Thren Valis's Arc

Chapter 18 of 18

The tank still read half full when Zarah climbed the ramp. She had watched Thren's ship fail before, then work. Now she stood in the hold and looked at the living hull like a woman checking a bet. Thren wiped acid from her hands and waited for the next flaw. Zarah always found one. "It turns five times now," Zarah said. "You fixed the flower." She said it flat, the way she said everything. She kept a private count of every engineer who had doubted her, and how long each took to fold. Thren knew she was near that list. "It crosses the dark now," Thren said. "That's what I built it for." "Building it and proving it are different things." Zarah leaned against the vine wall. "There's a solo solar race next month. It loops out around debris in another system. No help. No dock. You bring your ship home or you don't." She paused. "I'm entering mine." Thren's chest tightened. A race was not a test she controlled. No greenhouse, no time to patch a stalled turn. If the sunflower froze out there, the ship died and so did she. "You want to race me," Thren said. "I want to see if the plant flies or just floats." Zarah's mouth moved, almost a smile. "Metal against weeds. One winner. You've got the fuel now. Or you're bluffing." Thren looked at the bloom crowning the hull, the parasitic weed coiled quiet around its stalk. She thought of the numbers. Five turns per half tank. The race looped debris, which meant many turns, many corrections. She ran the course in her head and could not make it fail. The brake held. The acid lasted. "I'll enter," Thren said. Zarah nodded once, like a wager closed. "Registration wants a fuel plan and a hull rating. Metal ships have both. Yours has neither." She pushed off the wall. "You'll need to prove your acid burn on paper. Race officials don't touch living wood on faith." That was the trap under the offer. Thren had proof for her hand and Sylvana's hand. She had no numbers a stranger could read and trust. The race demanded a rating she had never measured. "I'll get you the burn rate," Thren said. "Get it right." Zarah walked to the ramp. "Out there, wrong math is a coffin." She left. Thren pressed her palm to the root wall. The hull warmed under her hand. She had chased navigation for months and beaten it. Now the whole ship faced one course, one system, no second chance. She fetched a fresh acid tank and her gauge. To enter, she had to log every turn, every drop, and hand a rival engineer the exact limit of her own machine. She began to measure.