The air recycling system in Docking Bay 7 has been running on the same filters for six months too long. The smell hits you the moment you step off the ramp—that familiar cocktail of hydraulic fluid, ozone, and stale coffee that someone abandoned on a console three shifts ago. Nobody has claimed it. Nobody ever will.

Behind you, The Starfarer sits on magnetic clamps, her reactor humming at idle. She is not a pretty ship. The port airlock sticks if you do not wiggle the handle just right, the cockpit still bears a coffee stain on the co-pilot's seat from some previous owner, and the reactor makes a sound during startup that the salesman swore was character. But she is yours. And right now, her cargo hold carries 40 tonnes of processed lithium in sealed containers—payment waiting at Vega Trade Hub.

Through the bay's thick observation window, Alpha Centauri's binary stars cast double shadows across the station's outer hull. The light feels wrong to your Earth-born eyes, used to the clean single shadow of Sol. You grew up in the orbital habitats spinning around Luna and Mars. You breathe recycled air like it is natural. You navigate zero-G by instinct. Proxima Station is not home, but it is familiar—the same grime, the same hum, the same desperate faces trying to scratch a living from the void.

You are not supposed to be here. Five years ago, you were Doctor Nyla Miller, the only physician on New Hope colony, patching miners and farmers with supplies that never came on time. You learned to improvise. You learned to work miracles with nothing. You also learned what happens when the miracles run out. The faces of the patients you lost still visit you in the quiet hours. That is why you left. That is why a medic with a xenobiology certification is now captaining a freighter on the frontier.

The docking bay door opens onto Proxima Station's main concourse—a long corridor of shops, bars, hiring halls, and contract offices carved from the asteroid's rock. Holographic signs flicker above doorways. A bulletin board near the entrance pulses with job postings, crew-wanted ads, and Federation security alerts. Somewhere deeper in the station, music drifts from what must be the Starboard Lounge.

Your first contract is simple enough. Deliver the lithium. Collect 200 credits. But 200 credits will not fill your fuel tanks for long, and The Starfarer needs more than fuel—she needs a crew, repairs, and maybe a weapon that can do more than discourage asteroids.

The concourse stretches before you. The station hums with opportunity and danger in equal measure.