VICE
The stars parted like torn fabric as the ship dropped from hyperspace leaving behind the blue-white streaks of the void and emerging into stillness.
And there it was.
It wasn’t marked on any modern star chart. There were no transponder beacons, orbital rings, or traffic queues, just a fractured asteroid adrift in a dead system. The system’s sun was no more than a dull ember at its distant edge. The rock looked wounded, split wide open, as if a god had struck it with a blade. From the jagged chasm at its equator, a faint glow pulsed red and gold, like breath from a sleeping beast.
As the ship approached, that wound revealed itself as the entry corridor: a narrow docking tunnel flanked by half-melted armor plating and retractable gun platforms. Turrets tracked the ship’s movement, silent and waiting. At the last moment, the comm crackled to life.
“Inbound vessel, transponder confirmed.”
“Identity registered.”
“Welcome to Avalon’s Reach.”
The voice was smooth, feminine, and artificial. A whisper that crawled beneath skin. SIN, the station’s AI, more myth than machine, had just opened the gates. The ship entered the mouth of The Maw, and the darkness swallowed everything.
Inside, the docking bay expanded into a colossal cavern tiered and ringed with platforms stacked like a multi-level market built into a broken cathedral. Every deck was alive: freighters unloading, haulers refueling, port crews shouting, and music thrumming in the distance like a heartbeat half-submerged in static. Vents belched steam. Neon strobes painted the air in shifting colors—blue, violet, green—signs advertising cantinas, pawn stalls, spice dens, and “discreet services.”
As the ship settled onto its assigned berth, mooring clamps locking in with a mechanical growl, the noise of the port became tangible as did the heat, movement, and scent. Burnt fuel mixed with sweet perfume and food carts frying meat that may or may not have started life on the same planet.
The ramp descended.
A service droid waited just beyond the landing pad, sleek and gold-accented, holding a projection plaque. Its voice was courteous and flat.
“Docking confirmed. Your presence has been logged. Welcome to Port Avalon. The rules are simple: No unpaid debts. No drawn weapons. No lies the Court can prove. Your time is your own.”
With that, it turned and rolled off into the crowd, already forgetting them.
Ahead stretched The Reachwalk, a massive thoroughfare arcing through the inner shell of the moon, lined with vendor stalls, food steamers, holo-posts, flickering bounty boards, and an unspoken tension humming in the air like static before a storm. People moved with purpose. Some walked with swagger, others with knives hidden beneath coats. Overhead, walkways crisscrossed like webbing, connecting access halls and multi-tiered suites.
To the left, a spiral staircase sank downward toward the lower levels, where bass-heavy music surged from behind velvet walls and neon signs: Violet Blue—Avalon Gray’s most decadent club, and the place where people went to forget what they owed.
Above it all, Avalon’s Court hovered in a ring of violet light far above the chaos, watching.
They’d arrived.
Whatever they were running from, chasing, or becoming, it would meet them here.
Port Avalon didn’t judge.
It remembered.
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