Luca sat on the edge of his bed, the System interface glowing in front of him. Emily lay stretched out behind him, her chin propped on her hand as she watched him, her hair an absolute mess.

"You're overthinking it," she said, poking him between the shoulder blades.

"I've got enough XP to max out all my Starship Captain skills," Luca muttered, running calculations in his head. "But some of these Infiltrator abilities look incredible. System Override, Adaptive Exploits, Hacking Efficiency..."

"You're going to level those infiltrator skills whether you like it or not," Emily pointed out. "Every portal we hit, every ruin we explore. But the ship needs you to be at your best right now."

Luca highlighted the Starship Captain skill tree, all those level 5s and 4s staring back at him. "At minimum, all my skills should be level 10 with abilities unlocked, right?"

"That's what I'd do." Emily's finger traced lazy circles on his back. "Besides, remember how useful Starship Systems has been? You caught that power fluctuation on New Dawn because of that skill."

She had a point. His infiltrator skills would grow naturally through combat and exploration, but his captain skills... those took dedicated investment.

"Alright," Luca decided. "Let's do this."

He started allocating XP, watching the numbers climb:

[Skill Level up! Starship Piloting Familiarity Level 4 → Level 10] (-170,612 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Precision Maneuver Level 1]

[Skill Level up! Starship Operations Familiarity Level 5 → Level 10] (-165,963 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Operational Insight, Level 1]

[Skill Level up! Starship Systems Familiarity Level 5 → Level 10] (-165,963 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! System Analysis Burst, Level 1]

[Skill Level up! Starship Navigation Familiarity Level 5 → Level 10] (-165,963 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Pathfinder's Intuition, Level 1]

[Skill Level up! Starship Maneuvering Familiarity Level 5 → Level 10] (-165,963 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Combat Drift, Level 1]

The information hit him like a wave. Suddenly, he understood engine harmonics he'd never noticed before, and could visualize flight paths that seemed impossible moments ago. But he wasn't done yet.

[Skill Level up! Orbital Navigation Familiarity Level 4 → Level 10] (-175,212 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Trajectory Lock, Level 1]

[Skill Level up! Zero-G Maneuvering Familiarity Level 4 → Level 10] (-171,203 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Vector Precision, Level 1]

[Skill Level up! Multi-Vector Piloting Familiarity Level 4 → Level 10] (-167,656 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Adaptive Flight Control, Level 1]

Knowledge flooded his brain. Three-dimensional movement patterns, gravitational calculations, thrust-vector optimization. His head started pounding, but he pushed through.

[Skill Level up! Atmospheric Handling Familiarity Level 4 → Level 10] (-181,733 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Instinctive Glide Correction, Level 1]

[Skill Level up! Fuel Efficiency Familiarity Level 2 → Level 10] (-205,998 XP)

[Ability Unlocked! Adaptive Burn Profiling, Level 1]

The final wave of information crashed into his skull like a jackhammer. Luca's vision went white as every nerve in his head screamed at once. He crashed backward onto the bed, his body convulsing as his brain tried to process years of piloting experience in seconds.

"Luca!" Emily's voice sounded distant, muffled by the roaring in his ears.

He felt her hands on his face, her legs sliding around to cradle his head against her thighs. The migraine was brutal - like someone had stuffed his skull full of molten metal and set it spinning.

"You idiot," she whispered, stroking his hair. "You should have done these one at a time."

"Didn't... think..." he managed through gritted teeth. The pain was so intense he could barely speak.

"Of course you didn't think. You never do when it comes to taking care of yourself." Her fingers were gentle against his temples, applying light pressure. "Just breathe. Let your brain catch up."

Gradually, the agony receded to a dull throb. Luca found he could think again, could process the flood of new knowledge without wanting to throw up. Flight patterns that had seemed impossible now felt intuitive. He could visualize engine efficiency curves, predict how the Triumph would handle in a dozen different scenarios.

"Better?" Emily asked, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead.

"Yeah." He sat up slowly, wincing. "Fuck, that hurt."

"How many skill points did you just spend?" Emily asked, concern creeping into her voice.

"I don't know," Luca replied, squinting at his interface. "Let me check my log... nearly one point eight million."

"You idiot," Emily said, looking down into his eyes and gently scrubbing his cheek with her thumb. "That's about as much XP as it took us to reach level 60."

"That explains the migraine," Luca muttered.

"That's what happens when you try to download a flight academy's worth of training in ten seconds." Emily shook her head, but she was smiling. "Ready to go and navigate the minefield?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," he replied, his head pounding.

The bridge felt smaller with the whole crew crammed into it. Everyone stood at their stations, tension thick enough to cut with a knife. Through the main viewport, Alpha Centauri A burned like an angry orange eye in the distance.

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Too fucking far.

"Alright, Zoe," Luca said, settling into his command chair. "Hit me with the hard numbers."

Zoe was working over her console, pulling up the navigation display. "Point-two light years to Alpha Centauri A. At sublight, even pushing the engines to maximum safe velocity..." She paused, running calculations. "Five months. Minimum."

"Five months?" Ryan's voice cracked slightly. "That puts us way outside our mission window."

"Gets worse," Zoe continued, highlighting their original trajectory. "Mission parameters called for a gravitational slingshot around Proxima b and we'd have been there in 20 days. Without it, straight-line sublight is 170 days." She gestured at the defensive formations scattered throughout the system. "But the mission parameters didn't account for space portals and defensive fleets making those routes suicidal."

Silence fell over the bridge like a blanket. Twenty days had become five months - mission failure.

"There might be another option," Danny said quietly from his sensor station.

All eyes turned to him. Danny looked uncomfortable with the attention, but pressed on.

"The FTL drive. Short hop, in-system. One day, maybe less."

"The schematics never specifically forbid short hops," Danny continued, though his voice wavered. "The Reality Anchor creates a localized containment bubble that stabilizes our quantum state. It keeps us tethered to the known laws of physics while the FTL drive skips us between normal folds of spacetime."

"Right," Chris said, his voice rising. "It prevents us from turning into exotic particles. But it doesn't do shit against physical debris. A grain of sand moving at relativistic speeds will punch right through our hull like it's tissue paper."

"If the field maintains integrity," Ryan added grimly, "we stay coherent as a ship. But any matter in our path..." He made a slicing gesture across his throat.

Joey stepped forward. "Let me get this straight. This Reality Anchor thing - it's not like shields in the movies? It won't deflect asteroids or space dust?"

Danny shook his head. "It's quantum containment, not physical protection. It maintains our structural integrity and temporal consistency. But debris..." He paused, looking sick. "Chris is right. Anything solid we hit becomes a relativistic projectile."

"Jesus," Zoe breathed, pulling up stellar cartography. "The space between Proxima and Alpha Centauri A isn't empty. There's interstellar medium - hydrogen, helium, dust particles."

"How much dust?" Luca asked, dreading the answer.

"Sparse, but it's there. Even a microscopic particle at FTL speeds..." Zoe ran calculations, her face going pale. "Impact energy equivalent to a small nuclear weapon."

Emily leaned forward. "So we're talking about flying through a minefield where every speck of dust is a potential ship-killer."

"That's about the size of it," Chris confirmed. "The Reality Anchor will keep us from dissolving into quantum foam, but it won't stop us from being shredded by debris."

Danny grabbed a stylus and started sketching on his tablet display, projecting it for everyone to see. "The Anchor Field is like a bubble protecting our quantum state. But think of it more like... a soap bubble. It defines what space we occupy, but anything physical can pass right through it."

Ryan muttered under his breath, "That deflector shield schematic sure would come in handy right about now."

"We can't even build it," Luca snapped back, frustration bleeding into his voice. "We've got the schematic, but we don't know what half the materials are, let alone how to manufacture them."

The bridge went quiet. Full scope of the risk, right there. Fuck. They weren't just gambling on untested technology, no. They were betting their lives that the space between stars was empty enough not to kill them.

Ryan leaned back against his console, that cocky grin spreading across his face. "Look, I hate the idea of getting vaporized by space dust. But five months? Our supplies won't last that long. Food, water, air recycling - we'd be eating each other by month three."

"The charter explicitly demands a complete system survey," Emily added, her voice tight. "Not half of one. If we return empty-handed, the Initiative loses legitimacy back on Earth. This whole program gets scrapped."

Chris shook his head, his face grim. "I get it. Mission failure versus certain death. But if the Reality Anchor flickers even once during jump, we're not talking about a quick death. We're talking about being spread across several light-minutes of space as exotic particles."

"Ryan's right though," Danny said quietly. "We're not equipped for a four-month journey. The life support systems, the food stores - we'd have to put half the crew in stasis, and we don't have the medical supplies for that."

"Luca," Zoe said, she called over from her navigation console as she finalized the trajectory, "I've plotted seventeen different vectors... They're all shit."

She pulled up the holographic display, casting blue shadows across her face. "Every path I run has debris clusters. Hydrogen pockets, dust concentrations, micro-meteoroids. The space between stars isn't empty - it's a fucking obstacle course."

Luca studied her work, and his newly upgraded navigation skills let him understand the complexity in a way he never could before. The calculations were elegant, sophisticated - far beyond anything he could create himself. But now he could at least follow her reasoning, see the trade-offs she was making.

"Which one's our best bet?" he asked.

"Vector seven," Zoe replied immediately, highlighting a path through the debris fields. "Longest route, but it threads between the major concentration zones. Still dangerous as hell, but it's the cleanest I can manage."

"Speaking of which," Chris's voice joined the conversation, "we've got a new problem. The Reality Anchor was designed for clear-space jumps. But running it through interstellar medium?"

Ryan's voice followed, sharp with frustration. "Every dust grain is a shock to the containment bubble. The generators will be fighting constant micro-fluctuations just to keep us coherent. The anchor load climbs past design spec the moment we push cadence."

Luca's command interface lit up with diagnostics: couplings edging yellow, capacitor banks heating under ripple current, coherence metrics twitching with every simulated dust strike. With his freshly unlocked Systems skill, he could finally read the picture for what it was, an anchor fighting turbulence like an aircraft in a storm. He could see how the load spikes lined up with bank cycles, where the inverters were close to saturating.

Understanding was one thing. Solving it? Another.

"What do you need from up here?" he called down to Engineering.

"Prayers," Chris replied grimly. "And maybe a miracle."

Zoe's hands trembled slightly over her navigation console as she finalized the new trajectory. "I've never plotted an in-system FTL jump before. Even with your corrections, I'm still flying blind here."

Luca caught the fear in her voice, the trust underneath it. She was scared, but she'd do it anyway if he asked. They all would.

"We also didn't come here to get vaporized by cosmic dust," Chris shot back at Ryan.

"Hey!" Luca's voice cut through the argument. "Enough."

The bridge went quiet. All eyes turned to him, waiting. Emily's hand found his shoulder again, steadying pressure that helped him think.

Luca thought about his dad's face as they escaped the Asteroid Belt, about Matteo back on Earth probably getting into trouble with Echo Team, about Alessio back with his grandparents. About all the people who'd put their faith in them.

Then he imagined Emily floating dead in space, her body torn apart by exotic particles. The thought made his chest tight.

"So what's the play?" Emily asked quietly.

"We didn't come out here to play it safe," Luca said finally. "Danny's right - nothing in the schematics forbids this. And Ryan's right too - we can't fail the mission because we were too scared to try."

"Luca," Emily said softly. A warning, maybe. Or just worry.

He caught her eye, saw the fear there. But also trust. She'd follow him into hell if he asked, and they both knew it.

"We attempt the hop," he decided. "Ryan, Chris, get to engineering for live power balancing. Danny, I want continuous monitoring on dust density and field coherence. Zoe, implement the course correction and plot us the cleanest corridor you can find."

"Yes, Captain," Zoe replied, though her voice was tight.

"Joey, prep the medical bay for..." Luca paused. "Well, whatever might go wrong."

"Already on it," Joey said, heading for the exit.

As the crew dispersed to their positions, Emily stayed behind. She leaned down close to his ear.

"You sure about this?" she whispered.

"No," he admitted quietly. "But I'm sure about us. About this crew. If anyone can pull off something this stupid, it's us."

She squeezed his shoulder, then took her position at the XO station.

Time crawled as the final preparations fell into place. In engineering, Ryan's updates came through in terse bursts - capacitors charging, power couplings stabilizing, Reality Anchor field coming online.

"Capacitors at full charge," Ryan's voice crackled over comms from Engineering.

"Understood. Zoe, status?"

"Trajectory locked with your corrections," Zoe reported, her hands flying over the navigation controls. "Cleanest path I can plot. Still gonna be rough - there's debris everywhere between here and there."

"Danny?"

"Sensors are nominal. Reality Anchor field generators are stable. But Captain..." Danny's voice was strained. "Once we start this, there's no stopping mid-jump. We either make it through or..."

"Or we become a very expensive fireworks display," Chris added from Engineering.

Luca could feel the ship responding, the subtle vibrations in the deck plating, the almost-electrical taste in the air as massive capacitors built their charge. His upgraded skills painted a picture of the Triumph's systems that felt almost intimate, he could sense the ship's readiness like a pulse.

"All stations report ready," Emily said from beside him.

"Ryan, are we green for jump?"

"Green as we're gonna get, Captain. Anchor field is stable. Power levels nominal. But if this thing flickers..."

"It won't," Luca said with more confidence than he felt.

He looked around the bridge one more time. Emily caught his eye and gave him a small nod. Zoe's hands were steady now on her controls, fear transformed into professional focus. Danny was going over his sensor array, ready to catch any anomaly.

Time to cheat the universe twice.

"Alright, people. Strap in." Luca settled back in his command chair, hands gripping the armrests. Static seemed to crawl across his skin as the Reality Anchor field reached full power. "Zoe, engage FTL drive on my mark."

The bridge hummed with tension as everyone secured themselves. Through the viewport, Alpha Centauri A waited like a distant promise.

"Three... two... one..." Luca took a final breath, thinking of everyone who was counting on them. "Energize."

Emily rolled her eyes even as she braced for the jump. "That's the wrong term, you dork."

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