Nole Alset holds two assets, and only one of them is a spacecraft.
Gravitrek is the space-exploration company, and the public face of everything. To the world it sells orbital tourism and the romance of a second home. Behind that it is the logistics arm of an evacuation — the largest problem ever posed, moving a species — and Alset fronts it personally because a planet told the whole truth at once would tear itself apart.
Orbit is the network. Everyone is already on it: the berths are argued over there, the nine became household names there, and a rumour about an Astral Bridge can be seeded at breakfast and believed by lunch. Alset did not buy Orbit for revenue. An evacuation is a story before it is a spacecraft, and whoever owns the story decides who stays calm.
The two feed each other. Gravitrek supplies the spectacle; Orbit decides what the spectacle means. The counts under an announcement — posts, shares, trends — are an instrument he plays, and he plays it.
Both hunts run through Orbit, which is the part neither side finds funny. The seekers read the same feed that hides the mission, because it is the fastest way to learn what the takers already know. A Good Luck Cat surfacing in a stranger's photograph has, more than once, been the only lead anyone had.
Nole Alset