Akiko stirred, ears flicking as the Driftknight's low hum crept back into her awareness. The migraine had dulled since she officially joined the crew.

Still there, but manageable. Her tail curled once, then unspooled lazily. She blinked against the cabin's dim light.

A figure stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

Young. Dark hair in a ponytail. Grease-streaked jumpsuit. Tool belt slung low on her hips. Her posture was stiff, her expression somewhere between impatience and barely-contained judgment.

"You're awake," the woman said. No greeting. Just clipped efficiency and eyes already measuring her.

Akiko propped herself on one elbow, a dry smile tugging at her lips. "Yeah, I'm awake. Let me guess, Kara sent you?"

The woman's jaw tightened, just slightly. "She did. Tanya Peres. Junior Engineer. I'm supposed to show you around. So you can start pulling your weight."

"Straight to the point," Akiko said, stretching slowly. "No 'hope you're feeling better'? Tough crowd."

Tanya said nothing. Her silence did the talking.

Akiko swung her legs down and pushed off the bunk, catching herself against the opposite wall. "Alright, Tanya. Let's get to it."

They floated down the corridor in silence. Tanya moved with the practiced ease of someone used to narrow spaces and low gravity. She kept a measured distance.

Akiko followed, noting the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw stayed clenched.

"You're not thrilled about this," Akiko said after a beat. "Me, I mean."

Tanya didn't stop. "It's not about what I think. Kara wants you working, so you're working."

"Sure." Akiko dragged the word out. "But I'm guessing this has to do with Tomas."

Tanya's hand twitched on the handrail. Just a flicker, but it cracked the neutral mask.

"What do you know about Tomas?" she asked, sharp now.

Akiko slowed. "I know he was with your crew before the station. And I know Haven has him."

Tanya turned, suddenly still. "You handed him to them."

The words weren't loud, but they hit hard.

"That's not exactly how it happened," Akiko said, voice even. Her tail flicked once behind her. "He made his own choices—"

"I've heard the stories," Tanya cut in. "You lured him into a trap. Sold him out to save yourself."

Akiko blinked. The venom in her voice wasn't just anger. It was personal.

"That's what they're saying?" she murmured, somewhere between disbelief and amusement. "Creative."

Tanya's hands curled around a support beam. Her glare was sharp, but under it, grief.

"You weren't there when he kept us moving," she said, quieter now. "Even when everything was falling apart. He didn't deserve—" Her voice broke, and she cut it off fast. "He didn't deserve to end up in Haven's hands."

Akiko could've argued. Could've laid it all out. What really happened, what it cost her. But she held back.

She saw the pain in Tanya's eyes, and it wasn't about facts.

Akiko sighed, raising her hands slightly. "Look... I get it. You're angry. You've got every right to be. But Tomas made his choice. And so did I."

A pause.

"I'm not your enemy."

Tanya didn't answer at first. Just stared. Then she turned away.

"Kara thinks you're useful," she said, voice flat now. "Guess we'll find out."

She pushed off and floated down the corridor, not bothering to look back.

Akiko drifted after Tanya, boots catching the occasional rung as they floated through the utility spine of the ship.

The lighting here was harsher, more utilitarian than the crew sections. All exposed conduit and welded mesh underfoot. Someone had scrawled a crude cartoon of their captain on one of the pressure panels.

Tanya ignored it. Akiko tried not to stare.

Tanya snapped open the hatch with a practiced twist and gestured her forward.

"Water recycling junction. Primary filtration housing is flagged for backflow risk. You're going to isolate the pipe, remove the clamp, and swap the filter. If you do it wrong, you'll pop the seal and flood the bay."

"I said I'd help," Akiko muttered, catching the ladder beside her with a grunt. "Didn't realize you meant plumbing."

She blinked at the tight crawlspace ahead of them, its interior pulsing with the faint hum of active flow.

"Simple enough," she said, then immediately regretted saying it.

Tanya raised a brow. "Sure. Simple. Here."

She passed over a battered toolkit that looked older than Akiko. The latches had been replaced with scavenged wire, and something rattled inside.

"There's no 'undo' button down here, princess," Tanya added, pushing off the wall. "Don't strip the bolts."

Akiko rotated in place, one hand on the bulkhead, the other clutching the kit.

The weightlessness made every movement take longer than she intended. She tried to look like someone used to this. Someone who hadn't been navigating spreadsheets and combat simulations on a tidy military console just weeks ago.

And before that, dodging fireballs and pressure-plate spears.

It wasn't so different from disarming a trap, really. Just this time, she had to put it back together when she was done.

"Any last advice?" she asked as Tanya keyed a bypass on the panel.

"Yeah. Don't screw up."

With that, Tanya twisted away, boots catching a foothold above. Akiko stared at the narrow crawl ahead, then muttered under her breath.

"Right. Sink or swim."

Then, clutching the toolkit to her chest, she pulled herself into the dark.

The crawlspace was barely wide enough for her shoulders. Akiko wedged herself inside, toolkit floating beside her, and stared at the jungle of pipes that snaked across the bulkhead in lazy, colorless spirals.

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"Okay," she murmured, twisting to anchor her boots against a crossbar. "Any of these look like a 'primary filtration housing' to you?"

"Clarify: Local system schematic inconsistent with last recorded configuration. Manual override relays mislabeled. Estimated: sixty-four percent probability it's the upper-left pipe with the gray coupling."

"That's not confidence-inspiring."

"Would you prefer I guess with certainty?"

Akiko grimaced, reaching out to tap the gray-coupled pipe. It gave a faint metallic groan in response.

The bolts were rusted, the seal half-painted over, and someone had stuffed what looked like thermal tape into the gap where it met the wall.

She sighed, letting her body drift slightly.

"Recommend disengaging seal slowly. Ready safety latch in case of pressure miscalculation. Also: brace yourself for potential splashback."

"I can see that coming a mile away," she muttered.

Another bolt drifted from the kit and bounced off her knee. Her breathing echoed in the confined space, shallow and slightly irritated.

"Would you like a distraction? I could recite Driftknight's maintenance logs from the last six years. Half of them are in shorthand. One is a haiku."

"You're not helping," Akiko said, reaching for the next tool. Then paused.

She frowned.

"Actually, you're always helping. Or at least trying to."

"That is my function."

"Still. It's getting old. Calling you 'my AI' all the time. Or 'the AI'. Makes you sound like an appliance."

There was no answer, not that she expected one. Just the soft hum of environmental regulation behind the walls, and the faint scratch of metal as she worked a bolt halfway loose.

She exhaled through her nose. The silence wasn't judgment. But it felt like something. As if the idea had lingered longer than it should've.

"I should give you a name," she said aloud.

Another pause. A thread of warmth crept up her neck as she realized she was expecting a reaction.

"I do not object."

"That's not very helpful."

"I am not programmed to name myself."

"Well, I'm not used to naming anyone but my tail," she muttered, frowning. "And I don't think 'Fluffy' is going to cut it."

"Correct."

She smiled in spite of herself. A real one this time.

"Takuto," she said after a moment. "It means... guiding light. Or clever. Or something like that."

"Accepted. Logging name: Takuto."

"Good." Akiko grunted as she finally dislodged the bolt. "Because if you got a say in it, you'd probably just call yourself 'Optimal Performance Module' or something ridiculous."

"That name is available."

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the pipe.

"Takuto it is."

She settled back into the rhythm of the task, tools floating beside her, Takuto quietly feeding her schematics in the corner of her vision.

The pipe assembly still made no sense. A mess of mismatched fittings and jury-rigged connections that looked more like sabotage than plumbing.

Her tail twitched once. Then again.

"Alright," she muttered, more to herself than anyone else. "Name granted, bond forged, dignity intact. Let's try not to embarrass ourselves."

She wedged deeper into the cramped maintenance shaft, working her wrench into an awkward angle.

"Come on," she muttered, twisting the wrench. "Just work."

The pipe groaned. For a moment, she thought she had it, until a cold spray exploded from the joint, dousing her from head to toe.

Akiko froze, blinking water out of her eyes. Her ears drooped under the weight, her soaked tail dragging across the slick floor like a defeated mop. She let out a long exhale, the scent of damp fur curling in the air around her.

A sound behind her caused her ears to tilt that way.

She turned and found Tanya crouched at the corridor's edge, arms crossed, wrench in hand. There was a flicker in her eyes. Amusement, maybe. Her lips twitched dangerously close to a smile.

Akiko arched a brow. "Something funny?"

The moment passed. Tanya's expression hardened back into stone.

"Wasting water isn't funny," she said briskly, pushing off the wall. "If we lose too much, we'll be rationing until Zephara."

Akiko groaned, dragging a hand down her soaked face. "Yeah, message received. Next time I'll politely ask the valve to behave."

Tanya didn't dignify it with a response. She floated closer and got to work. Her hands moved quickly, tightening the joint until the hissing stopped.

"Done," she said, backing off. "Clean up the globules before they hit something important."

Akiko bit back the retort. Pointless. Tanya hadn't softened. Even that flicker of humor had vanished like it never happened.

She sighed and pulled a filtration net from the kit, waving it gently through the air. Droplets caught in the mesh like silver insects in a web, drifting lazily as the tool passed through them. Every pass took patience. Steady motion, no sudden jerks, or the globules would scatter again.

By the time she'd cleared most of the floating water, her sleeves were soaked and her tail still clung damply to her back.

Still, she told herself as she stowed the net, she hadn't flooded the entire shaft. Progress.

Later, as Akiko drifted back toward her bunk, she found herself thinking of Kaede.

Her sister would've handled the valve with a flick of the wrist and a murmured incantation, magic sinking into the metal like second nature. Akiko's own talents didn't stretch that far. Fire and force, parries and strikes, none of it helped with rusted bolts.

Still, she was used to scraping by. If Tanya needed her to earn her place one busted system at a time, fine. She'd do it.

But first, a towel.

She found a towel two compartments over and did her best to wrangle the damp from her fur. The motion was automatic, her thoughts still stuck in the crawlspace.

Rust and old magic. Expectations she couldn't meet, but still had to pretend she might.

By the time her tail was halfway dry, she was already drifting down the corridor, towel slung across her shoulders like a forgotten banner.

Faint voices caught her ears, coming from the lounge.

Inside, she found Lila, Quinn, and Raya clustered around the holo projector. The screen's soft glow painted their faces in pale hues. They floated with practiced ease. Boots clipped to the floor, bodies anchored at handholds.

Akiko gripped the nearest rail, ears twitching toward the broadcast.

A clean-cut anchorwoman stared from the screen, framed by a rotating image of the shattered Stygian station. Its skeletal remains hung silhouetted against the planet below.

OUTER COLONY SABOTEURS SUSPECTED IN STYGIAN STATION DESTRUCTION

"The station's destruction has reignited tensions between Haven and the outer colonies," the anchorwoman said, tone carefully even. "Sources suggest extremist involvement, though Haven officials have not confirmed any suspects."

Quinn let out a bitter laugh. "Extremists, my ass." His arms crossed tight across his chest. "The innies don't need proof. They'll blame us no matter what."

Raya looked over, troubled. "They don't know it wasn't the colonies," she said softly. But even she didn't sound convinced. "They weren't there."

"They don't care," Quinn shot back, stabbing a finger at the screen. "They never have. Every excuse they get, more patrols, more restrictions. And now? Supplies. You know they'll use this to choke us again."

Lila's voice cut through the tension, steady but sharp. "They always do. Doesn't matter if it's our fault or not. Something goes wrong, it's suddenly on us."

Akiko floated closer, her gaze flicking across the group. "You think they really believe the colonies could pull off something like that?" she asked, voice low.

Quinn's jaw tensed. "They don't care what's possible. They care about the story. And if the story paints us as terrorists, it keeps their people afraid. Keeps them obedient."

The room fell quiet again. The broadcast continued in the background, words like security measures and system-wide cooperation rolling past on the ticker.

Akiko could feel the weight of it. The crew's frustration. The growing pressure in the system. The way even quiet rooms like this one felt like they were holding their breath.

Raya bit her lip, eyes still on the screen. She looked torn. Akiko couldn't tell if it was the broadcast or Quinn's reaction that hit harder. Either way, the weight of the Stygian station's destruction hung heavy in the room.

Akiko leaned back, the sharp edge of Quinn's words fading as her thoughts turned elsewhere.

She knew what really destroyed the station.

The entity had done that. Twisting machines, warping minds. No saboteur group had the power to fracture a place like that. But Haven wouldn't care. They'd reshape the story, smooth its edges, mold it into a weapon.

A truth no one wanted wasn't useful.

Her gaze wandered toward the window.

She'd passed it a dozen times over the past week. Now, in the lull of conversation, she drifted closer.

Her breath caught.

Erythraea filled the viewport.

A churning canvas of rust-red and ochre, bands of cloud twisting in endless loops. Storms the size of cities spiraled within darker belts, while pale tendrils wrapped around them like smoke drifting underwater.

It looked alive.

She pressed closer, ears tilting back slightly. She'd orbited Stygia before back on the Sovereign, but this was different. Erythraea didn't just dominate the sky. It bent space around it. Dwarfed everything. It made her feel smaller than she had since crossing into this universe.

"First time seeing it up close?" Lila's voice cut through gently.

Akiko glanced over. The chief engineer hovered near the window, a faint smirk tugging at one corner of her mouth.

Akiko nodded. "I've seen big before. But not... this."

Quinn grunted from his spot near the holo. "It's a gas giant. Looks nice, sure. But unless you're harvesting hydrogen, it's just scenery."

"It's more than that," Lila said, drifting beside Akiko. Her tone lost its edge, softening. "It holds a dozen moons, some with more raw resources than half the inner system. Without Erythraea, the Outer Shipyards wouldn't be here."

Akiko tilted her head. "So the Yard orbits one of the moons?"

"Not quite." Lila tapped lightly on the glass. "It sits in a Trojan orbit, trailing the planet like a shadow. Keeps it stable and out of the way, but close enough to reach the moons when they need to."

Akiko looked back at the gas giant.

The scale of it pressed against her. She'd always thought herself adaptable: nimble, clever, fast enough to survive whatever the world threw at her. But here, with Erythraea filling her vision and the stars stretched out behind it, she felt like a speck.

No magic. No clever trick. Just her, floating through the vastness.

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