I wake to the wrong kind of quiet.
Not silence. The Drifting Truth isn't built for silence. Coolant ticks behind the bulkhead, an intake valve cycles on an irregular four-second count, and the hull plates give off a low, structural drone that vibrates straight through the medbay cot.
The amber diffuser overhead hums in its housing. Across the cracked plastic, someone has drawn a thick line in black grease-pen, crossed it out, and written: STOP FLICKERING OR ELSE.
Nix. The handwriting is too jagged to belong to anyone else.
My left arm is numb. Arya is still curled against my side, her forehead pressed into my torn sleeve, one hand caught in the seam near my wrist. Her skin radiates a dull, stubborn heat, but the hard shivering from the climb has broken.
I take a slow breath. The seal patch on my ribs holds, though the tape pulls against the bruised bone underneath. My mouth tastes of copper, stale filter dust, and the sour electrolyte wash Rhett gave me before I went under. My tongue finds the jagged notch where my teeth bit through during the cascade and presses down until the sting cuts through the fog.
Present. Awake.
My bare left foot is cold against the bottom sheet. On the right, the salvage-stitched brace lies heavy and locked, its outer plate cold where the cooling mesh has stiffened against the casing. Beneath the composite sleeve, my knee throbs with every heartbeat, answered by the faint, delayed tick of the crawler’s actuator pin.
The SpineLock along my vertebrae sits dormant. It should feel like relief. Instead, it feels like waiting for a tripwire to catch.
“You are awake,” ORIN says.
His voice arrives through the neural port behind my right ear, but the latency is off—a fraction of a second late, followed by a brittle scrape of synthetic static.
“I’m awake,” I rasp.
The words drag over dry tissue.
“Your vocal output suggests otherwise,” ORIN notes.
The dry tone is intact, but the signal clips on the consonant. A thin electronic hiss bleeds across the link, then cuts abruptly.
“ORIN.”
“I am online.” The reply comes too quickly, forced into the channel.
The port warms against my skull—not enough to trip a thermal alarm, just enough to make the scarred skin pull tight.
“What’s wrong with the routing?”
“Residual harmonic feedback from the mainframe coupling,” he says, his cadence rigidly even. “The local bus sustained an inductive surge during the climb out of the stack line. The damage is isolated.”
I stare at the grease-pen scrawl on the diffuser. “Isolated or stable?”
A pause. Longer than his baseline.
“It is not currently propagating,” he says.
“You hate saying currently.”
“I use the terms available to the situation.”
Arya stirs at my side, her fingers flexing once against my sleeve before settling back into the fabric. I keep my chest still until her breathing levels out.
“Can Nix patch it?” I whisper.
“Nix possesses competent diagnostic tools,” ORIN says. “Whether their methods comply with Core architecture standards is irrelevant, given that Core standards generally involve decommissioning.”
“That’s a yes.”
“It is an acknowledgment of limited alternatives.”
The medbay settles back into its rhythm. Beyond the threshold, the corridor runs dim and narrow, lit by the low-draw brown lamps of a ship trying to look dead to long-range sweeps. The door remains open. Thane’s rule, or Rhett’s. It leaves a clear line of sight to the opposite bulkhead, where a bundle of insulated wiring hangs secured with yellow seal tape.
An open door means an exit. It also means anyone can step through.
I try to move my left hand. A sudden, involuntary flutter runs through the tendons of my wrist—a sour, rhythmic twitch that has nothing to do with the field or the lingering drag of the tranquilizer. It sits deep in the marrow, cold and hollow, gnawing at the nerve roots along my forearm.
Withdrawal.
I pull the edge of the blanket over my fingers to keep the motion out of sight.
The ship groans, shifting pitch as a low-output attitude jet fires somewhere near the tail. The deck tilts half a degree and levels. The movement wrenches through my bad hip, and my teeth clamp down before the sound gets out.
Arya’s eyes open.
They are dark, wide, and clear before her head even lifts from my arm. The fever glass in her gaze has thinned, and she looks straight at my face, tracking the tension in my jaw.
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
She doesn't blink.
“Fine enough.”
She stays still for two breaths, then looks toward the small shelf bolted to the bunk rail. A plastic water pouch sits clipped into the bracket, the straw valve capped.
She reaches for it. Her arm is too short to clear the angle without leaning her weight against my cracked ribs.
I try to reach up and unhook it for her. My shoulder locks halfway, the torn muscle across my collarbone pulling hard against the seal patch. The arm drops back to the mattress, useless.
The failure sits like acid in my throat. I can bend an industrial blast shutter until the steel shears, but I can't reach two inches of molded plastic.
Arya doesn't wait for me to struggle. She slides her knees forward, shifting her weight with careful precision to avoid the brace and the bandaged side of my torso. She works the clip loose with both hands, brings the pouch back, and holds the straw to my mouth.
I take three swallows. The water is flat, lukewarm, and tastes of ship-tank zinc, but it washes the copper out of my mouth.
“Thank you,” I say.
She nods once, solemn, and drinks the rest herself before setting the empty pouch flat on the sheet.
Footsteps scrape against the deck plates outside. Slow, deliberate, heavy enough to announce their approach before they hit the light.
“Rhett,” ORIN reports in the port. “Approaching at zero-point-eight meters per second. He is carrying an aluminum utility tray and making deliberate acoustic contact with his boots.”
“I can hear him, ORIN.”
Rhett steps into the doorway with the tray rested against his hip. His dark hair is flattened on one side, a fresh strip of dermal seal stuck crooked across his temple. His gray work shirt is on inside out, the wash-tag sticking up near his collar.
He catches me looking at it.
“Don't start,” Rhett says, his voice rough with sleep. “Nix woke me up twenty minutes ago by dropping a spanner on the galley deck.”
“Your shirt is backwards,” I say.
“It's inside out, which is structurally superior for airflow.” He steps inside, keeping his hands open and visible, and sets the tray on the rolling cart instead of bringing it near the bunk. “Morning. Or mid-cycle. Time is an arbitrary construct until we clear Ashkaru’s orbital shadow.”
“Where are we?”
“Low drift. Four hundred kilometers above the southern basin. Running cold, running dark, letting the reaction thrusters bleed heat so we don't look like an active drive flare to the high-orbit buoys.” He checks the monitor console, his eyes flicking over the readouts. “Core still doesn't have a clean vector.”
“And an unclean one?”
Rhett grimaces slightly. “They’re sweeping the industrial repeaters around Stack Twelve. Nix says the ghost data you dumped into the regulator is keeping their search grid tied up in the canyons.”
“For now.”
“For now,” he agrees. He doesn't move toward the bed. Instead, he sets two foil ration packs, a clean thermal strip, and an injector ampoule onto the cart. “Food first. Standard broth paste. It tastes like chalk and salt, which means it’s working.”
Arya looks at the packs.
Rhett nudges one toward her side of the cart. “That one’s yours. Calories only.”
Arya looks at me.
“It's fine,” I tell her.
She picks up the foil pouch, uses her teeth to tear the seal, and begins eating in small, rhythmic bites.
I reach for the second pack with my right hand. The fingers close, but the tremor catches my thumb, making the foil crinkle against the metal rail. I clamp my left hand over my wrist to steady it, but the shaking just moves up into the forearm.
Rhett looks down at the cart, adjusting the packaging on the thermal strip so I don't have to watch him see it.
“Can I check the feed from the monitor?” he asks, keeping his tone light. “Just pulling the twenty-minute telemetry.”
I let out a slow breath. “Yes.”
He taps the slate. The monitor’s amber readout refreshes with a soft chirp.
“Seizure markers are down from the post-cascade spike,” Rhett says, scanning the columns. “Neural load is still sitting high, but the SpineLock isn't pulling auxiliary draw from your motor cortex anymore. Temperature is elevated.” He pauses, his jaw tightening slightly. “Autonomic stress is climbing.”
“Withdrawal,” I say.
Rhett looks up from the screen. His eyes are steady, clinical, but stripped of the casual ease he was wearing a moment ago.
“From what compounds?”
“I don't know the names.”
“The Cradle kept inventory,” Rhett says gently. “You were the inventory. They didn't give you maintenance logs?”
“They gave me injections.”
ORIN’s voice cuts into the room, routing through the small speaker beside the monitor as well as my port. The audio crackles with static, but the words are sharp.
“Active maintenance protocol for Omega-Seven included daily neuro-suppressants: Somnolex-D for interface stability, Neurogate-Nine for receptor dampening, and cyclic stimulants during field calibration.”
Rhett listens, his fingers going entirely still on the edge of the slate.
“They had you on a four-tier chemical leash,” he says quietly.
“It kept the field from burning out the implants,” I say.
“It kept your nervous system dependent on their supply chain so you couldn't survive outside a containment ring without seizing.” Rhett sets the slate flat on the counter. He breathes through his nose, holding his temper down. “Right. We don't have Cradle-grade synthetics, and I wouldn't push them into you if we did. We manage the taper with broad-spectrum blockers, electrolytes, and rest. You’re going to sweat, you’re going to shake, and your nerves are going to misfire.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That isn't a recommendation, Kaelin.”
Footsteps pause at the threshold.
Thane stands just outside the doorframe, wearing a dark canvas vest over a grease-stained tunic, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. He doesn't cross the line into the room. He stands where the hallway light outlines his shoulders, hands loose at his sides.
“Status,” Thane says.
“Stable enough to argue,” Rhett replies. “Not stable enough to leave the cot.”
Thane’s eyes drop to my right leg, noting the locked brace, then shift to Arya. “How is she?”
“Fever’s dropping,” I say.
Thane nods once. “Tavi is awake. Mara sent an encrypted burst before our relay fell below the horizon.”
The name sits hard between us. My ribs tighten around the memory: the cargo bay floor, the smell of ozone, my field pinning the boy against the bulkhead while my body moved on reflex.
“How is he?” I ask.
“Bruised ribs. Sprained wrist from the impact,” Thane says evenly. “He’s working the air-scrubber filters in the lower hold with Nix.”
“He shouldn't be near me.”
“He isn't near you,” Thane says. “He’s three decks down. And he isn't leaving the ship. Kavren Yard is under a Core supply audit. Mara bought them time by paying the inspection tariff, but the regulators are checking every manifest. If Tavi goes back now, they log his genetic markers and trace the regulator sabotage straight to her stall.”
Air rations. Fines. The Core turning the screws on an entire settlement because an asset slipped the net.
“Because of us,” I say.
“Because the Core operates by containment,” Thane corrects, his voice flat. “Mara knew what she was trading. She wants him out of the basin until the audit clears. He stays aboard.”
I look at my hands. The tremor is still there, small and constant under the blanket. “He’s terrified of me.”
“He was terrified of the Core officers, too,” Thane says. “Fear keeps people alive when things are breaking. It doesn't mean you’re his enemy.”
He turns his head toward the forward passage as the bulkhead speaker clicks twice.
Nix’s voice rasps through, strained by cockpit static: “Thane. Passive telemetry on the orbital lane is clear, but the heat sinks are only down to forty percent. If we burn the main drive now, every thermal sensor between here and the moon is going to see our tail.”
“Hold drift,” Thane answers into his collar link. “How long until we can light the sub-light manifold?”
“Ten hours if we stay in the planet’s shadow. Twelve if we want to be invisible.”
“Give it twelve.”
“Understood. Also, tell our guest that if she tries to use her field to jump-start my auxiliary bus again, I’m locking the medbay from the outside.”
“She's in bed, Nix.”
“Good. Keep her there.”
The link cuts with a short snap.
Thane looks back into the room. He reaches out, his knuckles tapping the metal frame beside a small, recessed square on the wall behind the monitor. “You have a viewport shutter here. Nix locked it during the climb to cut the flash.”
I glance at the steel panel. “I don't need to see the dark.”
“It isn't dark,” Thane says. “Ashkaru is right below us.”
He turns and walks down the passage, his boots clicking away into the engineering corridor, leaving the medbay door open behind him.
Rhett watches him go, then looks at me. “Do you want it open?”
My instinct is to say no. A viewport is an unarmored breach in the hull, a window that lets in light and vectors and exposure. But the room feels narrow, thick with the smell of old antiseptic and the metallic hum of my own failing chemistry.
“Open it,” I say.
Rhett steps to the wall, unlocks the manual latch, and slides the heavy steel shutter up into its recess.
The black of low orbit fills the frame, cut by the vast, curving horizon of the planet below.
Ashkaru isn't empty. From four hundred kilometers up, the vast slag basins look like dried ink poured across cracked stone. Thin, glowing veins of orange and copper cut through the cloud layer—the endless burn of the deep extraction chimneys and the processing yards. To the east, the jagged scar of the canyon system where Kavren Yard sits is swallowed by a creeping wall of gray-white dust.
Above the atmosphere, pieces of dead stations and fractured orbital rings drift in slow, silent arcs, glinting like broken needles in the weak sunlight.
The Cradle is up there somewhere, burning or already cold.
Arya leans forward, her chin resting on my good shoulder as she stares through the thick quartz glass. Her eyes move across the curve of the planet, tracking patterns in the storm bands and debris fields.
My field pulses—a faint, hollow ache behind my eyes, wanting to reach out, wanting to touch the cold metal drifting in the dark. I pull my breath in through my nose, forcing the current back down into the base of my skull.
Rhett picks up his slate and sits back in the battered chair, the cardboard shim under the caster creaking under his weight.
“No alarms,” he murmurs, tapping a stylus against the screen. “No active intercepts. Twelve hours of drifting like a dead piece of ore.”
“It won't stay quiet,” I tell him, watching the black horizon turn beneath us.
Rhett doesn't look up from his notes. “No. It never does. But right now, the ship is holding, the door is open, and nobody is shooting at us.” He sets the slate on his knee and looks straight at me. “Take the twelve hours, Kaelin.”
I look from the window back to Arya’s hand resting on the wool blanket, then to the open doorway leading into the dark belly of the ship.
My hand still shakes. The fever is coming. The Core is still sweeping the canyons behind us.
I close my eyes, lean my head back against the thin mattress, and let the ship drift.