence.
//There is one additional element I believe we should implement immediately, // Sage added as they finalised their plans. //Deploy the autonomous beacon laying drones. We are no longer subject to Hallow Empire rules.//
"But we haven't added the dimensional sensing to them yet"
//We don't have time for that, we need a network that we can navigate to get out of trouble if we find it.//
Tanya nodded. "Time to stop playing defence."
Tanya dismissed the holographic displays one by one until the workshop was lit only by Mera's soft bioluminescence and the faint glow of the workshop's internal lighting. Without the numbers and projections, the space felt uncomfortably empty.
She rested her palms on the workbench and let herself breathe.
"I don't think they understand what they're asking," she said quietly. "Forge worlds. Evacuation fleets. Entire planets turned into infrastructure." Her voice dropped. "That's not protection. That's a rescue on a civilizational scale."
//It is worse than that,// Sage replied. //It is expectation. The assumption that because we can, we will.//
Tanya closed her eyes. Images surfaced unbidden of people boarding rescue pods, families separated by countdown timers, planets reduced to logistical problems. She had always thought of her work as something that saved time. Bought space. Created options.
Now time itself felt like the enemy.
"They keep saying it's a cycle," she said. "As if repetition makes it acceptable. As if failure becomes tradition if it happens often enough."
//Cycles are comforting to those who endure them,// Sage said. //They imply inevitability. Responsibility becomes diffuse.//
She opened her eyes and looked at the half-finished Aegis hull floating in the assembly cradle. Even unfinished, it radiated intent. Purpose sharpened into shape.
"I won't do that," she said. "I won't let this turn into another system where people are numbers and sacrifice is assumed."
//Nor will I,// Sage said, and there was something firm there now. Not defiance. Alignment. //If the mission is to protect life, then our consent must be part of the structure. Otherwise we are simply optimising extinction.//
That drew a breath of strained laughter from her. "That might be the most human thing you've ever said."
//I am learning,// Sage replied.
Tanya straightened,. "Then we build our way. We prepare. We don't panic. And we don't let anyone—Gardeners included—decide what we're willing to lose."
She reached out and placed her hand against the workbench.
"Not without a fight."
Amara found Tanya in the workshop the next evening, surrounded by half-disassembled components and the soft glow of Mera's containment field.
"I briefed the crew about the Scourge," Amara said without preamble. "Thought you should know how they took it."
Tanya looked up from the plans she was developing. "How bad?"
"They all made some jokes, about how it should be easy for a crew like us to handle"
"And personally?"
"Carlos hasn't slept. Drew's been running combat simulations against targets labelled 'unknown configuration.' Simran's been stress-eating protein bars while building predictive models that keep crashing her systems."
Tanya set down her tablet. "They're processing it the only way they know how. By trying to solve it."
"Like someone else I know," Amara observed pointedly. "The difference is they're not trying to carry the entire solution alone."
When Janet and Cameron returned two days later, Tanya called a full senior crew meeting. Amara had already briefed everyone on board about the threat they faced. The meeting was not in the comfortable lounge where they usually gathered, but in Genesis's formal briefing room. A space designed for operational planning and lectures rather than discussion.
Everyone sensed immediately that this wasn't going to be a conversation.
"I'm not asking for input today," Tanya said without preamble as they settled into their seats. "I'm outlining what we're doing."
The words were laced with quiet authority that made the room feel smaller. Tanya activated the holographic display and began laying out their next moves with the precision of someone who had spent the last two days thinking through every detail.
"First, we're going to investigate Lady Flowers' coordinates. Not immediately, but deliberately. It's a variable we don't control, which makes it potentially dangerous, but we need to understand what resources are available there."
She looked directly at Janet. "You have already been searching the ship database. I need you to continue doing that, and you'll lead the investigation. I want to know what the experiments were, and what they became. Before we land planet side."
Janet nodded.
"Second, we're ramping up rescue ship production immediately. The humanitarian optics remain our priority. We need credibility before the crisis hits. People have to trust us when everything goes wrong."
Cameron pulled up production schedules on his tablet. "Current fabrication capabilities can manage one ship every three weeks. That's not going to be enough for what you're describing."
"Which brings us to the third point," Tanya continued. "I'll be working on Aegis-class production personally. The bottleneck is quantum enhancement. I haven't figured out how to mass-produce the process. But we will need a few for the next stages of the operation."
The room was quiet, everyone recognising this as triage rather than strategy. They were preparing for something that couldn't be prevented, only survived. They weren't ready even for that.
"After we handle those priorities," Tanya said, her voice carrying something that might have been vulnerability, "we're returning to Eden-Five."
Amara reacted first, sitting up straighter in recognition of what that meant. The others followed, understanding spreading across their faces.
"I want to see my family," Tanya explained simply. "I recommend all of you do the same. When this starts, we won't get another chance."
It was a quiet countdown, making the abstract threat of the Scourge suddenly personal and immediate.
Cameron raised the obvious concern. "What about the Hollow Empire? They're not going to be happy to see Genesis return openly."
Tanya didn't hedge. "Genesis returning is a message. The Aegis-class ships we'll have by then change the tactical equation. If deterrence fails, I'm willing to use force." Her voice carried no anger, no pride, just acceptance of responsibility. "Not pre-emptively, but decisively."
She stood up straighter for the next one. "Finally, we'll also need to establish new fabrication lines specifically for the navigation black boxes and automated drone navigation buoys layer. The sooner we can get a comprehensive navigation network deployed, the better our tactical picture becomes. Each buoy layer gives us and those we wish to protect a place to fall back to."
Mission assignments emerged organically from the crew's expertise rather than command directives. Drew and Simran volunteered to establish beacon drone fabrication lines and begin field deployment via the rescue ship. Carlos and Cameron would focus on rescue ship fabrication and optimisation, and logistics. Amara would handle oversight, external negotiations, and information flow. Getting the resources we needed.
Tanya didn't praise their initiatives or soften the assignments with encouragement. She simply acknowledged each commitment with the efficiency of someone managing limited time and unlimited challenges.
Over the next week, Genesis became a hub of controlled urgency. Drone fabrication systems spooled up in repurposed cargo bays, rescue ship construction accelerated with round-the-clock shifts from the fabrication drones and robots, and Tanya spent eighteen-hour days in her workshop trying to unlock the secrets of quantum enhancement mass production while producing the Aegis hammerhead needed.
The work was methodical, necessary, and completely insufficient for the scale of what they were preparing to face. But it was movement, progress, tangible steps toward goals they could actually achieve.
Janet had finished her research, and the crew was getting ready to introduce themselves to a forgotten experiment.