Marko stood in the Adriatic’s forward cargo hold, one hand braced against a frame already humming the wrong pitch, and watched the Board paint the cascade in amber wireframe over rusted plating and bad welds.
Three ways for a sixty-year-old transport to die, and the clock hadn’t even started running yet.
FRAME 14 MICROMETEOR BREACH + STRESS FRACTURE.
CASCADE ACTIVE.
PATH A: FRAME 12 FAILS 00:18.
PATH B: BULKHEAD 7 SEPARATES 00:22.
PATH C: PATCH AT FRAME 15 OPENS 00:31.
Eighteen minutes before the first one landed.
Behind him, the DC party from Galactica worked fast and loud Corporal Hendry calling positions, two specialists hauling shoring beams through a hatch too narrow for the load.
Socko wrestled a torch rig into battery, swearing steadily in a tone that meant the seals were shot and he was making it work anyway.
The Adriatic’s captain stood in the hatchway, gray-haired and brittle, watching his ship bleed air into vacuum through a hole the size of a man’s fist.
He hadn’t said a word since Hendry told him to clear the space.
Marko pulled his attention off the wireframe and spoke to the frame itself, where Hendry could hear it.
“Frame Twelve’s the one that goes first.
Shore it now or the whole forward section opens.” Hendry looked at the breach the visible one, the one everyone was staring at, the one at Frame Fifteen.
“Dabrowski, the hole’s over there.” “The hole’s a symptom.
Twelve’s the wound.” He pointed at a seam two frames aft that looked, to anyone without the Read, like every other seam in a sixty-year-old transport hull.
“They patched it wrong three months ago.
It’s been loading stress into Fourteen ever since.
The meteor just opened what was already cracked.” “You’re telling me the breach we can see isn’t the problem.” “I’m telling you if you plug Fifteen and walk away, Twelve tears in under a minute and takes the bulkhead with it.” Hendry stared at him.
Then at the captain.
“That true?” The captain started to answer, then didn’t.
Looked at the seam Marko had pointed to like he was seeing it for the first time.
“We patched a coolant line there.
Back before the Fall.
It held.” “It held,” Marko said.
“Until today.” The Adriatic shuddered.
Something groaned deep in her bones.
PATH A ACCELERATING.
FRAME 12 FAILS 00:14.
Hendry made the call.
“Kowalski, Pena Frame Twelve, full shore, now.
Socko, get that torch on the bulkhead seam, anything that looks like it’s moving.
Dabrowski, you’re on Fifteen.
Patch it fast and dirty, I don’t care if it’s pretty.” Marko grabbed a plate and a magclamp and moved.
The breach at Fifteen was clean a puncture, not a tear, the edges still hot from friction.
He seated the plate, locked the clamps, and watched the Board track the pressure curve as the hold started winning back what it had lost.
Behind him, Kowalski and Pena hammered shoring beams into place against Frame Twelve with the kind of speed that came from knowing the clock was real.
Socko’s torch flared blue-white against the bulkhead seam, sealing a crack Marko could see widening in the overlay even as the weld laid down.
The captain hadn’t moved.
He stood in the hatchway, watching his ship die and be saved at the same time, and the look on his face was the look of a man who’d just learned his command had been on borrowed time for months.
FRAME 12 SHORED.
PATH A CONTAINED.
PATH B DECAYING.
“Bulkhead Seven,” Marko said, not loud, just clear enough for Hendry to hear.
“It’s not going to hold the outgassing.
We need to vent the aft compartment and seal the primary hatch or the separation happens anyway.” Hendry looked at him.
“There’s cargo back there.” “There’s cargo or there’s a hull.
Pick one.” The captain moved then, finally, a half-step forward that put him in Hendry’s line of sight.
“That’s three months of spare parts.
Medical supplies.
We can’t just” “You can.” Hendry’s voice was flat, a corporal talking to a captain of a ship that didn’t matter anymore.
“Dabrowski, vent it.
Socko, seal the hatch after him.” The captain looked like he wanted to argue and couldn’t find the ground to stand on.
He didn’t say anything else.
Marko went aft.
The compartment was small, low-ceilinged, packed with crates strapped to the walls in a pattern that said someone had tried to balance the load and done it wrong.
He found the vent control, a manual wheel crusted with sixty years of paint and neglect, and leaned into it.
The wheel didn’t move.
He reset his grip.
Leaned harder.
The Frame Twelve shore was buying him time but not much the bulkhead was still loading, and the Board’s projection said it had maybe six minutes before the welds gave and the whole aft section peeled.
The wheel broke free with a crack like a bone snapping.
Air screamed out through the vent.
The crates shifted against their straps.
One broke loose and tumbled, spilling plastic-wrapped bundles across the deck.
Marko didn’t stop to see what they were.
He spun the wheel until it locked, watched the pressure drop to nothing, and walked out.
Socko had the hatch already.
He slammed it shut and dogged it as Marko cleared the threshold, and the sound of the seal catching was the sound of a compartment written off.
PATH B CONTAINED.
PATH C NOMINAL.
HOLD STABLE.
FIX CONFIRMED THE ADRIATIC.
The Board went quiet.
Hendry looked at Marko, then at the sealed hatch, then back at the hold that was still breathing.
“That’s it?” “That’s it.” The shuddering had stopped.
The groan was gone.
The Adriatic hung in the black, wounded, ugly, and alive.
The captain stood in the hatchway and said nothing.
He looked smaller than he had when they’d arrived.
Hendry keyed his radio.
“Galactica, Damage Control Three.
The Adriatic is stable.
Breach contained, pressure holding, recommend she makes the next jump under her own power.” The voice that came back wasn’t Tyrol.
It was CIC, clipped and fast.
“Confirmed, DC-Three.
Write-off list updated.
Adriatic remains in convoy.
RTB when clear.” Write-off list.
Marko stood in the hold with a patch he’d slapped into place and a compartment he’d vented to vacuum, and the words sat in his chest like a stone he’d swallowed and couldn’t cough up.
They kept a list.
Of course they did.
Fuel was finite.
Hulls were irreplaceable.
Every jump cost tylium they’d never mine again, and every ship in the convoy was a probability curve of how long it could keep pace before it broke for good.
The Adriatic had been on that list.
He’d just taken her off it.
How many others were still on it?
ADRIATIC SURVIVAL PROJECTION: 31 DAYS ±9.
FAILURE MODE: STRUCTURAL.
He didn’t ask for that.
The Board gave it anyway.
Thirty-one days.
A little over a month.
The welds would hold until they didn’t.
The frames would carry load until they cracked.
She’d die tired, piece by piece, and there wasn’t a patch or a shore in the fleet that would stop it.
He’d saved her for a month.
Socko clapped him on the shoulder.
“Nice call on the Frame Twelve.
How’d you know?” Marko looked at the seam, clean and innocent to anyone without the Read.
“Old job.
Seen it before.” “Yeah?” Socko grinned.
“Your old job had sixty-year-old Colonial transports held together by spite and bad welds?” “Something like that.” They gathered tools.
Hendry logged the fix on a battered datapad.
The captain stood in the hatchway and watched them prepare to leave, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and very tired.
“Thank you.” Hendry nodded.
Didn’t say you’re welcome.
Just keyed the radio and called for pickup.
Marko walked out of the Adriatic’s hold carrying a toolbag and the number the Board had given him like a bill he’d never be able to pay.
The seal held.
For now.