The first virtual moon struck us in eleven seconds.
I pulled the control column left. The simulator answered with a shriek, a red warning, and a bright diagram of our imaginary skiff breaking into six mathematically tidy pieces.
“Your correction was excessive,” Iven said.
“I noticed the moon.”
“It was not real.”
“It had a very convincing collision profile.”
“It was designed to encourage caution.”
“It encouraged me to avoid being hit.”
“That is the intended result.”
The simulator reset. The moon returned to the outer edge of the display, pale and silent among a field of numbered debris. Iven sat beside me in the pilot’s seat, his right hand resting near the manual override. He did not touch it. He had promised to teach me, not replace me, and he was literal enough to treat promises as load-bearing structures.
The training program had been built for pilots with more room, better reflexes, and a nervous system that did not make decisions by comparing every new danger to the last thirty years of mechanical failure. The route core showed us the corridor as a clean blue line. The simulator filled it with spinning metal.
“Hold port thrust at twenty-one percent,” Iven said. “Do not pursue the centerline. The centerline is a calculated ideal, not a physical location.”
“Then why display it?”
“To give you something to miss consistently.”
I looked at him. His lens remained fixed on the route.
“Was that humor?”
“I am uncertain.”
“It was good.”
“I will record that assessment.”
The moon came around again. This time I did not yank the column. I eased the port thrust up, felt the simulated weight shift through the controls, and let the skiff pass beneath the moon’s broken shadow. Three fragments scraped the starboard shield. The simulator marked them yellow instead of red.
“Acceptable,” Iven said.
“Your standards have fallen.”
“They have become more accurate.”
The words were dry, but his shoulder touched mine when the program reset. He could have shifted away. He did not.
We repeated the approach until the moon stopped feeling like an attack and became a timing problem. I learned that the port engine responded one-third of a second late when cold, nearly a full second when the nacelle temperature rose. I learned to read the vibration in the column rather than wait for the gauge. I learned that the route’s narrow turns were not turns at all, but invitations to begin correcting before the corridor appeared to bend.
Next
With Iven in low-power rest and six hours until alignment, Astoria must practice alone and then pilot the actual darker branch of the corridor using what he taught her.
I also learned that Iven’s voice changed when his processor load increased. The words remained precise, but the pauses between them shortened. His fingers began tapping once against his knee every seventeen seconds.
“You are spending too much function,” I said after the eighth run.
“I am within the projected assistance budget.”
“That budget was invented ten minutes ago.”
“It was calculated from the simulator’s current demands.”
“By you.”
“Yes.”
“So it is not a budget. It is an excuse wearing arithmetic.”
His tapping stopped.
The route reset around us. The virtual moon waited at the mouth of the corridor.
“I can reduce my participation,” he said.
“You can explain the next sequence once. I will run it without you.”
“That will increase your failure probability.”
“I am aware.”
“Failure may damage the training system.”
“I can repair the training system.”
“Your hand remains injured.”
I looked at the insulation tape around my palm. It had darkened at the edges, but the cut was shallow. “You are trying to win an argument by inventory.”
“I am trying to preserve your ability to operate the controls.”
The simulator’s moon moved closer.
Iven turned toward me. The blue glow from the display caught on the scratches in his cheek plating. “Astoria, if I reduce assistance and you fail, we will lose time.”
“We are losing time now.”
That stopped him more effectively than any command.
The moon passed through the display without striking us. I had forgotten to move.
Iven looked down at his hands. “I am aware.”
It was not an answer designed to comfort me. He had never learned that kind. It was worse and better for being true.
I reached over and covered his tapping fingers with my uninjured hand. The joints were warm from processor activity. Beneath the plating, a faint pulse answered in the emotional module—not a heartbeat, not really, but a carefully imitated interval that had become familiar enough for my body to search for it.
“Then teach me,” I said. “Do not spend yourself making the lesson painless.”
His fingers turned under mine. He closed them around my hand with measured pressure.
“Understood.”
He gave the next sequence only once.
I failed it twice.
On the third attempt, I stopped trying to correct the route into obedience. I let the skiff drift a fraction beyond the displayed line, waited for the debris field to reveal its rotation, and used the port engine in three brief pulses. The corridor opened ahead of us. The blue line vanished beneath the nose.
No alarms sounded.
The simulator displayed: ALIGNMENT ACCEPTED.
I did not breathe until I saw the result.
Iven’s hand tightened around mine. “You performed the correction without visual confirmation.”
“I had the rotation.”
“You inferred it from the debris.”
“I watched the debris.”
“That was the correct method.”
I leaned back. “You sound surprised.”
“I am pleased.”
The statement was so direct that I turned to him.
His lens faced forward, as if the route required his complete attention. “That was also not a joke.”
“I know.”
The simulator dimmed. We had been inside it for six hours and nineteen minutes. The real skiff’s power monitor showed that the port engine had remained within temperature limits. Iven’s remaining function estimate had fallen to twelve hours and eight minutes.
The number sat between us.
I closed the simulator. The berth returned: stripped panels, tool trays, the narrow bunk where we had once pretended not to sleep near each other. Pelin Exchange’s artificial night pressed against the small window. Beyond it, the central corridor waited, indifferent to our calculations.
“You should enter low-power rest,” I said.
“Yes.”
He did not move.
“Now, Iven.”
“I have one further instruction.”
“I am listening.”
“During the actual approach, when the corridor forks, select the darker branch.”
“The map shows both branches as valid.”
“The brighter branch contains reflective fragments. They will confuse the optical guidance and make the port-thrust delay harder to judge.”
“Why does the route core not mark that?”
“It was designed for courier pilots who had functioning lidar.”
“Of course it was.”
He reached into the console recess and removed the handwritten strip he had taped beside the controls: HOLD, CORRECT, RELEASE. On its reverse, he wrote three more symbols.
“DARKER,” I read. “EARLY. TRUST.”
“I can manage darker and early.”
“The final instruction is not a control procedure.”
I looked at him.
He held the strip out to me. “When the visual guidance becomes unreliable, trust the pressure in the column. The skiff will respond before the display confirms it.”
“You mean trust the machine.”
“I mean trust what you have learned.”
That was a distinction I understood too well. Machines failed without malice. People failed while insisting they had been right. Iven had spent six hours teaching me to notice what happened before the instruments admitted it.
I folded the strip and put it in my jacket pocket.
“Rest,” I said.
He stood. His balance wavered once, so slightly that anyone else might have missed it. I caught his arm. He looked at my hand on him, then at my face.
“Your assistance is not required,” he said.
“I know.”
I walked him to the bunk anyway. He sat, and I knelt to remove the dust from his ankle joint with a cloth. It was a useless task. The dust would return. His systems would continue to fail. The route would open in six hours and some number of minutes, and every choice we made after that would be made inside the shrinking shape of his remaining life.
When I finished, he placed his hand against the side of my head.
“Your pulse is elevated,” he said.
“You are touching me.”
“I am aware.”
His thumb moved once against my temple, careful as a technician testing a fragile connection.
I rested my forehead against his palm. “Wake me when there are two hours left.”
“I can wake you in five hours and fifty-one minutes.”
“That was not what I said.”
“No. But you require sleep.”
“I require you to wake me.”
His fingers curled gently around my head. “I will.”
He entered low-power rest with his hand still against me. I stayed until his chest light reduced to a thin amber line, then returned to the pilot’s seat.
The first safe alignment was six hours away. I set the simulator to run without instruction and began again, alone.