Sleep hadn’t found Marko yet just the hum of life support and, three racks down, someone breathing like they were trying not to wake up screaming when the Board offered him a block he hadn’t asked for.
AFTER-ACTION AVAILABLE.
FRAME 8 COMPARTMENT D FAILURE.
He didn’t want the After-Action.
Didn’t want to look at the math of how Weir and Ruiz and Latos had died in a compartment he’d walked away from calling the shore good enough.
The block sat there.
Patient.
Amber phosphor against the inside of his eyelids when he closed them.
He opened his eyes and thought the query he’d been holding off since the alarm yesterday.
What did I miss.
The overlay bloomed.
Not a wireframe this time.
A schematic, flat and technical, Frame 8 Compartment D in cross-section with the shore he’d called rendered in thin amber lines and the failure mode painted over it in a color that wasn’t quite red.
The shore had held for six days.
The frame beside it the one outside the compartment, the one he’d never Read because the fire had been contained and the shore was in had been taking incremental load every jump.
Micro-fractures propagating through a weld someone had called good three years before the war and never inspected since.
The shore transferred the load.
The frame took it until it couldn’t.
When it gave, the compartment’s structure went with it, and the men inside had maybe four seconds between the sound of steel tearing and the bulkhead coming down.
Marko’s gut went cold.
He could have Read the adjacent frame.
Should have, if he’d been thinking past the fire to the structure around it.
The capacity had been there.
The Bearing had been there.
He’d stopped at the shore because the fire was out and Tyrol had needed him three other places and he’d called it finished.
The block that came next sat at the bottom of the schematic like an invoice.
SHORE VALID.
FRAME FAILURE EXTERNAL TO FIX BOUNDARY.
STRUCTURAL CONTEXT UNREQUESTED AT INITIAL READ.
PASSIVE UNLOCK AVAILABLE: CONTEXT READ.
LOAD-BEARING STRUCTURE WITHIN TWO FRAMES OF PRIMARY FIX, AUTOMATIC.
PRICE: STATE THE BOUNDARY YOU SET.
Marko read it twice.
The passive was exactly what he needed.
Exactly what would have saved them.
A Read that indexed the structure around the fix automatically, so he’d see the adjacent frame’s fracture the way he’d seen the shore’s load.
All he had to do was tell the Board why he’d stopped where he’d stopped.
He lay there and felt the ship hum under him and didn’t say a thing.
The memorial was at 1100, down in the port hangar because the chapel couldn’t hold the crowd anymore.
Marko went because not going would have been noticed, and because Tyrol had made it clear in the way he hadn’t made it an order that the deck gang was expected to show.
He stood in the back with Socko and Cally and a dozen other specialists, all of them in clean coveralls that still smelled like whatever they’d been working on before they’d stopped to stand here.
The priest some civilian from one of the Fleet ships said words Marko didn’t track.
Specific and forgettable at the same time.
Three names got added to the wall.
Weir.
Ruiz.
Latos.
Cally cried quietly into her sleeve.
Socko stood with his jaw set and his hands in his pockets, staring at the deck like it owed him an answer.
Marko just stood.
He’d done his grieving in private, in his rack, staring at a schematic that told him exactly how three men had died because he’d drawn a boundary and called the work inside it finished.
The thing moving in his chest now wasn’t fresh.
It was old and tired and had the same shape as the hatch he’d sealed in another life, and crying wasn’t going to move it.
So he stood.
Composed.
Didn’t look away when they called the names, didn’t look down when Cally broke, didn’t do anything but hold still the way he’d learned to hold still when the arithmetic spent people and you were the one who’d done the math.
Dee was three rows forward, near the front with the CIC and command staff.
She didn’t turn around.
But when the priest finished and people started filing out, she walked past Marko’s row on her way to the hatch and her eyes caught his for maybe a second.
He couldn’t read what was in them.
Respect, maybe.
Or question.
She didn’t stop, didn’t say anything, just kept walking.
Marko followed the crowd out and went back to work.
The hydraulic system in Bay 3 had a slow leak nobody had been able to pin down for two weeks.
Marko pulled the access panel, traced the lines by hand, and found the weeping seal in under ten minutes without ever asking the Board for help.
Socko handed him the replacement seal from the parts bin.
“You’re working too fast.” Marko fitted the seal, torqued it down.
“It’s a slow leak.
Faster I find it, less hydraulic we lose.” “That’s not what I mean.” Marko wiped his hands on a rag and didn’t look up.
“I’m fine.” “You didn’t cry.” “Not everybody does.” “Cally did.
Rivas did.
Pollux.
Me, a little, last night when nobody was looking.” Socko’s voice stayed level.
Not accusing.
Just factual.
“You stood there like you were on watch.
That’s not fine.” Marko sealed the panel, logged the repair on his tablet.
“I grieve different.” “Or you don’t.” Marko looked at him.
Socko’s face was tired and honest and carrying something that looked like worry under the usual banter.
“I do,” Marko said.
Quiet.
True.
“Just not where people can see it.” Socko nodded slowly.
Let it sit.
“All right.
But if you need to talk” “I know where you bunk.” “I’m going to charge you for my time.” It surprised a short, dry breath out of Marko that wasn’t quite a laugh.
Socko’s mouth twitched.
“There he is,” Socko said.
“Thought we lost you.” They worked the rest of the shift in the comfortable silence of people who didn’t need to fill the air, and when Marko went back to berthing that night the Board was still holding the same block it had offered that morning.
PRICE: STATE THE BOUNDARY YOU SET.
He lay in his rack and thought about the adjacent frame he hadn’t Read.
The fire he’d stopped and walked away from.
The three men who’d died because he’d called a shore finished when the structure around it was still failing.
The truth the Board wanted was simple.
He’d stopped because stopping had felt like enough.
Because he’d been tired and Tyrol had needed him and the fire was out and he’d wanted the save to be clean and complete and done.
He’d wanted to bank it.
File it under wins and move on.
And the Board wouldn’t give him the capacity to see wider until he admitted he’d drawn the boundary where it was comfortable instead of where it was true.
Marko closed his eyes.
He could say it.
Right now.
Spend the honesty and take the passive and never miss an adjacent frame again.
But saying it meant looking at every other save he’d called finished.
Meant asking whether he’d drawn those boundaries true or just drawn them where he could stand to stop.
Meant carrying the thought that maybe the sealed hatch in his old life hadn’t been the only door, and he’d just stopped looking because looking hurt.
He wasn’t ready for that.
So he kept the grief, and the doubt, and the old weight that had his name on it, and he let the passive stay locked.
The Board didn’t argue.
It just went dark.
Marko lay there and listened to the ship hum and someone three racks down trying not to wake up screaming, and he wondered how long he could keep refusing to pay for the things he needed before the bill came due in a way he couldn’t dodge.
The next morning Dee found him in the corridor outside CIC.
He’d been running a fiber-optic diagnostic on the backup comms line, routine maintenance that didn’t need the overlay but kept his hands busy.
She stopped.
He stopped.
“Petty Officer,” he said.
“Specialist.” She had a tablet under one arm and grease on one sleeve, probably from the same fiber run he’d been tracing.
She looked at him the way she’d looked at him in the hangar yesterday.
Measuring something.
Then she said, quiet and level, “The ones who don’t cry are usually the ones carrying the most.” Marko didn’t have an answer for that that wasn’t a lie or a confirmation.
Dee nodded like he’d said something anyway.
“Just wanted you to know someone noticed.” She walked past him into CIC, and Marko stood in the corridor with a fiber diagnostic tool in his hand and the feeling that he’d just been seen in a way he hadn’t agreed to.
He went back to work.
The backup comms line tested clean.
He logged it, handed the toolkit back to the tech station, and went to find the next thing that needed fixing.
The passive stayed locked.
The grief stayed where he’d put it.
And Dee’s words stayed in his head, turning over like a part he couldn’t quite identify but knew he’d need later.