Morning on Midnight Veil looked exactly like afternoon, evening, and night: sulfur-yellow sky, and toxic wind howling across barren plains.

Inside the Centurion's command center, Luca nursed his second cup of coffee and watched the survey team's vital signs on the main display. Emily sat beside him at the workstation, close enough that their shoulders touched whenever one of them leaned forward to check the readouts.

Danny was hunched over the SpectraForge equipment in the cargo bay, muttering to himself as he compiled their report on the Varnathi data. Pixel had claimed her spot near him, chirping occasionally when Danny's muttering got too animated.

"Ryan, Chris, status report," Luca said into the comms.

Static crackled back, interference from the toxic atmosphere turning their voices into barely-intelligible fragments.

"—heading northeast toward—" Ryan's voice cut in and out. "—acid pools look promising—"

"—fuck that, we should check the—" Chris's response was equally garbled. "—western ridge has better—"

Luca rubbed his temples. "Zoe, can you clarify what those two idiots are arguing about?"

A burst of clearer audio came through. "They're arguing about which direction to survey first. Ryan wants to check the acid pools where we killed the Leviathan. Chris thinks the western ridge will have better mineral exposure."

"Joey, your opinion?"

Joey's voice was the calmest of the bunch. "I say we do both. Split the difference, spiral pattern outward from our current position. That way we cover more ground and they can both be right."

"Or both be wrong," Zoe added helpfully.

Emily leaned back in her chair, a smile playing at her lips. "They're like children."

"They are children," Luca said. "Children with very expensive equipment and no adult supervision."

She laughed, the sound warm in the cramped command center. Her hand found his on the armrest, fingers intertwining casually. The bruising on her ribs had darkened overnight, spectacular shades of purple and yellow visible through the thin TL9 shirt she wore.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

"Sore." She leaned into him slightly, comfortable in a way she hadn't been before. "But worth it. I'll be fine in a few days."

On the display, the survey objectives ticked upward slowly.

[Objective: Toxic Sludge Source Survey] (4/5) [Objective: Inorganic Mineral Survey] (18/24) [Objective: Atmospheric Survey] (13/15) [Objective: Flora Survey] (49/60) [Objective: Lifeform Survey] (15/20)

"Speaking of functionality," Emily said, turning to face him fully. "You still have attribute points pending."

Luca grimaced. He'd been avoiding that decision, mostly because he wasn't sure where to put them. "I was thinking Willpower and Memory. Boost my weaker attributes."

Emily shook her head. "Your Charisma is your lowest stat. Thirty-five points? That's terrible for a captain."

"I have charm," Luca protested. "People like me."

"People tolerate you," she corrected, but she was smiling. "And Charisma is your lowest attribute by far. You barely have any skills that use it right now, but what happens when you want to upgrade your professional path? Captain skills probably scale off Charisma. Leadership, negotiation, crew coordination - all of that."

"Maybe," Luca admitted. "But that's future problems. Right now, Perception is what keeps me alive. Memory helps with navigation and recall. Willpower affects my ability durations."

"Fine, stay charming through sheer force of personality instead of actual stats," Emily said. "But don't come crying to me when you want to unlock some captain ability and realize you need forty Charisma to qualify."

"I won't," he said. "I'll just suffer in silence like I always do."

"You've never suffered in silence in your entire life."

He pulled up his attribute screen, weighing the options.

Charisma: 35 Intelligence: 55 Memory: 57 Perception: 76 Willpower: 40

"What if I dumped everything into Perception?" he said, half-joking. "Get it to eighty-six, really lean into the scout-sniper build."

"Then you'd be a robot with great eyesight and terrible social skills." She poked his ribs, careful to avoid his own bruises. "Balance, Luca. That's what makes you effective."

Over the comms, Ryan's voice cut through: "—taking samples from the pool edge—kshhh—looks like concentrated sulfuric compound—"

The [Inorganic Mineral Survey] ticked up to 19 out of 24.

Luca sighed, making his decision. Four points into Perception, bringing it to an even 80. Three into Memory, pushing it to 60. And three into Willpower, getting it to 43.

"Happy?" he asked.

"You didn't put anything in Charisma."

"I'm charming enough," he said, leaning closer to her. "You seem to like me just fine."

She rolled her eyes, but her smile widened. "That's different. I have Stockholm Syndrome from being stuck on a ship with you for months."

"Stockholm Syndrome implies captivity. You could have left."

"And miss all this?" She gestured at the command center, the toxic planet outside, the garbled comms from their team dodging acid rain. Then her expression softened, her hand tightening around his. "I chose to be here, Luca. With you. I could have stayed on Earth and gone in a completely different direction. But I chose this. I chose you." She leaned closer, her voice dropping. "And you're not getting away from me now."

He kissed her then, gentle and brief, but enough to convey what words couldn't. When they pulled apart, she was smiling.

"Good," he said quietly. "Because I'm not going anywhere either."

Luca pulled up his XP allocation screen, wincing at the number staring back at him: 3,560,000 unallocated experience points. A fortune in progression, but the costs ahead made it feel inadequate.

"I need to dump this somewhere," he muttered, scrolling through his skill options.

Emily glanced over. "What's the holdup? Just level up your new Infiltrator skills."

"That's the problem." He highlighted the cost breakdown. "To get my new class skills to level 10, I need almost nine million XP. Nine million. I'm starting to regret investing in those skills at all."

Zoe's voice cut through the static, clearer than the others. "Ryan's found something. Looks like concentrated sulfuric compounds at the edge of the acid pool—RYAN! Don't touch that!"

"Why's that?" Emily asked, half-listening to Zoe's chatter while keeping her eyes on Luca's screen.

[Objective: Toxic Sludge Source Survey (5/5) - Complete] +15,000 CP

"Because all those are Infiltrator skills," Luca said, a note of frustration creeping into his voice. "My covert ops skills are way more useful in practice. Like my Ghost Protocol ability. I could get it up to level 5 for..." He trailed off, doing the mental math, then grimaced. "Uh, nevermind."

Emily looked at him. "For?" A knowing grin spreading across her face.

"Yeah, nevermind," Luca said quickly. "It costs nearly ten million XP to get that skill, Light Armor, to level 15."

She leaned back, processing that. "Nine million XP to get your new Infiltrator skills to level 10 and unlock those abilities, or ten million to get a single TL8 skill to level 15?"

"Yeah." Luca scratched his head, staring at the numbers. "That's a lot. The requirements skyrocket after level 10. Like, exponentially. It's insane."

"You know what that means?"

"We're going to have to run more portals," Luca said.

Emily frowned. "If we do them well... we have our choices of portals, just have to pick the safest. So what are you going to do?"

Luca thought about it, weighing his options. "Maybe spread my points around? Get my core skills up a few levels, unlock some—"

"Luca." Emily's tone made him pause. She knew him too well. "Whatever you decide, stick to it. You change your skill queue every other week. Pick a path and commit."

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"I don't change it that often," he protested weakly.

"Not the point." She fixed him with a look. "Make a plan. Follow the plan. Don't get distracted by shiny new abilities halfway through."

Luca sighed, knowing she was right. He pulled the XP allocation screen back up, this time with more focus.

"Okay. New Infiltrator skills to level 10 first. That unlocks the TL9 abilities, gives me a complete skill set at that tier. Then I focus on getting my TL8 covert ops skills to level 15. No deviations, no 'oh this looks cool' detours."

"Good," Emily said. "Now stick to it."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And stop calling me ma'am."

"Yes, Captain Berrow."

She kicked his shin under the console. "Better."

[Skill level up! Silent Takedowns Proficiency Level 6 -> Level 8] [Skill level up! Hacking Efficiency Familiarity -> Level 8] [Skill level up! System Override Proficiency Level 6 -> Level 8] [Skill level up! Data Breach Proficiency Level 6 -> Level 8] [Skill level up! Adaptive Exploits Proficiency Level 6 -> Level 8] [Skill level up! Execution Protocol Proficiency Level 6 -> Level 8]

"Ryan, confirm you're getting those samples," Luca said into the comms, forcing himself to focus back on the mission. "We need complete data on those sulfuric compounds."

"Copy that," Ryan replied. "Chris is getting atmospheric readings. This stuff is nasty. Like, melt-your-face-off nasty."

"That's why we pay you the big bucks," Luca said dryly.

"You don't pay us anything."

"Semantics."

The mission reward notification still blinked in his peripheral vision. One modification slot, earned from completing the Varnathi escort mission. He'd been saving it, trying to decide what to upgrade.

"I'm taking the Multitool upgrade," he said, accepting the modification reward.

He pulled his multitool from his belt and confirmed the selection. The air shimmered, and a small metallic cube materialized in his palm, no larger than a dice. It was warm to the touch, its surface covered in intricate geometric patterns that seemed to shift and reconfigure.

Luca set his multitool on the dinette table and spread out the cube. They snapped together with a soft click, blue lasers connecting each corner in a grid pattern that enveloped the device.

A notification appeared in his HUD: [Upgrading in Progress - 4 hours].

[Advanced Multitool Fusion] Integrates: Advanced Bio-Analysis Suite, Motion Ecology Predictor Grants enhanced environmental scanning, predictive movement patterns for local fauna, and molecular-level composition analysis.

"Nice," he said, selecting it. "Gives me Danny's science capabilities without sacrificing my exploration functions."

Emily nodded approvingly. "Four hours isn't bad. You'll have it operational before the survey team gets back."

Over the comms, chaos erupted.

"Contact! Multiple hostiles, looks like—" Chris's voice was cut off by the distinctive whine of plasma weapons.

"We're fine!" Joey's voice came through calm. "Just some ambush predators. Three, maybe four. We've got this."

Luca sat up straighter, hand moving instinctively toward his own weapon before he remembered he was safe inside the Centurion. On the display, the team's vitals spiked. Adrenaline, elevated heart rates, but nothing critical.

"Joey, confirm status," he said into the comms.

"All good, Luca. Zoe's already dropped two of them."

Ryan's voice crackled through, breathless but excited: "These things are like armored slugs with—Jesus, did you see that?!"

"Ryan, status!" Luca barked.

"We're fine! We're fine! These things are gross. Like, monumentally gross. I need a shower after just looking at them."

Emily poured herself more tea, utterly unconcerned. "He always exaggerates."

"Always," Luca agreed, settling back into his chair but keeping his eyes on the vitals.

The firefight lasted another two minutes. It was brief and apparently one-sided given the lack of panic in Joey's updates. When it was over, the [Lifeform Survey] objective jumped to 18/20.

"We're too far for XP share," Luca muttered.

"Specimens scanned," Joey reported. "And yes, Ryan's right. They're monumentally gross. Telescopic eye stalks, some kind of acidic mucus secretion. I'm tagging them for the biological database."

"Great," Luca said. "Try not to die out there."

"Copy that, Captain."

The survey objectives continued ticking upward as the morning progressed. Emily made more tea. Luca watched the displays and occasionally interjected when Ryan and Chris's arguments got too heated. Danny emerged once to complain about the comms interference disrupting his concentration, then disappeared back into the cargo bay and shut the door.

"Atmospheric readings are next. We're hitting different elevation points to get a complete profile."

Twenty minutes later they received their notification.

[Objective: Atmospheric Survey] (15/15) [Complete] +20,000 CP

"Flora survey's going to take longer," Chris said. "There's a lot of moss variants. Zoe swears she saw one of them move."

"It did move," Zoe insisted. "I'm not crazy."

"Debatable," Ryan muttered.

Two hours of bickering over moss samples later:

[Objective: Flora Survey] (60/60) [Complete] +75,000 CP

"Finally," Emily said, marking it off on the workstation. "I was starting to think they'd argue about lichen until we ran out of air."

The lifeform survey completed shortly after, courtesy of another gross slug-creature that Ryan described in detail.

[Objective: Lifeform Survey] (20/20) [Complete] +85,000 CP

The notification flashed across their displays simultaneously, bright and satisfying:

[Triumph Initiative - Adventuring Company] - Level Up! Level: 2 Membership: 7/500 Contribution Points: 613,025/3,000,000 Credits: 200,000,000

Luca leaned back in his chair, grinning. "We leveled up the company."

"About time," Emily said. "We've been busting our asses for weeks."

"Months," he corrected. "And it's only going to get harder from here. Three million contribution points to hit level three."

"We'll get there." She squeezed his hand. "One toxic hellhole at a time."

Over the comms, Ryan's voice cut through with barely-contained excitement: "Luca, you're going to want to hear this. We found something."

"Define 'something,'" Luca said, sitting up.

"Mineral formations. Big ones. Chris's multitool is going crazy with readings."

Chris's voice joined in: "Varionite veins, exposed along the cliff face. Looks like the Leviathan's acid blood did exactly what you thought. It stripped away the topsoil and exposed the geological strata underneath."

Luca felt his pulse quicken. "Just Varionite?"

"Negative. We're seeing at least three distinct mineral types. Transmitting scan data now."

The workstation lit up with incoming data, but the streams were choppy, corrupted by interference. Emily frowned at the fragmented readings.

[Objective Assigned: Inorganic Mineral Survey] (24/24) +510,000 CP

"Chris, we're getting maybe thirty percent of your transmission," she said into the comms. "Can you try again?"

Static crackled back, then Chris's voice cut through in bursts: "—atmospheric interference is—kshhhh—trying to—kshhhh—hold on—"

A few seconds of clearer audio: "Repositioning to higher ground. Give me two minutes."

Luca watched the data stream stabilize slightly as Chris moved. The mineral scan results started populating more completely now, though still with gaps.

"Better," Emily said. "Keep that position if you can. We're getting readable data now."

The analysis began filling in properly, and her eyes widened as the mineral compositions appeared on screen.

He looked over her shoulder. [Varionite] blinked at the top, followed by dense technical readouts scrolling past faster than he could process. Black-green crystalline veins. Superconductive properties. Coordinates logged along the eastern cliff faces.

"Holy shit," Luca breathed.

A second scan populated. Pyroclastium. Metallic foam structures from volcanic compression, plasma-resistant, tagged with a bright red warning: VOLATILE - heat-based mining prohibited.

Then a third: Caustispar. Iridescent crystalline formations with structural binding properties when alloyed.

Ryan's voice came through again: "It gets better. My multitool's detecting similar signatures all over this region. The acid exposure isn't limited to just the Leviathan site. There are exposed veins within a fifty-kilometer radius."

"The whole damn planet might be riddled with this stuff," Chris added. "We just needed something corrosive enough to expose it."

Luca looked at Emily, seeing his own excitement reflected in her eyes. "We need to mark these locations. Get exact coordinates, concentration estimates, everything."

"On it," Zoe said. "Joey's already tagging sites with survey beacons."

For the next hour, the field team moved systematically through the mineral-rich zone, scanning and cataloging every exposed vein they could find. The data streamed back to the Centurion in bursts, interference making the transmissions choppy but readable.

Luca watched the survey map populate with markers, each one representing a potential fortune. Varionite clusters along the eastern cliffs. Pyroclastium deposits in the volcanic ridges to the north. Caustispar spires dotting the toxic swamps.

"Midnight Veil isn't just a survey mission anymore." Emily said quietly. "This is a claim we need to protect."

"Does it though?" Luca asked, still staring at the map. "Change everything, I mean. We file the claim, sure. The IFC gets their cut, we get paid out. But then what? We just... keep going, right?"

Emily looked at him, reading something in his tone. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking this is what we do now. Explorers. Survey crews jumping from planet to planet, portal to portal." He leaned back in his chair. "Never settling down. Never staying in one place long enough to call it home. Is that what you want?"

She was quiet for a moment, studying his face. "What do you want?"

"I want to see the universe," he said simply. "As much of it as we can see. I want to know if the Varnathi are still out there somewhere, if we can find more of them, wake them up from the stasis they're in. I want to know if there are other civilizations. Other people like us, or completely different." He gestured at the mineral data. "The payout's going to be astronomical, yeah. But that's not why I'm here."

"You're here to satisfy your curiosity," Emily said. It wasn't a question.

"Basically." He looked at her, suddenly uncertain. "Is that enough for you? Never having a permanent home, always moving, always chasing the next discovery?"

Emily's hand found his, squeezing gently. "I'm here because of you, Luca. If you want to spend the rest of your life exploring, then that's what we'll do."

"Even if it means never settling down?"

"Even then." She smiled. "Besides, the Triumph is home. Our quarters, our crew, our stupid poker games and terrible coffee. That's enough for me. As long as you're there."

Something in Luca's chest cracked wide open. He turned to her, cupping her face in his hands, and kissed her properly. Not the gentle, careful kisses they'd shared before, but something deeper, more urgent. Three days of toxic hellscape and near-death experiences and the bone-deep relief of having her here, alive, with him.

Emily responded immediately, her hands sliding into his hair as she pressed closer despite her bruised ribs. The command center, the survey data, Midnight Veil's toxic atmosphere outside... all of it faded into background noise.

His hands found her waist, pulling her from her chair and into his lap. She made a small sound against his mouth, laughing, as she straddled him in the too-small command chair.

"Luca," she breathed between kisses.

"Yeah?"

"We're supposed to be working."

"We're multitasking."

The comms crackled with static.

"Survey team to Centurion—ksshhh—kshhhh—returning to base." Ryan's voice cut through, muffled and distant. "Anyone there?"

Luca's hand slid up Emily's back, pulling her closer.

"Luca? Emily?"

...

"Guys...?"

Emily's fingers traced down his neck, his collarbone, making him forget what planet they were on.

"Hello?" Ryan's voice carried a note of exasperation now. "Is anyone actually monitoring comms or...?"

"Danny?"

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