CHAPTER THREE
ilyan
Black Star woke me before Topper did.
It wasn't an alarm. Nothing flashed, nobody shouted through the speakers, and the room lights were still dimmed to night cycle. The ship simply changed beneath me. A vibration rolled through the wall behind the bed, deep enough that I felt it through the mattress before I properly heard it, then faded into a low mechanical hum that seemed to settle somewhere inside my ribs.
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling while another softer tremor moved through the bulkhead. Black Star had never been completely quiet, not even during the few hours I had managed to sleep. Air moved through the vents. Pumps cycled somewhere behind the walls. Machinery several decks away came and went in tones too low to identify. Caelum spent enormous amounts of effort hiding the systems keeping everyone alive. Black Star didn't seem interested in pretending there wasn't a machine around you.
"Good morning, Ilyan. Your total sleep duration was six hours and fourteen minutes." Topper sat on my desk with his charging cable connected beneath his left rear leg, his glassy black eyes already lit in the darkness. "This is below your recommended minimum."
"What was that?" I pushed the blanket down and sat up, waiting to see if the vibration came back.
"My greeting occurred approximately two seconds ago." Topper disconnected himself from the charger with a mechanical click and stepped closer to the edge of the desk.
"The ship." I rubbed one hand through my hair and immediately made it worse. "That vibration."
"Probable high-load machinery." Topper tilted his head while the faint hum continued beneath us. "I lack sufficient shipboard access for precise identification."
"So you don't know." I swung my feet onto the floor.
"That is also accurate." Topper jumped down, landing unevenly on his repaired rear leg before following me toward the washbasin.
I liked him better when his answer libraries were damaged.
By the time I had showered, fought my hair into something I could plausibly claim was intentional, and pulled on the gray-and-white research uniform the Directorate had issued us, somebody knocked on my door hard enough to make Topper turn his whole body toward it.
Rafi stood outside with his jacket only half zipped and two breakfast bars in one hand. His curls were crushed flat along the left side of his head, and one of the woven bracelets around his wrist had somehow gotten tangled beneath his access band. "You're alive, which saves me from explaining to Dr. Marr why I knocked six times and left." He held one of the bars toward me. "I also saved you a seat. Anya says beverages aren't legally recognized reservation markers, but she has no enforcement authority."
"You've known her for a day and already created a legal system around annoying her." I took the breakfast bar and locked my room while Topper slipped between my shoes into the corridor.
"Civilization has to start somewhere." Rafi crouched when Topper approached him. "Morning, Topper. You look significantly more prepared than he does."
"Good morning, Rafi." Topper's speaker crackled around his name.
I started down the corridor while Rafi caught up beside me. "Did your wall shake this morning?"
"At six seventeen." He immediately stopped smiling quite as much. "I figured it was a drive test, then remembered I know almost nothing about drives and decided not to embarrass myself by announcing that theory publicly."
"It could've been a particle-transfer test." I felt for the vibration again through the soles of my shoes, but the corridor was steady now.
Rafi nodded seriously. "Good. We've upgraded from my guess to your guess."
The others were already in the cafeteria when we arrived, and Rafi had actually saved me a seat. His unopened drink sat in front of the chair beside him while enough food covered the rest of the table to make the method surprisingly effective.
"Your beverage still does not constitute a formal reservation." Anya looked over the top of her tablet as Rafi moved it back to his tray.
"It worked." He sat down and tore open another food packet.
"That is not the same thing as being valid." Anya returned to whatever she had been reading, though the neat line of her mouth suggested she had already accepted that arguing with Rafi was going to become a daily activity.
I sat beside him while Topper climbed into the empty chair on my other side. Naomi was turning a piece of synthetic fruit over with her fork as though she suspected the color orange had been exaggerated. Jun sat across from her with both hands around a steaming cup, already dressed properly enough to make the rest of us look as if we had just escaped our rooms.
Naomi glanced at Topper. "Is he actually allowed in here?" She pointed toward him with her fork while he inspected the edge of the table.
"Technically." I opened the breakfast bar Rafi had given me. "Personal companion units are allowed in common habitation areas as long as they stay off the ship network."
Anya lowered her tablet again. "You read the robotics section of the habitation regulations."
"I had a reason." I nodded toward Topper.
"You voluntarily read regulations." Rafi leaned closer to me as if this changed something fundamental between us.
"You spent half of yesterday studying fabrication-deck safety labels." I bit into the bar.
"That was different. They had diagrams." Rafi looked toward Anya for support and received none.
Jun took a drink. "That didn't improve your argument."
The wall display near the cafeteria entrance changed to our rotation schedule. Environmental engineering, medical systems, fabrication, network architecture, then the line I had already memorized before going to sleep.
ADVANCED PARTICLE SYSTEMS — RESTRICTED OBSERVATION — 14:30
I checked the time despite already knowing it.
Rafi noticed. "You're doing it again." He followed my eyes toward the schedule.
"What?"
"The staring." He pointed his fork toward the display. "You looked at the storage trunks yesterday like they had personally insulted your family."
"They had six primary branches." I finished the breakfast bar and folded the wrapper into a smaller square without thinking.
Naomi sighed. "I still don't understand why six is interesting."
"The public architecture shows four major high-capacity paths coming from the main reserve complex." I drew them against the tabletop with one finger. "Propulsion, weapons, ship systems, auxiliary surge handling. The chamber we saw yesterday had six trunks large enough to support primary loads."
"So two are classified." Naomi shrugged and finally ate the orange piece.
"That's where the interesting part begins." I looked toward her. "You don't install two additional trunks that size because somebody wanted better lighting."
Naomi's mouth moved slightly. "Maybe they're extremely important lamps."
Rafi stopped chewing. "Was that a joke?"
"Don't make it strange." Naomi pointed her fork at him.
Anya closed her tablet. "Independent experimental systems would explain it. If the classified hardware has separate load requirements, the public diagrams could remain technically accurate without showing the entire architecture."
I looked at her. "You thought about this."
"I thought about how to make you stop talking about it." Anya picked up her drink.
"That is still thinking about it."
She ignored me.
I liked winning arguments she refused to acknowledge.
The morning started in propulsion.
The five of us stood behind a reinforced observation wall while engineers brought Black Star's main drive through a low-output calibration sequence. Even from several compartments away, the machinery filled most of the engineering feeds with structures large enough that scale stopped being useful. Containment rings wrapped the main acceleration assembly. Particle-transfer trunks disappeared behind armored housings. Cooling systems branched through the engine complex like another ship had been built around the first one.
Lieutenant Soren, one of the propulsion engineers, stood beside the central display with his sleeves rolled above his forearms. "Black Star wasn't designed around short deployment cycles. Its deep-range drive architecture prioritizes sustained acceleration, particle efficiency, and thermal stability over the kind of short-duration maximum output you see in many fleet combat vessels." He changed the display to two projected routes through the inner system.
I raised my hand before thinking about whether anyone else had a question.
Rafi saw it and lowered his head toward the table in front of him.
Lieutenant Soren looked at my badge. "Corven."
"What's the reserve-to-output efficiency at sustained cruise?" I watched the main-flow figures scrolling beside the engine model.
"Classified." Soren answered without hesitation and moved to the next display.
Rafi leaned toward me. "Excellent contribution."
"I had to check."
"You checked yesterday."
"Different engineer."
"Strong methodology."
Soren continued before I could answer. "What I can tell you is that maximum acceleration by itself is almost meaningless over deep-system distances. A vessel that can sustain moderate acceleration longer can outrun a faster vessel if the faster one has to stop pushing first."
Naomi nodded toward the trajectory model. "So Black Star can keep spending reserve efficiently after pursuit ships start becoming concerned about consumption and heat."
"Exactly." Soren enlarged the curves. "Speed is often the least useful word in spaceflight. Duration, vector, available reserve, thermal capacity, and where you need to stop matter more."
The calibration sequence began.
Particle flow rose first on the engineering display.
Then I felt it through the deck.
The same kind of vibration that had woken me, only cleaner and stronger. Black Star wasn't producing enough thrust to move meaningfully against the construction restraints, but somewhere below us a ridiculous amount of particle energy was moving through containment hardware at once.
Numbers climbed.
Cooling load increased.
The main field stabilized.
I watched the distribution path instead of the thrust figures.
One line disappeared.
I leaned closer to the glass.
It returned three seconds later.
I frowned.
Soren noticed. "Something wrong?"
"That branch vanished." I pointed toward the lower edge of the projected architecture.
He looked.
The branch was there again.
"The display is simplified during transition states." Soren tapped the console once.
"It wasn't simplified before the transition." I zoomed the public-facing model on my own tablet and compared it.
For just a moment his eyes shifted away from me, not toward the display but toward another engineer standing near the control station.
Then he looked back. "Construction software is not always elegant."
Anya glanced at me from two places down the observation rail.
I looked back at her.
Neither of us said anything.
The explanation was possible.
That annoyed me more than if it had been obviously wrong.
Black Star was unfinished enough that almost any strange behavior could be blamed on commissioning. A display went blank? Construction software. A door rejected an authorized badge? Construction software. The ship shook at six in the morning? Construction software was probably responsible for that too if you asked the right person.
The rest of the morning passed through damage control and fabrication.
Rafi nearly stopped being Rafi when we reached the manufacturing deck.
The fabrication floor occupied several connected compartments full of automated cutters, pressure-forming systems, composite printers, stock-processing machines, and articulated assembly arms. Black Star could not manufacture an advanced Frame from raw ore, which Rafi seemed to take as a personal insult, but it could produce enough ordinary components to keep a deep-range fleet alive much longer than one dependent entirely on supply ships.
A technician rolled an unfinished Frame shoulder plate toward us on a reinforced cradle. The blank had already been shaped and layered, though its final armor treatment and specialized coatings hadn't been applied.
"This came out of the ship?" Rafi asked while moving close enough to inspect the edge.
"The structural blank did." The technician tapped one knuckle against the exposed layering. "Final treatment requires equipment we don't carry."
"So if a Frame loses an arm, Black Star can replace it." Rafi's hands moved through the air around the plate without touching until the technician nodded permission.
"Parts of it. Structural members, armor, common actuators if we have the stock, joint housings, mechanical interfaces, basic electronics. Advanced sensors, military processors, specialized particle systems, high-end weapons hardware—those don't appear because you ask fabrication nicely."
Rafi ran two fingers along the unfinished edge. "So the ship makes the boring parts."
"The boring parts are usually what stop a ship from moving." The technician smiled while Rafi considered that.
"I respect boring parts." Rafi nodded once, suddenly serious.
Anya looked toward me. "That might be the most mature thing he's said since boarding."
"I heard you." Rafi kept examining the armor.
"You were supposed to." Anya followed Dr. Marr toward the next station.
The medical section came after that, though I noticed Jun had already started being greeted by name.
A nurse near the trauma rooms raised two fingers when he passed. Jun returned the gesture without breaking stride, which made Rafi stare at him.
"You have contacts now." Rafi moved beside him while we followed Dr. Marr through the corridor.
"I asked questions yesterday." Jun adjusted the cuff of his jacket.
"You asked whether surgical adhesive could glue your shoe together."
"It was a materials question."
"It was a shoe." Jun looked at him.
Rafi smiled. "That's why I need a medical expert."
Jun's expression barely changed, but I saw the corner of his mouth begin to shift.
I was beginning to notice things like that.
Rafi became louder when he was comfortable. Naomi argued more when she cared. Anya went completely still when something didn't fit. Jun got funnier the less his face admitted he was joking.
Yesterday they had mostly been names.
That morning I had started predicting what they would say before they said it.
Lunch happened on Deck Forty-Two again, and when I reached the table my usual chair was empty except for Rafi's bag.
He moved it to the floor when he saw me without saying anything.
I sat beside him.
Construction workers filled several nearby tables, gray coveralls stained with sealant and machine oil. Federation officers occupied another section, mostly ignoring the student badges around our necks. Black Star was large enough to swallow five gifted students without becoming impressed by them.
I liked that.
Rafi had just begun explaining why fabrication was the most important system aboard when Naomi stopped eating. "Atmosphere." She rested her fork against the tray.
He looked at her. "What about it?"
"You said fabrication is the most important system." Naomi pointed upward toward the ventilation grilles. "You die faster without air."
Jun stirred something into his tea. "Medical keeps you alive after environmental systems fail."
Anya didn't bother looking up from her tablet. "Control architecture keeps all three functioning."
I set my drink down. "Particle systems support almost every major high-output system you've named."
Rafi looked around the table, slowly realizing the conversation had escaped him. "Fine. The ship is annoyingly interconnected."
"That might be why it's a ship." Naomi took another bite.
A shadow stopped beside the table.
Dr. Marr checked the time on her wrist. "Corven, your particle-systems rotation has moved forward twenty minutes. They're ready for you at fourteen ten."
I checked the cafeteria clock.
Thirteen forty-eight.
Rafi immediately grinned. "He's abandoning us."
I stood and picked up my tablet.
Naomi looked at my tray. "You still have half your lunch."
"Im suddenly not hungry anymore." as I pushed the tray toward the center.
Jun quietly took the untouched roll. "Go before he starts vibrating."
"I don't vibrate." I pulled my jacket straight.
Rafi looked beneath the table. "We have no instrumentation proving that."
Anya raised her eyes just long enough to say, "I hope the restricted laboratory keeps him."
"You'd miss me." I followed Dr. Marr toward the exit.
"I would live." Anya's attention returned to the tablet before I could answer.
We took two lifts deeper into Black Star.
The first accepted my temporary clearance.
The second ignored it completely.
Dr. Marr entered a rotating authorization code and pressed her thumb against a biometric reader before the doors finally closed.
I looked at the blank wall where normal lifts displayed deck numbers. "This seems excessive for observation."
"It is." Dr. Marr faced forward as the lift started moving.
"That isn't reassuring."
"It wasn't meant to be." She folded her hands behind her back.
The progress bar along the wall shifted without telling me how far we had traveled.
I watched it until curiosity won. "Where exactly are we going?"
"Restricted research."
"I got that from the restricted elevator."
"You're very observant."
"That's why the schedule says observation." I smiled.
Dr. Marr looked at me.
I stopped smiling first.
The lift opened into an unfinished corridor.
The difference from the public research decks was immediate. Armor plating covered only portions of the walls. Temporary transparent panels protected cable bundles that would eventually disappear behind finished surfaces. Yellow construction lines crossed the floor around open service channels, and handwritten calibration notes had been stuck directly onto several access housings.
Two engineers hurried past us pushing a diagnostic cart while arguing quietly.
"—if the secondary allocator is still chasing the return path, reduce the transition buffer before Kade runs another full-response test—"
My head turned automatically.
Dr. Marr caught the back of my jacket before the rest of me followed.
"I'm walking forward." I looked back at her hand.
"You were rotating."
"Turning isn't leaving."
"It becomes leaving remarkably quickly with you." She released me and pointed down the corridor. "This way."
The next door required her clearance again.
It opened onto the particle laboratory.
I forgot about the engineers immediately.
The six trunks were overhead.
All of them.
They ran behind armored transparent shielding above the main laboratory, each almost as wide as my torso before splitting toward separate containment gates farther down the compartment.
I stopped.
Dr. Marr made it several steps before turning around.
"You found your pipes." She folded her arms.
"They are not pipes." I walked beneath the first junction and followed the branch lines with my eyes. "This is where the reserve chamber feeds."
"Some of it."
"Where do the others go?" I moved far enough to see two trunks disappearing through another armored wall.
"Restricted systems."
"We're inside the restricted system."
"More restricted systems." Dr. Marr resumed walking.
"That is an irritating answer."
"It is also the accurate one." Her mouth twitched slightly.
The laboratory stretched much farther than the corridor suggested. Containment test chambers occupied one wall behind thick glass, while engineering benches, diagnostics, temporary equipment racks, and control consoles filled the center. The ceiling above several sections remained open for construction access.
Nothing looked ready for visitors.
I liked it immediately.
A woman stood beside the main diagnostic station with both hands braced against its edge. She was maybe forty, with tightly braided dark hair pulled away from her face and a gray engineering coat marked by several tiny burns near one cuff. There was no military rank on her chest, just a Black Star development badge.
"Corven?" She looked at the identification strip around my neck.
"Ilyan." I stopped beside the console.
"Lysa Kade. Adaptive systems lead." She offered a hand, and I shook it before my attention wandered toward the display behind her.
She noticed.
"Dr. Marr warned me." Kade rotated the screen toward me.
A particle architecture filled it.
Not Black Star's.
Smaller.
More complicated.
A central reserve line divided through adaptive control nodes and smaller buffer chambers before branching toward propulsion, limb actuation, sensors, cooling, weapon systems, and secondary hardware.
Frame architecture.
I recognized that immediately.
What I didn't recognize was the way it moved.
Load values kept shifting through the diagram even though it was only running a recorded sequence. Particle allocation flowed from the lower limbs to the torso, then toward shoulder actuation, then back into the hip systems in fractions of a second.
"You're buffering the hips independently." I stepped closer before remembering Kade had introduced herself less than ten seconds earlier. "Three times."
Kade looked at the screen instead of me. "Why?"
"Standard architecture usually handles surge compensation centrally." I pointed toward the first buffer without touching the display. "This one favors rotational thrusters, this one is tied directly into high-output leg actuation, and that third path goes through the torso instead of returning to the primary allocator."
"Which tells you what?" Kade asked while Dr. Marr moved to the side and apparently decided watching me embarrass myself counted as education.
I followed the paths again.
The answer came quickly.
Maybe too quickly.
"You expect the load to change faster than the central system can compensate." I looked at the transition values. "So the buffers keep high-demand systems ready before the main distribution network catches up."
Kade tapped two fingers against the console and brought up response figures.
I read them.
Then read them again because the first numbers looked wrong.
"That can't be the standard response profile."
"It isn't." Kade leaned against the station.
"It's too fast."
"For what?"
"For almost everything." I enlarged the transition curve. "A standard combat Frame would smooth this before it reached the machine."
Kade's mouth lifted . "There we are."
"What?" I looked at her.
"Nothing." She changed the display before I could decide whether I had passed some test nobody had told me about.
I hated when adults did that.
There were enough things I didn't know without them becoming pleased every time I accidentally approached one.
Behind Kade, armored shutters began moving.
Light spilled through the widening gap.
I turned.
The first thing I saw was a leg.
Primer-white armor covered the outside of the calf while the inner section remained exposed, dark structural members and unfinished actuator housings visible behind temporary access panels. The foot sat locked inside a maintenance cradle large enough to have its own platform network.
The shutters kept opening.
A waist appeared.
Torso.
Shoulders.
Head.
Radian stood almost eighteen meters tall inside the adjoining integration bay.
The Frame looked unfinished because it was. Clean Federation-white armor covered parts of the chest, legs, and left arm, but entire sections remained dark gunmetal skeleton. Calibration crosses and black engineering numbers marked primer panels. One forearm had no exterior armor at all. Temporary cables and particle-transfer lines ran from the bay walls into open service ports beneath the torso.
Its head was narrower than the Federation Frames I had seen around Talia's bases, with three recessed vertical sensor channels instead of a broad horizontal visor.
I probably should have stared at the machine.
Eighteen meters of humanoid machinery stood behind reinforced glass, one hand large enough to close around my entire body. Maintenance crews moving beside its ankles looked ridiculous.
Instead I followed the temporary particle lines.
Two of the six high-capacity trunks descended into the integration bay.
That was what got me.
"That's what the extra lines feed." I moved toward the glass.
"Part of what they feed." Kade came beside me.
I barely heard her.
Two trunks entered independent test regulators before splitting again around Radian's torso. The regulators themselves were oversized compared with standard Frame servicing equipment.
I traced the route in my head.
Reserve input.
Adaptive staging.
Local buffers.
Dynamic redistribution.
The machine suddenly became interesting because the particle system had given it permission to be.
"XF-01 Radian." Kade rested one hand against the railing.
I repeated the designation silently.
The name didn't matter yet.
The architecture did.
"What's the full-load transition time?" I asked while a technician opened another access panel on Radian's thigh.
"Classified." Kade didn't even try hiding her amusement.
"Everyone here thinks that word is funny."
"It becomes funny after enough people ask for things they aren't allowed to know."
"I'm the only student here."
"Then you're carrying a proud tradition."
I looked back through the glass. "What is it actually trying to solve?"
Kade brought the control architecture back onto the main display. "Pilot delay."
"That's too broad."
"Good." She expanded the sequence. "Conventional Frames interpret pilot input before acting on it. Your hands move. Your feet move. Your eyes shift. The machine receives those commands, predicts what you intended, suppresses noise, prevents obviously destructive combinations, allocates particle output, and executes."
"That costs time." I watched the command trace move through several software layers before reaching the machine.
"Very little."
"But you built Radian because very little became too much." I enlarged the gap between pilot input and actuator response until it became visible.
Kade looked at me for half a second.
That was enough.
I smiled.
She noticed and shook her head. "Combat performance eventually reaches a point where small delays become important. Radian reduces the predictive and corrective layers between pilot and Frame."
"So it listens more directly."
"That's one way to phrase it."
"That sounds better."
Kade laughed once and opened a test record. "Every pilot says that before getting into it."
The telemetry appeared.
I leaned over the console.
The first pilot profile was clean.
Too clean.
Control input entered the system, software softened the edges, and Radian moved after the command had been cleaned into something easier for the machine to understand.
The second pilot had reduced assists.
The curve became rougher.
The third had almost none.
That record looked terrible.
Tiny control inputs became full machine corrections. The pilot changed direction, corrected too far, corrected back, then started compensating for movements he had caused himself. Particle allocation jumped between systems chasing every new command.
At first I assumed Radian was doing something wrong.
Then I looked at the machine-response curve.
It was almost perfect.
The pilot was the mess.
"They're fighting it." I enlarged the third record.
"That's what the test pilot said." Kade stood beside me.
"No, they're fighting themselves." I pointed toward the input sequence. "They keep expecting the machine to fix the middle part. So they issue commands like the correction still exists, then Radian executes more of what they actually asked for."
Kade didn't answer.
I looked up.
She was watching me instead of the telemetry.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." She straightened.
"That's twice."
Dr. Marr laughed quietly behind us. "He keeps count."
"Of course he does." Kade switched the display.
I thought about Talia.
She had once described piloting as pushing the controls and making the machine go where she wanted. Apparently several million lines of software were making sure she didn't tear off her own shoulder assembly while doing it.
I made a mental note to bring that up the next time she bragged about being a pilot.
Kade loaded another interface. "Want to try the distribution sandbox?"
I looked at her. "The what?"
"Engineering simulation." She pointed toward a station set farther back from the glass. "No cockpit. No pilot interface. You'll control particle allocation against maneuver requests and system loads."
That sounded considerably more interesting than a cockpit.
I moved before she finished explaining.
Kade followed at a slower pace. "You may be the first fourteen-year-old I've met who becomes more excited when I remove the giant robot from the exercise."
"The giant robot is attached to the interesting part." I sat at the station.
"Somewhere, our entire Frame development team just felt insulted."
The simulator gave me a finite particle reserve, fixed thermal capacity, and a standard Frame architecture based loosely enough on Radian that most of the classified details had been removed.
I found the automatic balancing option.
Then disabled it.
Kade stared at the screen. "Naturally."
"It'll interfere."
"That is what it was designed to do."
"Exactly." I started the simulation.
The first sequence requested forward acceleration, lateral correction, torso rotation, and weapon charging in quick succession.
I moved particle allocation out of inactive systems before the scheduler could.
The efficiency score climbed.
The second sequence demanded high-output hip rotation while the upper torso continued tracking a target.
I shifted reserve into the local buffers before the turn completed.
Higher score.
This was easy.
Not easy in the sense that I could stop paying attention. Easy in the way a problem became easy after you understood what it wanted.
Particle systems always told you what they wanted.
Energy wanted somewhere to go.
Heat wanted somewhere else to go.
The machine wanted enough reserve in the right system before the demand arrived.
I could do that.
A shoulder-actuation request appeared.
I cut output there because the simulated torso hadn't completed its rotation.
Kade watched the graph. "Why are you reducing shoulder availability?"
"It doesn't need full output yet."
"And if the pilot fires early?"
"They shouldn't."
Kade smiled.
I disliked that smile before the simulated pilot fired.
The shoulder demanded full actuation.
I had already moved the reserve.
Response lagged.
An amber warning appeared.
I shifted power back too late.
"That was a bad decision by the pilot." I glared at the simulation.
"The machine still has to survive bad pilots." Kade rested one hand on the console.
"That seems unfair to the machine."
"War contains many unfairnesses." She reset the scenario.
The next sequence went better because I stopped assuming the imaginary pilot had good judgment.
I resented him for that.
The simulator didn't care.
Then an unexpected collision warning appeared.
Full lateral thrust.
Weapon charge active.
I killed the weapon charge immediately and dumped reserve toward maneuvering.
The Frame avoided impact.
The score dropped.
Kade tapped the display. "Combat objective failed."
"The machine didn't get hit." I looked at her.
"The target escaped."
"The pilot stayed alive."
"Maybe survival wasn't the only objective." Kade met my eyes.
I looked back at the simulation.
That answer bothered me more than it should have.
A particle system didn't care why you asked it to do something.
It only told you what it cost.
People apparently made the stupid parts more complicated.
Kade reset the sequence and forced the weapon charge to remain active.
I spent more reserve.
Heat rose.
The shot completed.
Then the simulator requested an emergency lower-body correction.
I had already pulled too much particle availability away from the legs.
The Frame reacted late.
Impact.
The screen froze.
My reserve still read sixty-eight percent.
Kade enlarged the allocation map. "Plenty left."
"In the wrong places." I already saw it.
"Exactly." She pointed toward the unused reserve sitting comfortably inside systems that hadn't helped when the hit came. "Having energy is not the same as having it where you need it."
I stared at sixty-eight percent.
That number annoyed me.
A machine dying with more than half its reserve felt offensive.
I restarted the simulation before Kade told me to.
The next run was uglier.
I left small amounts of available output in systems that probably wouldn't need it.
Probably.
I hated the inefficiency.
The simulated Frame survived.
I ran it again.
Then again.
By the sixth attempt, I had stopped trying to make the graph beautiful.
I left reserve margins in the hips.
Kept more readiness in the torso than the planned sequence required.
Allowed the weapon system to hold less than ideal charge so movement remained available.
Kade changed the scenario without warning.
The Frame suddenly needed twice the expected lateral correction.
My reserve margin caught it.
Barely.
The machine moved.
I smiled.
"You liked that." Kade folded her arms.
"I fixed it."
"You made it less efficient."
"I fixed it." I looked back at the graph.
"You're going to discover those statements fight each other a lot."
I didn't answer because I was already trying to make the next run both.
Behind the glass, Radian's left hand opened.
The movement was slow enough to be part of a maintenance sequence, but I noticed the response delay between the command marker and the fingers.
Tiny.
Still there.
"That isn't using the same profile as the third pilot." I stood and moved toward the glass.
Kade followed my eyes. "Maintenance mode."
"You turned the smoothing back up."
"We have technicians standing next to it." She pointed toward the people working on the service platform beside Radian's wrist. "Full-response testing while they're inside the movement envelope would be a creative way to reduce staffing."
"How much faster is the hand at full response?" I watched the enormous fingers close.
"Fast enough."
"That isn't a number."
"It's the number you're getting."
The technician beside Radian's hand moved to another platform.
For the first time, I thought about scale instead of architecture.
One finger was longer than he was tall.
The whole hand could pick him up.
Or me.
Then the thought disappeared when another diagnostic graph appeared near the wrist.
"What happens if you remove the correction layer entirely?" I asked.
"You don't." Kade's answer came immediately.
"Because it becomes unsafe?"
"Because human input is noise." She leaned against the railing. "Even the best pilot moves in ways they don't intend. Muscle tension, breathing, startle responses, fatigue. A completely direct system wouldn't feel responsive. It would feel insane."
"But there's a point where less correction is better."
"Yes."
"And you haven't found it."
Kade looked through the glass at Radian. "Not one that every pilot agrees on."
That was more interesting than any number she had refused to give me.
Dr. Marr checked her wrist. "Five minutes."
I turned toward her. "That's nothing."
"It is exactly five minutes."
"I haven't seen the control hardware."
"This is restricted observation, not unrestricted dismantling."
"I wasn't going to dismantle anything."
Both women looked at me.
"That was insulting." I crossed my arms.
Kade laughed. "You can have one more simulation."
I went back immediately.
The final run started without a planned sequence visible.
That changed everything.
No future maneuver list.
No upcoming loads.
Just current movement, reserve, heat, and system state.
I stared at the screen.
"Where are the requests?"
"They'll appear when they happen." Kade stood behind me.
"That's worse."
"That's life."
The first command demanded acceleration.
I distributed conservatively.
Then rotation.
Then a weapon charge.
I kept more reserve than necessary in the lower body.
Nothing happened there.
Waste.
The weapon fired.
New command.
Emergency correction.
My margin saved me.
Another acceleration demand arrived immediately afterward.
Particle reserve fell through fifty percent.
I reduced sensor output slightly.
Kept cooling high.
Moved reserve away from the left arm.
Wrong.
The next command needed it.
I corrected.
Late.
Not fatal.
Heat climbed.
Forty-three percent reserve.
Thirty-seven.
The Frame completed another evasive maneuver.
I found myself leaning closer to the display even though that didn't make anything move faster.
Twenty-nine.
The warning indicator changed.
I started cutting everything that wasn't necessary.
The simulation hit me with another weapon request.
I stared at it.
If I charged the weapon, movement became worse.
If I didn't, the objective failed.
I charged it halfway.
Moved.
Fired late.
Missed.
The Frame survived.
The simulation ended.
Twenty-two percent reserve.
I leaned back.
"That was terrible."
Kade looked at the result. "You survived."
"I missed the target."
"You survived."
"I used almost eighty percent."
"You survived."
I looked up at her. "You only have one metric."
"No." Kade switched off the simulator. "I just know which metric lets you complain about the others afterward."
I stared at the blank screen.
That line stayed with me longer than I wanted.
Dr. Marr handed me my tablet. "Time."
I looked through the glass one last time.
Radian stood motionless in its cradle while work lights moved across the unfinished armor. Three dark sensor channels ran down its face. Temporary cables hung from its open torso like veins somebody hadn't bothered hiding yet.
I still didn't want to pilot it.
That wasn't the thought I had.
I wanted to know what the control system felt like when the software stopped getting in the way.
That was different.
At least I thought it was.
The access door closed behind us.
The others were spread through the common research lounge when I got back.
Rafi occupied most of one couch with a materials sample balanced on his knee. Jun sat at the far end reading a medical text. Naomi had taken over one of the environmental displays, and Anya was surrounded by three floating windows that made it look as if she had constructed a small office around herself.
Rafi saw me first. "There he is." He set the composite sample aside. "Did something explode?"
"No." I dropped into the open place beside him.
His face fell. "Waste of restricted access."
Naomi turned from the display. "Did you find the two extra particle trunks?"
"Yes." I opened the simplified architecture Kade had allowed me to keep. "They feed experimental systems."
Anya's windows disappeared almost immediately. "What kind?"
"A Frame." I enlarged the distribution model.
Rafi stopped moving.
Then he leaned closer. "You saw a prototype Frame and led with particle trunks."
"The Frame is attached to the interesting part."
All four of them looked at me.
I looked around the table. "Why does everyone react like that?"
Naomi sat opposite us. "Because most people would consider the eighteen-meter combat machine the interesting part."
"It's called Radian." I rotated the architecture. "XF-01. Experimental adaptive particle distribution, decentralized buffers, reduced control smoothing, much faster command response."
Rafi stared at the diagram for maybe two seconds. "What weapons does it have?"
"I didn't ask."
His face changed as if I had said something genuinely offensive. "I defended you yesterday."
"From what?"
"I don't know yet, but emotionally I did."
Jun looked over his medical text. "You threatened to buy Topper."
"That was bonding."
Anya leaned forward. "How reduced is the control smoothing?"
"They wouldn't tell me." I enlarged the simplified command path. "Normal Frames correct pilot input before translating it into movement. Radian strips away part of that delay."
Naomi studied the sequence. "Which makes it harder to control."
"Apparently the test pilots hated the low-assist settings."
"That seems like evidence." Naomi rested her elbows on her knees.
"They were used to the machine fixing them." I replayed one of the simplified telemetry examples. "Radian wasn't malfunctioning. The pilots kept correcting movements that the system would normally clean up for them."
Anya watched the command traces. "So they were anticipating software that wasn't there."
"Exactly." I pointed toward her.
Rafi looked between us. "You two get much too excited when sentences become diagrams."
My wrist display buzzed before I could answer.
Talia.
I accepted the call.
Her face appeared above the low table. She was sitting in what looked like a military ready room, one side of her short red-brown hair still damp and the collar of her dark flight undersuit open at the throat.
"There he is." Talia leaned closer to her display. "Black Star survive another day?"
"Barely." I lowered the projection enough that the others could see her.
Talia noticed immediately. "Those are the other students."
Rafi leaned halfway across me. "Hello."
I pushed his forehead back with one hand.
Talia laughed. "That one's Rafi?"
"The one Mom warned you about?" I asked.
Rafi stopped struggling. "Your mother warned you about us."
"She does that accidentally." I let go of him.
"That doesn't make it better."
Talia looked toward Topper, who had climbed onto the table sometime during the call. "Frog."
"Hello, Talia." Topper's speaker crackled faintly.
Rafi pointed between them. "So you are responsible."
"For improving his name?" Talia smiled. "Absolutely."
I leaned back into the couch. "I saw Radian today."
Talia's expression changed instantly. "The XF prototype?"
Rafi slapped my shoulder and pointed toward her. "See? That is the appropriate response."
I shoved his hand away.
Talia leaned closer. "You actually got inside the integration bay?"
"Observation gallery."
"What does it look like?"
"It has a six-branch adaptive particle architecture with independent buffers in the lower-body distribution network."
She stared at me.
Rafi made a helpless gesture toward her.
Talia rubbed one hand over her face. "You were standing next to an experimental Frame and stared at its particle plumbing."
"They are not plumbing."
"I know what they are." She looked offended on behalf of Frames everywhere. "What does the machine look like?"
"White." I tried to remember the armor instead of the system. "Mostly. Some primer. Exposed right forearm. Three vertical sensor channels. Around eighteen meters."
"What weapons?"
"I didn't ask."
Talia closed her eyes.
Rafi leaned into view again. "Thank you. I've been suffering alone."
"You're my favorite one." Talia pointed at him.
"This relationship is moving quickly." Rafi settled back.
I ignored both of them and reopened the control graph. "Radian reduces the correction layer between pilot input and machine response. The test pilots kept overcorrecting because they were used to the computer cleaning their commands."
Talia's amusement faded. "How far did they reduce it?"
"Classified."
"That could be awful." She sat back.
"It looked faster."
"That is not automatically better." Talia rested one arm across the table in front of her. "A Frame is correcting you constantly. Breathing, grip pressure, your foot shifting because you're tense, the way your hands move when something hits you unexpectedly. You don't notice because the software throws half of it away."
"That slows the machine."
"Yes." She nodded. "And stopping the pilot from accidentally punching the hangar wall is generally considered useful."
I thought about Kade saying human input was noise.
"What if the pilot doesn't need as much correction?" I asked.
Talia looked at me for a second longer than I expected. "Everybody needs correction."
I smiled slightly. "That sounds like something an officer says."
"It sounds like somebody who has actually piloted a Frame." She pointed through the projection. "Do not volunteer to test it."
"I wasn't planning to."
"That answer sounded suspicious."
"I don't care about piloting it."
Rafi leaned toward the projection. "He genuinely doesn't. It's upsetting."
Talia looked at him. "Keep him that way."
"I have no authority over him."
"Nobody does." She sighed.
Someone called her name offscreen.
Talia glanced away, listened, then looked back. "I have to go."
"You always have to go."
"That is generally how military employment works." She reached for something outside the camera. "Send me a picture if they let you back near Radian."
"You said you'd block me if I sent particle systems."
"I mean the Frame."
"I'll consider it."
"No diagrams."
"That seems unreasonable."
Talia smiled. "Love you."
"Love you too." I watched the projection disappear.
Rafi remained quiet for almost two seconds. "Your sister is terrifying."
"You met her for three minutes."
"I bond quickly."
Anya looked back toward her own screens. "You've used that excuse enough times that it has stopped meaning anything."
"It remains accurate." Rafi pointed toward Topper. "He taught me."
Topper blinked once.
We stayed in the common lounge through most of the afternoon without deciding to.
That was beginning to happen more often.
Naomi worked on environmental performance figures. Jun read through trauma-care procedures he had apparently been given permission to access. Anya disappeared into Black Star's training network. Rafi turned the rejected fabrication sample over and over in his hands while reading its fracture report.
I tried recreating part of Radian's distribution model from memory.
Not the classified architecture.
Just the logic.
The part that bothered me was the direct-control problem.
If Kade was right, a completely direct interface would be almost unusable because human movement was messy. If the test pilots were right, too little correction made the machine feel unstable.
So the question wasn't whether software should interfere.
The question was how much.
I drew a response curve.
Deleted it.
Drew another.
Rafi leaned over from beside me. "That looks exactly like the last one."
"It isn't."
"What changed?"
"The delay."
"Can I see it?"
"No."
"Then I'm correct." He leaned back.
I moved the graph farther away from him.
Across the lounge, Anya tapped her tablet twice.
Then a third time.
She stopped moving.
I noticed because Anya only went completely still when something didn't behave the way she expected.
Rafi noticed because he noticed anything that might become entertainment. "Did the computer finally refuse to marry you?" He rolled the composite sample between both palms.
"My research partition disconnected." Anya reopened the connection window.
Naomi looked up from the environmental display. "Ship network?"
"Local partition." Anya tried another route. "Main research access is still active."
Jun lowered his medical text. "Maintenance?"
"That's what the notification says." Anya's eyes narrowed slightly. "But this partition isn't supposed to share maintenance routing with the general research network."
I stopped drawing.
A second later her connection returned.
Rafi spread both hands. "Fixed."
Anya stared at the access log instead of celebrating. "Something authenticated through the wrong layer."
"What does that mean?" Naomi asked.
"It means either the network architecture is configured differently than the documentation says, or somebody temporarily bridged systems that are supposed to remain separated." Anya opened another diagnostic window.
Rafi tilted his head. "Can the answer be construction software?"
I looked at him.
He grinned.
A yellow notice appeared across our displays before Anya found anything else.
TEMPORARY NETWORK INTERRUPTION — COMMISSIONING UPDATE
Naomi pointed toward it. "There."
Anya read it twice. "That explanation is bad."
"It has official formatting." Rafi looked impressed.
"Official formatting doesn't change network topology." Anya dismissed the notice and returned to the access history. "The research partition shouldn't have needed that update."
I thought about the display branch disappearing during the propulsion test.
Possible.
Everything was possible on a half-finished ship.
That was becoming irritating.
"Ask Dr. Marr." Jun reopened his medical text.
Anya sent the message.
Three minutes later the reply arrived.
Routine commissioning instability. No action required.
Rafi leaned over her shoulder. "You've been defeated by routine commissioning instability."
Anya locked the tablet. "I hate that phrase."
"You hate things that happen without your permission."
"That is not true." She looked toward him.
Naomi kept reading. "It's mostly true."
Anya turned toward her.
Naomi didn't look up.
I smiled.
Dinner was normal enough that the network problem faded.
Rafi discovered Topper would track a spoon if he held it just above his head. Jun told him three separate times that this didn't qualify as training. Naomi stole part of Rafi's dessert after he complained about hers. Anya denied watching any of this despite correcting Rafi's method twice.
By the time we returned to the research habitation level, I had mostly gone back to thinking about Radian.
Mostly.
The access door on our normal route rejected Dr. Marr.
She tried it again.
Red.
Rafi looked around the corridor. "Routine commissioning instability?"
"Probably." Dr. Marr entered an override code.
Red again.
I stopped smiling.
Dr. Marr pressed her thumb against the panel.
Nothing.
A Federation security officer approached from the opposite direction, checked our residency badges, then tried his own clearance.
Red.
That changed the problem.
A student badge failing meant nothing.
Dr. Marr's badge failing was strange.
Security failing made it something else.
The officer touched two fingers to his earpiece. "Control, Junction R-Fourteen is rejecting authorized credentials." Static came through loudly enough that I heard part of it from several meters away.
He adjusted the channel. "Control?"
A broken voice answered. "—maintenance reset—secondary routing—hold—"
The connection disappeared.
The corridor lights dimmed.
Only slightly.
Then returned.
I looked toward the ceiling.
Three armed security personnel moved quickly through the junction behind us.
Not running.
Almost.
Their rifles were still secured against their chests, which was apparently supposed to make that less interesting.
I tried to think of a construction problem that needed three people carrying rifles.
Nothing came to mind.
That did not mean one didn't exist.
I suddenly wanted Dr. Marr to provide one of those boring adult explanations Rafi always complained about.
"We're taking the secondary route." Dr. Marr turned before the security officer finished trying his comms again.
Anya moved beside her. "What happened to the door?"
"Construction problem." Dr. Marr didn't slow.
"That isn't what the security officer thought."
"It's what I think until somebody tells me otherwise." Dr. Marr looked at all five of us. "And all of you are returning to habitation."
Rafi walked faster. "That sentence had more authority than usual."
"Good." Dr. Marr kept us moving.
We passed an open maintenance alcove.
A terminal inside showed a blank screen.
Then text appeared.
CONNECTION LOST
A second line flashed beneath it.
LOCAL AUTHORITY ACTIVE
Then both vanished.
I slowed.
Rafi, walking beside me, noticed. "What?"
"Nothing." I kept moving.
That answer sounded exactly like the adults I had spent the day getting annoyed with.
I disliked that.
The habitation level seemed completely normal when we reached it.
Same lights.
Same hum through the floor.
Same five doors.
Dr. Marr stopped in the center of the corridor. "Stay in this section tonight. No observation gallery, no cafeteria trips, no wandering into research because somebody remembered a question." Her eyes settled on me for the final part.
"I've followed every access rule so far." I touched my wrist to my room panel.
Dr. Marr looked at me.
Rafi looked at me.
Anya looked at me.
"That feels unnecessarily coordinated." I opened the door.
"Just stay here." Dr. Marr's expression had lost almost all the patience from earlier. "All of you."
We agreed.
Technically.
My room door shut.
Topper climbed onto the bed while I dropped into the desk chair and reopened the notes I had made from Radian's simulation.
The control problem returned immediately.
That was what curiosity did when given something better than anxiety.
The security officer's failed comms could wait.
Radian couldn't.
I recreated the pilot-response curve.
Standard correction.
Reduced correction.
Raw input.
There had to be a point between the second and third where the machine stopped feeling delayed without becoming impossible to control.
The test pilots hadn't found it.
Or they had and the Federation wouldn't show me.
That was another possibility.
I enlarged the architecture from memory and drew the path between the control computer and adaptive distribution network.
The system wasn't only moving the Frame.
It was deciding where particle reserve should already be by the time the movement happened.
Which meant the more directly the machine understood pilot intent, the earlier the particle system could prepare.
That was the interesting part.
Not response.
Prediction.
Someone knocked.
I minimized the diagram instinctively.
Rafi stood outside carrying his fabrication sample and a bag of snacks. "Anya says we're not allowed to leave the habitation section." He stepped into the room after I moved aside. "So I came here because technically your room is inside the habitation section."
"You found a loophole in staying put."
"I'm adapting." He dropped onto the edge of the bed while Topper moved out of the way.
I reopened the diagram.
Rafi watched for a few seconds. "Still thinking about Radian?"
"Yes."
"Good. Because I have a question." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wrist display. "Do you remember the materials lab?"
"That's a worrying beginning."
"The technician took us through Service Corridor Forty-Seven-B after the main hall was blocked by that loading cart." Rafi opened a ship map.
I looked at him.
He enlarged the route.
Service Corridor Forty-Seven-B ran behind the materials section, then curved toward a maintenance spine.
Near the experimental research deck.
Very near.
"You memorized that?" I asked.
"I remember structures." Rafi sounded mildly offended. "You remember particle trunks. Anya remembers everything that makes her angry. I remember where walls go."
I leaned closer to the map.
A small maintenance access symbol sat near the end of the corridor.
The same kind of access path I had seen technicians using inside Radian's integration bay.
My thoughts moved before I gave them permission.
Service route.
Maintenance deck.
The main security doors wouldn't matter if the service spine connected behind them.
That did not mean we could get in.
Probably.
Rafi watched my face. "That's the look."
"What look?"
"The one where you pretend you haven't already decided something."
"I haven't decided anything." I enlarged the maintenance symbol.
"Of course not." He leaned back on his hands. "You're just studying a route toward the classified prototype you spent all day talking about."
"I want to know where the service corridor goes."
"It goes toward Radian."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you." Rafi smiled. "Which seems to be the problem."
I stared at the map.
Dr. Marr had explicitly told us not to leave habitation.
Talia had explicitly told me not to wander anywhere I wasn't supposed to.
Dad's entire parenting philosophy could probably be summarized as if you take it apart, put it back together, which was not quite permission but also wasn't helpful.
I closed the map.
Rafi's smile disappeared slightly.
"We're not going tonight." I looked toward the door.
He waited.
"Obviously." Rafi nodded far too quickly.
I looked back at him.
He tried to appear innocent.
It was terrible.
"Tomorrow there's a scheduled diagnostic window after evening rotation." I reopened the schedule and found the maintenance block Kade had mentioned earlier. "If the service corridor is open, we could look."
Rafi's eyebrows rose. "Look."
"Look." I pointed toward him. "We are not touching anything."
"I didn't say anything about touching."
"You were thinking it loudly."
"I'm offended."
"Good."
Topper climbed between us and sat on the bed.
"Unauthorized-area access increases injury risk." His black eyes moved from me to Rafi.
We both stared at him.
Rafi slowly pointed toward the frog. "Did he just understand the plan?"
"There is no plan." I reached for Topper.
He stepped backward.
"Elevated heart rate detected, Ilyan." His speaker crackled around my name.
Rafi grinned. "There's definitely a plan."
I grabbed the pillow and threw it at him.
He caught it against his chest.
Outside the room, Black Star continued humming through the dark, six hundred meters of unfinished machinery wrapped around us. Somewhere below, Radian stood inside its cradle while engineers adjusted systems I had only been allowed to see through glass.
I had spent the entire day being shown enough to understand that there was more.
That was their mistake.
Rafi lowered the pillow. "So tomorrow?"
I looked at the maintenance route one more time before shutting down the display. "We're going to look." The words sounded much more reasonable before I imagined saying them to Dr. Marr.
Rafi smiled anyway.
Topper made a low mechanical chirp from between us.
I should have listened to the frog.