Kord found him in Bay 3, where the overhead floods threw hard white light on everything and nowhere to hide.
“Specialist Dabrowski.” Marko kept his eyes on the cable harness.
“Sergeant.” “Where were you, eleven-hundred to fifteen-hundred, four days back?” The day of the Constellation call.
The forty minutes he’d let burn.
Marko set down the crimper.
Turned.
Met Kord’s eyes straight nothing to hide and everything to fear.
“Bay 2.
Pulling damaged relay modules with Specialist Baird.” Kord’s face stayed flat.
“Baird confirms that.” “Then I was there.” “He also said you were with him the shift the Adriatic went critical.
And the morning the Cybele took the hatch breach.” Marko’s pulse stayed level.
His hands stayed loose.
“Socko and I work a lot of shifts together, Sergeant.
Chief Tyrol assigns us that way.” “Funny how you’re always working with someone when something breaks somewhere else you happen to know the answer to.” “Not funny.
Efficient.
Two-man teams handle more ground than solo.” Kord stepped closer.
The bay was full of deck gang, but the space around Marko had gone very quiet.
“Baird’s covering for you.” “Baird’s telling you where I was.” “He’s telling me what you told him to tell me.” Marko kept his voice flat.
Procedural.
The tone that gave Kord nothing to pry at.
“If you think Specialist Baird is lying to a master-at-arms during an investigation, Sergeant, that’s between you and him.
I was in Bay 2.
Pulling relays.
For four hours.” Kord held the silence.
Let it stretch.
Watched for the crack.
Marko held.
He’d sealed a hatch on a screaming man once.
He could stand in white light and let a hunter look.
“We’re done,” Kord said finally.
“For now.” He walked.
Marko waited until the hatch cycled shut before he let his shoulders drop.
Socko appeared from behind a Viper’s landing strut, wiping his hands on a rag that hadn’t been clean in weeks.
“You’re welcome.” Marko turned.
“What did you do.” “Told Kord you were with me.
All shift.
Because you were.” “I wasn’t.” “You were in Bay 2 for three of those four hours, brother.
I stretched it.
Kord can’t prove I’m wrong unless he’s got eyes I don’t know about, and if he’s got eyes like that we’re all frakked anyway.” Something in Marko went hard and quiet.
“You lied to a master-at-arms.” “I gave him an alibi.
There’s a difference.” “Not to Kord.
Not if he catches it.” Socko shrugged.
Pocketed the rag.
“Then he catches it.
You think I’m letting him pull my best DC hand because the guy’s got good ears?
Frak that.
You were with me.
That’s the story.
It holds or it doesn’t.” The creed in someone else’s mouth.
Marko swallowed it down and kept going.
“If it doesn’t hold, he takes you down with me.” “Then I go down.
I’ve gone down for worse.” “Not for me you haven’t.” Socko’s grin surfaced, crooked and sure.
“Yet.
I haven’t gone down for you yet.
Everything’s got a price, Dabrowski.
This one’s a two-jump favor, plus hazard, plus the quiet costs you a bottle of whatever I can’t get and you somehow can.” The invoice.
The code they spoke in when the loyalty underneath was too big to name.
Marko’s hands were steady.
They felt like someone else’s.
“I can’t pay that.” “You don’t have to.
I’m extending credit.” Socko clapped him once on the shoulder, hard enough to feel real.
“You’re good for it.
You’ve been good for it since you pulled Cally out of that coolant flood without stopping to ask what the book said.
The deck knows its own, brother.
Kord doesn’t.” He walked before Marko could answer.
Left him standing in Bay 3 under the floods with a debt no ledger could close and a friend who’d burned real risk like other men burned scrip.
Marko had carried his own weight his whole life.
Civilian side, Colonial side, the old world and this one.
You never leaned.
You never let people bleed for you.
You bore it alone because the alternative was feeding someone else into the fire, and he’d done that once and the name had stopped behind the steel and he’d sworn The thought stuck.
He’d sworn he wouldn’t be the man who decided who paid.
Socko had decided.
For him.
Without asking.
Marko sat down on a tool crate.
The bay was loud with work and the ship’s mechanical breath, but the sound felt far away.
The Board had been silent since the Constellation.
Not dark just waiting.
Watching him sit with what he’d learned.
That being alone was safer.
Alone meant no one else bled when the blade fell.
And Socko had weighed covering a too-lucky specialist against an investigator who never quit and shouldered it anyway, because Marko was worth it.
Not because Marko had asked.
Because Socko had decided the friend mattered more than the danger, and that certainty was what Marko couldn’t survive and couldn’t refuse.
He’d told himself he was protecting people by staying distant.
Keeping them out of the blast radius.
Rationing what they knew so they couldn’t be caught holding his secrets.
Socko had walked into the radius with his eyes open and his story straight, and the lie would hold or it wouldn’t, and if it didn’t Kord would have two names instead of one.
Marko’s chest hurt in a place that wasn’t physical.
He stood, went back to the cable harness, pulled the damaged sections and logged them.
The work was easy his hands knew it before his brain caught up.
Somewhere Kord was writing, or checking his notes against the watch logs, or interviewing another deckhand who’d been in the wrong place at the right time.
Somewhere the alibi Socko had built was holding by a hair, and the only thing keeping it from unraveling was that Marko had actually been in Bay 2 for most of the window and Socko was good enough at his job that no one could say for sure he was lying.
The exposure was real.
What Socko had done was real.
Marko worked until end of shift, checked the board, logged off.
Found Socko in the starboard berthing, playing cards with Cally and two other deck rats Marko knew by face but not name.
Marko dropped a flask on the table.
Unmarked.
Unsourced.
Grey-market stock, the sort Socko quoted prices on and Marko never asked about.
Socko picked it up.
Eyed it.
Sniffed the cap.
“Phoebe brandy.
Pre-war.
Where in the void did you get this?” “You don’t ask, I don’t tell.
That cover the tab?” Socko looked at him.
The grin slipped, just for a beat, and underneath it was the same quiet heat Marko felt when he made a fix hold and a man walked away breathing.
“We’re square,” Socko said.
Pocketed the flask.
“This time.” “This time?” “You’re my brother, Dabrowski.
That means you’re expensive.” The grin came back, full and easy.
“Genocide discount doesn’t apply twice.” Cally laughed.
One of the deck rats made a crack about Socko going soft.
Socko told him where to shove it, and the game went on, and Marko stood there in the noise and the warmth and the smell of too many people living too close, and he understood.
He’d been adopted.
Not asked.
Not consulted.
Just claimed same as Socko claimed a corner of the market, same as Tyrol claimed a bird that refused to fly for anyone else.
The deck knew its own.
Marko had a circle now.
Small.
Founded on a lie Socko had told to keep him breathing and a bottle Marko couldn’t explain having.
Built on what the Board had been teaching him since the clawback: that survival was never clean, and the weight landed in pieces, and sometimes the hardest part was watching someone else carry it for you.
He nodded once.
Turned to go.
“Marko.” He stopped.
Socko didn’t use his first name.
Not ever.
Socko’s voice was quieter.
Still had the grin in it, but under that a warning.
“Don’t make me regret it.” Marko met his eyes.
“I won’t.” He left.
The corridor was dim and cold and empty, and his reflection in the dark porthole glass looked different someone who’d started this war alone and wasn’t anymore.
The Board woke.
Not a Read.
Not a block.
Just a single line, amber phosphor in the black.
SACRIFICE WITNESSED.
HARD RETURN WHERE NO RETURN SHOULD BE.
STANDING WATCH PENDING.
Pending.
Not advanced.
Not revoked.
Pending on whether Marko deserved what Socko had spent.
Whether the fix the alibi, the circle, the belonging would bear the weight or crack under it.
Marko kept walking.
The ship hummed around him, thirty-three minutes from the next jump, and somewhere behind him Socko was drinking pre-war brandy he hadn’t asked the price of, and somewhere ahead Kord was writing in a file that had Marko’s name on it and now maybe Socko’s too.
It held or it didn’t.
Everything else was a story they told so they could keep working.
The corridor stretched.
Marko walked it.
Alone, but less alone than he’d been an hour ago, and the weight of that sat next to the sealed hatch and the Constellation’s forty minutes and every other correct choice that left a stain.
The Board’s glow faded.
The watch went on.