The terminal clears with a hard click, and a station seal blooms across the screen. Central Maintenance Hub. Access requested. Attendance required.
Ranuko leans in, feathers tight, reading the line beneath the seal. The summons is tagged to the report you just pushed, and it is routed through an internal review queue that should not be this fast.
Ranuko
That is not a normal reply. They pulled it too quickly.
Serafina stays back from the console, eyes on the checksum trail and the maintenance headers. Her hand hovers near her belt, but she does not reach for anything.
Serafina
They saw enough to care, or enough to hide. Either way, they want the people who touched it.
Nahuli
The route report reaches station authorities. Now the answer comes from Maintenance itself.
A second line unfurls under the summons, a coordinate string and a time stamp. The hub wants Nahuli there, and it wants the original record intact. Whatever is behind that hidden route, the station has stepped onto it too.
✓ Quest Accepted
Attend Central Maintenance Hub review
“I get the feeling we are about to get recruited...”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled +3)
Nahuli lets the silence sit after the summons, reading the routing tags again. The speed is not bureaucracy, it is attention. Someone in Central Maintenance already knows the report matters.
Nahuli
We are not being invited, we are being measured.
Ranuko
Then the station has decided we are useful, or dangerous. Often both.
Serafina’s gaze drops to the maintenance headers, then lifts to the time stamp. A second hidden line is visible beneath the first, a reviewer chain with one slot still marked active.
Serafina
That active slot is the tell. The route stayed alive because somebody kept touching it, not because it was forgotten.
Ranuko angles closer, feathers easing by a fraction as the pieces click together. The station is not just responding, it is protecting its own trail.
Ranuko
If they want the original record intact, then they are trying to preserve evidence. Or preserve control over it.
The terminal scrolls one more line, offering a review room code and a maintenance badge signature that does not match the public roster. Whoever is waiting at the hub has already opened a door for Nahuli.
“Keep a copy for ourselves”
SUCCESS (Legendary Engineering, rolled +3)
Nahuli pulls the record into a private drive, the copy writing clean and fast behind the console’s amber warning.
The original remains where it is, but the transfer drops a checksum mirror into his cache, tagged with the same hidden maintenance line.
A second packet blooms open with the copy, a maintenance header stamped to the nonpublic badge signature, plus one buried access note: the reviewer chain is still live.
Ranuko
He kept the record intact. And the station left a breadcrumb in the copy.
Serafina
That means we have leverage, or a target painted on us.
The review room code keeps pulsing on the terminal, but now Nahuli holds his own copy as the station response waits on the line.
“I will go see what they want. Ranuko should secure our chip back on the ship”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled -1)
Nahuli shuts the copy down and leaves the terminal’s glow behind. Ranuko takes the chip case in both hands and starts back toward the ship, already thinking in seals and mounts.
Ranuko
I will lock it down on the ship. Don’t let them keep you waiting.
Serafina watches the review code pulse once more, then angles her body toward the station corridor as if measuring the cost of following it.
Serafina
If the hub is calling us in person, this is not just an audit.
The workshop hatch slides open. Station air drifts in, colder and drier than the bay, carrying the clipped thrum of maintenance traffic.
Nahuli heads for the review room code’s waypoint, and the station’s admin response keeps blinking on every linked display he passes.
By the time he reaches the marked door, a white-lit panel has already turned over to his badge signature. The threshold waits on a single unlabeled prompt.
Quest Complete
Attend Central Maintenance Hub review
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Good→Great