“All hands, we have a critical situation on the fuel processing ship Tantalus.
Cascade failure, minutes to catastrophic loss.
Any qualified engineer with separation-system experience report to CIC immediately.” Marko’s hands stilled on the wrench.
Sixteen-hundred rotation, three bolts into the fuel relay Tyrol had assigned him, and the intercom had just rewritten his afternoon.
The Board opened.
TANTALUS FUEL SEPARATION SYSTEM FAILURE.
CASCADE TO RESERVES IN 4:20.
FIX AVAILABLE.
BEARING -18.
He set the wrench down.
Tyrol moved toward the comm panel.
“CIC, Tyrol.
I’ve got general DC capability but no fuel-processing quals.
What’s the situation?” “The separation valves are stuck open, Chief.
Unrefined tylium is mixing with the processed reserves.
If it reaches critical mass before we vent, the explosion will gut our fuel supply for the next twenty jumps.” “How long?” “Four minutes, maybe less.” “Who do you have on the Tantalus?” “Processing crew.
No engineers.
The last qualified specialist died in the Fall.” Tyrol’s mouth flattened.
“I’ll send” “Chief.” Marko’s voice was quiet.
“I can do it.” Tyrol turned.
“You’re not refinery-rated, Dabrowski.” “I know.” Marko met his eyes.
“Send me anyway.” For a second the Chief stared at him.
Whatever he saw in Marko’s face made his own go complicated.
Then he keyed the comm.
“CIC, Tyrol.
I’m sending Specialist Dabrowski.
He’ll need a Raptor, now.” “Chief, we need someone who” “You need someone who can stop it.
Send the Raptor.” The flight took ninety seconds.
The Tantalus was a civilian vessel, all jury-rigged plumbing and makeshift compartments never built to hold this much volatile fuel.
The processing deck smelled like scorched metal and panic hot tylium and ozone, the air itself tasting wrong.
The crew chief met Marko at the hatch a woman with burn scars on both hands and terror in her eyes.
Behind her, two deckhands stood frozen beside an open maintenance panel, tools abandoned on the grating.
“You’re the engineer?” “I’m what you’ve got,” Marko said.
“Show me.” She led him to the separation chamber.
The valves were screaming, pressure building behind stuck seals, unrefined tylium bleeding into the reserve tanks in a slow, irreversible mix.
The deck plates vibrated under his boots.
Three minutes left, maybe less.
Marko studied the array.
The Board overlaid it in amber a schematic he’d never seen before, rendering in perfect detail over the failing machinery.
SEPARATION VALVE ARRAY PRESSURE LOCK.
MANUAL OVERRIDE SEQUENCE REQUIRED.
STEP 1: ISOLATE FEED LINE, VALVE A-7.
“I need a hydraulic shunt and a pressure gauge,” Marko said.
The crew chief blinked.
“How did you” “Now.” She ran.
Marko’s hands moved.
The Board walked him through it, one step at a time a procedure he’d never been trained for, rendered in his fingers as cleanly as if he’d done it a thousand times.
Isolate the feed line.
Bleed the pressure.
Override the valve sequence by hand.
His palms knew the angles, the force, the exact moment to release and turn and lock.
The Tantalus crew watched.
Kord, halfway across the hangar deck when the call went out, had followed.
He stood in the hatch, silent, watching Dabrowski’s hands do work no deckhand should know how to do.
Two minutes.
STEP 4: REVERSE FLOW VALVE C-3.
HOLD 8 SECONDS.
RELEASE ON PRESSURE DROP.
Marko’s hands moved.
The valve fought him, pressure spiking hard enough to rattle the pipe housing, and he held it exactly as long as the Board said and not a second more.
The needle dropped.
One minute.
FINAL STEP: VENT CONTAMINATED MIX, ISOLATION TANK.
SEAL PRIMARY RESERVES.
He threw the vent.
Contaminated tylium screamed out through the emergency line into a sacrificial holding tank, and the separation valves cycled, one by one, back into their correct positions.
The hiss died.
The reserve tanks sealed.
The cascade stopped.
Silence hit the deck like a pressure wave the absence of screaming metal so sudden it rang in his ears.
Marko stepped back.
His hands were shaking.
The Tell was starting a distant pull at the edge of his vision, light bending wrong at the periphery and he’d done an engineer’s work in front of a crew, a master-at-arms, and a CIC net listening to every word.
The crew chief was staring at him.
“How did you know that sequence?” “I didn’t,” Marko said.
It was the only true answer he had.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Her eyes went to the sealed reserves, then back to him grateful and unsettled in equal measure.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
Marko nodded and walked toward the hatch.
His legs felt distant, heavy in a way that had nothing to do with gravity.
The Bearing burn was settling in eighteen units drawn down in under four minutes and the Board had gone quiet.
Kord was still standing there.
“Specialist,” Kord said.
Soft, almost conversational.
“Where did you learn fuel separation protocol?” “I didn’t.” “Then how” “I don’t know, Sergeant.” Marko met his eyes.
“I saw what needed to happen and I did it.
If that’s a crime, write it up.” He walked past Kord onto the Raptor.
The sergeant didn’t follow immediately he stayed in the hatch for three more seconds, watching the sealed valves as if they might explain what he’d witnessed.
The flight back was silent.
The pilot didn’t ask questions.
Marko sat in the jumpseat, hands shaking against his knees, the Tell pulling at the edges of the world.
Every rivet in the Raptor’s hull stood out too sharp, too bright, the way things did when the Board had taken more than he could spare.
He’d saved the fleet’s fuel.
He’d done it in front of witnesses who would never forget.
And somewhere three decks up, in CIC, Commander Adama turned to his tactical officer and asked a question Marko would never hear but would feel for the rest of his life.
“Who is that specialist?” Dee caught it from her comm station, fingers pausing over the board.
Gaeta heard it while pulling up Dabrowski’s service record, his stylus stopping mid-stroke.
Tigh, pouring a drink he wouldn’t finish, set the bottle down.
And Kord, stepping off the Tantalus behind Marko with a case that had stopped being circumstantial, heard it too.
Marko made it back to the hangar deck.
Tyrol was waiting, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
“It held?” “It held,” Marko said.
Tyrol studied him for a long moment.
“You saved twenty jumps’ worth of fuel doing work you were never trained for.” “Chief” “I don’t want to know how, Dabrowski.” Tyrol’s voice was quiet.
“I’m grateful.
The fleet’s grateful.
And gratitude like that throws a long shadow.
People are going to notice you now.” Marko said nothing.
“You’re off rotation for the next twelve hours,” Tyrol said.
“Get some rest.
You look like hell.” Marko nodded and walked to berthing.
His bunk was crooked from Kord’s search.
He sat on the edge, palms flat on his knees, and breathed.
The Board flickered.
FIX WITNESSED.
HOLDING.
STANDING WATCH ADVANCED.
And below it, in smaller text, the line he’d been watching climb for two weeks: HARD RETURN +4.
Marko closed his eyes.
He’d saved the reserves.
He’d burned his invisibility to do it the one thing that had kept him alive since the Fall, the single fragile advantage of being nobody, gone in four minutes of valve work on a ship he’d never set foot on before today.
And somewhere above him, the Commander of the fleet now knew his name.