The arm unfolded from the certification gantry with the slow confidence of a machine that had never been forced to improvise. Three sensor heads rotated toward the reserve bank strapped to Going Somewhere’s external frame. Red light moved over the thermal tarp, the ceramic casing, and the four sections I had isolated before removing it from Rill-802.
“Remain stationary,” the relay instructed.
“I am stationary,” I said.
“Your vessel is drifting at 0.03 meters per second.”
“That is not stationary.”
“It is within the berth’s capture tolerance.”
“Then your instruction is imprecise.”
The relay did not answer. It extended another arm.
Behind the gantry, the inner-system relay occupied a hollowed asteroid whose interior had been lined with docking rings, fuel pipes, and enough regulation equipment to make a small government feel permanent. Its outer lights burned steadily through the dark. Beyond them, the central planets were only bright points buried in the glare of traffic.
I had spent months imagining that light.
Now I was close enough to see the scratches on the berth’s inspection arm.
“Your provisional reserve value is five hundred twelve kilowatt-hours,” the relay said. “Housing integrity is compromised. Certification cannot proceed.”
I looked at the bank. “The housing held through extraction and transit.”
“Historical performance does not establish certified containment.”
“It establishes more than your inspection arm has.”
“Your observation is irrelevant.”
“That has not stopped me before.”
The arm struck the casing with a testing probe. The sound traveled through the cargo frame and into the cockpit floor. I imagined the four damaged clusters waking in sequence, finding the fractures in their thermal barriers, and deciding to become a fire.
The probe withdrew.
“Containment failure probability exceeds berth tolerance by 1.8 percent,” the relay said. “Reserve rejected.”
For one second, I could not hear the skiff’s fans.
Then the assessment clock appeared across my console.
HOLD ESCALATION: 00:18:42
Next
Astoria and Iven are cleared to begin central transit at first cycle, but the relay’s updated estimate means every hour of that journey will bring Iven closer to the irreversible choice they have refused.
Eighteen minutes until Going Somewhere became an impounded vessel instead of a poorly equipped one.
“Sera,” I said over the open channel.
Her voice arrived from intake with the scrape of paper or some equally old administrative substitute. “You brought it back.”
“You saw the bank.”
“I saw the bank fail preliminary certification.”
“It has five hundred twelve kilowatt-hours.”
“It has five hundred twelve provisional kilowatt-hours in a housing the relay calls unsafe.”
“Can you override the relay?”
“No.”
“Can you make it accept the housing?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly to be useful. I opened the cargo-frame controls and released the thermal tarp. The bank emerged into the relay lights, scarred ceramic and black mounting rails exposed.
Sera continued, “You can appeal with a physical containment demonstration.”
“Define demonstration.”
“Brace the housing, isolate the failed clusters, and prove the eight surviving clusters can discharge without transferring heat into the damaged sections.”
“I already isolated them.”
“Your isolation is a salvage condition. The relay wants an independent interlock.”
“Of course it does.”
“Do you have one?”
I looked at the bank. Then at the cargo frame. Then at the fragments of Rill-802 still drifting beyond the berth lights.
“I have half a tender,” I said.
“That is not a specification.”
“It is the best one available.”
The relay’s arm retracted. A shutter began closing over the berth’s inner access corridor.
“Your assessment hold will escalate in seventeen minutes,” it said.
I cycled the suit lock and crossed to the bank.
The relay protested. Sera swore once, quietly, as if she had been saving the word for a better customer. I anchored my tether to the cargo frame and pulled myself along the bank’s side. Its casing was colder than the surrounding metal. The damaged clusters had been physically separated, but the housing fractures ran beneath the common bus junction. If the surviving cells discharged hard, heat could travel through the mounting structure and reach them.
I needed a brace that would not conduct.
Rill-802 had used ceramic insulation around its customs scanners. The forward truss had broken apart, but pieces of the scanner housings were still visible in the debris field.
“I am going out,” I said.
“You have sixteen minutes,” Sera replied.
“I know.”
“Do you know that salvage fragments from a disintegrating tender are not worth being killed over?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I pushed away from the berth.
The debris was moving slowly, but slowly in space still meant that every fragment had a direction and no interest in mine. I matched the nearest piece by sight, corrected with the suit’s maneuvering jets, and caught it against my chest. The ceramic shell had split cleanly along one edge. I broke away the scanner’s copper backing with my pry bar and kept the pale insulating plates.
A larger fragment turned end over end toward me. I waited until its rotation brought the edge around, then kicked away from it. The edge passed close enough to scrape my shoulder plate.
“Your suit telemetry shows impact,” Iven said.
His voice came through the private channel.
I stopped moving.
“Iven?”
“I am receiving the relay’s traffic and monitoring your suit.”
“You should not be actively transmitting.”
“I am not actively transmitting.”
“You are speaking.”
“The channel is relayed through the berth. I have not opened a direct transmission.”
I pressed the ceramic plates against my suit and started back toward the bank. “You could have said that before I went outside.”
“You did not ask.”
“That is becoming your favorite defense.”
“I have identified that it is often effective.”
The berth caught me with a magnetic clamp. I dragged the ceramic plates into the cargo frame and began cutting.
The bank had four exterior mounting points. I removed the two nearest the damaged clusters, slid the ceramic beneath them, and rebuilt the brace with lengths of Rill-802’s scanner lattice. The lattice was ugly, asymmetrical, and stronger than anything I could have fabricated in the time available. I wired a second interlock across the damaged cluster isolation switches, then connected the output leads to the relay’s test coupler.
The clock showed four minutes.
“Your modifications are not certified,” the relay said.
“No,” I agreed. “Test them.”
“Unauthorized alterations increase uncertainty.”
“Then measure the uncertainty.”
I closed the final clamp.
The surviving clusters discharged.
For three seconds, the bank’s casing remained dark. Then the eight operational indicators lit in sequence, green and steady. Heat rose through the frame. The ceramic plates held it away from the cracked sections. The four damaged indicators stayed black.
The relay’s sensor arm descended again.
This time, it did not strike.
“Output stable,” it said. “Thermal transfer to isolated clusters: below threshold. Housing integrity: conditionally acceptable.”
I let my forehead rest against the bank.
“Conditionally?”
“Certification is valid for one central-access bond and six hours of berth operation. Reserve bank must remain externally mounted. Damaged clusters must not be reconnected. Any thermal breach voids certification.”
“Accepted.”
“Your acceptance is not required.”
“It is still satisfying.”
The shutter opened.
A green line appeared across my console, leading inward toward the relay’s central docking corridor. Going Somewhere’s assessment hold vanished. In its place appeared a temporary access bond number, a berth assignment, and the words CENTRAL TRANSIT ELIGIBLE.
I read them twice.
Then I laughed once, sharply, because the alternative was to make some larger noise inside my helmet.
Sera came over the channel. “You are cleared.”
“I know.”
“You still owe the retrieval contract’s processing fee.”
“I thought the berth-credit waiver covered it.”
“It covers the berth.”
“Of course it does.”
There was a pause. “Astoria.”
I waited.
“You made the bank acceptable.”
“I braced it.”
“You made it acceptable,” she repeated. “Those are not the same thing.”
The channel closed before I could decide whether to object.
I brought Going Somewhere into the assigned berth. The clamps took hold. Beyond the forward glass, service lights moved across the hull in neat white bands, inspecting the skiff I had built from things other people had abandoned.
For the first time, the relay was not asking what I could surrender.
It was asking where I intended to go.
I opened the private channel. “Iven.”
“I am here.”
“We have central access.”
“I received the certification notice.”
“Say something less administrative.”
A pause. Longer than his usual response delay.
“I am pleased that you succeeded,” he said. “I am also pleased that the reserve did not require your destruction.”
“That is better.”
“I am practicing.”
I looked at the green bond number on my console. “We are going in.”
“Yes.”
The word was small. It carried the weight of every cold berth, every dark corridor, every decision we had made with a clock counting down somewhere nearby.
Then my power monitor refreshed.
Iven’s remaining core estimate had dropped during the certification work.
Not by much. Less than an hour, according to the relay’s crude projection. But the number was no longer hidden beneath route calculations and retrieval deadlines.
The relay had accepted our reserve.
It had not accepted him.
I placed my hand against the cockpit glass, facing the berth where his signal waited beyond the walls.
“Central transit begins at first cycle,” I said.
“I will be ready.”
I kept my hand there until the docking lights dimmed, and neither of us pretended that ready meant the same thing as having time.