"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The klaxons kept screaming, and Luca could feel his chest getting tighter with each passing second. His hands were shaking, a feeling of intense panic surging through him. The smell of burned electronics was making his throat raw, and he had to fight the urge to just curl up in a corner and wait for someone else to fix this mess. But that wasn't an option. Everyone stared at him like he had a goddamn plan.

Think, you dumbass. Luca forced himself to take a deep breath. The fusion reactor was still humming down below, finally stable. Generator holding steady.

Ryan and Chris had gotten the new transformer installed without electrocuting themselves, which was honestly more surprising after their little pissing match. So what is the problem?

"Alright, listen up!" The words came out steadier than he felt. In his head, he was screaming, but apparently his mouth had decided to play captain. "Fusion reactor's stable, generator's holding, and the new transformer is in place. We need to get the power flowing right... and fast."

He had to be the leader they expected. "Power grid first, then life support. Ryan, grab me those electrical diagrams. The big ones."

Already elbow-deep in a storage bin, Ryan shot him an exasperated look. "I'm looking, man! Whoever packed these away has got them all out of order!"

"Hey, that was me!" called Chris as he headed out of the bridge.

"Well, thank you very much for making this more difficult than it needed to be, bro!" Ryan yelled at Chris' retreating back. Luca watched Chris flip him the bird without even turning around.

"Quit bitching!" Luca snapped. They were running out of air, and these two were still trying to figure out the pecking order. "For the love of..."

With a triumphant grunt, Ryan yanked out a roll as thick as his arm. "Got 'em. These fuckers are huge."

"Those are the old ones," Luca said, looking at the label. "Where's the updated set?"

Ryan groaned. "You wanna go down there and do it yourself?"

"No, I want to keep the reactor from blowing up. Try the left bin."

Across the main table, they spread the diagrams like a battle plan. Luca stared down at what looked like the world's most complicated puzzle. Lines, symbols, and numbers everywhere, all of them apparently important. Ryan was already tracing pathways with his finger, muttering curses under his breath.

"Okay, the main bus is here," he said, jabbing at a thick line. "Transformer's feeding into it fine, but something downstream is causing the system to shit itself. Load balancing software wasn't calibrated for this half-finished grid. It's just dumping power through the first available path."

"Zoe," Luca said, turning to where she stood at her console in flip-flops and shorts. "Think you can squeeze into the maintenance shaft and check the connections?"

Without looking up, she raised an eyebrow. "Why? Because I'm small?"

"Because you're the only one who won't get stuck," Luca replied without missing a beat. "So yeah, because you're small."

Grabbing a tool belt and a flashlight, she made her way to the access hatch. She glanced back once. "You sending me in alone?"

"Danny." Luca pointed at his science officer. "Go with her."

"We'll need a multimeter," Danny said, shrugging out of his orange hoodie.

Ryan clutched his toolbox protectively. "Dammit. Fine. But I'd better get it back in the same condition!"

Deep breath. "Joey, I want you on comms. See if you can raise anyone. Genesis, other ships. Even static is better than this damned silence."

Moving to the comms station, Joey shook his head. "The asteroid field here is too dense, but I'll give it a shot."

From somewhere in the ship's guts, Zoe's voice crackled over the radio. "Connections look solid, but this junction is glowing. Definitely not supposed to happen."

Back to tracing lines on the diagram, Ryan jabbed at a cluster of pathways. "There. Junction box twelve's getting hammered. It's trying to shove way too much power through a circuit that was never meant to handle this kind of load."

"Because the ship's not finished," Luca said, stating the obvious.

"Exactly." Ryan's finger traced the overloaded pathway. "Load balancing software is basically nonexistent. System doesn't know how to distribute power properly, so it's just shoving everything through the first path it finds."

"Oxygen's down to eighty-five percent," Joey cut in from his station. "CO2 climbing fast. We're running out of time."

Emily's voice followed, each word tight with stress. "Luca, I can try bringing the life support scrubbers online, but they need massive, stable power. If I flip that switch now with the grid this fucked up, we either fry the entire environmental system permanently, or worse, create a feedback loop that destabilizes the reactor."

"Look, it's simple," Ryan said, stabbing the schematic with his grease-stained finger. "We shunt power directly around the bottleneck. Bypass all the fancy load balancers and feed raw juice straight from the generator into the secondary grid. Yeah, it'll surge like hell, but it'll force everything to stabilize. Two minutes, tops."

Chris looked like Ryan had just suggested setting the ship on fire. "Are you completely insane? A raw power shunt will blow every secondary fuse we have and toast that transformer we just installed! The only way that doesn't kill us is manual isolation. We cut Junction Twelve completely, reroute everything through auxiliary conduits. Slower, but we don't explode."

"Slower?" Ryan shot back. "That would take at least an hour! We'll be suffocated by then!"

They were arguing blind, based on theory and guesswork. A fast plan that would probably blow them up, versus a safe plan that would definitely let them suffocate. And they were all suffocating.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Great. Three ways to die. Luca stared at the diagram as Ryan and Chris started gesturing wildly at different sections.

They need a commander, not another engineer, Luca thought. He looked at the three terrible options on the table. He didn't have enough information. Not to make a call like this.

Only one way to get what he needed. A way that would cost him.

"Stop," Luca said, his voice quiet but firm, cutting through the argument. "Both of you. Stop."

Ryan and Chris fell silent.

Luca closed his eyes.

This is going to hurt like hell.

He activated [Starship Systems Familiarity]

Pain shot through his head like a lightning bolt, and he gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling. The electrical diagram sprang to life in his mind, lines and numbers coalescing into a coherent image. It was overwhelming, disorienting, but also... clear.

[Ability Activated: Systems Analysis Burst (4 minutes)]

By focusing on system monitors and diagnostic tools, you can mentally process complex subsystem interactions in a fraction of the time. This allows you to pinpoint interdependencies or cascading failures that would otherwise take much longer to identify.

Effect: For 4 minutes, your understanding of system interconnectivity is heightened, enabling you to isolate a subsystem causing issues or recognize inefficiencies in the current setup.

Cooldown: 24 hours

"What did you do?!" Ryan's voice shot across the bridge. "You aren't supposed to activate abilities at level 4!"

"I'm fine," Luca lied through gritted teeth, fighting a wave of nausea that threatened to drop him. "But I can see everything now. The whole grid. And we've got three more critical junctions about to cascade."

In a heartbeat, Emily was at his side. "Luca, you look like you're about to pass out."

"I'm fine, Em." His vision swam, but he forced himself to focus.

He focused on Ryan's plan to bypass the junction. The system in his mind flashed with a horrifying probability: [Catastrophic Transformer Overload: 72% Probability]

He shifted his focus to Chris's more conservative plan. The data was just as grim: [Main Bus Short Circuit Cascade: 65% Probability]

Both plans were suicide with different timing.

Fighting the urge to vomit, he analyzed Emily's desperate gambit. New numbers cascaded through his consciousness. [Reactor Destabilization Feedback: 15% Probability] [Permanent Damage to Life Support Grid: 90% Probability] [Crew Asphyxiation: Averted]

Fuck. The ability didn't give him a good option. Just three terrible ones with neat little percentages showing exactly how each would kill them.

Near-certainty of crippling a vital system versus high probability of blowing them all to hell.

His decision to make.

"Forget the junction box." Each word came out strained through the pain splitting his skull. "We're not fixing the grid. We're sacrificing a piece of it to stay alive."

"Emily." He turned toward her, vision blurring. "You're pulling power directly from the primary reactor conduit. Raw, unregulated feed. It'll probably trash the environmental controls permanently, but it'll keep us breathing."

"Luca, that's a one-way street!" Her voice cracked. "We'll be locked into that configuration!"

"Better than being dead!" The words came out harsher than he intended. "Ryan, Chris. The moment Emily pulls that power, the grid's going to go absolutely insane. You use that chaos to isolate Junction Twelve. Only shot we get."

A beat of stunned silence fell over the bridge. The engineers weren't just being asked to fix something; they were being asked to trust their captain's batshit crazy plan over everything they'd been taught.

It was Ryan who broke the silence, his voice a tight wire of adrenaline. "On your mark, Captain."

"I've got your six, Ryan," Chris said.

Luca's eyes found Emily's on the main bridge display. She had questioned him, warned him of the danger, but now, in the moment of decision, he saw only focus. She gave him a single, sharp nod.

He didn't need to ask if she was ready. She was his XO. She was always ready.

"Execute," Luca said, and the ship held its breath.

The ship shuddered as Emily rerouted massive power through conduits never meant to handle such loads. Warning lights strobed across every panel, and Luca could hear the reactor's hum shift to a deeper, angrier pitch.

"Power's flowing!" Emily's voice cut through the chaos. "Life support coming online, but the grid's losing its shit!"

"Now, Ryan, Chris!" Luca shouted into his comm. "Sixty seconds. Go!"

The next minute stretched like a year. Sparks flew from overloaded junctions, emergency klaxons wailed, and the ship bucked like a pissed-off horse. But through it all, Luca caught the most beautiful sound in the universe. Their air scrubbers wheezing back to life.

"Junction bypassed!" Chris's voice crackled through static. "It's holding!"

Warning lights flickered and died as the power grid found its new, completely fucked-up equilibrium. Crisis over. Relief hit Luca so hard it nearly dropped him to his knees.

The migraine slammed into him like a freight train, dropping him to the deck with his hands clamped over his skull. Fuck.

"Life support is stable!" Emily called out, yanking off her oxygen mask. Then she paused, double-checking her readings. "Wait... that's weird. The environmental grid should be completely fried after that power surge, but everything's reading normal. We got incredibly lucky."

"You're welcome," Ryan grinned, still covered in soot and grease. "I invested all my attributes in Luck."

"Shut the fuck up, Ryan," Zoe said, climbing out of the maintenance shaft with a smile. "There's no such thing."

"Hey, explain this then!" Ryan gestured at the functioning life support display. "Ninety percent chance of permanent damage, and we walk away clean? That's pure Ryan Mitchell magic right there."

For the first time since they'd been dragged into this nightmare, Luca actually believed they might survive. Clean air flowing, lights steady and bright, nobody actively dying from smoke or electrical fire.

Danny had collapsed against the bulkhead next to him, his face finally showing some color instead of that corpse-gray he'd been rocking. Ryan had stumbled up from engineering, grinning like he'd just won the lottery.

Even Chris looked less like a recruiting poster and more like a exhausted twenty-two-year-old who'd been through absolute hell. Joey was still fussing over everyone's vitals, but his readings were climbing back to normal, and Emily had stopped looking like she was calculating their odds of not dying.

"Don't get too comfortable," Chris muttered, wiping soot from his face. "You still smell like burnt rubber."

"Better than smelling like sweat and Axe body spray," Zoe quipped.

Ryan gasped, clutching his chest. "How dare you. This is imported"

"Yeah, from a gas station," coughed Danny.

The sound cut through their celebration, static and electronic whines that made everyone freeze. Emily moved to the ship's comm station as she tried to clean up the signal. The noise resolved into something that might have been a voice, buried under layers of interference and background noise.

"...Triumph of Darron... this is Genesis Platform..."

That voice, even distorted by static and transmission problems, was unmistakable. "Dad,"Luca breathed, struggling to get up and join Emily.

"...do you copy... repeat..."

She was working frantically to boost the signal, adjusting frequency and filtering out interference. The voice came through clearer, and Luca's relief at hearing Dad's voice was immediately replaced by the tension in his tone.

"Luca, they've compromised our command center."

The blood drained from his face. Compromised. What the hell did that mean?

"Their shuttles launched five minutes ago. They're coming for you."

Five minutes. Luca looked around at his crew and could see the same calculation running through everyone's heads.

"Dad, our main thrusters are still offline," he said into the microphone. "We're sitting ducks here."

The transmission was getting worse, Athan's voice fading in and out through bursts of static. "...power core... avoid the asteroid field... don't trust..."

"Dad? Dad, come in!" Luca was practically shouting into the comm now, his hands gripping the console so hard his knuckles were white.

"...they... Karen..."

"Karen? What does she have to do with this?" Emily asked.

And then nothing. Just static and the empty hiss of dead space. What did he mean?

"Dad!" Luca yelled, but the channel stayed dead. Emily kept working the controls, cycling through every frequency and emergency channel, but Genesis Platform had gone silent.

"They cut him off," Emily said quietly.

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