Holsten joins a rare in-person gathering in a converted shuttle bay, uneasy amid the unexpectedly large crowd. He reflects on human sociability even as he prefers solitude. Vitas takes the floor, preparing to report on the planet they orbit, while Guyen watches from the back.

Vitas frames the context: this system holds another Old Empire terraforming site, unlike the quarantined, completed world guarded by Kern’s AI. Here, the station was abandoned mid-process. Drone surveys show a geologically active world with roughly 0.8g, a four-hundred-hour day, high temperatures, and only five percent oxygen—already a poor candidate for settlement.

Close imagery reveals an almost uniform, ash-grey biosphere: a fungus-like organism carpeting mountains, basins, and valleys, possibly a single planetwide entity that binds most of the world’s water. It photosynthesizes via unfamiliar chemistry, leaving the air hypoxic. Whether it was intended, a mistake, or a post-abandonment takeover is unknown, but Vitas deems it effectively permanent.

When asked if it can be cleared, Vitas dismisses burning in such thin oxygen and warns that the spore-soup atmosphere rapidly cripples equipment; both drones fail after brief operation. She recommends halting investigation and replacing lost drones later. Guyen concurs that the planet is not a refuge, orders new drones when feasible, and shifts priority to integrating station technology and overhauling the Gilgamesh, ending with a fervent promise to claim humanity’s “birthright.”