Airi slipped out of hyperspace
softly, almost elegantly, like not a ship
but a cat
deciding to walk through a wall without asking physics for permission.
And right in front of them, a bluish giant opened up
Methuselah.
An old one.
Ancient, heavy,
glowing with deep, hostile layers of atmosphere.
Around it, like a swarm of metal flies,
orbited satellites
small, large, useless,
and the kind that should have been scrapped a long time ago.
But among them, one stood out.
A massive structure.
Chisui Station.
In Japanese
"BLOODSUCKER STATION."Only the marketing team liked the name.
Everyone else thought it was a little too honest.
From the station down into the suffocatingly dense layers of Methuselah’s atmosphere,
huge pipelines stretched
like metallic vampire fangs
driven straight into the flesh of an ancient gas titan.
They pumped gas from the depths of the old giant,
dragged it upward under insane pressure,
forcing it into massive reservoirs,
where the substance was processed, stabilized,
and turned into fuel—
which, according to official reports,
powered nearly half of the extraction chain of KAF Corporation.
The station belonged to one of its subsidiaries:
KANZAKI ARC EXTRACTION RING™.
On paper, it sounded elegant.
Almost poetic.
In reality
it was the official emblem of the Kanzaki clan.
The brochures said:
"We simply stabilize resource assets."Reality looked more like:
"We are industrial vampire addicts,
and this planet is our next victim."Chisui Station was built in the finest corporate traditions:
too big,
too expensive,
too dangerous,
and too ugly
for anyone to admit humans actually built it.
The structure was segmented, multi-layered,
like the Kanzaki clan had taken a wakizashi,
blown it up to skyscraper scale,
and wrapped it in industrial guts.
The surface of the station was:
matte,
charcoal-dark,
burnt in places,
patched in others,
and in some areas,
just straight-up dirty.
Thousands of pipes crossed at inhuman angles,
giving the feeling the station was built
not by engineers,
but by ants
given nanotechnology
and a truckload of amphetamines.
A massive orbital ring rotated around the station
slowly, threateningly, just loud enough
to make pilots feel:
"This piece of shit could fall apart any second,
but thanks to KAF Corporation, it'll fall apart strictly on schedule."Signal lights blinked in perfect sync. Too perfect.
Like even the light bulbs were under corporate code of conduct.
Outer industrial modules—”Legal Hell”
The station’s perimeter consisted of:
- ominous repair platforms;
- hanging containers;
- drilling sections;
- exhaust shafts;
- airlocks that opened whenever the hell they felt like
and even a few areas where the metal had melted
and nobody bothered to replace it.
KAF Corporation called it:
"Adaptive external perimeter."I call it:
“A rusty industrial hedgehog that died,
but keeps functioning out of sheer corporate inertia.”
Mid level—”The Gut”
Main processing zone:
- pipes cracked;
- valves exploded;
- sparks flew;
- robots cursed in binary;
- ventilation wheezed like it had asthma;
- operations control buried in the mess;
- ventilation wheezed like it had asthma,
humidity felt like a sauna where even the pumps were crying from overwork.
The smell was a mix of hot metal, ozone, and gas peroxide.
KAF called it:
"Central resource processing zone."I’d call it:
“Industrial worker hell.
Or heaven.
Depends how much I’ve fucking had to drink.”
Upper level—”Kanzaki Oasis”
Too calm.
Too quiet.
Too clean.
Here you had:
- Offices;
- conference rooms;
- private chambers;
- miniature gardens to show “respect for tradition”;
- decorative panels with waves and cranes
and a lonely bar for the chosen few.
The corporation called it:
"Strategic decision-making center."I’d say:
“This is where they sit, drink tea,
and make decisions
that kill planets.”
Lower level—”Heart of the Bloodsucker”
No humans there.
- Only machines.
- Massive pumps roaring like beasts.
- Tunnels where blue light burst upward from below.
- Pressure so intense even steel bent.
- Sounds so violent your eardrums might just file for leave.
KAF called it:
"Infrastructure node."I’m telling you:
“If hell exists somewhere,
its atmospheric pressure looks exactly like this.”