The scavengers came back the third night, and Jessica counted six torch-beams crawling across the derelict's hull. She watched them from the broken observation deck, still in the stiff coronation robes she hadn't bothered to change out of. The embroidered constellations along her sleeves caught grease from the railing. Below her, on the cradle scaffolding, another hull plate went missing while she watched. She had eleven weeks to turn this wreck into the flagship that would carry her coronation fleet, and at this rate she would have a crown and no ship to wear it on. She climbed down the service ladder in the robes because there was no time to change. Her toolbelt hung crooked over the sash. In the lower bay she pried open a crate stamped ENGINE PARTS and dug past the couplings until she found what she wanted: a magnetic clamp array, salvaged, half-charged, enough. She dragged it toward the outer airlock. A voice stopped her at the seal. "You're going out there alone. In that." The enemy diplomat stood in the corridor in his crimson coat, rival insignia catching the work-lights. He was supposed to be upstairs in the imperial chambers, waiting on tomorrow's session. He had been showing up early to every meeting for a week. Jessica did not know what game he was playing, and she did not have time to learn it tonight. "They're stealing my ship," she said. "Move." He didn't move. "Let me help." "No." He stepped aside. She cycled the lock and went out along the spine of the hull in mag-boots, dragging the clamp array behind her on a tether. The scavengers hadn't seen her yet. She reached the primary breach point, anchored the array to the bare ribs, and keyed it live. The field snapped on with a low hum she felt in her teeth. Every loose plate within thirty meters slammed back against the hull and locked. One scavenger, halfway through cutting a panel free, was pinned by his own tool. The rest scattered down their lines toward their skiffs. Jessica watched them go. Her hands were shaking inside the gloves. She had kept the ship. She had also just declared, in front of witnesses she did not know, that this derelict was hers to defend. When she cycled back through the airlock, the diplomat was still there. He held out a rag for her hands. On the deck beside him sat a sealed case she had not seen him carry in. He tilted his head at it. "A gift," he said. "From my faction. They heard about your scavenger problem this morning." Jessica looked at the case. Nobody outside her own crew had known about the scavengers this morning. She took the rag and wiped grease from her knuckles slowly, buying seconds. The ship was saved. Someone was watching her save it. And that someone had arrived before she'd finished asking for help.

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.

Jessica woke to a stranger walking her hull. She saw him on the outer camera — a short, bald man with a beard and glasses, a satchel across his chest, a sketchpad open in one hand. He was not in a crimson coat. He was not a scavenger. He was drawing her ship. She pulled on her jacket over the ceremonial robes she had not bothered to take off. The crown pinched her hair. She left it on and went out through the airlock. The man saw her and did not run. He lifted the sketchpad like a shield. "Michael," he said. "Michael Dicenzo. I heard you claimed her. I wanted to see her before anyone else painted over the story." "You're on my hull." "I know. I'll go." He did not move. "I've been sleeping in the aft crawlspace for six days. I draw. That's all I do. I want to publish what you're building." Jessica's first instinct was to throw him out the lock. Her second was slower. Word of her claim had traveled. If she made this man an enemy, he would sell his sketches to the next bidder who wanted her ship. If she kept him, he was a witness she chose. A soft step behind her. The florist stood at the inner hatch in her linen dress, a bundle of bright, sunburst lilies in her arms. "He said to bring these," she said. "For the chambers." The petals nearest Jessica's sleeve had already begun to curl. Then the scale of the problem shifted. A shape uncoiled from behind the engine parts crate on the upper gantry. Long body. Wet, shimmering scales that flickered like a pulsar. A marsh dragon, small enough to have slipped aboard in a crate, large enough to open a mortal in one bite. Its head came down, jaw parting, aimed at the florist. The florist did not see it. Michael did. He dropped the sketchpad. He ran three steps along the upper gantry, put both hands on the engine parts crate, and shoved. The crate went over the rail. It fell one deck and struck the dragon square across the skull. Bone cracked. The dragon crumpled onto the plating, tail lashing once, then still. The lilies dropped from the florist's arms and lay open on the deck, glowing. Michael climbed down the ladder, breathing hard. His glasses were crooked. He picked up his sketchpad. Jessica looked at the dead dragon. She looked at the short man who had just saved the only mortal welcome in the imperial chambers. She looked at the florist, who was staring at her own empty hands. "Aft crawlspace," Jessica said. "You can keep it. You draw what I tell you to draw. Nothing leaves this ship without my mark." Michael nodded once. She had an artist now. She had a witness. And somewhere on her ship, something else had been hiding in a crate.

The dragon's body was gone by morning. Jessica had dragged it out the airlock herself, then washed the deck plates until her sleeves were black. The crown sat crooked on her head. She left it there and went down to the power core because nothing else on the ship mattered until the core turned over. The core sat in a shielded well three decks below the gantry. Its housing was cold to the touch. A hairline crack ran across the containment ring, thin as a hair, long as her forearm. She traced it with a grease-dark finger. Cold meant no tools. No tools meant no welder, no lift, no scrubber, no lights past the emergency strips. She could not rebuild a ship by hand in the dark. Michael came down the ladder behind her, sketchpad already open. He said nothing. He drew. "Stop drawing and hold this," Jessica said. She pushed a fiber patch into his hand and climbed into the well. She knew the crack would not hold a cold restart. She had to warm the core first, seal the ring, then bleed the coolant lines slow. She pulled the patch tight across the fissure and clamped it. She rerouted a battery cart from the emergency strip and fed current into the starter coil by hand. The coil hissed. The housing began to tick as it warmed. The patch held for six seconds. Then it split. A jet of plasma-lit coolant sprayed up the well. Jessica threw herself flat. The spray hit the bulkhead and froze there in a bright, layered bloom, petals of frost fanning out like a lantern flower stuck to the wall. Beautiful. Useless. The core was venting. "Seal," she said. "Michael, the sealant gun. Red grip." He passed it down. She fired two lines of sealant across the ring, then a third across the split patch. The hiss dropped. The tick steadied. She fed the coil again. The core caught. Light came up along the strips in the ceiling. The lift motors thumped alive one deck above. Her welder, three decks up, began its warm cycle with a low hum she felt through her boots. The tools were hers again. She climbed out of the well shaking. Her hands were bleeding at two knuckles. Michael was drawing her hands. "Don't publish that," she said. "I won't." A chime pulled her head up. The outer hatch panel. A delivery had been logged at her airlock while the core was down — no crimson coat on the camera, only a crate left on the plating. Stenciled on its side was the mark of the enemy faction. A tag hung from the seal. She did not need to open it to know what it was. The debt had sent someone after all. The core was hot. The ship could build. And whatever was in that crate would decide what she built the scavengers raided during this time but Michael also planted some plants near by the wolfs liked these plants the scavengers and the wolfs fought well this was happening

The crate sat in the airlock like a held breath. Jessica crouched a meter from it, welder cold at her hip, and listened. Outside the hull she could hear the scavengers again, a distant scrape along the lower plating, and under that a wet, glassy snarl she did not know yet. The ship was hers. The debt was inside it. Michael came down the corridor with his sketchpad clutched to his chest. His glasses were fogged. He was breathing too fast. "Wolves," he said. "On the hull. The plants I put out — they came for the plants. The scavengers are still out there too. They're fighting." Jessica did not look up. "Draw the crate. Not me. The crate." She circled it. The stencil on the side was the crimson mark of the enemy faction. A paper tag hung from the seal. She did not touch the tag. A forced lid could trigger a charge and blow the airlock. A cut hinge could burn a chemical fuse. She did not know which, and not knowing was the trap. She went back up two decks and came down with a scope and a coil of fiber line. She fed the scope under the lip of the crate where the seam was thinnest. On the little screen she saw a folded cloth, a curl of stem, and a soft, layered glow. Petals. A lantern plant, packed in shock foam. Under the plant she saw the shape of a wire running to the underside of the lid. A pull trigger. Open the lid, pull the wire, lose the airlock. "It's a bloom," she said. "And a trap. They sent me a garden with a fuse." She cut the crate open from the bottom. She laid it on its side, sliced the base panel with the welder at low draw, and eased the plant out through the floor of the box while the lid stayed sealed. The wire went slack in her hand. The lantern's petals opened in the corridor light, layered and slow, throwing soft color across Michael's glasses. Under the plant, folded in the cloth, was the tag. Three words in a clean hand. Grow it. Owe more. A heavy thud hit the outer hull. Then a second, closer. Jessica went to the port. On the plating, framed in its own red light, a wolf of glass stood over a scavenger's body. Its veins burned like a lit core. It turned its head to the port and looked at her. Behind it, two more of its kind were tearing into the last of the raiders. "They're not with the scavengers," Michael whispered. "They're eating them." Jessica set the lantern plant on the deck. Her hands were steady now. "Log it," she said. "The crate's open. I own what's inside. And something out there just picked a side."

The lantern plant sat on the deck between them, glowing soft through its layered petals. Outside, the last wolf dragged a scavenger off the plating and vanished below the port. Jessica knelt by the plant and pressed a finger against the soil in its pot. Dry already. The corridor was too cold, the air too thin, the light too flat. She had hours, maybe a day, before the bloom wilted. If it died, the enemy faction's terms went from a debt to a broken contract, and broken contracts with them ended in boarding parties. "It needs a room," she said. "Warm. Humid. Full spectrum. I don't have one." Michael lowered his sketchpad. "The observation blister on deck four. Glass ceiling. South-facing when the ship spins." "Cracked in two places. Vents to vacuum if I look at it wrong." She stood and walked. He followed, pencil already moving. She passed the galley, the dead hydroponics bay, the sealed medbay. None of it would hold. Then she stopped at the cargo lock on deck three and put her hand on the hatch. Inside sat the iron rhino. A hauler drone, chest-high, armored in plate, its flanks stamped with sun-shaped heating cores. Salvage from the second scavenger run. She had stripped it for parts twice and never finished. The cores still worked. The shell was sealed. It had its own power line. "That," she said. "I gut the cargo bin. Line the inside with the growth film from medbay. Route two of the heat cores through the wall. It's a greenhouse the size of a coffin, but it's sealed and it's mine." She worked six hours. Michael sketched and passed her tools. She cut the hauler's cargo hatch, welded a viewport in the lid, and ran coolant loop backwards so the cores warmed instead of chilled. She needed her father's calibration wrench for the core regulators. It was in the locked toolbox under her bunk. She had not opened that box since he died. She broke the latch with a chisel and did not look at what else was inside. She took the wrench. She closed the lid. She set the lantern plant into the rhino's chest cavity and sealed the viewport. The petals lifted. Color spread across the glass. The soil sensor read green. Michael exhaled. "You did it." Jessica wiped her hands on her robe. Grease streaked the embroidered stars. "I kept it alive. That's not the same." The comm at her hip clicked. A clean voice, crimson-faction cadence, no name given. "Confirmed growth signature. Terms accepted. A representative arrives in twelve hours to inspect the specimen and deliver the second item of your repayment." The channel closed. Jessica looked at the glowing rhino. She had bought the plant's life. She had bought another delivery she had not agreed to. "Log it," she said. "They're sending more."

Eleven hours after the crimson faction's message, Jessica stood in the cargo lock and stared at the sealed rhino. The lantern plant inside still glowed. The representative would arrive in sixty minutes with a second item she had never agreed to accept. If she took it, her debt doubled. If she refused it at the airlock, they called the contract broken and sent a boarding party. She needed a third option, and she needed it now. "I can't outrun them," she said. "So I write the terms first." Michael Dicenzo looked up from his sketchpad. He sat cross-legged by the hatch, pencil paused, glasses slipping down his nose. "Terms of what?" "Delivery. If I set the rules for how their gifts arrive, I control what counts as accepted." She pulled a data slate from her belt and started typing. "Inspection protocol. Quarantine cycle. Signature required from the owner. Me. Not the florist. Not an airlock sensor." A soft knock came at the inner hatch. The florist stood there in her linen dress, arms empty for once. Her hands shook. Jessica had not called for her. "He sent me ahead," the florist said. "He wants me to prep the receiving bay. Flowers. A table. He said you would understand." Jessica understood. The diplomat was staging a ceremony. Ceremonies made debts public, and public debts could not be renegotiated. "No table," Jessica said. "No flowers. Tell him the receiving bay is closed for repairs." The florist's mouth opened. Closed. "He's already docking." Jessica moved. She crossed to the airlock panel and locked the outer seal on manual override. Then she keyed the comm. "This is the ship's owner. Delivery refused pending signed inspection protocol. Transmitting terms now." She sent the slate's contents through the channel. "No item crosses my hull until you countersign. That's the condition." A pause. Then the crimson voice, tighter than before. "You are altering an accepted debt structure." "I'm defining it," Jessica said. "Countersign or take your crate home." The silence stretched. Michael's pencil started moving again, fast. The florist pressed both hands to her mouth. The comm clicked. "Terms received. The representative will countersign at the hatch. He requests a private audience after delivery." Jessica cut the channel. Her hands were shaking. She had bought herself a signature. She had also bought a private audience with the diplomat in the crimson coat, alone, inside her ship. "Log it," she said to Michael. "Every word he says. From behind the bulkhead. Don't let him see you." Michael nodded and slipped into the crawlspace. Jessica turned to the florist. "Go back through the lock. Tell him the owner is ready." The florist left. Jessica wiped grease from her palms onto her robe. The stars embroidered there had gone black with soot. She unlocked the outer seal and waited for the man in the crimson coat to step aboard her ship.

Jessica heard boots on the ramp. The diplomat would cross her hatch in under a minute. She had won a signature and a private audience, but she had not won silence. The crimson faction had known about her scavengers before she reported them. That meant a bug on her hull, or in her walls, or in something they had already delivered. If they listened while she bargained, every word she gave him would reach his masters before he did. She keyed the comm to the crawlspace. "Michael. Kill every signal leaving this ship. Now." His voice came back thin. "I draw pictures. I don't jam radios." "The fox," she said. "The clockwork one in the parts locker. Its tail core throws interference when the gears spin backward. My father used it to test shielded panels. Wind it the wrong way and set it on the deck plate above the receiving bay." She heard him scrambling. She had thirty seconds. She grabbed the copper crocodile shell from the salvage bin, the one with the crystal spines her father had gutted for its wiring harness. She pried the harness free and clipped it across the airlock's internal sensor line. Any transmitter tucked inside the diplomat's coat would find its uplink smothered by the harness's dead-band feedback. Crude. It would hold for one conversation. Michael's voice crackled. "Fox is spinning. Tail's glowing wrong." "Good. Keep it running until I say stop." She felt the deck hum as the interference field bit in. Her own comm went to static. She cut it and shoved the slate into her pocket. The outer seal clicked. The diplomat stepped through in his crimson coat, gloves folded over one wrist, eyes already counting the exits. "You're early," she said. "I am always early." He glanced at the crocodile harness taped along her wall. His mouth tightened. "You've blinded my escort." "I've blinded everyone. Including you. Your recorders won't leave with anything but noise." He studied her for a long moment. Then he inclined his head. "Then we speak plainly. That is rarer than you know." "Sit," she said. She pointed to the crate she had dragged in for a chair. "Tell me what your faction actually wants from a woman rebuilding a dead ship." He sat. The fox's tail throbbed overhead, drowning the room in silent static. Behind the bulkhead, Michael's pencil moved. Jessica pulled up her own crate and faced the diplomat across two feet of grease-stained deck. For the first time since the coils arrived, the crimson faction could not hear her. She had bought a private room inside her own ship. Whatever he said next, it would belong to her alone. "Talk," she said. And he did.

The diplomat had been talking for less than a minute when Jessica felt the deck shudder under her boots. Not an impact. A stutter. She knew the rhythm of her own power core the way she knew her pulse, and it was skipping. She glanced at the overhead where the clockwork fox spun its tail backward. The interference field was bleeding inward. Her own systems were drinking the static she had aimed at his recorders. "Keep talking," she said. She didn't look at him. She pulled the slate from her pocket and thumbed it awake. The core temperature bar was climbing. Containment ring holding, but the regulators were reading noise instead of signal. If the core tripped now, her lights died, her locks opened, and this man walked out with everything he had come to learn. A thump hit the outer hull. Then another. Not one impact. Many. Something was climbing her ship. Her comm hissed. Michael's voice came through the crawlspace grate above her head, low and fast. "Princess. I'm in the vents. There's things on the hull. Wolves. And men with cutters. The wolves are killing the men and the men are cutting through anyway." She kept her face still. The diplomat watched her over folded gloves. He had heard the thumps. He chose not to react, which told her he had known. "Michael," she said into the slate, quiet. "The fox. Slow the tail by half. Don't stop it. Half." "Half means he hears some of us." "Half means my core lives. Do it." She heard him scrambling in the vent. A small clang. The deck hum eased. The temperature bar leveled, then dropped one notch. The lights held. She looked up at the diplomat. "Your boarding party is early." "My escort," he said, "is not mine." "Then whose." He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The crimson faction had watchers on watchers, and someone had decided a private audience was too private. Jessica stood. She kept the crate between them. "We finish this later. On my terms, on record, or not at all. You'll walk out the way you came in and you'll walk out now." He rose. He inclined his head, the same measured bow as before. "Then we speak again." "We speak again." He stepped through the airlock. She sealed it behind him and killed the fox. Her lights steadied. The core held. She keyed the vent grate. "Michael. Stay up there. Draw everything you see. Every cutter, every wolf, every mark on their coats. I want to know who sent them." "Copy." A pause. "Princess. They're still cutting." She looked at the hull plate above her head. Sparks bit through a seam near the bulkhead weld. Her core was safe. Her ship was not. The negotiation was over. The siege had started.

The airlock sealed and Jessica turned to the engine bay. She had less than a minute before the cutters broke through. Her tools lay scattered across the deck from the negotiation, kicked wide when she'd swept the crate between herself and the diplomat. A driver here. A spanner under the crate. Her calibration wrench three paces behind her. Without them stacked at the core, she could not rig any defense before the attackers reached it. She dropped to one knee and started grabbing. Driver. Pliers. The heavy coil spanner. She stacked them against her chest. Sparks kept biting through the seam above her head. She could hear the cutters now, a wet grinding sound through the plate. "Michael," she said into the slate. "Get down here. I need hands." A grate popped two meters above her. The artist dropped, landed hard, and caught himself on the bulkhead. Glasses crooked. Sketchpad still shoved in his belt. He looked at the mess on the deck and said, "Tell me what." "Wrench behind me. Torque bar under the crate. Bring them to the core hatch. Now." He moved. He didn't ask why. He scooped the wrench, kicked the crate aside, and dragged the torque bar behind him. Jessica reached the core hatch and dumped her armful. She counted. Driver, pliers, coil spanner, wrench, torque bar. Enough. "Hold the hatch open," she said. Michael braced it with his shoulder. Jessica went in on her knees. She could see the containment ring humming clean. Good. She pulled the coil spanner and cracked the housing on the secondary feed. If she cross-wired the feed through the outer plating, the whole corridor between the breach and the core would carry a charge. Not lethal. Enough to drop a man in armor for a count of ten. Enough for her locks to hold. She worked. Her hands knew the shape of it. She stripped the feed, jumped it to the plating conduit, and torqued the coupling down. Her knuckles bled. She didn't stop. A cutter punched through above the corridor. Boots hit her deck. "Now," she said. Michael threw the switch on the wall. The corridor lit blue. A shout, then a thud. Another thud. The boots stopped moving. Jessica backed out of the hatch and sat on her heels. She looked at Michael. He was already drawing. Pad on his knee, pencil moving. He didn't look up. "Don't publish that one yet," she said. "I know." She stood. The corridor hummed. Her tools lay where she needed them, in a tight ring around the core hatch, each one within a hand's reach. Her ship was hers again for the next hour. Through the plating she heard more boots. A second wave, further out. And under that, the dry click of glass wolves on metal, closing from the other side.

The blue glow in the corridor dimmed as the trap's charge bled off. Jessica listened past the humming plates. Boots. Wolves. Both closer. She turned to Michael and saw his pencil stop against the pad. His hand was shaking. Not a small tremor. A whole-arm shake he could not hide. She crossed to him. His face was gray. Sweat cut a line through the dust on his temple. He had thrown the switch. He had watched men drop. He had not eaten since the diplomat sat down at her table. "Sit," she said. "No time." "Sit or you fall over in the next fight and I lose you." He sat against the bulkhead. She dug into the crate by the hatch and pulled out a pressurized canister the florist had left with the water rations. She cracked the valve, poured a cup, and pushed it into his hand. He drank. She watched his throat move. She watched the shake slow. "Eat," she said, and gave him a ration bar from her belt. He chewed. He swallowed. He set the pad down. Then he set it back on his knee, opened it, and turned it to face her. "Before the next wave," he said. "You need to see this." She almost told him no. She looked anyway. It was not a comic page. It was a copy of a star chart. Alien marks. A ring of symbols she did not know, linked by thin lines into a shape like a bent crown. In the corner of the page, his neat block letters: FOUND UNDER THE WRECK. LEVEL SIX. STONE ROOM. "Under my ship," she said. "Under the hull. There's a hole in the drydock floor. I found it the second week. There's a room down there older than the ship. The map was on the wall. I copied it." "How long have you been sitting on this." "Six weeks." She looked at him. He did not look away. "The crimson faction isn't here for the debt," he said. "They're here for that. I think they always were. The coils. The plant. All of it. They were buying time to find what's under you." Her hands went cold. The scavengers. The surveillance before she had reported a thing. The diplomat's patience. It all lined up in one clean line she could not unsee. "Why now," she said. "Because I'm scared. And you deserved to know before they got to it." Boots hit the far corridor. Wolves clicked closer on the hull. Jessica took the page from him and folded it into her jacket, against her ribs. "Get up," she said. "You can walk?" "I can walk." "Then the fight changes. We're not defending a ship. We're defending a door." She pulled him to his feet. His hand was steady in hers.

Jessica pulled the folded page from her jacket and spread it flat on the deck plate. The alien marks stared back at her under the corridor's dim light. Michael crouched beside her, pad on his knee, watching her face. "They can't have both," she said. "If they take the wall, they still need mine to read it. If they don't have the wall, mine is the only one left." Michael's jaw set. "You want the original gone." "I want it dust." He looked at the hatch that led down. Then at her. "I know the way. You don't. And you can't cross the drydock floor. Snipers have the gantry. They'll drop you before the door." She knew he was right. She had walked that floor a hundred times. It was open plating for forty meters, no cover, and the gantry ran the whole length above it. "You go," she said. It cost her to say it. "I go." He tore a clean page from his pad and pressed a fresh copy of the chart into her hand. "Two copies now. One stays with you. The other burns with the wall." She folded the second copy against the first. "How." He reached under the crate by the hatch and dragged out the hauler drone she had gutted for the greenhouse. He had kept it. He had reset the clamps. "Cargo run. I ride under the belly, clamped to the frame. It flies low along the trench wall. They shoot at drones all day and hit nothing. I drop through the floor hole. I do the job. I come back the same way." "What do you use on the wall." He patted his belt. Two thermite sticks from her welding kit. She had not seen him take them. "Michael." "Don't." He fixed his glasses. "You paid me to draw. I'm drawing the ending." She helped him strap in under the drone's frame. His arms shook again. He did not mention it and neither did she. She keyed the drone to its lowest profile and sent it out the service vent. She watched the feed on her wrist screen. The drone skimmed the trench. A rifle cracked twice and missed. It dropped through the hole in the drydock floor and the feed cut to stone. She waited. Boots hammered the deck above her. She did not move. A white flash washed the feed. Then a second. Then static. The drone crawled back up the trench four minutes later, scorched along one flank, Michael still clamped under it. He rolled free onto her deck and coughed soot into his sleeve. His beard was singed. His glasses were cracked across one lens. "Wall's gone," he said. "Room's gone. Ceiling came down on it." Jessica pressed the two folded copies flat against her ribs. The only map in the world was hers now. The boots above were closer, and they did not know it yet.

Michael was still coughing soot when Jessica pulled him upright. The boots above them were three decks away. She could hear the wolves too, claws scraping the outer hull where the breaches gaped. Two holes in the port side. One in the belly. Every one of them a door. "I can't weld while they're climbing in," Jessica said. "I need the hull sealed to finish the engine work. I can't seal the hull while they're coming through it." Michael wiped his glasses on his shirt. "So you kill what comes through first." "I kill what comes through first." She dragged the parts crate open and started sorting. Two servo frames from the gutted hauler drones. A rail cannon barrel she had pulled from a Verak component months ago. Tracking coils. Power cells. Enough scrap to build something ugly and enough time to build it only if she moved now. She worked on the deck plate with Michael handing her tools. Two hours. She bolted the servo frames upright and gave each one a Verak targeting eye and a bolt gun off a mining rig. Rough. Bandy-legged. They looked like children's toys welded from junkyard bones. She keyed them to hunt anything moving toward the breaches from inside. The turret took longer. She mounted it on a swivel plate at the corridor junction where all three breach lines converged, fed it the rail barrel, and wired it to the same friend-or-foe loop. "Names?" Michael asked. His pencil was already out. "No names. Just draw them working." She walked the two robots to their posts and left the turret humming. Then she climbed back to the observation port and watched. The crimson boarders came through the belly breach first, six of them, rifles up. They did not see the wolves coming through the port hole behind them. The glass wolves hit the boarders from the rear, red light burning inside their bodies. The corridor turned into a slaughter. The wolves tore through crimson coats. The crimson coats emptied their rifles into glass ribs. Both sides went down in pieces. Whatever crawled out the far end, wolf or man, walked into the robots. The bolt guns cracked. Two wolves fell. Three boarders fell. One wolf reached the junction and the turret cut it in half at the shoulders. The rail barrel kept turning, kept firing, until nothing moved in the corridor. Jessica waited a full ten minutes. Nothing else came. She climbed down and walked the corridor with her welder over her shoulder. The robots tracked her and stood down. The turret clicked to standby. She reached the belly breach and looked out. The drydock floor was empty. The gantry was empty. Whoever was left had pulled back. "I can weld now," she said. Michael was already sketching the turret from behind her. "Draw fast," she said. "I want the hull closed by morning."

By dawn Jessica had two hull plates welded and the third clamped. She left Michael on watch and took the copies of the star chart up to the throne room. She had not been in that room since the crash. The doors still hung crooked. The coronation throne sat where it had always sat, cracked down the middle from the impact, one arm sheared clean off. Someone was frozen to it. He was small, pale as bone, in a coat that had once been fine. A silver crown sat crooked on his head. Frost climbed the throne where his hands rested on the armrests. His eyes tracked her the moment she stepped in. "Don't scream," he said. "It wastes air." Jessica did not scream. She set the toolbox down and stared. The throne was hers. This room was hers. She had walked past that door for months and never opened it. She stepped closer. The frost on the throne dimmed a shade where her body warmed the air. "Who are you." "Rook Gale. Crowned at the exact moment this ship broke. I have been here since." "You're stuck." "I am the throne, at present." She unrolled the star chart on the floor in front of him. The lines glowed faint blue. She had copied every mark from the wall beneath the drydock. She could read none of it. "Can you read this." His eyes moved across the chart. Something in his face changed. Not warmth. Recognition. "Yes." "Then read it." "Get me off the throne." Jessica knelt and touched the frost on the armrest. It softened under her fingers and hardened again when she pulled back. She understood then. The cold held him because nothing warm stayed close enough, long enough. "If I thaw you, you read the whole chart. Every mark. Every symbol." "Yes." "If you lie, I put you back." "Fair." She went down to the engine bay and pulled a heat core off her greenhouse rig. She carried it up and set it at his feet. She sat on the cracked step of the throne with her back against his knee. Her body heat bled into the coat. The frost on the armrests thinned. His fingers moved, slow, then faster. He lifted one hand. It shook. He pointed at the chart. "This mark is a rendezvous. This one, a fleet count. This cluster is a delivery window. Three days." "Delivery of what." "A weapon. The crimson faction has been waiting for the coordinates. They still don't have them. You do." Jessica looked at the chart. Three days. She had the map. She had the location. She had a fae lord thawing onto her coronation throne, and the crimson faction was about to arrive at a place they could not find without her. She stood. "Keep reading." Rook flexed his fingers. "Where are you going." "To decide whether we get there first."

Jessica came down from the throne room with the chart rolled under her arm and a list in her head. Three days. Two working hands, counting her own. Michael could weld a seam if she stood over him, but he was an artist, not an engineer. Rook could read stars and not much else yet. She needed the port nacelle rehung, the stabilizer housing rebuilt from the frame out, and the coolant lines run before she could even test a burn. She stood in the engine bay and looked at the hole in her ship and knew she would not finish in time. She was still standing there when she heard the wrench. It tapped down the corridor in a slow, uneven rhythm. Metal on deck plate. She turned. An old fae came around the bulkhead, silver hair, oil-dark coveralls, leaning on a cracked wrench welded into a cane. He did not look at her. He looked at the stabilizer housing. "You've got the mounts crossed," he said. "Third from the left. It'll shear on first burn." Jessica set the chart down. "Who are you." "Kael Groven. I fix the lights in the crew quarters. I have been fixing them for two hundred years." He tapped the cane against the deck. "I heard the throne thaw. Figured the ship was awake again." "You've been aboard the whole time." "Someone had to be." Behind him, a girl stepped through the hatch. Sharp jaw. Flight uniform pressed flat. Medals lined up straight on her chest. A cadet, and young, and standing at attention like the room might grade her. "Vael Vireth," she said. "I train in the war room. Nights. I can lift, I can weld, I can run a diagnostic loop." "You've been on my ship." "Yes." "How long." "Since the crash." Jessica looked between them. Two more ghosts her ship had been hiding. She thought of the finished coupling she had found that first night, the tools left out, the lights that had never gone dark in the crew quarters. Not abandoned. Tended. "Show me the mounts," she said to Kael. He was already limping past her. He set the cane against the housing and put both hands on the third mount and named every part he touched. Vael dropped her jacket on a crate and picked up a torque driver without being asked. Michael came in with the star chart copies and stopped in the hatch. "Get Rook a chair he can move in," Jessica told him. "He reads. We build." By the end of the shift the stabilizer housing was framed. Kael had corrected two more of her welds without comment. Vael had run the coolant line clean on the first try. Jessica wiped her hands on her robes and did not care about the grease. She had a crew. She had two days left. And she still did not know if the ship would fly before the crimson faction arrived at the coordinates only she could give them.