Chapter Six
Rhazek
Jorren brings Elara’s thanks, along with a complaint about the bread.
The command chamber remains dim, the recovered data floating before me in thin gold columns: names, payments, ship registries, false rescue codes.
I return my attention to the files. “Tell the galley to improve morale in baked goods.”
The enemy files rearrange at my gesture, expanding the payment trails attached to the laboratory vessel. Three false companies. Two dead intermediaries. One masked transmission burst near the Obsidian Belt. Sarkan’s style is visible beneath it all: elegant, cruel, too pleased with itself.
An hour later, I pull up the survivors’ medical status.
Asha is awake and asking for Elara. Grace remains critical, her baby’s heartbeat present. Captain Naylor is unconscious, her head trauma improving. The others are stable.
I stand and look toward medical.
Jorren folds his arms. “No. You agreed to supervised contact.”
I step around the table.
Jorren moves with me, blocking my path.
A systems alert cuts across the wall before I can object.
“Report,” I command.
The Black Star answers through the walls. “Lower civilian recovery deck oxygen ratio fluctuating. Automated correction delayed. Root cause unknown.”
Jorren is already moving. “Sabotage?”
“Possible,” the ship says.
“Casualties?”
“None. Vulnerable patients may destabilize if fluctuation continues.”
I leave the chamber.
Jorren keeps pace beside me, all humor burned away. “Engineering team?”
“Dispatched,” The Black Star says.
“Seryn? Elara?” I ask.
“Dr. Vahl informed. Elara Quinn is in transit to recovery to visit Asha Bell.”
“Route?”
The ship displays the corridor map. Gold lines. Red hazard zones. Elara’s position marked by a white pulse moving with Nima and two guards.
I quicken my pace.
The corridor bends, opens, narrows into a lift shaft. Crew step aside before we reach them. The Black Star moves us downward without waiting for command, the lift dropping through decks in a smooth controlled fall.
The lower recovery deck comes into view on the wall display. Oxygen remains within survivable range but unstable. The system cannot correct because a manual bypass in auxiliary life support is stuck between human-safe and Dravari-standard output.
“Who accessed auxiliary?” Jorren asks.
“No authorized access logged,” The Black Star answers.
The lift doors open.
The air feels dry even to me. It will be harsher on human lungs.
The corridor ahead is bright with medical lights and civilian recovery signage. Dravari medics move quickly between rooms. Two engineers kneel beside an open wall panel, tools connected to a pulsing black conduit. Seryn stands over them, one hand on a scanner, expression cold enough to frost metal.
Elara is there.
She stands near the recovery room entrance with Nima at her side and a child’s small hand clutching hers.
Asha is thin and brown-skinned, her hair in uneven braids, a medical wrap around one shoulder. A blanket covers clothes too large for her. She looks up at Elara as though the entire ship has become survivable because Elara exists inside it.
Elara looks down at the child with an open gentleness that vanishes when she sees me.
I stop several paces away.
Elara’s eyes narrow. “What’s happening?”
“A life-support irregularity,” Seryn says before I can speak. “Minor at present.”
Asha’s grip tightens on Elara’s hand. “Are we going to lose air again?”
Elara crouches immediately to the child’s height, ignoring the way the movement must pull at her ribs. “No. Look at me. We have air. Hear me breathing?”
“You copy me, okay? Slow in. Slow out. Like we practiced when the scrubbers stuttered.”
Elara inhales slowly.
Asha follows.
“That’s it,” Elara murmurs. “We don’t waste panic until we need it.” Asha gives a watery laugh.
Then the oxygen alert pulses red again.
Asha flinches and coughs.
Elara turns her head toward the open wall panel.
She rises, bracing against the recovery-room doorway.
“What panel is that?” she asks Seryn.
“Auxiliary atmospheric bypass.”
Elara’s attention locks onto it. “Why is it cycling like that?”
The engineer says, “The regulator is caught between atmospheric presets.”
“Human and Dravari?”
His brows lift. “Yes.”
“What’s the humidity doing?”
Elara steps closer to the panel.
The engineer clears his throat. “Humidity is dropping with the oxygen correction.”
Asha coughs again behind her.
Seryn turns her scanner toward the child.
Elara leans over the panel. “This isn’t sabotage.”
Jorren says, “You cannot know that.”
She does not look at him. “I can if your system is making the same stupid mistake ours used to make.”
Elara points at the pulsing conduit. “Your regulator thinks human-safe means lower density and lower moisture because it’s converting from Dravari baseline, but the recovery rooms are compensating locally with medical humidity.
So the auxiliary bypass keeps overcorrecting. It’s fighting the room units.”
Seryn checks the readings. “She is right.”
Elara drops to one knee beside the panel.
“Can you isolate the room humidifiers from auxiliary?” Elara asks.
“The interface is rejecting manual override,” the engineer says.
Elara holds out her hand for the engineer’s tool.
The engineer passes the tool.
Elara leans into the panel.
The tool is made for Dravari hands. Too large. Too responsive to claw pressure. It slips in her grip.
Nima kneels on Elara’s other side. “Tell me what to hold.”
Elara gives her a brief grateful look. “That conduit there. Not the glowing part.”
Nima’s hand stops midair. “Maybe lead with that.”
“The dark ring. Hold it steady.”
Nima holds it.
Elara works the tool against the bypass casing. The first attempt fails. The second sparks.
The oxygen warning pulses again.
Asha coughs harder.
The panel unlocks.
The casing slides open. She reaches inside.
Elara shifts the inner connector. “The bypass loop is physically latched. Your system is trying to move it electronically, but the latch warped. Probably from combat vibration.”
“Can you release it?” Seryn asks.
“Yes.”
The first engineer says, “The internal edge is sharp.”
Elara flexes her fingers. “Everything on this ship is sharp.”
She reaches deeper.
The panel sparks again.
Blue-white energy snaps across her wrist.
Elara jerks back with a cry.
I am there before thought.
My hand closes around her forearm, not her wrist, pulling her away from the live panel as my other hand drives into the conduit. The current hits me instead, hot and biting. The Black Star tries to shut it down a breath too late.
Pain climbs my arm.
Elara is caught between my arm and chest, her injured hand clutched close to her body.
Her pulse beats against my palm through the thin Dravari fabric. My throat markings flare.
I release her immediately.
My tail has curved between her and the panel. I draw it back.
Elara offers her hand. Seryn examines the burn and coats it with sealant. Minor damage, the doctor says. Painful, but not deep.
The first engineer says, carefully, “The conduit is still unstable.”
Elara snaps back to the panel. “I wasn’t done.”
“You need to let the engineers finish,” I say.
Elara stands, locking her knees against a sway. “Asha is sitting ten feet away thinking she’s about to suffocate again because your giant ancient warship is too proud to admit its life support is having a communication issue. I am not going back to bed while a child listens to an oxygen alarm.”
“If you want to protect me,” she says, “then stop making me useless.”
I turn to the engineers. “What is required?”
The first engineer recovers. “Manual release while the auxiliary system cycles down. Someone must hold the latch open. Someone else must reroute the humidity correction.”
“I can do the reroute,” Elara says.
Jorren kneels beside the panel. “I hold the latch.”
Elara points. “Hold that exactly halfway when I tell you. Open it fully and the system will slam to Dravari baseline.”
Elara takes the tool again with her unburned hand.
The oxygen alarm pulses.
Elara kneels beside Jorren and bends over the panel again. “Okay. On my count. Three, two, one. Half.”
Jorren moves the latch.
The conduit groans.
Elara slides the tool into the exposed ring and twists.
The lights flicker.
Asha gasps.
The system resists.
Elara’s injured body trembles. Sweat beads along her hairline. The burn sealant shines across one hand; the other shakes around the tool.
The latch shudders.
Jorren’s arm strains. “It wants to close.”
“Don’t let it.”
Elara catches the slipping tool badly, scraping her knuckles. Blood wells red.
The Black Star reacts before I can.
The panel light changes from red to gold. The sharp inner components retract by a fraction, making room for Elara’s smaller hand.
Elara twists the tool once more.
The latch clicks.
At Elara’s direction, the engineer keys the reroute into the manual panel.
The oxygen alarm shifts from red to amber.
Then gold.
The air thickens by a fraction.
“Humidity correction stabilizing. Oxygen ratio stable,” The Black Star reports.
Asha takes a deep breath.
Elara sits back on her heels, pale and sweating and grinning like she has personally insulted death and gotten away with it.
Elara points at the panel. “Replace that latch; don’t polish it and pretend it learned a lesson.”
The engineer nods.
Asha appears at Elara’s side, blanket trailing. “You fixed it?”
“Yes. Temporary fix. The engineers will make it permanent.”
Asha looks from Jorren to me. “You told the big scary ones what to do.”
Elara’s mouth twitches. “Somebody had to.”
Elara opens one arm, careful of her burn and bandages. Asha folds into her immediately.
The child presses her face against Elara’s stomach, small arms tight around her waist.
Elara closes her eyes and wraps one hand around Asha’s shoulders.
Watching her hold Asha, I want a future.
A room with warmth because warmth means comfort, not system failure.
Children who practice breathing because they are laughing too hard, not because the air might run out.
Seryn steps forward. “You need to sit, Elara.”
Asha pulls back, worried. “Are you sick?”
“No.” Elara strokes the child’s hair with careful fingers. “Just tired.”
Nima guides Asha back toward the recovery room. The child resists for two steps, then lets herself be led once Elara promises to come in after Seryn checks her hand.
Elara sits on the low emergency bench near the wall.
One of the medics whispers the word bond.
Elara hears it. Her shoulders tighten.
I let my gaze move across the watching crew until the medic falls silent.
Nima returns as Seryn seals Elara’s scraped knuckles. “Asha says you can use her bed if you promise not to die.”
Elara looks down at her hands. “Tell her I accept the terms.”
Seryn gestures toward the recovery room. “You may sit with her for twenty-two minutes. Then your quarters.”
Elara rises from the bench. “Thank you for letting me fix it.”
Then her gaze drops to my hand.
The conduit strike left a black line across my palm. It is already sealing, but it still hurts.
Elara steps toward me. “Your hand.”
She stops close enough to see the markings still dimly lit beneath my skin.
She reaches.
Two fingers touch the unburned edge of my hand.
Gold burns from my palm up my forearm, across my throat, beneath my armor. Heat cracks through me so fast my breath turns rough. My tail goes rigid behind me.
Her pulse hammers through those two small points of contact.
Then her eyes clear.
She snatches her hand back.
Elara steps away, breathing hard.
“I don’t even know you.”
I lower my hand slowly.
The burn is gone.
Where her fingers touched, two small gold marks remain on my skin, glowing like embers.
She sees the healed skin and the marks. Her face drains.
She walks into Asha’s recovery room without looking back, her hand clenched at her side.
Nima follows.
Seryn steps closer, voice low enough for only me and Jorren.
“This cannot continue unmanaged.”
“No,” I say.
Inside the recovery room, Asha laughs at something Elara says. I turn away from the door.
“Seal the corridor report,” I tell Jorren.
He nods.
Jorren’s jaw tightens. “We may need to move her off ship.”
“Offer her both options when she is stable.”
I turn toward the lift.
From behind the recovery room wall comes Elara’s voice, low and gentle.
“No, Asha. Listen to me. You are allowed to sleep. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”
I keep walking.