Jessica solar's Arc

Chapter 2 of 15

Jessica pulled the clamp array off the hull at dawn. The coils were black at the cores. She had drained it saving the ship, and it would not fire again without a full recharge she did not have parts for. The scavengers had run once. They would come back tonight to test whether she could do it twice. She had nine hours. She carried the dead array into the lower bay and set it on the bench. The diplomat's sealed case still sat by the airlock where she had left it. She had not opened it. She did not intend to. She needed a weapon, not a bribe. She stripped the array for parts. Two coils were salvageable. She needed six. She pulled the manifest for the ENGINE PARTS crate and found nothing that matched. She checked the second crate. The third. Her hands were shaking again, this time from no sleep. A knock at the bay hatch. The florist stood there in her plain linen dress, a bundle of cut blooms in her arms. Bright lilies, petals like small suns. She was the only mortal cleared into the imperial chambers, and she had never come down to the lower decks before. The blooms nearest Jessica's grease-black sleeves had already begun to curl. "He sent me," the florist said. Her voice was quiet. "He said you would not open the case. He said to tell you it is coils. Six of them. Rated for your array." Jessica set down the wrench. "He knew what I burned out." "He knew before I did." Jessica looked at the case. Then at the lilies wilting in the woman's arms. Accepting the coils meant owing the crimson coat something she could not yet name. Refusing meant losing the hull tonight, and with it the ship that was supposed to carry her coronation fleet. She had eleven weeks. She had one night. She crossed the bay and broke the seal. Six coils, packed in foam. Rated exactly for her array. No note. No terms. She lifted one out and it was warm from storage, not cold from a cargo hold. It had been kept close. She fitted the coils by afternoon. The array hummed back to life on the bench. She hauled it out to the breach point herself and anchored it before the light went. When the first torch-beams crawled across the hull at dusk, she keyed the field live and watched the scavengers scatter a second time. She walked back through the airlock and the diplomat was in the corridor again, in the same crimson coat, as if he had never left the ship. He did not ask if the coils had worked. He already knew. "Thank you," Jessica said. The word tasted like a debt written down. He inclined his head. "My faction will send someone to discuss terms in the morning." She had kept the hull. She had sold something else to do it, and she did not yet know the price.