Chapter 14 of 18·6 min read·Within the six-hour retrieval contract window
The Bank in the Dark
The Rill-802 appeared on my scope as a dead object with a contract attached to it.
It drifted beyond service lane marker seven, rotating once every forty-three seconds. Its customs colors had been burned nearly white by radiation, and the registration number was visible only when the hull turned broadside to the relay lights. No running lamps. No beacon. No reassuring evidence that the tender had ever contained people who expected to leave it.
I reduced Going Somewhere’s thrust and matched its rotation by hand. The port engine shuddered through the control column, then settled into the vibration I trusted. The replacement had cost me an interface relay, three days of sleep, and most of my remaining confidence in my own fabrication work. It was still the most reliable thing aboard.
The contract clock showed five hours and thirty-two minutes.
I opened the passive channel. “Iven.”
His answer arrived three seconds later, carried by the relay rather than active transmission. “I am receiving.”
“Any change at the berth?”
“Your assessment hold remains inactive. The relay has requested a status update twice.”
“Tell it I am performing contract work.”
“I have done so.”
“Did it sound convinced?”
“No.”
That was reassuring. A convinced relay might have been malfunctioning.
I brought the skiff alongside the tender’s service collar and fired the docking harpoon. The hook struck with a sound like a hammer dropped inside my chest. For half a second, Rill-802 continued its rotation around us. Then the cable tightened, the collar locked, and the tender dragged my bow twelve degrees off alignment.
I corrected with a short port burn. The engine complained. I ignored it.
The service collar’s exterior hatch had been welded shut from the inside, probably after the fire. I unpacked the cutter, clipped my tether to the skiff, and crossed the gap on the handline. The metal flexed beneath my boots. Somewhere inside Rill-802, something heavy shifted and came to rest.
“Structural movement,” I said.
“I detected it,” Iven replied. “The tender’s forward truss has lost approximately nine percent of its rated integrity.”
“You could have mentioned that before I stepped onto it.”
“You had already stepped onto it.”
“Your timing remains an area for improvement.”
Next
The reserve bank has survived, but the relay must still certify its damaged housing—and Astoria must face what central access will demand if it rejects even this alternative.
The hatch took six minutes to open. It had been sealed with emergency resin, and the resin had cured into something harder than the surrounding alloy. I cut around the perimeter in narrow sections, catching each glowing fragment in my tool pouch before it could drift into the collar mechanism. The last section released without warning. I stumbled forward, struck my shoulder against the inner wall, and watched the open hatch spin away into blackness.
The tender’s corridor beyond was unpressurized and dark. My suit lamp showed pale fire suppressant foam frozen along the ceiling. A customs inspection placard hung crookedly near the floor, still displaying the words DECLARE ALL BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS in three languages. Beneath it, a body harness floated in the passage with no body inside.
I did not stop to wonder where it had gone.
The reserve bank was listed in the tender’s cargo schematic as a removable emergency unit beneath the inspection deck. Rill-802’s internal map had been corrupted, but the old customs architecture was standardized. I followed the pressure doors toward the central spine, counting junctions and checking for heat with the back of my glove.
At Junction Four, the corridor ended in twisted metal.
The fire had not spread far. It had simply damaged everything in the most inconvenient direction. A maintenance trunk had collapsed across the passage, carrying three meters of conduit and a section of deck plating with it. Beyond the obstruction, my lamp caught the green outline of a service ladder.
I looked at the clock. Five hours and one minute.
I set the cutter to low power and began removing the conduit one length at a time.
On the passive channel, Iven said, “Your suit temperature has decreased by two degrees.”
“I am aware.”
“You should return to the skiff and use the alternate route.”
“There is no alternate route.”
“There is a maintenance crawlspace beneath the port habitation ring.”
“You said the forward truss was compromised.”
“I said the forward truss had lost nine percent of its integrity. The crawlspace remains within acceptable structural limits.”
“You have a map?”
“I have the tender’s original maintenance schematic. I accessed it through the relay’s public registry.”
“You accessed a customs registry from passive reception?”
“I used the relay channel. This did not require active core expenditure.”
He had anticipated the question before I asked it. I could picture him in the relay berth, seated beside the docking controls, one hand resting near the clamps as if he could somehow hold them open through concentration. He had agreed to remain behind. He had not agreed to be useless.
“Send the route,” I said.
A thin line appeared on my suit display, painted across the dark in amber. I followed it down through a maintenance hatch and into a crawlspace barely wider than my shoulders. The tender’s interior pressed close on both sides. Every few meters, I found a dead inspection lamp or a label marking a system that no longer existed.
Iven kept talking in small, precise intervals. Not enough to waste power. Enough to keep me from mistaking the silence for abandonment.
At one point he said, “The blue polymer cloth is still secured in your inner pocket.”
My hand went to the pocket automatically. The transparent chip rested against my ribs.
“I know,” I said.
“I am aware. I intended to remind you that it remains present.”
“Why?”
There was a pause of four seconds. Long enough that I checked the channel indicator.
“Because you touch the pocket when you are frightened,” he said.
The crawlspace narrowed ahead. I had to remove my pack and push it in front of me. My glove caught on a torn strip of insulation. I lay still, cheek against cold decking, while the tender groaned around me.
“I do not touch it when I am frightened,” I said.
“You touch it before making decisions with an elevated probability of personal injury.”
“That is different.”
“I have not identified a meaningful distinction.”
I smiled into the dark. It felt like an inefficient use of oxygen.
The crawlspace opened above the reserve compartment. I cut through the inspection grate and lowered myself into the room. The reserve bank occupied most of the far wall, a rectangular unit enclosed in black ceramic shielding. Its status panel was dark. The casing bore a customs seal and three impact fractures.
I climbed over the debris and removed the panel.
The bank had survived. Not cleanly. Four of its twelve cell clusters showed thermal damage, and the isolation system had locked the damaged sections out. The remaining eight clusters held a projected five hundred and twelve kilowatt-hours.
Enough for certification. Barely.
I pressed my helmet against the casing. “I found it.”
Iven’s reply came at once. “Confirm operational value.”
“Five hundred twelve, with four clusters isolated.”
“That exceeds the relay minimum by thirty-two kilowatt-hours.”
“Assuming the relay accepts the damaged housing.”
“Will you be able to transport it?”
I looked at the bank’s mounting rails. They had been designed for a customs tender with a functioning cargo lift. I had a hand winch, two lengths of cable, and a skiff with an engine that disliked being asked for anything.
“Yes,” I said. “I will make it transportable.”
Removing the bank took two hours and seventeen minutes. I cut through the retaining bolts, assembled the winch around a structural rib, and dragged the unit through the maintenance crawlspace centimeter by centimeter. Twice the tender lurched beneath me. Once, a section of ceiling fell into the compartment I had just left.
Iven continued to monitor my suit and the tender’s rotation. When I stopped to breathe, he told me how many minutes remained before the relay’s assessment hold.
He never told me to hurry.
At the service collar, I attached the bank to the skiff’s external cargo frame and sealed it beneath a thermal tarp. The tender’s rotation had increased by six seconds per cycle. Its forward truss was beginning to fail in earnest.
I crossed back to Going Somewhere with the tether pulling hard against my suit.
The moment my boots touched the skiff’s deck, Iven released the docking clamps from the berth. The relay authority transmitted an objection. He transmitted our active contract and the reserve bank’s provisional value in response.
“You used active power?” I asked, climbing into the cockpit.
“Seven seconds of transmission.”
“That is not passive reception.”
“No.”
“You were supposed to conserve.”
“I conserved for five hours and twenty minutes.”
There was no reasonable argument against that. I started the engines.
Behind us, Rill-802’s forward truss broke apart in a slow bloom of metal. I watched it recede in the rear camera until the customs number vanished among the fragments.
Going Somewhere shuddered as the reserve bank swung against its restraints. The port engine held. I brought us toward the relay, toward the berth where Iven was waiting in the only way he could, and toward the machine that would decide whether our future counted as properly powered.
His voice entered the cabin through the speaker, quiet and exact.
“You returned before I became dramatic.”
“I told you I would.”
“I am pleased that your statement was accurate.”
I looked at the bank’s weight warning, then at the relay lights ahead.
For the first time since we entered the inner system, I had brought something valuable with me that did not need to be destroyed in order to prove its worth.