Then the emergency lights flicker on, bathing the cockpit in blood-red, and I can see my hands. They’re shaking. Both of them, wrapped white-knuckled around the yoke, trembling like I’ve just mainlined pure adrenaline.
I have. I absolutely have.
“Status?” Rynn asks. He’s already unbuckling, reaching for me, his hands checking my ribs, my neck, my skull for injuries before he even glances at himself. Through the bond, I feel his relief crash over me like a wave—warm, golden, fierce. Alive. You’re alive. We’re alive.
“We’re down,” I wheeze, patting his hands even as I do my own inventory. Everything hurts, but nothing seems broken. Just battered. Just bruised. Just lucky as hell. “Ship’s dead, though. Main power is gone.”
“SYSTEM FAILURE,” Zip’s voice is weak, fading, and something cold and awful spreads through my chest. “CORE POWER... DRAINING. CAPTAIN CHAOS... I AM LOSING COHERENCE. IT HAS BEEN... A PLEASURE.”
No.
Panic, sharp and cold, pierces through the adrenaline like a blade.
“Zip!” I scramble out of my harness, ignoring the ache in my ribs and the throb in my skull. I dive under the console, ripping open the maintenance panel with fingers that won’t stop trembling. “Don’t you dare fade out on me. Don’t you dare.”
He’s been with me for seven years. Seven years of sarcasm and sensor readings and AI sass that drove me crazy and kept me sane. Seven years of late-night conversations when the black got too big and the loneliness got too loud. He’s not just a ship system.
He’s my friend.
“Rynn, hand me the data-spike from the emergency kit!”
Rynn doesn’t ask questions. The bond hums with his understanding—he feels my terror, feels why this matters—and he snaps the kit open and slaps the spike into my hand.
“Transferring consciousness,” I mutter, jamming the spike into the hardline port. My fingers fly across the manual interface, pulling up protocols I haven’t touched since flightschool. “Come on, Zip. Come on, you sarcastic bucket of bolts. Hop over.”
The screen flickers. A loading bar crawls agonizingly slow. 80%... 90%...
The cockpit lights die completely. The hum of the ship—that constant, subliminal vibration I’ve lived with for so long I forgot it was there—goes silent. It feels like a death.
“Polly,” Rynn warns, his hand on my shoulder. I can feel his concern, taste it like copper on my tongue. “I smell fuel. The containment field is failing. We need to leave.”
“Not without him.” I stare at the screen, willing it to move. My vision blurs, and I blink hard. I am not crying over an AI. I am not. “I’m not leaving him to die in the dark.”
I know, Rynn pushes through the bond. I’m not asking you to. But if this ship explodes—
The data-spike chimes. Green light.
“Got him.” I yank it free and shove it into my pocket, patting it against my hip like I’m checking on a heartbeat. Relief hits me so hard my knees actually buckle, and Rynn’s arm is around me instantly, holding me up. “Let’s go.”
Rynn kicks the emergency release for the canopy. It blasts off with a hiss of hydraulics, and the sounds of the hangar rush in—shouting, boots running on stone, the whine of loading lifts. The air smells different here. Sharp and clean, with a mineral tang like rain on hot rock. Alien. But not hostile. Not anymore.
We climb out onto the scorched hull of my poor, beautiful ship. She looks like a crushed soda can, smoke pouring from her flanks, pink paint blackened and blistered. I feel a pang of grief so sharp it steals my breath—she fought so hard for us, gave everything she had—but there’s no time for it.
Because the hangar isn’t just a landing bay. It’s a mobilization zone.
And it’s magnificent.
The space is cavernous—three hundred meters at least, carved from living obsidian that gleams like polished night. Crystalline veins thread through the walls, pulsing with amber light in patterns that look almost organic, like the heartbeat of some vast, ancient creature. The ceiling arches overhead, supported by pillars of fused volcanic glass that catch the emergency lights and scatter them into fractured rainbows.
Zaterran warriors in full crystalline armor are moving with terrifying precision, their movements so coordinated they might be one organism with a hundred bodies. They’re setting up heavy repeating blasters behind barricades of stacked cargo—weapons that hum with a sub-audible thrum I feel in my back teeth.
But woven through the military discipline is a chaotic stream of civilians. Staff in simple tunics. Families carrying bundles of possessions. Refugees clutching crates and children, hurrying toward the blast doors at the rear with the quiet, determined terror of people who’ve done this before.
It hits me then, like a fist to the solar plexus.
This isn’t just a fortress. It’s a home.
There are kids here. Families. Lives that have nothing to do with interstellar politics or Meridian assassins or ancient bloodline conspiracies. And I brought a war fleet to their doorstep.
