The Gatekeeper's Arc

Tessa Rill smelled ozone before she saw the sky. On Helio Arc the air tasted like old metal and salt reclaimed from a thousand reclamation pumps; it was the scent she had learned to take like breath. The ring hung a hundred kilometers above its gas giant, a slow braided city of conduits and gardens and scaffolds where the sunlight was always a thin coin. Tessa's hands were raw from tightening bolts on the hydrofeed when Kyra from the next hatch called up to her in that sing-song voice that meant trouble had come and someone had to do something about it.

"You catch news from the gate?" Kyra asked from her window, hair a halo of wiring and grease.

Tessa wiped her palm on her coveralls. The cloth left a silver smear. "Only the usual—late cargo, late clean-water. Or we clean our own tanks and call it an industry."

Below them the Orbital lift groaned, a long metallic note that reminded Tessa of wind through old chain-link fences. Children on the lower terraces chased magnet-balls that clicked against alloy like laughter against tin. The feed-lines hummed. The world hummed. It took less than an hour for the hum to thin.

A broadcast blinked across the public feed twenty meters away: a blue-stenciled circle and a steady, small voice. "Attention Helio Arc: the Ember Gate is reporting anomalous attenuation in transit signatures. Ships scheduled from the Jovian docks will be delayed pending investigation. Prioritize critical cargo only."

Kyra's hands went still. Tessa felt the way the word 'anomalous' moved through a room of people—light solid to shadowed worry. A cargo pod had failed to dock earlier that morning; its distress glittered across monitors like a flare. The pod's last ping showed only white noise and a single heat signature that faded into nothing.

Tessa slid down to the terrace, boots clacking, and saw who had gathered: small merchants, a stern-eyed clinic nurse, old men who mended nets by trade. Someone whispered 'seeds'—and the word folded the crowd like a shutter. Seed-stock shipments were what kept Helio Arc alive in the lean months. Without seeds, the hydrobeds would start to fail in weeks.

Gideon Kael found her then, elbowing through with his oil-streaked apron and the slow, shuffling gait of someone who had spent his life in the thrall of machines. He kept his hands tucked inside a canvas satchel like a man hiding a small, offended creature.

"You heard?" Gideon asked. His voice was a wire that had lost some insulation; it sparked kindness anyway.

Tessa nodded. Her hands clenched; the air felt thinner than it had a heartbeat before. The ring had always been hungry, and now hunger had a name. "If the Gate's anchor is compromised, it's not only seeds. It could be med-cores, parts, oxygen packs. We can't wait for the shipping lines to fix themselves."

Gideon looked at her with an expression she had learned to read: the one men used when they decided someone too young asked to carry weights meant for older shoulders. "This business," he said, "isn't for the faint. You're set on leaving?"

Tessa stared at the darkening sliver of the gas giant. The city lights below were tiny, beautiful scabs. "If we don't find what was taken—if we don't bring it back—the ring will close in on itself. I can't watch that happen."

Kyra swallowed. Somewhere beyond the terrace, a child hummed a tune that Tessa recognized from before—small, steady, the sort of thing you hummed when you needed to believe a thing would keep being true. Tessa felt the tune catch inside her like something moving into place. She had been planning to leave for months; she had not expected to be shoved by circumstances so suddenly. But the Gate's stuttering pulse had the clarity of necessity.

Gideon tapped his satchel, and his fingers came away with a small cold box. The metal was dented, the latches amateurish. "I can't go with you," he said without pretense. "I built things that should still be here. But there's a core—old, but it remembers routes. It owes me a favor. Take it, and don't let it apologize for who it used to be."