Chapter 79: What We Carry

Rhiannon did not send a table.

She sent a tablecloth.

Dinraal discovered it beneath three packets of dried fruit, a tin of biscuits, and a note explaining that if he intended to spend the rest of his life eating from military furniture, he could at least make an effort.

Isolde read the note over his shoulder.

“She’s being very restrained.”

“There’s a second page.”

“That sounds more like her.”

The parcel had traveled with the latest supply tender. Its wrapping bore the marks of several inspections, each carefully resealed. Someone had written PERSONAL EFFECTS—NO ACTIVE COMPONENTS along one side.

Underneath, in Rhiannon’s handwriting, was an addition.

The biscuits are not experimental.

Dinraal opened the tin.

“They look safe.”

“You said that about Asha’s heated ration pack.”

“That was a mechanical failure.”

“It melted a spoon.”

“A small spoon.”

Isolde took a biscuit before he could continue defending himself.

The tablecloth was dark blue, folded around two wooden napkin rings. Neither matched the other perfectly. Beren’s work, Dinraal thought, though there was no signature.

At the bottom of the parcel lay a recording crystal.

He set it in the reader.

Their kitchen appeared.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Sunlight crossed the wooden table. The curtains shifted in a breeze from the open window. Someone had placed a bowl of small yellow flowers near the sink.

Aurelius sat on the far side of the table.

The First Weapon occupied Dinraal’s chair.

Rhiannon stood behind them with an expression suggesting that everyone had already received instructions and was failing to follow them.

“We received your message,” Aurelius began.

Something bumped his knee beneath the table.

He glanced down.

“Yes. You’re included.”

The First Weapon lifted his head toward the recorder.

Isolde made a small sound beside Dinraal.

Aurelius smiled.

“The house is being cared for. Your garden has survived an argument between Rhiannon and Meret about watering.”

“There was no argument,” Rhiannon said.

“Of course.”

“Meret had misunderstood the drainage.”

From somewhere outside the image, Tiamat laughed.

The sound made Dinraal’s throat tighten.

He had not realized how much he missed hearing them all in one room.

Aurelius continued.

“The sixth station passed its first sustained trial yesterday. Arcturus refuses to call it finished until Enna has inspected the reports, but the operators are doing well.”

Tiamat leaned into view.

“They’re doing very well. Tell Enna the cooling system has stopped trying to embarrass us.”

“And,” Aurelius said, “we have received the first families from the latest convoy. Mara and Cleopatra are arranging accommodation. Nessa has borrowed two more rooms for lessons.”

Rhiannon reached past him to straighten the flowers.

“We miss you,” she said.

The simplicity of it stilled the room.

Then she looked directly into the recorder.

“And we expect you back with enough of yourselves left to enjoy being here.”

The message continued with small things.

A repaired gate.

A child who had decided the river needed a name before the planet did.

An argument over where to build the next bakery.

Dinraal watched every moment.

When it ended, Isolde rested her hand on the folded cloth.

“Let’s put it out.”

So they cleared the little bolted table in their quarters.

They spread the cloth.

Then they sat together, ate biscuits, and watched the message again.

The arc changed during the next four days.

Not quickly enough to see from one watch to the next.

But the people studying it began to recognize the difference.

Dark spaces appeared where ships had hung.

A service platform drifted beyond the outer curve, stripped of its occupants and useful equipment. Two pressure shelters waited beside the recovery vessels, each holding people who had needed to be brought out of unfamiliar time slowly.

The western station remained sealed.

Behind its walls, the mechanical brake held.

Enna returned twice with repair crews.

On the first visit, they removed the warped guide.

On the second, they installed the enormous bearing Gilgamesh had carried across the hangar.

He was disappointed to discover that carrying it had been the easy part.

For six hours, he held a support in position while three engineers argued about tolerances.

When he returned, he sat down beside Dinraal with great care.

“I have made a decision.”

Dinraal looked up from a report.

“Yes?”

“I will never complain about a siege again.”

Isolde, reading beside him, raised an eyebrow.

“Never?”

“There are intervals during a siege.”

Enna passed behind them.

“There were intervals.”

“You told me not to move.”

“And you did beautifully.”

Gilgamesh watched her leave.

“That sounded suspiciously like encouragement.”

“It was,” Isolde said.

“I dislike how effective it is.”

By the end of the fourth day, the western actuator could move through its full inspection range.

The repaired section did not close.

Enna would not permit that yet.

But it moved when commanded, stopped when commanded, and remained still after the command equipment was removed.

That was enough to earn a quiet cheer from the engineering crews.

Asha wanted to record the sound of the mechanism engaging.

Enna allowed it.

Then she made Asha stand behind the safety barrier like everyone else.

The next planning session began with names.

Isolde had asked for that.

The projection above the table still showed the arc, the captured vessels, and the routes between them. But the document beneath it held the people they knew remained aboard.

Some names had come from maintenance crews.

Others from ration lists, work assignments, or messages passed between windows.

A few were only descriptions.

Older man, left hand missing two fingers.

Girl called Renn, surname unknown.

Two sisters assigned to condenser cleaning.

They had learned to keep those entries.

People who appeared on no official manifest were still people someone might recognize.

“We have confirmed occupants in nine remaining vessels and three service compartments,” Isolde said. “Several groups may have been moved since the last contact. We’re treating the numbers as minimums.”

Alexander studied the rescue assignments.

“The next two outer releases can proceed without entering the inner structure.”

“Yes.”

“The old survey ship?”

Eve enlarged its image.

It lay close to the largest ring, its long hull almost swallowed by a web of supports.

Aramaeis had recognized the class weeks earlier.

Now, with better angles and the western arm held steady, they could see the name beneath the damage.

Wayfarer’s Rest.

Aramaeis read it aloud.

He did not recognize the ship itself.

That mattered to Dinraal.

His uncle had begun to look wary whenever an ancient name appeared, as though every one might carry a personal obligation.

“Pressure?” Johanna asked.

“Two compartments,” Eve said. “Weak heat in one. No verified response.”

“Can we detach it?”

Enna shook her head.

“Not intact. Its keel has become part of the support around the ring.”

Silence settled briefly.

Then Isolde moved the ship’s marker into the inspection group.

“Boarding team. Medical support close enough to receive survivors.”

Alexander nodded.

“And the second command station?”

Teren, sitting beside Enna, turned her work slate.

“It lies beyond the ship. There’s an inspection bridge between them.”

Dinraal studied the route.

Two tasks.

One approach.

The sort of arrangement that always looked simpler on a map.

“Separate teams,” Alexander said before anyone could suggest otherwise. “The ship gets searched completely. The station gets assessed. Neither team waits on the other to withdraw.”

Teren nodded.

This time, she had come to the meeting wearing her old tool belt over her new clothes.

She had not asked to join the boarding party.

Instead, she had spent the previous evening teaching two allied engineers how to recognize the station’s mechanical cutouts.

When one of them thanked her, she had looked almost surprised.

The Questioner spoke that afternoon.

It used the emergency frequency assigned to one of the remaining captive ships.

The voice belonged to a woman.

Eve checked it against the recordings they had collected.

No match.

The transmission was short.

“You are reducing the time available to them.”

Alexander ordered a recording and no reply.

Six minutes later, it spoke again.

“The structures you disturb preserve their lives.”

Dinraal stood behind the communications officer.

On the display, the signal appeared to originate from three different points along the arc.

Asha isolated the strongest.

“It’s being relayed.”

“Can we identify the original source?”

“Not safely from here.”

Another pause.

Then the woman’s voice said, “Return the western control.”

Enna, who had been called to the bridge, folded her arms.

“No.”

Alexander glanced at her.

“I didn’t transmit it,” she said.

The next message came after a much shorter interval.

“One vessel may depart for each restored connection.”

Nobody moved.

Dinraal looked at the captive-ship markers.

There were still children in some of those compartments.

Old people.

People who had survived by doing exactly what they were told.

He wondered how many of them could hear this.

“Do we answer?” the communications officer asked.

Alexander looked toward Dinraal.

Dinraal shook his head.

“It knows we want them alive.”

Isolde stood beside him.

“And it wants the brake released before we reach the other controls.”

Enna nodded.

“That is the one thing it has asked for clearly.”

The woman’s voice returned.

“You cannot preserve every life.”

Dinraal’s fingers curled against the edge of the console.

Isolde touched his wrist.

The transmission repeated twice.

Exactly.

The same breath between preserve and every.

Then the signal stopped.

Alexander ordered the rescue schedule advanced where crews were ready and left unchanged where they were not.

He did not let the threat make the decisions.

Dinraal was grateful for that.

He was less certain he could have managed it himself.

That evening, Aramaeis found him in the hangar beside the boarding craft.

Dinraal had finished inspecting his equipment.

He was inspecting it again.

His uncle leaned against a cargo rail.

“Does the silver require checking?”

“No.”

“The pressure supplies?”

“Already done.”

“Then I assume you’re thinking.”

Dinraal rested his hands on the open locker.

“It offered ships.”

“Yes.”

“I know why. I know what it wanted.”

Aramaeis waited.

“But someone aboard those ships may have heard it. They may think we refused a chance to bring them out.”

“They may.”

Dinraal looked at him.

His uncle’s expression was gentle, but he did not soften the answer.

“Would you have given it the control?”

“No.”

“Then you made the decision you could defend.”

“That doesn’t mean they’ll understand.”

“No.”

The hangar hummed around them.

A technician guided a fuel hose into place. Someone called for a missing fastener. The boarding craft’s pilot climbed down from the cockpit carrying two cups.

She offered them both.

Aramaeis accepted.

Dinraal did too.

After she left, his uncle looked toward the craft.

“When we return, some people will thank us. Some will be angry that we took so long. Some will be angry about things we cannot change.”

Dinraal studied the cup.

“You sound certain.”

“I’ve been all three.”

That made him look up.

Aramaeis smiled faintly.

“Sometimes at the same person.”

Dinraal leaned against the locker.

“I don’t want to become good at deciding who has to wait.”

“Then keep being careful with the people who do.”

For a while, they stood together without speaking.

When the technicians finished, Dinraal closed the locker.

He did not open it again.

The Wayfarer’s Rest had a painted ceiling.

Dinraal discovered it when his helmet light crossed the entrance chamber.

Small stars covered the curved surface.

They were arranged in familiar constellations, though some had names he did not know. Near the hatch, one painted star had been circled in red, and someone had written a joke beneath it.

The lettering had faded beyond reading.

Isolde followed his gaze.

“A survey crew with a sense of humor.”

“I’d like to meet one.”

Behind them, Johanna’s two medics brought in the portable pressure shelter.

The entry compartment was empty.

So was the first corridor.

The ship had no gravity.

Loose objects rested against the walls where old movement had left them. A cup turned slowly when Dinraal brushed past it. Its handle was wrapped in thread.

Their clocks showed a growing difference.

Still within the planned limit.

Asha’s voice came through the wired relay.

“The warm compartment is ahead and below you. Two bulkheads.”

They passed a mess room.

Four bodies remained secured to the benches.

Dinraal stopped.

The medics checked them.

No movement.

No life.

One of the dead had a blanket tucked carefully around his shoulders.

Isolde read the names on the compartment’s emergency slate.

Then she photographed it and left it where it was.

They would collect everyone they could.

First, they had to reach the heat.

The lower compartment was a medical room.

Its hatch had been sealed from inside.

Dinraal tapped the frame.

Waited.

Tapped again.

There was no answer.

One of the medics checked the atmosphere through the sampling port.

“Thin, but breathable with support.”

Isolde placed a hand against the hatch.

Her silver flowed around the damaged seal.

Dinraal cut the locking arm.

They eased the hatch inward.

Six medical couches filled the room.

Four were dark.

Two showed dim amber lights.

A woman lay on one.

A man on the other.

Neither appeared to be breathing.

The medic nearest Dinraal moved immediately.

“Circulation present.”

Johanna’s voice sharpened over the line.

“Do not disconnect the couches. Show me the control panels.”

Dinraal held the camera steady.

The machinery was old enough that even its warning symbols differed from the ones he knew.

Teren joined the medical channel from the staging ship.

“That model has a transfer reserve beneath the footplate.”

“How long?” Johanna asked.

“It should provide twenty minutes.”

“Should?”

“I haven’t serviced one since before the closure.”

Johanna studied the readings.

“We’ll supply independent power before moving either patient.”

Dinraal looked at the other four couches.

One had a maintenance cover removed.

The parts inside had been stripped.

Then he saw the handwritten labels.

Dates.

Names.

Small marks beside each repair.

Someone had kept the last two machines running by taking pieces from the others.

“Two alive,” Isolde reported.

Her voice remained steady.

Dinraal was glad someone’s did.

The station team reached the inspection bridge while the medics worked.

Enna, Aramaeis, Gilgamesh, and two allied engineers crossed beneath a field of pale filaments that withdrew from their lights.

Dinraal watched their progress in the corner of his display.

He wanted to follow.

Instead, he held a medical couch while the engineer beside him fitted an external supply.

The woman on the couch had gray hair cut close to her scalp.

A scar crossed one eyebrow.

Her uniform had been folded and placed beneath the bed.

On top of it lay a small cloth animal with one missing ear.

Dinraal secured both in a bag.

The medic noticed.

“Thank you.”

“Someone should have it when she wakes.”

“If she wakes.”

He looked at her.

The medic’s expression was kind.

“I’m going to try very hard.”

Dinraal nodded.

That was enough.

From the station team, Enna reported an intact outer chamber and damaged internal controls.

Aramaeis confirmed that the mechanical isolation doors could close.

Gilgamesh asked whether anyone needed the railing he was about to remove.

The work continued.

Then the ship’s emergency speakers came on.

The woman’s voice returned.

“You have found two.”

Dinraal went still.

Isolde turned toward the speaker.

“There were more.”

Nobody answered.

“One hundred and twelve entered this vessel.”

Eve began checking the crew records they had copied.

Dinraal wished she would not.

He knew why she had to.

The voice continued.

“They could not endure the passage. I preserved what remained.”

Johanna spoke firmly over the medical channel.

“Keep moving. We are not discussing this beside my patients.”

The medics obeyed.

Dinraal lifted the couch.

Its small amber lights trembled.

The speaker said, “Ask them what they remember.”

Isolde cut the wire.

The voice stopped.

The northern command station had survived more cleanly than the western one.

Its people had not.

Aramaeis found seven at their posts.

The crew had closed the isolation doors during the original failure, trapping themselves inside when a pressure line ruptured.

Their emergency masks had been used.

Their final orders remained on a local slate.

The station’s spindle was still seated.

Enna disconnected the external command lines before approaching it.

This time, the pale material hidden in the insulation did not surprise her.

She removed the entire cable trunk.

Gilgamesh carried it outside.

Then the engineers brought in their own power.

The local console answered with the same quiet lamp they had seen at the western station.

No voice.

No altered instructions.

Enna checked the mechanical gauges.

“Second actuator is operable.”

Aramaeis looked up.

“Damage?”

“Less than the western one. The guide needs clearing. Two pressure seals need replacement.”

“And the third?”

She brought up the local inspection record.

The last actuator lay close to the central throat.

A long support had collapsed across its travel path.

Enna stared at the image.

“That is inconvenient.”

Gilgamesh leaned over her shoulder.

“How inconvenient?”

“Large.”

He considered the support.

Then, to her surprise, he shook his head.

“I can’t lift that without something sound beneath me.”

Enna looked at him.

He seemed offended.

“I do know when a thing is heavier than the floor.”

“Good,” she said.

“We’ll need the tugs,” Aramaeis said.

“And to clear everything still attached to that support,” Enna replied.

She saved the inspection data.

Before they left, Aramaeis collected the seven identification plates.

He placed them in separate pockets.

There would be time for names later.

He would make it.

The woman from the medical couch woke thirty hours after they brought her aboard.

Dinraal was not there.

Neither was Isolde.

They were asleep, and Johanna had instructed the ward staff that a patient regaining consciousness did not automatically constitute a reason to wake everyone who had helped carry her.

The woman woke to a low light, a warm blanket, and a nurse sitting beside her.

Her first question was whether the ship had cleared the disturbance.

Her second was whether her husband had survived.

The nurse answered the first carefully.

Johanna answered the second herself.

He was in the next bed.

Alive.

Still unconscious.

The woman turned her head until she could see him.

Then she cried without making a sound.

By the time Dinraal and Isolde visited, she had slept again and eaten a few spoonfuls of broth.

Her name was Siven.

Her husband was Orren.

They had been the Wayfarer’s Rest’s last functioning engineers.

“Captain ordered us into the couches,” she said.

Her voice was thin.

“The others were already gone. He said someone needed to be alive when relief came.”

Isolde sat beside the bed.

“Was the captain in the mess?”

Siven nodded.

“The couch wouldn’t hold him. We tried.”

Her gaze moved toward the bag on the nearby chair.

Dinraal passed it to her.

She opened it slowly.

When she found the little cloth animal, she pressed it to her mouth.

For a moment, he wished he had given her privacy.

Then she reached for his hand.

“Thank you.”

He sat down.

Siven remembered the Questioner.

Not as the voice they had heard.

Not as a face.

As a place where their instruments stopped agreeing with one another.

The Wayfarer’s Rest had approached the original containment site after receiving a distress call.

They had expected survivors in damaged ships.

They found vessels hanging motionless beside a darkness that bent the stars.

“Our captain tried to pull away,” she said. “The drive fired. We could feel it. But the same support stayed outside the window.”

Asha and Eve listened from the foot of the bed.

Johanna had allowed ten minutes.

Eve had placed a timer where everyone could see it.

“It asked us to repair a transmitter,” Siven continued.

“Who asked?” Eve said.

“The speakers. Different voices. Some were ours.”

“Did you repair it?”

“Yes.”

There was no defensiveness in the answer.

Only exhaustion.

“We thought it would let us leave.”

Dinraal looked at the old burns along her wrists.

“What happened?”

“It asked us to repair something else.”

The room remained quiet.

“After a while, we stopped. The captain cut every circuit that reached outside. We lived on reserves. Some of us were already sick.”

Siven glanced toward her husband.

“It didn’t understand why we stopped.”

Asha leaned forward slightly.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because it kept asking what payment we required.”

Dinraal thought of the transmission.

One vessel for each restored connection.

Siven’s fingers tightened around the cloth animal.

“We asked to go home. It kept offering things aboard the ship. Food. Heat. Another month of air.”

Her eyes closed.

“That wasn’t what we meant.”

Johanna ended the conversation before the timer sounded.

Nobody argued.

The next message from the Questioner arrived during the evening watch.

It used Siven’s voice.

Eve cut the bridge speakers after the first sentence and moved the recording to an isolated station.

Dinraal listened there with Isolde and Alexander.

“Your repairs can be completed more efficiently with cooperation.”

A pause.

“The remaining occupants can be preserved.”

Another pause.

“The western and northern controls are unnecessary to their release.”

Alexander folded his arms.

It knew about the northern station.

Of course it did.

The message continued.

“Identify the condition under which you will cease removal.”

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

There it was again.

The same problem it had studied in the records.

Why they came.

Why they left.

What made them keep risking people for strangers.

It had learned enough to bargain.

It had learned which voices hurt.

But it still framed every choice as something that could be purchased with the right quantity.

Alexander stopped the playback.

“No response.”

Dinraal nodded.

Then he looked toward Eve.

“Can it still hear through the medical equipment?”

“The couches were disconnected and moved out of the ward before either patient woke. Every component we kept is isolated.”

“So that voice came from an older recording.”

“As far as we can establish.”

He watched the frozen waveform.

Siven had already paid enough for those words.

He would not ask her to hear them again.

The rescue work accelerated.

With two command stations isolated, the fleet could hold more of the arc steady.

Three more vessels came free over the next two days.

A fourth could not be moved, so its occupants crossed through a temporary pressure tunnel into a shelter built against its hull.

They brought a cooking pot.

A cage containing something small that the medical staff insisted on examining.

Seven bundles of letters.

A disassembled water pump.

And a door.

Alexander looked at the last item as it entered the receiving bay.

The woman carrying one end explained before he could ask.

Her children’s heights were marked on the inside.

He stepped out of the way.

Dinraal helped them find somewhere to put it.

There were losses too.

A rescue team found a compartment whose life-support system had failed before the fleet arrived.

They brought out the bodies and the records they could recover.

Another group refused the first attempt at evacuation because the last people who had promised release had taken three of their friends away.

Pell spoke to them through the hull.

Then Nemi.

Eventually, they opened the hatch.

Nobody called them difficult.

By the third evening, the known occupied spaces had narrowed to two vessels and a maintenance barracks beside the collapsed support.

The numbers were better.

The work ahead was harder.

And for the first time, the Questioner began moving ships the fleet had not yet reached.

Eve noticed it in the comparison images.

The nearer vessel had shifted half its own length toward the central throat.

Not drifting.

Being drawn inward.

The second followed six minutes later.

Alexander called every team leader to the bridge.

Enna studied the movement.

“It’s taking them with the support.”

“Can we stop it?”

“Not from either station we hold. That assembly is beyond the third actuator.”

On the projection, the collapsed support lay across the mechanism they needed to repair.

The two captive vessels were attached to its outer end.

The barracks was built into the bracing beneath it.

Dinraal stared at the slow change in position.

The Questioner had offered them ships.

Now it was moving the remaining people where rescuing them would require giving up their safest approach.

Isolde pointed to the barracks.

“If it moves that much farther, the pressure tunnel we planned won’t reach.”

“How long?” Alexander asked.

Asha calculated.

“Assuming it maintains this speed, less than nine hours.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

She looked at him.

“We shouldn’t plan around nine hours.”

Alexander called for the towing captains.

Enna opened the actuator drawings.

Dinraal began forming the approach in his mind.

A direct descent.

Silver around the barracks.

A hard pull before the support reached the throat.

He could feel how much it would demand.

He could also see the people trapped inside.

Beside him, Isolde was studying a different part of the projection.

“The support doesn’t have to stay in one piece.”

Enna looked up.

“What?”

Isolde traced the long structure.

“We keep planning to lift all of it away from the actuator. But the ships and barracks are attached to this outer section. Cut here. Tow that section outward. Let the inner end remain until the people are clear.”

Enna enlarged the joint.

“It’s under load.”

“Yes.”

“We’d need to take that load before cutting.”

Alexander turned toward the arriving tug captain.

The captain studied the mass estimate.

“Four tugs.”

“We have four,” Alexander said.

“Then four.”

Dinraal looked again.

The task changed.

He would not have to carry the whole disaster himself.

He only had to help hold one joint.

They prepared without the rushed silence Dinraal had come to associate with desperate plans.

People asked questions.

They changed assignments.

One tug captain rejected the first towing angle and proposed another.

Johanna demanded a second receiving craft.

Enna insisted on a physical signal at the cut point in case the radios failed.

Teren identified an old maintenance pin that could help keep the support from rolling after separation.

Gilgamesh volunteered to install it.

Nobody laughed.

It was exactly the sort of work he could do.

Dinraal and Isolde checked each other’s pressure reserves.

Then they checked the independent supplies for the reference assemblies.

Their hands met over a coupling.

For a moment, neither moved.

“Tell me,” Isolde said.

He looked at her.

“What?”

“Whatever you’re deciding not to say.”

He glanced toward the boarding craft.

“I’m afraid it knows how to make me come closer.”

She nodded.

“So am I.”

“If it puts someone where we can see them—”

“We decide together.”

“And if there isn’t time?”

“Then we trust the plan we made while there was.”

He let out a breath.

She rested her forehead against his.

“You don’t have to stop caring to be careful.”

“I know.”

“Keep knowing.”

He smiled faintly.

“Yes, wife.”

Her mouth curved.

“Better.”

Then the boarding signal sounded, and they went.

The cut point lay in open space.

Beyond it, the central darkness filled too much of Dinraal’s view.

He fixed his eyes on the metal.

Old bolts.

A seam.

The inspection marks Teren had described.

His work.

Beside him, Isolde anchored the second reference assembly.

Gilgamesh moved beneath the support with the maintenance pin held against his shoulder.

The tugs approached in pairs.

Their lines settled onto attachment points prepared by the advance team.

Alexander called each captain.

One answered.

Then the next.

Then the third and fourth.

“Tension rising,” Enna reported.

The support groaned through Dinraal’s boots.

Farther out, lights flickered in the barracks.

A work lamp flashed from one window.

They had received the warning.

People were moving toward the reinforced compartments.

“Pin seated,” Gilgamesh said.

Isolde’s silver spread along the joint.

Dinraal joined his to it.

The pressure arrived immediately.

Behind his eyes.

Along his teeth.

A sensation of something enormous turning its attention toward a sound it recognized.

The darkness shifted.

“Stay on the joint,” Isolde said.

“I’m here.”

The tugs increased power.

Enna watched the load readings.

“Not yet.”

A strand of pale material rose from the support and struck Dinraal’s shoulder.

His armor held.

He cut it away without releasing the brace.

“Not yet,” Enna repeated.

A second strand reached for the reference assembly.

Gilgamesh tore it free.

The tug engines brightened.

The metal beneath Dinraal’s hands eased by a fraction.

“Now.”

He and Isolde cut.

The first section parted cleanly.

The second did not.

A buried reinforcement remained beneath the seam, hidden from the old drawings.

The support twisted.

One towing line snapped taut hard enough to throw its tug sideways.

“Hold,” Alexander ordered.

The captains held.

Dinraal could feel the remaining reinforcement through his silver.

A thick inner rib.

If he cut it immediately, the outer section would roll toward the barracks.

“Angle correction,” he said. “Third tug, lower pull.”

The captain answered.

The line shifted.

Too slowly.

The pale growth around the inner section began to tighten.

It was pulling the broken joint back together.

Isolde’s armor brightened.

“Dinraal.”

“I see it.”

Their reference assembly shook.

For a moment, the clocks inside his visor disagreed so violently that one seemed to stop.

He could not tell whether the tug had moved.

He could not trust the apparent position of the far hull.

Then a white lamp flashed beside his hand.

Once.

Twice.

The physical signal.

Enna’s team had the new load.

He cut the rib.

The support separated.

The outer section surged away.

Dinraal released his brace.

Isolde caught the back of his armor and pulled him clear as the inner end slammed sideways into the ruined guide.

Gilgamesh came off the structure a heartbeat later.

Behind them, four tugs dragged two ships and a barracks into open space.

The central darkness changed shape.

Something vast pressed against the narrowing line between the old supports.

Dinraal felt a wordless demand through the silver.

His hand moved toward it before he understood that he was moving.

Isolde seized his wrist.

“Look at me.”

He did.

Her face filled his visor.

Her eyes.

Her mouth, set with effort.

The small crease between her brows.

“Recovery craft,” she said.

He turned with her.

They flew.

The first people reached the receiving ship while the tugs were still moving.

The barracks held eighty-nine.

The two vessels held another hundred and forty-six between them.

All two hundred and thirty-five came out alive.

The evacuation took hours.

It was untidy.

One pressure sleeve jammed.

A frightened man struck a medic who approached too quickly, then broke down trying to apologize.

A child refused to leave without the woman who had cared for her.

They waited until the woman was found.

Dinraal carried stretchers.

Isolde helped settle people into the shelter compartments.

Gilgamesh spent most of the evening crouched beside a damaged hatch, holding it open while evacuees passed.

Nobody asked him how he felt about sieges.

By the time the last headcount was confirmed, the central projection showed no remaining confirmed occupants inside the planned closure zone.

There were still compartments to inspect.

Still wrecks they could not assume were empty.

But the known names had all been moved to the recovered list.

Isolde stood over it for a long time.

Then she sat down.

Dinraal knelt beside her chair.

She pressed her hands over her face.

He waited.

When she lowered them, her eyes were wet.

“Every name we had,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Even the girl with no surname.”

“Yes.”

He took her hands.

Around them, the receiving bay remained loud with people who had somewhere else to be.

The third actuator was exposed.

The broken support had fallen clear of its travel path.

Its outer guide was damaged, but the central mechanism remained whole.

Enna reviewed the images twice before speaking.

“We can repair it.”

Alexander stood beside her.

“How long?”

“With the parts already aboard and two uninterrupted shifts?”

He waited.

“A day.”

Nobody mistook that for a promise.

But nobody mistook it for a guess either.

Eve added the latest inspection map to the projection.

Three closure sections.

Two command stations under local control.

The original closure station still sealed.

A central severance mechanism awaiting a current physical inspection.

And a fleet that, for the first time since arriving, had enough recovered people aboard that the medical transports would soon have to leave simply to make room.

Dinraal looked toward the departure schedule.

He thought of the house.

The blue tablecloth.

Aurelius speaking gently while Rhiannon arranged flowers behind him.

He thought of Siven waking beside her husband, and Teren learning how to live in a century she had never expected to see.

There would be work after this.

There would be grief after this.

The Questioner had other openings, other servants, other places where it had reached into the world.

But this breach could close.

This place could stop taking people.

Alexander turned from the projection.

“Tomorrow we inspect the central mechanism. The repair crews continue in shifts. Rescue teams finish the remaining compartment searches.”

He looked around the room.

“Then we decide whether we’re ready.”

Dinraal nodded.

For once, readiness did not feel like a word people used when they had run out of alternatives.

They had built it.

Hour by hour.

Ship by ship.

And when he reached for Isolde’s hand beneath the table, hers was already waiting.