Thren Valis's Arc

Chapter 17 of 18

Zarah's words stayed with Thren all night. Kill the fight, save the fuel. She stood in the nursery at dawn and stared at the sunflower crowning her ship. The bloom turned toward the window, chasing the first light. Every time a pilot pulled it off course, it strained back. That strain drank the acid dry. She could not kill the flower. Steering died with it. She needed something to hold the bloom still without stopping it. She walked the rows of her nursery, hunting for an answer. Near the compost bins she found the weed she had cursed for months. It coiled around her ironwood posts, thorned vines looping tight, squeezing the life from anything it touched. She had ripped it out a dozen times. Now she stopped and watched it grip a dead stalk. It did not crush at random. It held. It only tightened when the plant beneath it pulled away. The idea hit her like cold water. The weed strangled struggle. When a plant fought, it clamped down. When the plant went still, it eased. That was a brake. A living brake that answered to force alone. Thren cut three lengths of the vine. She carried them up the ramp and knelt at the base of the sunflower stalk. She wove the weed around the stem, then spliced its roots into the fungal web that fed the whole hull. The weed drank in. Its thorns settled against the flower's stalk and waited. She fetched the pitcher plant's acid tank and filled it half full. Enough for a real test. Then she pressed her palm to the root wall. "Turn left," she told the ship. "Off the sun." The sunflower strained toward the window. It always did. But this time the weed felt the strain and clamped. The bloom stopped fighting. It held where her hand asked, quiet, its resistance choked off at the stalk. The magnetic ring fired once. The nose swung left and stayed. Thren watched the acid gauge. It dropped a hair, then held steady. She turned the ship again. Again the weed caught the flower's pull and pinned it. The gauge barely moved. She turned it a third time, a fourth, a fifth. The tank still read half full. She pulled her hand back and sat on the floor of her own ship. Five turns. Before, three had killed it. She ran the numbers in her head and could not make them come out wrong. The weed she had torn out and thrown on the compost had solved the flaw Zarah swore was fatal. The bloom steered. The brake held. The acid lasted. The ship was efficient now. It could turn as many times as a journey demanded. Thren looked at the half-full tank and knew the vessel could finally cross the dark between worlds. One question remained, the one that had kept her awake for months. Now she had fuel enough to ask it.