CHAPTER FOUR
Ilyan
The first rule Rafi and I broke was probably the least impressive one available on Black Star. We left the habitation section after evening rotation. No stolen security codes, no hacked military doors, no crawling through ventilation ducts with flashlights between our teeth. We put on our jackets, waited until Dr. Marr disappeared toward the administrative offices, and walked through a door our student clearances were perfectly capable of opening. That almost made it worse. If the door had rejected us, I could have blamed the ship for stopping a bad idea before it became interesting.
"You look guilty," Rafi said as the habitation door sealed behind us. He had found a dark maintenance jacket somewhere and pulled it over his Directorate uniform, apparently believing the extra layer transformed him into somebody impossible to identify. The bright woven bracelets around his wrist disagreed. "Not regular guilty either. You're walking like somebody described walking to you five minutes ago and you're trying to perform it correctly."
"I'm walking normally." I checked the corridor ahead while two civilian technicians crossed the far junction without giving us more than a glance. Black Star was quieter during evening shift, though never actually silent; ventilation whispered through overhead grilles while distant machinery pulsed through the floor beneath our shoes. "You're wearing a disguise consisting entirely of another jacket."
"It has more pockets." Rafi patted one near his ribs and brought up the maintenance map on his wrist. "Also, technically, I'm helping you commit your crime. That makes this an accessory jacket."
"Our crime," I corrected as we started toward the research spine. Topper had wanted to come, which had led to a five-minute argument in my room about risk assessment before I finally left him charging on the desk. A green robotic frog following us into a restricted prototype bay seemed like exactly the sort of detail administrators would remember when deciding whether to expel somebody. "You're the one who found the route."
Rafi looked pleased by that distinction. "I prefer collaborator. Accessory sounds like something Anya would cite in a disciplinary hearing." He enlarged a section of the ship map as we walked. Service Corridor Forty-Seven-B curved behind the materials laboratories before joining a maintenance spine that ran toward experimental integration. "We go through materials, take the service passage behind fabrication transfer, then follow the maintenance spine until we reach the bay. Unless the map has changed since yesterday, in which case we wander around until security finds us and you explain everything."
"You're the one who remembers structures," I said while studying the route. "I thought you were supposed to be useful."
"I am useful. Maps confirm memories." He glanced at me. "That sounds like something Anya would say, but I'm choosing not to be upset about it."
The research decks felt different without Dr. Marr walking ten steps ahead of us. During the day, everything had seemed arranged into approved pieces: this laboratory, this observation platform, this corridor, this door we were not supposed to touch. At night, the same decks looked more like the inside of a machine. Half-finished wall panels sat beside temporary coverings, service lights replaced the brighter daytime illumination, and maintenance workers passed with tool cases or equipment carts without caring that two students were going somewhere students probably shouldn't. Black Star had almost nine hundred people aboard during construction. Being unimportant turned out to be extremely useful.
The materials laboratory was closed, but the service passage beside it remained open because a construction crew had been moving equipment between decks. Rafi gave me a small, triumphant look when the panel accepted his student badge. "See? Structural engineering." He stepped into the narrower corridor and spread one hand toward the exposed conduit trays overhead.
"This isn't structural engineering." I followed him inside as the door shut behind us. Actual pipes—coolant and water rather than particle-transfer trunks—ran overhead beside bundled electrical lines. Yellow maintenance markings crossed the floor, and every few meters a structural rib divided the passage into repeating sections. I refused to point out the pipes because Rafi would never let me forget it. "You found an unlocked service door."
"Everything becomes engineering if you understand it badly enough." He started forward, his shoes sounding louder against the unfinished deck. "That should probably be the official motto of this residency."
The maintenance spine turned toward experimental integration exactly where he remembered. My pulse sped up slightly when Radian's bay identifier appeared on the wall directory ahead, which was stupid because I had already seen the machine. I wasn't sneaking through Black Star because I desperately wanted to sit in a Frame. I wanted to see the control hardware Kade had refused to show me and understand how the adaptive network interacted with the pilot interface. Those were completely different things. They only sounded suspiciously similar if somebody described them honestly.
I thought about Dad while we walked. He had spent most of my childhood discovering what I had taken apart because screws returned in the wrong order or because I forgot which access panel had originally been dusty. If he were here, he would probably understand exactly why knowing there was something behind a wall made the wall unbearable. He would also probably drag me back to my room by the collar. I chose not to imagine that part.
A pressure door waited at the end of the spine with a red access indicator beside it. I tried my student clearance once and received an immediate denial. Rafi folded his arms while I examined the maintenance status. "Very scientific. We have now established that a restricted door remains restricted."
"I needed a baseline." The panel showed an active diagnostic cycle on the far side, which matched what Kade had mentioned earlier. Radian was scheduled for another maintenance calibration tonight. "The access seal should cycle when the diagnostic team transitions."
Rafi leaned close enough to read over my shoulder. "Should?"
"Kade complained yesterday that maintenance gets fifteen-minute gaps between test blocks because everyone has to clear the movement envelope." I checked the clock. "Next transition is in four minutes."
"You built an infiltration plan from a woman complaining about scheduling." Rafi looked at me with an admiration I did not deserve. "I take back several bad things I've thought about particle science."
A maintenance cart hummed around the corner before I could answer. We moved aside while a technician guided it toward the pressure door, one hand balancing a tablet against the control bar. He pressed his clearance to the panel without even looking at us, and the door opened. The cart rolled through. The panels began closing behind it.
Rafi moved first.
I followed because letting him get trapped alone would have been irresponsible, which was the explanation I settled on after we were already through.
The pressure door sealed behind us with a heavy metallic sound. Rafi stared back at it, then pressed his wrist against the interior panel and watched the indicator flash red. "Good news. Our responsible retreat has been converted into a theoretical concept."
"We'll find another route." I studied the corridor ahead as if confidence could manufacture exits.
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you."
Rafi smiled. "You really hate hearing yourself."
I did, especially when he said it correctly.
The maintenance spine opened onto an elevated platform overlooking the experimental integration bay, and I stopped so abruptly Rafi walked into the back of my shoulder. Yesterday I had seen Radian through reinforced observation glass. The glass had lied about scale. From the platform, eighteen meters stopped being a measurement and became something my eyes had to repeatedly correct for. The Frame's feet rested inside huge maintenance locks embedded in the bay floor, articulated braces held its hips and torso steady, and service platforms surrounded the shoulders and chest like scaffolding around a building.
More armor had been fitted since yesterday, though several sections remained primer-white or entirely exposed. The completed plating followed clean Federation lines without the bulk of older military Frames: narrow torso, compact shoulders, powerful legs, smooth armor broken by dark gunmetal joints. Black calibration crosses and engineering numbers still marked the unfinished surfaces. Three recessed sensor channels ran vertically through the head, completely dark while the machine remained powered down. They gave Radian a face without making it human, which I liked more than I expected.
Rafi gripped the railing beside me and looked up slowly. "You said it was white." His voice had lost most of its usual joking rhythm.
"It is white." I followed a pair of temporary particle lines where they entered the open torso through oversized test regulators.
"You left out the part where it's enormous." Rafi tilted his head farther back. "I understand Frame budgets now. That thing has more individual parts than my mother's freight lifter has reasons to swear at people."
"Your mother's freight lifter isn't expected to maneuver an eighteen-meter body through combat." I started down the maintenance stairs before I could spend too long appreciating the whole machine. Up close, armor stopped hiding the complexity beneath it. Access seams crossed every plate. Cooling channels disappeared beneath structural members. Service labels sat beside emergency release points and diagnostic ports. Human beings had built every centimeter of Radian, which made the machine less mysterious and the things I didn't understand much more annoying.
"My mother's freight lifter has met dockworkers," Rafi said while following me. "You're underestimating its combat history."
No one stopped us when we reached the bay floor. A pair of engineers were visible behind a high control-room window on the opposite wall, but neither looked toward us. Automated maintenance arms moved slowly along Radian's lower body while diagnostic lights pulsed around the locked ankle assemblies. We were wearing Directorate badges in an active research section; from a distance, maybe that was enough to turn us into somebody else's problem.
Rafi stood beneath the Frame and looked almost straight upward. "I'm beginning to think 'look' was an intentionally flexible word when you described this plan."
"We are looking." I moved toward a lift platform attached to the torso-maintenance tower. Its access panel accepted Rafi's fabrication clearance, which surprised both of us enough that we stared at the green light for a second.
Rafi hit the control before it could reconsider. "The ship has chosen us."
"The ship is unfinished." I grabbed the rail as the platform began rising. Reduced gravity made the movement gentle, but watching the bay floor fall away still tightened something in my stomach. "That's different."
We rose past Radian's waist and chest. From here I could see directly into gaps beneath the left shoulder armor where shielded particle-distribution hardware threaded through the structure. I leaned toward the railing, following the architecture physically instead of through Kade's diagrams, until Rafi caught the back of my jacket.
"You criticize me constantly and then try to fall inside the prototype." He pulled me away from the edge. "I want that recorded somewhere."
"I wasn't falling. I was looking at the secondary distributor."
"You were looking at it with your upper body."
The platform stopped beside a narrow service bridge connected to the upper torso. At the end of that bridge, partly hidden behind an open armor panel, was the cockpit access hatch.
Neither of us said anything immediately.
This had not been the plan. The plan had been to see the control hardware from maintenance access and leave before anybody discovered us. The control hardware was, unfortunately, now directly in front of me. I understood that this was a terrible argument while my feet carried me onto the bridge anyway.
Rafi watched me for three steps before following. "I would like it formally recorded that approaching the cockpit is your idea. I brought you to the bay. You are now walking toward the military prototype with something I can only describe as religious intent."
"I don't have religious intent." I reached the open hatch and leaned inside. "I'm curious."
"That's significantly worse in your case."
The cockpit was smaller than I expected. That was my first thought. Radian was an eighteen-meter machine, yet the human being controlling it sat inside a compartment barely larger than a storage room. A deep pilot seat occupied the center, surrounded by articulated control grips, foot systems, restraints, sensor housings, and dark display panels. Maintenance covers had been removed from portions of the console, exposing labeled interfaces beneath, while temporary diagnostic cables ran through the rear wall into the seat assembly.
Rafi looked over my shoulder. "That's disappointing. I expected more buttons."
"There are plenty of buttons." I ducked through the hatch and stepped into the cockpit.
"I expected dramatic buttons." He caught my sleeve before I reached the seat. "You said we weren't touching anything."
"I need to see the controls." I looked back at him. "I can't examine them from the doorway."
"That sentence has probably been spoken immediately before half the technological disasters in human history." He held on for another second, then released me when it became obvious I wasn't leaving.
I lowered myself into the seat.
It had been adjusted for an adult. My shoulders sat too low against the restraint guides, and my shoes barely reached the pedals. I found the seat-position controls and brought the whole assembly forward until my feet settled properly.
Rafi's head appeared through the hatch. "You touched something."
"The seat doesn't count."
"You're inside a machine worth more money than both our families will ever see and you're inventing exceptions in real time."
The cockpit smelled like electronics, hot polymer, machine oil, and something faintly metallic. Talia's flight gear sometimes carried the same smell after training. Thinking about her made yesterday's warning return immediately: Do not volunteer to test it. I wasn't volunteering. No one knew I was here. Somehow that sounded worse when phrased correctly.
I rested my hands above the articulated grips without closing my fingers around them. The controls were simpler than I expected, not because Radian had fewer functions but because most of them were placed where the body expected them to be. Primary movement through both hands, fine attitude correction embedded in the grips, thrust control at the pedals, eye-tracking sensors around the display frame, pressure sensors beneath the seat and restraints. A pilot didn't command each individual joint. Nobody could. The pilot described the movement with their body and the software translated the intention into eighteen meters of machinery.
A small diagnostic panel near my right hand glowed.
MAINTENANCE CONFIGURATION ACTIVE
PILOT STATION OCCUPANCY DETECTED
I stopped moving.
Rafi saw my face change. "Does it know you're there?"
"Yes." I watched another line appear beneath the first.
BIOMETRIC CALIBRATION REQUIRED
"It's probably part of the maintenance sequence." I said it mainly because I wanted that to be true.
Rafi leaned farther into the cockpit. "You use 'probably' more often the closer we get to being arrested."
Sensors activated inside the seat. Soft restraints moved beside my shoulders without warning, and I jerked backward hard enough to make Rafi laugh.
"You jumped." He braced one hand against the hatch.
"They moved on their own." I found the manual harness controls and glared at him.
"You are sitting inside a moving machine."
"It is not supposed to move."
"Another distinction that might have been useful outside."
I closed the harness deliberately. The restraints settled across my shoulders, waist, and thighs, tighter than anything in the shuttle. I had seen bruises shaped like straps across Talia's shoulders after difficult training sessions and never thought much about where they came from. Sitting inside Radian made that suddenly obvious. An eighteen-meter machine could know perfectly well where it was moving. The pilot's bones and organs still had to come along.
The seat scanned my posture and adjusted around me. Height. Arm reach. Leg length. Eye position. Resting heart rate. The control grips shifted inward by millimeters until my fingers naturally settled around them.
"It's calibrating around me." I watched the numbers stabilize.
Rafi's amusement faded slightly. "Is it supposed to do that?"
"It says calibration."
"That is not how knowing things works."
The primary displays came alive before I could answer.
The cockpit walls disappeared.
I sucked in a breath.
External camera feeds stitched themselves together across a broad visual envelope until most of Radian seemed to vanish around me. The integration bay stretched across nearly two hundred and seventy degrees, slightly distorted where different camera angles joined but wide enough that turning my head no longer felt necessary. Rafi appeared outside the open cockpit hatch, then the system recognized him as a nearby person and outlined him in amber.
MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL — PROXIMITY
"That is incredible." I forgot to be careful with how impressed I sounded.
Rafi waved from outside. "Can you see me?"
"Unfortunately." I looked toward him, and the sensor view centered automatically before Radian's head moved. I shifted my eyes toward the far wall. The display followed there, then returned to Rafi as soon as I looked back. "The visual system is anticipating eye movement separately from the head assembly."
"That means absolutely nothing to me." Rafi leaned against the hatch. "But your face says I should pretend it's important."
"It is important."
A status column appeared along the lower edge of the display.
External test feed active. Internal particle reserve isolated. Heat nominal. Weapons safed. Propulsion locked. Limited diagnostic actuation available.
The last one caught my attention.
A prompt opened automatically.
LIMITED ACTUATOR CALIBRATION
LEFT HAND / RIGHT HAND / HEAD SENSOR MOUNT / WRIST / ELBOW
Rafi saw where I was looking even if he couldn't read the prompt. "No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You made the face."
"What face?"
"The one where I become part of a disciplinary report."
I selected LEFT HAND.
Rafi swore under his breath while the display switched to the enormous hand resting beside Radian's torso cradle.
INPUT RANGE LIMITED TO 3%
Three percent. Maintenance movement. Barely enough to change anything.
I closed my fingers around the grip and moved slightly.
Radian's index finger curled.
I stopped.
The movement had been almost immediate.
My hand moved. The control shifted. Radian moved. The delay between them was small enough that my brain had trouble separating the events.
"You moved it." Rafi had stopped joking entirely now.
"One finger." I opened the Frame's index finger again and watched the external camera feed. "The standard filter is still active."
"That is one more giant robot finger than either of us is authorized to move."
I tried the middle finger. Then both together. Radian responded with a precision that made scale disappear. I had expected eighteen meters of machinery to feel distant, like giving instructions to something enormous and waiting for the result. Instead the hand simply did what I asked.
A second prompt appeared.
CALIBRATION RESPONSE — REDUCED FILTERING AVAILABLE
My fingers stopped.
Kade had told me maintenance mode increased smoothing because technicians worked nearby. Reduced filtering would still be far from Radian's full-response profile.
It would also be closer.
Rafi couldn't see the prompt.
That wasn't a meaningful reason to select it.
I selected it anyway.
The control resistance changed so slightly I almost imagined it. I moved my hand, and Radian responded sooner. Open. Close. Wrist rotation within the maintenance limit. Back again. There should have been some conscious translation between my body and the machine—some moment when I remembered this was not my hand—but the movement made immediate sense. It felt less like operating machinery and more like throwing a ball. I never calculated every angle in my shoulder and elbow before throwing. I looked where I wanted it to go and trusted the rest of my body to organize itself.
Radian felt dangerously close to that.
Rafi watched the hand below us. "Have you done this before?"
The question annoyed me quickly enough that I turned toward him. "Where exactly would I have done this before?"
"I don't know. Rich-person summer camp."
"My family isn't that rich."
"That being your objection is concerning." He looked down at the Frame's hand again. "You knew where it was before you looked."
"I can see it."
"So can I. I would've punched the wall."
"That explains why you aren't sitting here." I rotated the wrist back to center.
Rafi almost smiled, then didn't.
I moved the hand a little faster.
The harness tightened when Radian's shoulder reacted against the maintenance restraint. Pressure crossed my chest, tiny compared with an actual maneuver but enough to make my body notice the machine's mass. Talia's bruises made even more sense. Neural control could be perfect and physics would still collect its payment.
Then the bay lights went out.
Radian's cockpit remained powered, but everything beyond the external cameras vanished into black before emergency strips ignited along the deck in red. Rafi turned toward the control room. "That wasn't us." He had already moved one hand toward the hatch frame.
"No." A heavy impact traveled through Radian's structure before I could say anything else. The harness tightened automatically, catching my ribs hard enough that I felt the pressure in my teeth.
Somewhere outside the cockpit, an alarm began screaming.
The bay speakers activated a second later. "Security breach. All personnel initiate emergency containment protocol. Unauthorized boarding detected in—" Static tore through the announcement before the sector number arrived.
Rafi backed away from the cockpit. "Ilyan, get out."
I pulled the restraint release.
Nothing happened.
PILOT RESTRAINT LOCK — ACTIVE SYSTEM STATE
"The harness locked." I tried the manual release again, harder this time.
Rafi leaned back inside. "Then unlock it."
"I am attempting that." The maintenance display vanished beneath security warnings while Radian's connection to the bay network dropped, returned, then dropped again. A distant concussion rolled through Black Star and shifted the Frame against its braces. The restraint bit into my ribs for the second time, harder, and nausea followed almost immediately. My head knew the machine had barely moved. My body still felt like something enormous had shoved me sideways.
Footsteps struck the maintenance bridge outside.
Fast.
Rafi looked toward them. "People are coming."
"Get inside." I pulled at the harness again while my pulse climbed across the biometric display.
"There's barely room for you."
"Then get behind the hatch. Just don't stand out there."
Gunfire cracked somewhere beyond the bay before he could answer.
Not the distant thunder of ship weapons from a broadcast. Small arms inside metal corridors were sharper, uglier, the sound multiplied by Black Star's structure. A burst. Another. One shot by itself. Something struck a wall outside and the sound stopped.
Rafi froze with one hand on the hatch. "That was shooting."
"I know." My mouth had gone dry.
A door below the maintenance platform exploded inward.
Smoke and fragments burst across the bay floor as three people entered through the opening. Dark clothing, armored vests, respirators, rifles. No Federation insignia. One went straight toward the integration controls while another covered the opposite side of the bay. The third was broad-shouldered, close-cropped hair visible beneath partial head protection, with a scar disappearing below his collar.
They moved like they already knew the room.
That frightened me more than the weapons.
Radian's system outlined all three in amber.
UNKNOWN PERSONNEL
The broad man looked up.
Straight toward Rafi.
His rifle came with his eyes.
Rafi stopped moving.
"Hands where I can see them." The man's voice carried across the bay through the respirator as he started climbing the maintenance stairs.
Rafi slowly raised both hands, his usual restless movement gone completely. "We're students. We're not security." His voice sounded wrong coming from him—too careful, every word measured.
"I can see the uniform." The man lowered the rifle a few degrees, though not enough to matter. "Stay where you are and come down slowly when I reach you."
"I can't." I activated Radian's external speaker because nothing else seemed capable of making him hear me. My voice exploded across the bay much louder than expected, and everyone flinched, including me. "The cockpit restraints are locked."
The man's attention shifted toward Radian.
So did his rifle.
Rafi was still between him and the cockpit.
Everything in my head narrowed.
The weapon. Rafi. The Frame's left hand. The maintenance platform.
I didn't think about scale.
I moved.
Radian's hand rose.
The broad man heard the actuators and turned, but eighteen meters of machine didn't need much distance. The hand came beneath the service platform, bent part of the railing aside, and closed around him before he could retreat.
His rifle fell.
Rafi swore and dropped flat against the platform.
I lifted the man away from the deck.
The external camera changed angle automatically.
He was inside Radian's hand.
My hand.
No.
Radian's.
His boots kicked once in open air before he stopped, armored fingers wrapped around his torso and thighs. Every warning available to the cockpit appeared at once.
HUMAN PROXIMITY
ACTUATOR SAFETY LIMIT
MAINTENANCE INTERLOCK
The system tried to stop the grip tightening.
I overrode the first warning without even deciding to.
"Put the gun down or you'll be stuck cleaning him off radians hand!" My voice boomed across the bay while my heart rate climbed past one hundred twenty.
The rifle was already lying on the platform.
I knew that.
I could see it.
I said it anyway.
The other two boarders aimed upward.
At Radian.
At me.
"Tell them to lower theirs." I tightened my fingers a fraction, and Radian translated that fraction into enough pressure to change the man's breathing.
The woman below touched her comm. "Garrick?"
So that was his name.
"Lower weapons." Garrick remained remarkably still inside Radian's hand, his voice strained but controlled. "Both of you. Now."
Their rifles lowered.
Not dropped.
Lowered.
I still didn't loosen my grip.
"Don't point anything at him again." I looked toward Rafi, and Radian's visual system followed my eyes immediately. "If anybody points a gun at him, I squeeze."
Rafi stared toward the cockpit.
He wasn't smiling.
Nobody was.
For the first time, I understood exactly what my hand was capable of doing.
A person was inside it.
Not an icon or a simulated load or a maintenance warning. A man whose ribs existed somewhere beneath my fingers. I could kill him with one movement. I didn't need a weapon. I didn't need to know how Frames fought. I only needed to close my hand.
The simplicity of it made my fingers suddenly feel enormous.
"I'm not pointing anything at him." Garrick kept his hands visible against the armored digits. His breathing had become shallower. "Neither is anyone else."
"Who are you?"
"My name is Garrick Sorn."
"That isn't what I asked." My own breathing had become loud inside the cockpit.
"We're Nexus." Garrick watched the dark sensor face above him.
The word meant almost nothing for a second. Then pieces of news reports found one another in my memory. Relief convoys. Illegal salvage. Refugee extractions. Armed intervention. Smuggling accusations. Mom had covered them more than once. Talia had called them idiots. Depending on which broadcast you watched, Nexus were criminals, rescuers, pirates, deserters, or people who showed up where recognized governments had stopped caring.
Now they were inside Black Star.
"You're stealing the ship." I didn't mean it as a question.
Garrick didn't answer.
Someone else entered through the breached door below.
The new arrival didn't look like the leader of anything. He looked nineteen at most, lean enough that the protective vest over his dark clothes seemed slightly too large, with dark hair falling over his forehead in a way Federation regulations would have fixed immediately. No rank. No medals. No obvious insignia.
The people in the bay changed when he entered anyway.
Garrick's eyes shifted toward him. The woman at the console made room without being told. The other rifle stayed lowered.
That was enough.
"Put him down." The young man stopped below Radian and looked up toward the cockpit.
The order was so unreasonable I almost laughed. "You broke into this ship." I kept Garrick suspended. "You pointed a weapon at my friend."
"I didn't point it." He glanced toward Garrick before looking back up. "He did."
"That isn't better."
"No." He accepted that immediately. "It isn't."
I wanted him to argue. Arguments gave me something solid to push against. Calm agreement left everything where it was.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Lucien Marek." He stopped beneath Radian's arm, far too close if I moved it suddenly. "I'm responsible for the people who entered this bay."
Rafi had managed to sit up behind the damaged railing. "Responsible like supervisor?" His hands were still raised even though nobody had told him to keep them there.
"Close enough." Lucien looked toward him briefly, then back at me. "We knew five students were aboard before we entered Black Star. Naomi Calder, Rafi Mercer, Anya Venn, Jun Aras, Ilyan Corven. None of you were supposed to be anywhere near the boarding routes."
The fact that he knew our names hit harder than I expected. "You knew we were here and came anyway."
"Yes." He didn't hesitate.
"You blew up a door."
"That tends to happen during an armed boarding."
Something hot pushed through the cold in my chest. My grip tightened again.
Garrick's face changed this time.
Only slightly.
Lucien saw it. "If you wanted him dead, he would already be dead." He didn't step away. "You've been holding him long enough to understand exactly how easy it would be. You haven't done it."
"You don't know what I want."
"No." Lucien glanced at the Frame's hand. "I know he's still breathing."
I hated him for being right.
"Put him down slowly," he said. "Nobody here is going to touch Rafi."
Rafi looked toward me.
Garrick remained still.
My real hand hurt. I hadn't noticed how hard I had been gripping the control until I tried relaxing it. Radian loosened with me, and Garrick took a sharp breath as the pressure eased.
I lowered the arm.
Too quickly.
Radian's shoulder shifted against the maintenance brace, and the movement transferred through the cockpit hard enough for the harness to catch my ribs. Pain flashed across my side and my head struck the padded rest. Nausea followed immediately. The entire bay seemed to tilt even though the camera horizon remained steady.
My brain knew exactly where Radian's arm had moved.
My body didn't care.
I slowed the descent.
When the hand reached the platform, Garrick stepped out and caught the railing because his knees almost gave out. He bent forward, one arm pressed across his ribs, then picked up his rifle from the deck.
My grip tightened again.
He saw it.
Instead of raising the weapon, Garrick removed the magazine, cleared the chamber, and slung the rifle behind his back. "Better?" His voice was rougher now.
I didn't answer, but Rafi moved past him toward the cockpit hatch. I caught Rafi's sleeve and pulled him inside far enough that one foot had to brace against the wall. There was absolutely not enough room for two people. I didn't care.
Lucien touched his comm below us. "Prototype bay secure. Two students located here. Confirm the others."
Static answered first. Then a woman's voice came through. "Research shelter secure. Three students, Dr. Marr, eleven civilian personnel. No injuries."
My chest loosened before I could decide whether I wanted Lucien to see the relief.
Naomi. Anya. Jun. Alive.
"They're safe," Lucien said while watching the bay controls.
"You're holding them." I kept Rafi partly inside the cockpit.
"We're keeping them in the shelter until the contested corridors are clear."
"Then let us off the ship." I looked beyond him toward the damaged pressure door. "You have docking bays."
"Some remain under Federation control. Others are still evacuating civilian personnel. I'm not moving children through a firefight because you understandably want to leave."
"You don't get to talk like you care." The words came faster now. "You're the one causing the firefight."
Lucien looked at me for a moment. "Yes."
That answer made me angrier than denial would have.
A deeper vibration traveled through Black Star.
I recognized it.
Drive preparation.
Rafi felt it too. His hand closed around the hatch frame as the ship's low artificial gravity changed slightly. "You're actually stealing it." He stared down toward Lucien.
"We are." Lucien didn't bother changing the word.
"Where are you taking us?" Rafi asked.
"Away from Caelum."
The simplicity made it sound impossible.
Three days earlier Mom had stood behind a departure barrier telling me to message when I docked. Dad had tightened my bag straps until they hurt. Talia had told me not to touch anything expensive.
I had been gone for three days.
"Stop the ship and let us off." I pulled against the locked restraints again.
"I can't do that."
"You can. You won't."
Lucien's expression remained annoyingly still. "That is more accurate."
Gunfire erupted from the far access corridor.
The first burst came so suddenly that my mind didn't connect the sound to bullets until rounds struck Radian's outer armor. The impacts thundered through the chest around me like somebody had hit the cockpit with hammers.
Rafi dropped behind the hatch frame.
Garrick pulled him lower.
A Nexus boarder beside the control station folded to the deck.
There was no dramatic pause.
One moment he was standing.
The next, blood sprayed across the pale console behind him.
A round had entered high through the side of his neck where the protective vest ended. He clamped both hands over the wound, but blood pushed between his fingers immediately, bright beneath the maintenance lights. His mouth opened and a wet, broken sound came out before his knees struck the floor.
I stared.
I had seen blood before. Dad slicing his hand open in the workshop. Gravball collisions. Talia splitting her eyebrow when I was nine and spending an hour pretending the injury had given her the ability to read thoughts.
This was different.
The amount was wrong.
Blood shouldn't leave a person that fast.
A woman beside the fallen man grabbed the back of his vest and started dragging him toward cover. Another burst struck the station above them and forced her flat.
"Federal security!" someone shouted from the breached corridor. "Drop weapons! Step away from the prototype!"
Four Federation security officers entered behind armored shields.
For one stupid second, relief hit me.
Federation.
Our people.
Then Garrick raised his rifle.
The bay became noise.
The woman at the control station fired twice while Lucien moved behind a structural column. Federation rounds struck the maintenance scaffolding, throwing sparks across the floor. A Nexus rifle cracked beside Radian's foot.
One Federation officer leaned from behind the shield.
A round struck his helmet near the lower jaw.
The impact snapped his head sideways. The visor held, but the armor beneath it deformed inward so sharply that his body dropped before his rifle did. Another officer caught the back of his vest and dragged him behind cover. His head rolled at an angle that made something in my stomach turn over.
I looked away.
Rafi had seen it too.
His face had gone gray.
The firefight lasted maybe twenty seconds.
The pressure doors sealed between the two groups with a heavy metallic slam. Federation rounds struck the opposite side twice more, then stopped.
Silence returned so abruptly that I could hear myself breathing.
The Nexus woman immediately crawled toward the man who had been hit in the neck. "Tom, look at me." She pressed both hands over the wound while blood continued slipping between her fingers and running across the deck.
Garrick reached them and dropped beside her, one hand still pressed to the ribs Radian had crushed. He looked at the wound once. "Pressure seal."
"It's through the carotid." Her voice shook even while her hands remained steady.
"Seal it anyway."
She tore a medical patch open with her teeth and forced it against the wound.
Blood filled beneath the transparent membrane almost immediately.
Tom's leg jerked once.
Then again.
His eyes moved toward the ceiling.
Maybe toward nothing.
His hand slipped away from his throat.
The woman kept pressure on him.
Garrick checked his pulse.
Nobody announced the moment he died.
They simply kept trying until there was nothing left to try.
When Garrick finally lowered his hand, the woman sat back on her heels. Blood covered both palms and half her forearms.
I looked toward Lucien.
He was staring at the body.
His face had become completely still.
"Was that your fault?" I asked before deciding whether the question was fair.
Lucien looked up toward me. "The boarding?"
"The man." My throat felt too dry.
His eyes moved back to Tom. "Yes."
Garrick looked at him.
Lucien didn't change the answer.
A communications tone cut through the bay before anyone could say more. The Federation transmission came through Black Star's speakers cleanly enough that every person in the room stopped moving.
"Attention aboard SFCV-01 Black Star. This is Solar Federation Construction Security Command. Your vessel is under unlawful seizure. Cut propulsion, restore command authority, and surrender immediately."
Federation.
They knew.
That should have made everything better.
Mom would know soon. Dad would know. Talia would know. The Federation would retake Black Star, pull us off, arrest Lucien and Garrick and everyone else, and this would become something Selene complained about on the news while Dad repeatedly asked whether I had actually climbed into a prototype cockpit without permission.
Lucien touched his comm. "Hana, give me external transmission."
The bloody woman at the console wiped one hand against her trousers and worked the controls.
Lucien stepped toward the nearest pickup. "Federation Command, this is Lucien Marek of Nexus. Black Star is under our control. Civilian evacuation remains in progress. Five students are aboard. Repeat, five minors remain aboard this vessel."
I stared down at him.
He had told them.
That mattered.
The answer came back quickly. "Nexus personnel, you are ordered to release all hostages and cease propulsion immediately."
"We're not hostages," I said automatically.
Then I looked at the armed people in the bay, the sealed pressure doors, and the harness refusing to release me.
Rafi followed my eyes. "Maybe don't commit too strongly to that sentence."
Lucien continued without looking toward us. "The students are unharmed. We will transfer them once a safe method becomes available. Black Star will not surrender."
I stared at him. "There goes the safe method."
The Federation voice returned. "Main propulsion activation will be treated as an escalation. Cut your drive and no disabling action will be necessary."
Lucien looked toward the tactical display. "Understood."
The channel closed.
"Understood?" I switched Radian's external speaker on again because I wanted him to hear every part of this. "They literally told you what happens next. Stop the ship."
"No." Lucien turned toward the cockpit.
"They know we're aboard."
"Yes."
"And you're still doing this."
"Yes."
I almost preferred people who lied.
The ship moved.
Black Star's acceleration was low enough that the artificial gravity compensated for most of it, but I felt the directional change in the seat. Everything became slightly heavier toward the rear. Rafi grabbed the hatch frame. Somewhere beneath us, the main particle drive had gone from preparation to sustained output.
"They're actually stealing it," Rafi said quietly.
I knew.
That was the problem.
External sensor data began populating Radian's display as Black Star's tactical network came partially online. Construction-security cutters, patrol craft, Federation Frames. I knew enough from Talia's training footage to recognize the formation taking shape around us.
"They're cutting the drive vector." I followed the markers instinctively.
Rafi looked over my shoulder. "Can they?"
"Probably." I hated saying the word again.
A new marker crossed the aft sensor field.
Not Federation.
A thin dark Frame shot past Black Star's exterior cameras with multiple thruster clusters firing independently. Its armor was asymmetrical, narrow torso turning around its own momentum as shoulder and hip thrusters pulsed at different moments. The machine fired a compact weapon during the rotation, destroyed a pursuing Federation Frame's rifle, then changed direction without wasting thrust correcting the entire maneuver at once.
I forgot everything else for several seconds.
The movement was beautiful.
I hated noticing that with Tom's body still on the bay floor.
"Vesper has contact with four," somebody shouted from the control station.
A young woman's voice came through comms, fast and irritated beneath static. "I can count, Hana. I still have eyes."
Lucien touched his earpiece. "Kaia, stay off the forward group. Protect the stern."
"Then tell the stern to stop being six hundred meters wide."
Another voice cut in. "Your heat is climbing."
"I also still have temperature sensors, Niko."
Vesper crossed Radian's feed again.
I watched the estimated particle output almost without thinking. Short impulses. Efficient transfers. Nothing held at maximum longer than necessary. Whoever Kaia was, she understood the reserve in a way Radian's test pilots hadn't. She wasn't fighting motion. She was spending exactly enough energy to alter it.
A Federation Frame fired.
Vesper rotated through the shot.
Not around it.
Through the geometry of it, changing her angle while preserving most of her existing momentum.
The particle bolt missed by meters.
Talia would have loved that.
The thought hurt unexpectedly.
Another Federation transmission entered the bay. "Black Star, cut main drive immediately. Failure to comply will result in disabling action."
Lucien answered from the console. "Five minors remain aboard. Civilian evacuation is incomplete. Any disabling fire risks inhabited compartments."
"Cut your drive and no fire will be required."
Lucien watched the tactical map for several seconds. "Negative."
I stared at him. "You're insane."
His eyes shifted toward Radian. "Maybe."
That was not what I wanted the person stealing our ship to say.
A bright particle discharge crossed the tactical display.
It passed ahead of Black Star and dispersed without contacting the hull.
Warning shot.
Everyone in the bay understood it.
The Federation channel opened immediately. "Black Star, this is your final warning. Cut main propulsion."
Lucien said nothing for three seconds.
Then he touched his comm. "Continue acceleration."
"You idiot." I switched the external speaker on so quickly the words boomed across the bay. "They know we're here. Stop making them shoot at us."
Rafi put one hand on my shoulder. "Ilyan."
I barely felt it.
Federation Frames moved.
Six.
Two broke toward Black Star's aft drive structures. Another pair shifted toward radiator-control vanes and external sensor arrays.
Disabling targets.
They were trying to cripple the ship without destroying it.
That should have reassured me.
Then I remembered Black Star was unfinished.
One round entering deeper than predicted. One ruptured coolant path. One particle trunk failing through a populated section. Machines didn't care that somebody had intended to hit something safer.
A particle bolt struck Black Star.
The entire ship shuddered.
Rafi slammed into the hatch frame.
Radian's harness crushed into my ribs so hard the air disappeared from my lungs. Pain flashed white through my chest while the Frame's stabilization system reacted to the ship movement and pushed another force through the cockpit from a different direction.
For several seconds I couldn't breathe.
My brain knew exactly how Radian had shifted.
The information was perfectly clear.
My body was busy wondering why my ribs had just tried to occupy the same space as the restraint.
Rafi grabbed his shoulder. "They shot us." He looked almost offended by the reality of it.
New warnings came through Black Star's local network. Radiator control damaged. After exterior strike. Two construction workers injured. Pressure holding.
Lucien's people moved faster.
Someone finally pulled a white thermal sheet over Tom.
Another impact rolled through Black Star, smaller than the first but hard enough that my bruised ribs reacted before the harness even tightened.
Rafi looked at me. "You're hurt."
"I'm fine." The words came out breathless.
"You're saying that while not breathing correctly."
"I got hit by the harness."
"So you're hurt."
I didn't have enough air to argue properly.
Lucien's comm erupted with Kaia's voice. "I've got four on the stern and two cutting under the carrier. I can keep them off the engines or the radiator vanes. Choose."
"Drives," Lucien answered immediately.
"Great. I always wanted to die defending plumbing."
I would have corrected her under almost any other circumstances.
A missile detonated close to Vesper.
The external feed flashed white.
When the cameras recovered, one of the Frame's upper thruster spars was hanging at the wrong angle. Vesper tumbled sideways before Kaia caught the rotation with two staggered impulses.
Another Federation Frame closed.
"Kaia, disengage." Lucien's voice changed slightly for the first time.
"Busy."
"Break off."
"If I break off, they reach Black Star."
"We'll handle it."
"With what?"
No one answered.
Vesper blocked another shot with an armor section along the damaged side.
The impact tore plating away.
The machine spun harder this time.
Kaia corrected late.
I knew it was late before the tactical display confirmed anything.
Her reserve had fallen.
Heat was climbing.
Another Federation machine approached beneath Black Star's stern.
Vesper turned toward it.
The next particle bolt hit her lower leg.
Armor vanished in a bright flash.
Part of the limb separated entirely, spinning away in several pieces while the sudden mass change threw Vesper into a violent tumble.
Kaia screamed across the open comm.
One sharp sound.
Then breathing.
Fast and broken.
My hands tightened around Radian's controls.
I knew how to stop the rotation.
Not the battle.
The rotation.
Short right-hip correction. Let the existing spin carry through. Counter with the surviving upper thruster. Don't dump the whole reserve into fighting momentum that already existed.
I knew.
I had never piloted a Frame.
I knew anyway.
That frightened me enough that I looked down at my own hands.
Lucien looked up toward Radian at almost the same moment.
I saw what he was thinking.
"No." I didn't wait for him to say anything. "Whatever you're about to ask, no."
Rafi looked between us. "No what?"
Lucien started toward the maintenance stairs.
"I said no." I pulled at the harness again. "I moved one hand. That doesn't make me a pilot."
"You moved an eighteen-meter machine without hesitation," Lucien said as he climbed. Garrick followed more slowly with one arm pressed against his ribs where Radian had held him.
"A hand." My voice rose as Lucien reached the service platform. "I moved one hand while the Frame was locked into a cradle."
"Can Radian launch?"
"I don't know."
"Can you operate it?"
"No."
"You just did."
"I moved a hand!"
The repetition started sounding desperate because it was.
Rafi stepped closer to the cockpit. "He's telling the truth. He has never piloted one."
"I know." Lucien gripped the maintenance rail.
Both of us stopped.
"You know?" I stared at him.
"We reviewed the student records before boarding. Particle science, athletics, no military training, no pilot certification, no flight program."
"Then why are you standing here?"
"Because I watched you use Radian more precisely than I expected somebody with no training could." He looked past me toward the active cockpit displays. "I don't need you to win a battle."
"I don't know how to fight one."
"I need you to keep them away from the hull."
"You're asking a fourteen-year-old to launch a combat Frame."
"Yes." Lucien didn't soften it.
Rafi stared at him. "You're insane."
"Possibly." Lucien kept his eyes on me.
I reached for the restraint release again. "Get me out."
"If you leave Radian, it stays here."
"That sounds perfect."
"Then Vesper fails."
"Not my problem."
"Then Federation Frames disable Black Star."
"Your problem."
"Then the ship becomes a battlefield."
"It already is because of you." I pointed toward Tom's covered body below. "This is your disaster. Fix it yourself."
"Yes." Lucien's voice remained quiet. "It is my disaster."
I wasn't expecting agreement.
He continued before I found something to throw back. "The other three students are inside an armored research shelter thirty-one meters from an exterior service trunk. It is currently one of the safest compartments available."
"Then keep them there."
"That safety changes if Federation fire breaches the aft structure."
Rafi turned toward him. "You said they were safe."
"I said they were secure. There is a difference now." Lucien glanced toward the tactical display. "We're trying to move everyone farther inward, but Federation security still controls two transit junctions."
"Then surrender." I hated how easy the solution sounded.
"No."
"Then stop pretending this is my problem."
Lucien watched me for several seconds. "If you stay here and do nothing, people aboard this ship may die."
The meaning settled slowly.
Naomi.
Anya.
Jun.
Dr. Marr.
Rafi standing beside me.
"You're using them." My voice became quieter.
Rafi looked toward me.
Lucien didn't answer immediately.
"You're telling me where they are because you want me imagining every shot reaching them." Anger covered the fear enough that I could breathe normally again. "You put them there. You put all of us here. Now you're telling me I have to fix what you did, you selfish bastard."
"I'm telling you I need your help."
"No." I leaned toward him as far as the restraint allowed. "You're telling me people die if I don't help you. That's a threat."
Garrick looked toward Lucien.
Rafi went completely still.
Nobody corrected me.
Lucien finally nodded. "Yes."
That answer emptied something out of the cockpit.
He didn't look proud of it.
He didn't look ashamed enough either.
"If a route opens, Garrick will move you to the research shelter whether you help us or not." Lucien kept one hand on the maintenance rail. "If you stay in Radian and the prototype can launch, I need you to keep Federation Frames away from Black Star. You don't chase them. You don't attack their ships. You force distance."
"I said no."
"I heard you."
"Then stop asking."
"The situation hasn't stopped changing."
I wanted to hit him.I wanted to squeeze him so hard that his blood spilled onto the floor and do it all over again.
The thought was simple, immediate, and probably the most normal thing I had felt since the first gunshot.
I couldn't reach him because I was strapped inside an eighteen-meter Frame.
The irony almost made me laugh.
Kaia's voice tore through Lucien's comm again. "Lucien." There was no sarcasm left in it now.
Vesper remained on the tactical feed, tumbling near Black Star's stern. One leg gone below the knee. Left arm no longer responding properly. Heat warning high. Particle reserve falling.
A Federation Frame moved toward her while another continued toward the carrier.
"Kaia, disengage," Lucien said.
"Trying."
"You're done."
"Wasn't asking."
The pursuing Frame fired.
Vesper barely moved in time.
The shot missed her torso but stripped armor from the damaged shoulder and sent her spinning again.
I could see how to correct it.
That was becoming unbearable.
"Ilyan." Rafi stood beside the cockpit opening with blood on one sleeve.
Not his blood.
I checked anyway.
"You don't have to do what he wants." Rafi swallowed and looked down toward Lucien. "This is their fight."
Another particle bolt struck Black Star.
The ship lurched.
The harness crushed my already bruised ribs, and something in my left side seemed to pull hard enough that pain remained after the pressure released. I bit the inside of my cheek. Blood touched my tongue.
A drop landed on the back of my hand when I wiped my mouth.
Topper would have noticed immediately.
Dermal damage detected.
The thought arrived so clearly I almost heard his damaged speaker.
I wished he were here.
Then I was relieved he wasn't.
Two Federation markers moved toward the damaged radiator control.
Black Star's tactical estimate appeared beside them.
Ninety-eight seconds.
I looked at Radian's status.
Internal particle reserve isolated.
Propulsion locked.
Weapons safed.
Maintenance braces engaged.
A machine that should not have been moving.
A machine I absolutely should not have been sitting inside.
I thought about Mom standing behind the departure barrier. Dad tightening my bag strap after pretending he wasn't worried. Talia laughing because I had spent more time looking at Radian's particle regulators than its weapons.
Naomi telling me not to cover Caelum with my thumb.
Anya stealing my chair.
Jun moving food out of the way before the pillow fight started.
Rafi saving me a seat without saying anything.
Ninety-two seconds.
I hated that my brain remembered all of them now.
"I don't know how to fight." I looked at Lucien.
"I know." He didn't move closer.
"I don't know how to shoot anybody."
"We can walk you through the weapon controls."
"That isn't what I mean." I stared at him.
Lucien understood.
His face changed only slightly. "I know."
Rafi looked at me and shook his head once.
Eighty-seven seconds.
I looked back toward Vesper. Kaia had stopped the worst of her rotation and was drifting near Black Star with one functioning leg, one damaged arm, and enough thruster control to remain alive.
Eighty-three seconds.
"I keep them away from the ship." My voice sounded smaller than I wanted.
Lucien waited.
"I don't chase anybody who leaves." I tightened my hands around Radian's controls. "I don't attack somebody just because they're Federation."
"Agreed." Lucien nodded once.
"I don't kill anyone."
He hesitated.
Tiny.
Barely a pause.
Enough.
"That isn't what I said." I felt anger return immediately.
"No." Lucien's fingers tightened around the rail. "I can promise we will give you every option we can before that happens. I can't promise what another pilot forces you to choose."
I hated him.
I hated the Federation Frames outside.
I hated Black Star for being valuable enough that adults thought any of this was reasonable.
Mostly, I hated the countdown because it kept moving whether I made a decision or not.
"Get Rafi out of the bay." I looked toward Garrick.
Rafi turned on me. "Ilyan, no." His face had changed completely from the boy who had joked about accessory jackets less than an hour ago. "I'm staying."
"You can't stay beside the cockpit if this thing moves." I looked at the narrow service bridge and imagined Radian shifting even half a meter. "You'll hit something before I can stop it."
"Then I'll move farther back."
"Go find Naomi and the others."
"I'm not leaving you with them."
Garrick said nothing.
Lucien said nothing.
That made me angrier because they were letting Rafi turn this into our decision.
"Rafi." I looked at him.
Whatever he saw on my face stopped him.
His eyes moved to the blood on my hand, then back to me. "You better come back." His voice had gone rough around the edges.
I almost made a joke.
Nothing came.
So I nodded.
Garrick touched Rafi's shoulder carefully this time. When Rafi didn't move away, he guided him toward the stairs.
Lucien dropped from the service bridge and started issuing orders the moment his feet hit the bay floor. "Release maintenance restraints. Clear particle isolation and transfer diagnostics to local control. Hana, get Niko into Radian's system and find whatever prototype documentation we have."
The bay changed around me.
People started running.
Displays woke.
Someone pulled the white sheet farther over Tom's body before moving a tool cart around him because there wasn't time to take the body anywhere.
That seemed wrong.
Everything seemed wrong.
Rafi reached the lower platform with Garrick and looked back once.
Radian's system outlined him in amber.
PERSONNEL — STATUS UNKNOWN
I stared at the label.
The machine didn't know what a friend was.
Neither did I three days ago.
A new voice entered my headset. Male, quick, irritated, surrounded by enough background noise that he was obviously working while talking. "Radian cockpit, this is Niko. Whoever is in there, do not touch anything."
I looked down at my hands already wrapped around the controls. "That would've been useful earlier."
There was a short silence. "Why is there a child inside the Federation prototype?"
Lucien answered somewhere on another channel. "Long story."
"No, Lucien. That's a very short story with an extremely bad ending." Equipment clattered near Niko's microphone before his attention returned to me. "Kid, name?"
"Ilyan Corven."
"All right, Ilyan. Tell me exactly what the cockpit currently shows. Don't summarize anything you don't understand."
"Particle reserve isolated. Propulsion locked. Weapons safed. Left arm has maintenance authority. Sensor network partially connected to Black Star, and there are two Federation Frames about seventy seconds from the damaged radiator control." I scanned the status column. "Heat nominal. External test feed still active but unstable."
Niko went quiet for maybe two seconds. "Oh, I hate you."
"I get that a lot."
"Good. Means you're still functioning." His voice sharpened. "First rule: when we wake Radian properly, do not move anything until I tell you. Frames lie about being gentle. The harness doesn't stop acceleration; it just decides which parts of you get bruised first. Keep your head against the rest when I say. Don't lock your elbows. Breathe through high load. If your vision starts narrowing, tell me before you black out."
"Comforting."
"I am not trying to comfort you."
The first maintenance brace released around Radian's ankle.
Metal boomed through the Frame.
The cockpit moved barely a centimeter, but the change traveled up through the seat and into my body. My bruised ribs protested immediately.
A second brace released from the shoulder.
Radian shifted again.
I knew exactly where.
That was strange.
There was no confusion about the Frame's position. No feeling that I was sitting inside something enormous while it moved around me. The machine's orientation arrived in my head as cleanly as knowing where my left hand was without looking at it.
The force still hurt.
Knowing where the machine was did nothing to make my body stronger.
Niko's voice returned. "Your response numbers are weird."
"My what?"
"Nothing you need to worry about right now." Something clicked rapidly on his end. "Stay still."
I wanted to ask.
There wasn't time.
The internal particle system woke.
I felt it before the status display changed.
A vibration moved through Radian, different from Black Star's machinery because this was close enough to live beneath the seat. The dark sensor channels on the Frame's face came alive outside, and the cockpit view sharpened all at once.
More information appeared.
Heat.
Range.
Motion.
Particle flow.
Local structure.
Thruster condition.
External braces.
Sensor blind spots.
I expected it to overwhelm me.
It didn't.
That was the strangest part.
I didn't consciously read everything.
I simply knew where it was.
Left arm available. Right leg restricted by cradle. Shoulder clear. Rear visual blind angle partially blocked by maintenance equipment. Particle feed stable. External hatch open.
The information sat around me like pieces of a body.
PARTICLE RESERVE: 94%
Niko inhaled sharply over comms. "Radian is live. Do not move until the final torso restraint clears."
The last brace opened.
For the first time, nothing above Radian's waist physically held the Frame in place.
I stopped breathing without realizing it.
"Ilyan." Niko's voice came carefully through the headset.
"I'm here."
"Breathe."
I did.
Lucien's voice entered another channel. "Open Bay Three."
The armored bay doors began separating.
Black appeared between them.
Then stars.
Black Star's construction lights washed across the edges of the opening. Far beyond them, Earth curved blue and white against the dark. Closer, moving lights crossed the tactical display.
Federation Frames.
Pilots.
People.
Maybe somebody Talia knew.
Maybe somebody who had eaten breakfast that morning and complained about being assigned construction security.
Maybe somebody whose younger brother was waiting for them to come home.
My stomach tightened.
The launch system came online.
Radian's restraints pulled tighter across my chest before the machine had even taken its first step.
Niko's voice remained in my ear. "When the floor locks release, don't fight every movement. The Frame is heavier than what your body thinks it is, and the cockpit will transmit more force than you expect. Small inputs until you understand the response."
"I moved the hand already." My own voice sounded steadier than I felt.
"I saw the diagnostic record." Niko paused just long enough to make me wonder what else he'd seen. "That's why I'm telling you twice."
The floor clamps unlocked beneath Radian's feet.
For the first time, the machine stood on its own.
I felt the weight settle through both legs.
Not because the cockpit shook.
Because somehow I knew exactly where the pressure was.
Right foot slightly heavier.
Left knee compensating.
Torso two degrees forward from neutral.
I stared through Radian's eyes at the open bay.
That shouldn't have felt familiar.
It did.
Lucien appeared on a small communication window at the edge of the display. His face looked even younger when framed by Radian's military interface. "You only need to create distance. Kaia will guide you once you're outside."
"Stop telling me what I need to do." I kept my hands steady on the grips while the launch path illuminated ahead.
Lucien nodded slightly. "Fair."
I disliked him a little more for accepting that too.
The launch cradle began shifting beneath Radian's feet.
The stars moved closer.
My heart rate climbed high enough that the biometric bar changed color.
I tried not to look at it.
Niko apparently did. "You're allowed to be scared."
"I know."
"Good. Scared pilots sometimes survive. Pilots trying to prove they aren't scared make work for Tomas."
I didn't know who Tomas was yet.
I understood the point.
The bay doors reached full extension.
Nothing separated us from space except the containment field.
Radian's launch path turned green.
I tightened my grip around the controls, and the machine answered with tiny shifts beneath me before I had consciously asked for them.
That frightened me almost as much as going outside.
I thought about Rafi somewhere below.
Naomi, Anya, and Jun behind armored doors.
Topper alone in my room.
Mom and Dad probably learning from a news alert that Black Star had been stolen.
Talia somewhere in Federation space, maybe already hearing my ship's name shouted through a command room.
The launch indicator changed. I didn't feel brave. I didn't feel like a pilot. I felt fourteen, with blood drying across the back of my hand and a machine waiting for me to tell it what came next.
Before I knew I was going to say anything, my mouth opened.
"Ilyan Corven. Radian, launching."
The cradle released us.