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CHAPTER ONE – SERPINT

As soon as we exit the gate there is nothing to see but the uniinable beauty of Hare froate two, it looks like a piece of Heaven no et here

Hundreds of spacecraft orbit, waiting for clearance to dock on the lowest levels of the spinning ring Thousands of outlaws, assassins, and hunters inside losing and winning irls in one of the et their recent losses or celebrate their wins

But it wasn’t always that way

When we first found the place it was an abandoned e of people who have since all disappeared We weren’t the first to coates were already here But everyone knew better than to try and travel through them

It ned and operated by a single artificial intelligence that claimed to be tens of thousands of years old The discovery teao were able to send back a single report warning others to stay away before they disappeared, never to be heard froain

When we first arrived it was nothing but servo bots whirring about in eerie, dark silence No sound except the continuous clicking and hu bots as they polished and re-polished the glea obsidian floors

In other words… it was creepy as fuck

It wasn’t that ere particularly brave e arrived, ere just desperate And just kids Crux was the oldest at sixteen and Draden and I were the youngest at twelve The rest were somewhere in between

We’d done soo soo hoain From what I remember of that trip, we had an invitation of sorts Soressive security systeate and allow us to dock

The AI was charismatic and cordial But we’d read the report of the first contact tea that

We weren’t expecting what came next

Apparently even an AI can get bored after a fewand was craving interaction, so we alactic web and let him rejoin civilization

We didn’t ask anyone if it was a good idea, we just said yes Tray—resident evil genius of our depraved gang of seven—happily obliged and several hundred spins later the AI was content and happy and we had a new home

He was the one who really built this place, but ere the ones who benefitted