One neck-breaking, ear-splitting, Kreint-rumbling take-off later, the Hark finds itself exiting the atmosphere of Sere. Golt sits in the pilot seat with Rowe and Garren in the seats behind and Vlex in one of the smaller, less comfortable starboard wall seats meant for unlucky additional passengers. Seeing as whoever takes these port and starboard accommodations is sitting facing sideways in a hypersonic spacecraft capable of obscenely dangerous maneuvers, the crew surmised that Vlex should take the sacrifice to his neck since he was the youngest of the four. There was much debate as to why Rowe, the literal robot, couldn't take his place instead so he could take a co-pilot seat. The answer is still pending.

As the Hark prepares for its rendezvous with Sere’s only low-orbit OSG station, the night side of the planet creeps below. The world as a whole is nearly untouched, save for small pinpricks of light coming from the research stations and towns not dissimilar to Kreint. The most subtle suggestion of twilight gleams on the eastern edge of the world’s horizon as its sun readies another rise.

Soon, the station emerges from a distant vanishing point like a gleaming marble stencil. OSG stations are deceivingly simple in their appearance- six massive, white, rod-shaped structures bent at a one-hundred and twenty degree angle float apart from one another to create one gargantuan hexagon whose sides are formed by beams of radiant cyan energy emanating from each end. These beams keep each vertex in place and thus allow the station to act as one enormous construct.

Its scale is up to par for OSGs- that being unfathomably massive. Alliance standards demand that every station be able to transport at least one of whatever the largest ship in use is at the time. Luckily, expanding the structure to accommodate the newest freighter is usually not an issue due to the corners being tethered by what are effectively struts of light. This is, of course, ignoring the obscene hike in the energy bill that comes with increasing your gate’s surface area. In due time, the Alliance may just see its first galactic toll road.

As the now diminutive Hark crests towards the station, the radio picks up the stiff, artificial voice of its automated OSG Traffic Controller. After several lines of questioning regarding the ship’s identification, the crew it carries, and whether or not they are truly sure they would like to slingshot outside of Alliance space, the Hark finds itself at the very center of the hexagon. The light blue beams holding the station together glow brighter as the space around the ship warps and distorts.

In the blink of an eye, the Hark vanishes in a thunderclap of spacetime.