I whistle low under my breath. "What the hell happened to you?"
K-Seven drifts up beside me, all three lenses whirring. "Unit notes complete absence of standard kill-signatures. No plasma scarring. No kinetic impact craters. Hull damage originates from interior."
"That's what I thought," I murmur, my mind spinning through the terrifying implications of a warship being torn open from the inside out.
"Unit reiterates objection to boarding," K-Seven chimes, its tone laced with as much warning as a synthesized voice can manage.
"Objection noted. Also ignored."
Marrin's hopper appears on the scope, a battered orange smear closing on the breach from the other side. He's whooping on the open channel, ragged and triumphant. I mute him because I need to think, and Marrin thinking and Marrin whooping are incompatible states.
I bring theHarrowin progressively, circling her belly at a respectful distance. K-Seven skims its sensor suite across the hull and returns a bouquet of contradictions. Cold spots where the reactor should be, and a faint warmth near the bridge. No life signs. No active weapons.
"She's too clean, K-Seven," I observe, studying the pristine lines of the hull that completely defy centuries of drift.
"Confirmed. She should be a tomb."
"So why isn't she?"
Its primary lens dilates, refocuses, and dilates again. "Insufficient data. Recommend departure."
"Recommend noted."
"Repeatedly."
Marrin's voice punches back through the channel, the mute evidently his own doing. "Vane! I'm clipping on. I spot a feed port near the breach. I'm gonna jack in and ride her power grid for the sweep. Be a good girl and wave when I pass."
"Marrin, wait?—"
"Wave, Vane!" he crows, and then the line turns to static.
I'm already leaning forward, already shouting at K-Seven to prep the tether when I see the flash.
It's small. Almost nothing. A little flare of white along the breach where Marrin's hopper was seconds ago, and then the hopper vanishes entirely, leaving behind the chilling absence of both an explosion and a shockwave. The little orange smear folds inward on itself and crumples like somebody balled up a piece of foil, and then the space where it used to be sits empty except for a creeping bloom of debris drifting in a spiral I have never seen anything drift in.
My hand is frozen on the console.
"Marrin?" I breathe into the open channel. "Marrin, come back."
Static.
"K-Seven? What just happened."
K-Seven's lenses cycle three times before it answers, and when it does, the warble in its voice has gone flat. "Localized gravitational drumming. Origin: target vessel. Duration: zero point eight seconds. Effect: compression. Hopper is no longer structurally coherent."
"Plain language."
"She pulled him in and crushed him."
I gawk at the spiral of debris. It’s very small. What remains of Jex Marrin has already scattered beyond reach. He used to meet me at the hull and used to argue me down over finder’s fees. His last word to me was “wave.” Such a foolish thing to be left with—and somehow it is what undoes me. The word carries more weight than the death.
My throat works around something that won't swallow.
"Unit recommends immediate departure," K-Seven warbles quietly. "With considerable emphasis."
I don't depart.
I should. I know that. There is a part of me—the part that has gotten me this far, the part that learned at fifteen how to read a room and read a job and read a man, the part that has kept me breathing in rooms where other girls did not—that part is screaming at me to pull back, fan the flames, and go home to Orun and eat my debt like a grown woman.