Marko picked the alcove for the one thing that mattered after a day like this one one door in, tucked behind the water reclamation monitors, nobody’s reason to walk past it.
Old habit: count the exits before you let your guard down.
He sat, back to the cool bulkhead, and let the day catch up to him.
His shift had run long, and the lifeboat rescue sat in his gut like ballast nine saved, four lost, the arithmetic accepted.
He’d logged the call, closed the tablet, and kept moving because that was what you did.
The Board had marked it HOLDING.
Tyrol had called it good work.
Marko closed his eyes and let the ship hum through the steel.
“Dabrowski.” He opened his eyes.
Dee stood at the alcove’s mouth, a tablet under one arm and a look on her face that said she’d been searching.
Not frantic.
Methodical.
“Petty Officer,” he said, and started to stand.
“Stay.” She stepped inside and leaned against the opposite bulkhead, not quite close.
“I’ve been looking for you.” “Found me.” “You’re good at that,” she said.
“Being exactly where no one’s looking.” Marko said nothing.
Watched her the way he’d watch a frame under load waiting to see which way it moved.
“I wanted to say thank you,” Dee said.
“For the Monarch intercept.
You heard something I didn’t, and you were right.” “Did my job.” “So did I.” She tilted her head, studying him.
“I relay every word that comes through my net.
I don’t edit.
I don’t filter.
I pass it clean, and I trust the people on the other end to handle the truth.” The ground shifted under the conversation.
This wasn’t thanks.
This was a thesis.
“That’s the job,” he said carefully.
“It’s more than that.” Dee’s voice stayed level, but her eyes were sharp.
“In a fleet this size, running this scared, the second you start deciding what people can handle the second you manage the truth instead of serving it you’ve stopped being a relay.
You’ve become something else.” “A filter.” “A liar.” No heat in it.
Just fact.
“A kind one, maybe.
But the kindness doesn’t change what you are.” Marko held very still.
Dee kept going, and she wasn’t accusing she was explaining.
Stating her creed like another person might state their name.
“I stay human by staying honest,” she said.
“The day I start editing the signal is the day I lose what makes me worth trusting.
So I don’t.
Ever.” The space went quiet except for the ship’s hum.
She’d just handed him a boundary.
A map of where the line was and what happened if you crossed it.
She’d said it plainly because that was the only way she knew how to say anything.
“You think I edit,” he said.
“I think you’re careful.” Dee’s expression didn’t change.
“I think you hear things most people don’t, and I think you choose what to pass and what to hold.
I don’t know why.
Could be caution, could be something else.
But I know how it moves.” Marko’s pulse kicked once, hard.
She’d clocked the seam.
Not the overlay she couldn’t see that but the space around it, the careful choosing, the places where his honesty stopped.
“If I edited,” he said slowly, “would that be a problem?” “Depends.” Dee pushed off the bulkhead, not closing the distance but shifting her weight like she was settling in.
“Are you doing it to protect yourself, or to protect the people you’re lying to?” “Does the difference matter?” “To me it does.” Her voice softened, just slightly.
“If you’re protecting yourself, that’s fine.
Everyone’s got a right to privacy.
But if you’re protecting me if you’re deciding what I can handle and managing the truth because you think I’m too fragile to carry it then we’re going to have a problem.” Marko exhaled.
She wasn’t fragile.
That was the whole point.
She was the steadiest voice on the net, the one who threaded the fleet together through the thirty-three-minute clock, and she did it by refusing to flinch from anything the universe handed her.
And she’d just told him exactly what would break them.
“You’re not fragile,” he said.
“Good.” Dee smiled, small and real.
“Then we’re fine.” Marko wanted to believe that.
Wanted to take the out she’d just given him and call it clean.
But the overlay sat behind his eyes, amber and patient, and what he managed wasn’t privacy it was the gap between what he knew and what he could prove, and Dee had just drawn a line exactly through it.
“What if I told you,” he said, “that I ration what I say because the thing I know looks like a guess until it holds.
And by the time it holds, it’s obvious, so no one asks how I knew.” Dee’s eyes narrowed, not suspicious considering.
“That’s not editing.
That’s just being competent and quiet about it.” “What if the gap’s bigger than that.” “How much bigger.” Marko didn’t answer.
Dee watched him for a long moment.
Then she crossed the narrow gap and sat down beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
The bulkhead hummed through the steel, through both of them.
“I’m not asking you to tell me everything,” she said quietly.
“I’m just asking you not to lie.” “I haven’t lied to you.” “I know.” She turned her head, meeting his eyes.
“And I trust you.
But the second I catch you managing me deciding what I can handle, editing the signal because you think I need protecting I’ll stop.
Just so you know.” Marko went still.
She’d said it lightly.
A warning dressed as honesty, no threat in her voice, just the same plainness she’d used to state her creed.
And she hadn’t noticed him freeze.
Hadn’t clocked how the words landed like a countdown.
The second I catch you.
Not if.
When.
Because Dee didn’t miss things.
She heard the pitch of a signal through static, read people by the cadence of their breathing, and she’d already mapped the seam in his honesty without naming what it was.
Give her time, give her proximity, and she’d find the edge of the overlay not the overlay itself, but the gap where his honesty thinned, the careful silence he wrapped it in.
And when she did, she’d stop.
Marko looked at her steady, principled, the best part of his fleet and knew exactly what he was building.
A foundation with a fault line running through it.
“I hear you,” he said.
Dee’s smile widened, just a fraction.
“Good.” She didn’t move away.
Neither did he.
The alcove held them both, quiet and small and out of the way, and for ten minutes the war let them sit there without needing anything.
Marko memorized the feeling.
The shape of her shoulder next to his.
The way she breathed, steady and even, like she’d found a pocket of calm and decided to keep it.
The faint static-smell of her uniform, the same smell as every comm station on the ship.
He memorized it because he knew what came next.
The pull was mutual.
She’d closed the distance and sat down beside him, and that meant more than either of them had said out loud.
They’d gotten closer.
Built a real footing in the space of a ten-minute conversation, and it was good, and it was fragile, and it was standing on the one truth he couldn’t give her.
Marko had spent his whole life filtering what people knew.
Gauging the distance between what he saw and what he could say, curating every warning so the fleet could function without panic.
He’d told himself it was mercy.
That softening the truth was a kindness, a way to carry the weight so other people didn’t have to.
Dee had just named it plainly.
And she was right.
The worst part was that he couldn’t stop.
Couldn’t peel the overlay off and hand it back.
It kept people alive, and using it meant holding the gap closed, and holding it closed meant deciding what people could handle.
He could guard his honesty with everyone else in the fleet and live with it.
But Dee had drawn her line.
And Marko had just stepped into territory that mattered, built on a foundation she’d stop trusting the second she saw its shape.
“Shift’s almost over,” Dee said, glancing at her chrono.
“You heading to berthing?” “Soon.” She stood, brushing off her uniform.
Met his eyes with no pity, no suspicion just the quiet regard of someone who’d decided he was worth her time.
“Find me later,” she said.
“If you want.” “I will.” Dee nodded and walked out of the alcove, her steps even and unhurried, back to the comm station that needed her.
Marko sat alone with the bulkhead at his back and the overlay humming amber behind his eyes.
He’d gotten closer to Dee.
Let her matter.
Built a real connection in the space of a quiet conversation, and it was the best part of his fleet, and he was terrified of it.
Because she’d told him exactly what would break them.
And Marko knew, with the same cold certainty the Board used to mark a failing frame, that he couldn’t give her the one thing she needed.
He stayed until the shift change bell rang, then stood and walked back to the hangar deck, carrying the warmth and the fault line both.