The Burn Between Us

The transfer burn began at 03:17 ship time, because machinery was least likely to surprise me when everyone sensible was asleep.

Iven was strapped to the maintenance bench beside me. I had run three additional restraints across his torso and one around his functioning wrist. He objected to the wrist restraint on the grounds that it implied distrust.

“It implies that the skiff is about to accelerate,” I said.

“The two conditions are not mutually exclusive.”

The port engine gave a low, ugly shudder beneath the deck.

I checked the temperature feed. Yellow. Still yellow. The number had stopped climbing, which was not the same as being safe, but it was the closest thing available.

Nacre-7 filled the forward display now. The habitat was larger than I had expected: a ring of habitation drums around a central spine, its outer hull patched in different shades of silver. Floodlights burned along the docking arms. From this distance, the repairs looked like scars.

It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in eleven months.

Iven turned his lens toward it. “Visual confirmation of Nacre-7.”

“I can see it.”

“I am aware. I am providing confirmation.”

“You’re becoming irritatingly consistent.”

“I have been consistent since activation.”

“That is not the same thing.”

The countdown reached ten seconds.

I rested one hand on the emergency cutoff and the other against the side of Iven’s chest casing. The metal had warmed under the cabin heater. Beneath it, his core pulsed with the uneven rhythm I had stopped calling a fluctuation in my head, though never aloud.

“Ready?” I asked.

“I am not certain.”

The answer moved through me more sharply than the engine’s vibration.

I looked at him. “You’re allowed to say that?”

“I am revising my understanding of allowed statements.”

The countdown reached three.

The engine fired.

The skiff slammed backward hard enough to drive my shoulder into the pilot’s chair. The harness cut across my ribs. Somewhere behind us, a storage panel broke loose and struck the hull. The port engine screamed as if the entire galaxy had become an accusation.

Iven’s fingers closed around mine.

Not to steady himself. He had no balance to lose while strapped down. His grip was deliberate, joint by joint, a pressure selected and maintained.

I held on.

The stars stretched into white threads. Nacre-7 slid across the display, then lurched back as the skiff’s attitude shifted six degrees too far.

“Port thrust is falling,” I said.

“Confirmed.”

“Correct it.”

“I am attempting to correct it.”

The engine temperature climbed past the yellow band.

I cut the auxiliary coolant feed. It was the only move left that might keep the engine from seizing before the burn completed. The cabin filled with the smell of hot insulation.

The skiff rolled again.

Iven’s head struck the bench despite the restraints. His chest light flickered.

“Iven.”

“I remain functional.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I remain present.”

The words were nearly lost beneath the engine noise. I tightened my hand around his.

The transfer burn had lasted twenty-one seconds. It needed to last twenty-seven.

Six seconds was not a great distance in ordinary life. It was less than the time required to draw a breath, or decide not to answer a question. In a failing engine, six seconds was an entire future.

The port engine temperature crossed into red.

A warning glyph opened over the display.

I could shut down the engine and accept a bad orbit. We would miss Nacre-7’s docking corridor, but the habitat’s traffic control might retrieve us. If the skiff had enough power to transmit. If Iven had enough power to answer. If we did not drift past the habitat into the dark.

“Do we abort?” I asked.

Iven’s lens remained fixed on the trajectory lines. “No.”

“That is my decision.”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t make it for me.”

“I am not making it for you. I am identifying the option with the highest probability of preserving your life.”

The engine convulsed.

“Your life,” I repeated.

“And the continuation of your current objective.”

“You mean reaching Nacre-7.”

“I mean reaching Nacre-7 with me.”

His grip tightened once. A signal, or a coincidence with unusually good timing. I had stopped trusting coincidence where he was concerned.

Four seconds.

I overrode the thermal lockout.

The skiff shook so violently that the forward camera lost its image. Every loose object became a projectile. The damaged storage panel crossed the cabin and struck the wall. I heard something break behind me, but there was no time to inspect it.

Three seconds.

Iven’s core light went dark.

The loss of it was worse than the engine failure would have been. The cabin seemed to empty around me. I could see my own face reflected in the black curve of his chest casing, pale and distorted, one hand still wrapped around a machine that had just become silent.

“Iven.”

Two seconds.

I reached across him and slapped the manual stabilizer control. The skiff corrected by half a degree.

One.

The burn ended.

Silence arrived in pieces. First the engine stopped screaming. Then the vibration left the deck. Then the loose panel finished sliding across the floor and came to rest against the hatch.

Nacre-7 remained on the display, no longer stretching away from us. Our trajectory line curved through the habitat’s outer approach corridor.

We had made the transfer.

I unstrapped Iven so quickly that one buckle snapped against the bench. His body sagged toward me. I pulled him upright and pressed my ear to the casing, though metal did not carry sound the way flesh did.

There was no pulse.

“Iven.”

His lens remained dark.

I opened the service panel in his chest with hands that were less steady than they had been during the burn. The core assembly glimmered faintly behind its shielding. Not dead. Not active enough.

The diagnostic port returned a single line.

FUNCTIONAL PERIOD: 23 HOURS, 08 MINUTES.

I stared at it until the numbers blurred.

“Is that an estimate?” I asked.

The answer came after seven seconds of static.

“Yes.”

I shut my eyes. “Don’t do that.”

“I apologize.”

“Not for answering.”

“I am uncertain what behavior you are identifying as objectionable.”

“Going quiet.”

“I was conserving processing power.”

“You were gone.”

“I was not gone.”

“You were gone enough.”

His lens brightened by one narrow degree. “I will revise the conservation protocol.”

The sentence should have annoyed me. Instead, I pressed my forehead to his.

The docking alarm began to cycle. We were inside Nacre-7’s approach corridor, but our trajectory was too fast and our attitude too wrong for an automated capture. The habitat’s traffic control transmitted a repeating request for manual correction. Their voice was calm, expensive, and entirely uninterested in my emotional crisis.

I pulled away from Iven and returned to the pilot’s chair.

“What did we lose?” he asked.

“The port engine is finished.”

“Permanently?”

“I’ll know after I look at it.”

“You have already used the diagnostic language associated with permanent failure.”

“I was being dramatic.”

“That would be a new behavior.”

I looked back at him. “You’re welcome to keep insulting me after we dock.”

“I will schedule it.”

Our remaining thruster was too weak for a normal approach. I vented the skiff’s reserve coolant in controlled bursts, using the exhaust to turn us a fraction at a time. It was inefficient, inelegant, and the sort of maneuver I would never have attempted if Nacre-7 had not been directly ahead.

Iven fed me corrections from the damaged navigation system. His voice slowed between each one. I could hear the processing pauses growing longer.

“Altitude correction, point six degrees starboard,” he said.

I made the adjustment.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“They are inside a docking approach.”

“That does not exclude the possibility of—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

A pause.

“Understood.”

The nearest docking arm extended from Nacre-7 like a metal finger. Its capture lights shifted from red to amber as our transponder finally answered the habitat’s challenge.

Then green.

The arm caught us.

The impact was soft by Scrap Galaxy standards. I still felt it in my teeth.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke. The skiff hung against the docking collar, held by machinery built for ships worth more than everything I owned.

Iven released the last restraint with his functioning hand. He did not stand. I crossed the cabin and helped him down from the bench.

At the hatch, he stopped.

“Astoria,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Your request remains active.”

I looked at the sealed docking door, beyond which waited Nacre-7, Mara Sel’s archive, and whatever remained of the reason he had been built.

“It does,” I said.

“Then I will accompany you.”

His knees buckled. I caught him beneath the shoulder.

“Not if I have to carry you.”

“That condition was not included in the request.”

“It is now.”

Together, slowly and badly balanced, we moved toward the habitat airlock. The skiff’s engines cooled behind us. The remaining hours of his life continued counting down in the dark.