Marko’s boots rang on the deck plate, three bulkheads short of berthing, his mind trying and failing to think about nothing in particular.
The corrupted Read on Boomer sat in his chest like a cold stone, unresolvable, and he’d learned over eighteen hours of the thirty-three-minute cycle that thinking at a thing the overlay wouldn’t answer was a waste of Bearing he didn’t have to spare.
Then the amber teletype unfolded across his vision, unprompted, precise as a punch to the gut.
AFTER-ACTION AVAILABLE.
REVIEW THE WATCH.
Marko stopped walking.
The corridor was empty, third shift winding down, the hangar two bulkheads aft humming its low tylium thrum.
He blinked at the line, waiting for it to resolve into instruction or fade like the corrupted block had.
It held.
He’d never seen this before.
The Board had guided him through fixes, threaded him across distances he shouldn’t have been able to reach, locked capabilities behind thresholds he hadn’t crossed yet.
But it had never offered to review what he’d already done.
“All right,” Marko said under his breath.
“Show me.” The block expanded.
FRAME 47 MAGAZINE SAVE, FLASH FIRE SHORES-THEN-VENTS.
FIX WITNESSED.
HOLDING.
ADRIATIC SECTION 8 STABILIZATION RUSHED, TEMPORARY SEALS UNDER CONTINUOUS LOAD.
FIX UNWITNESSED.
PROVISIONAL.
Marko read the lines twice.
The first one he understood the magazine save, the thing that had dragged him from invisible to seen in front of Tyrol’s whole damage-control party.
The overlay called it HOLDING, past tense, done.
The second line made his gut tighten.
Provisional.
He’d stabilized a failing section on the Adriatic two days ago, a patch-and-pray job under fire while the Cylons chewed through the civilian fleet.
He’d shored what he could reach, walked an exhausted engineer through a seal that bought them time, and moved on when the next crisis came screaming over the comms.
The section had held long enough for an orderly evac.
People had lived.
It called the save provisional.
“Why?” Marko said aloud, too quiet for anyone but the bulkheads to hear.
The Board did not answer in words.
Instead the second line pulsed once, amber deepening to a color that sat somewhere between warning and wait, and beneath it a new block formed.
A FIX HOLDS OR IT DOES NOT.
SURVIVAL IS NOT PROVISIONAL.
A WATCH IS KEPT UNTIL IT IS RELIEVED.
Marko stared at the words.
His mouth had gone dry.
It wasn’t grading him on intention wasn’t counting the save because people had walked out alive that day.
What it wanted was proof the fix held: welds staying true, the patch not cracking under load, the thing he’d called stable remaining stable long enough to mean something.
And if it didn’t The thought died before it finished.
Marko didn’t know what happened if a provisional save failed, and the Board wasn’t telling him.
But the dread lodged in his chest anyway, cold and certain, the same shape as the stone he’d carried since the corrupted Read.
He swallowed.
“How do I know if it holds?” No answer came.
The blocks faded to the edges of his sight, patient and immovable, and in their place a single new line appeared.
STANDING WATCH BEARING INCREASED.
And just like that, Marko felt it.
A sliver of new capacity, threadlike and faint, settling into the hollow the remote Monarch fix had left behind.
Not enough to matter in a firefight.
Enough to notice.
Payment for the fire for the fix that held.
Marko exhaled a slow, controlled thing, the kind the deck taught you and started walking again.
His hands were steady.
The dread stayed.
— He found Socko two decks down, leaning against a storage-locker frame with a crate of something that definitely wasn’t regulation rations balanced on one knee.
“There you are,” Socko said.
“Thought you got lost in CIC and went flag.” “I’m not flag material,” Marko said.
“Frak, I hope not.
Flags don’t run favors.” Socko tilted his head toward the crate.
“Got a load coming off the Demetrius next jump.
Need your hands on a hydraulic seal they’re not admitting is cracked.
You free?” Marko glanced at the crate.
Whatever was inside smelled faintly of engine grease and something sweet he couldn’t place.
“What’s the load?” “Ambrosia and tobacco, mostly.
Some spare seals, if you’re feeling mercenary.” Socko grinned.
“Consider it an investment in morale.
Ours.” “Morale,” Marko repeated.
“Morale,” Socko said firmly.
“The fleet runs on cigarettes and goodwill, brother.
You think Tyrol’s parts budget keeps these birds flying?
Half the deck’s running on favors I brokered last month.
You want in or not?” Marko studied him the grin that didn’t quite hide the exhaustion underneath, the crate balanced like it weighed nothing, the whole fragile economy Socko had built from barter and trust and a conversational intimacy with every quartermaster in the fleet.
The man was keeping people fed.
Keeping them sane.
Doing it with a smile and a ledger nobody but him could read.
“Put it on my tab,” Marko said.
Socko’s grin widened.
“You don’t have a tab, brother.
You have a mortgage.” “Then I’ll owe you.” “Damn right you will.” Socko pushed off the locker and hefted the crate.
“Hydraulic seal’s in Bay 3.
Demetrius jumps in with us in forty.
I need that seal singing before their quartermaster asks why I’m the only one who can move cigarettes without an invoice.” “Copy that.” They walked in silence for a few seconds, boots echoing in the narrow corridor, and Marko felt the sliver of new Bearing settle a little deeper.
Real enough to notice but the Adriatic save sat provisional, unresolved, a job the Board didn’t consider finished.
Nothing stays done.
The thought turned over in his head, cold and factual, a law he hadn’t known existed until it bit him.
Socko glanced at him.
“You good?
You’ve got that look.” “What look?” “The one where you’re doing six kinds of math I can’t see.” Socko adjusted the crate.
“It’s unsettling.
Stop it.” Marko almost smiled.
“I’m fine.” “You’re a terrible liar, Dabrowski.
Lucky for you I don’t care.” Socko kicked open the hatch to Bay 3.
“Seal’s on the left.
Don’t get creative.
I need it working, not perfect.” “Working’s perfect,” Marko said.
“Now you sound like the Chief.” Marko found the hydraulic seal exactly where Socko said it would be a gasket split along one seam, weeping fluid onto a deck plate someone had wiped down recently and badly.
Standard fix; any specialist could handle it.
He pulled the clamp, swapped the ring, torqued it down, tested the pressure until the gauge needle stopped climbing and sat fat in the green.
Held.
Nothing.
No teletype, no amber glow, no commentary.
Too small to register or waiting to see if this one held too.
He wiped his hands on his coveralls and straightened.
Behind him, Socko was already negotiating with a Demetrius crewman over a pallet of something that smelled like tobacco and optimism voice low, hands loose, the grin doing all the heavy lifting.
The fleet ran on this.
On Socko’s ledger of favors, on seals that held just long enough, on fixes that bought another day and another jump and the hope that the provisional would resolve into something the books could call done.
Marko didn’t know yet what happened when a fix failed.
But the dread sitting in his chest told him he’d find out.
The Board’s last line lingered at the edge of his sight, faint as a watchfire.
A WATCH IS KEPT UNTIL IT IS RELIEVED.
NO FIX IS FINISHED.
Marko pocketed the old gasket and walked back toward the crate.
Socko handed him a cigarette he didn’t smoke and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good hands, brother,” Socko said.
“The Demetrius owes me now, and I owe you.
Circle of life.” “Circle of debt,” Marko said.
“Same thing in this fleet.” The jump alarm sounded, distant and flat, and the deck hummed under Marko’s boots as Galactica spun up her drives.
Thirty-three minutes until the next one.
Thirty-three minutes of borrowed time, seals that might hold, and fixes the Board hadn’t finished grading.
Marko let the cigarette burn down between his fingers and tried not to think about the Adriatic.
The books, he was learning, never closed.