The alarm split the reception like a knife.
Marko had the cup halfway to his mouth when the klaxon hit the old decommissioning-era wail that shouldn’t have been in the rotation anymore, the one that meant action stations across the whole ship.
The cup hit the deck.
Around him the crowd went from polite ceremony stillness to combat scattered in the span of a breath.
Adama’s voice came over the 1MC, flat and final.
“This is the Commander.
Set Condition One throughout the ship.
This is not a drill.
All hands to action stations.” Marko was already moving.
The deck gang hit the passageway in a knot Tyrol in the lead, Cally and Socko flanking, Marko in the flow.
No questions yet.
The Chief’s face had gone to stone and men who’d been laughing ten seconds ago now moved like sailors who remembered what the job was.
The ship lurched.
Not drift.
Not maneuvering.
Impact.
The overhead lights stuttered, went amber, and the deck plates sang a note Marko felt in his teeth.
Somewhere below, metal screamed against metal a sound that meant hull compression, structural grief, the ship taking a wound she’d remember.
Tyrol’s radio crackled.
Damage Control Central, fifteen calls deep already, every one of them worse than the last.
“Chief, we’ve got” The next hit was close enough Marko felt it through the deck.
Somewhere forward a klaxon started screaming and didn’t stop.
“DC-One, frame forty-seven!” The voice on the net was cracking.
“Fire in the galley passage, she’s going toward the magazine Chief we need bodies NOW” Tyrol didn’t break stride.
“Dabrowski, Socko, Cally, you’re on me.
Rest of you, Tool up and stand by for tasking.” He keyed his radio.
“DC-One, Chief Tyrol en route with a party, two minutes.” They made it in ninety seconds.
Marko could smell it before he could see it hot copper and burning polymer, the stink of a ship cooking herself from the inside.
The smoke hit them first black, chemical, the kind that came off burning insulation and wiring.
The passage to frame forty-seven was a mess: a buckled hatch, scorch marks crawling up the bulkhead, and a green damage-control crewman with wide eyes and a hose he had no idea what to do with.
“Report!” Tyrol’s bark broke the noise flat.
The crewman flinched.
“Chief fire started in the galley service passage, sir, I there’s men inside, two of them, but the” “How long?” “Three minutes, maybe four before she reaches the ordnance sir I think we need to flood and seal, the book says” “The book says a lot of things.” Tyrol turned to Marko.
“Dabrowski.
Talk to me.” Marko was looking past the hatch, through it, at the space his eyes couldn’t see and the overlay could.
The Board lit.
Amber wireframe, cool and exact, painting the passage in clean lines over the smoke and ruin.
The fire: a bright seam climbing the port bulkhead, six meters in, feeding on a ruptured coolant line that had flash-burned when something shrapnel, debris, the gods knew what had punched in during the hit.
The two men: huddled near the aft hatch, blocked by flame, no masks, maybe a minute left before smoke did what the fire hadn’t.
And the ordnance magazine, four frames down, its feed lines threaded along the burning passage.
The overlay printed it clean and cold: FRAME 47 FIRE REACHES MAGAZINE 3:40.
FIX: SHORE FEED HATCH, VENT AFT, EXTRACT B-DECK.
BEARING -12.
Marko’s chest went tight.
The cost landed before he’d even opened his mouth a slow leaching cold that started behind his eyes and sank into his shoulders like ice water pooling in the marrow.
He blinked the overlay down and met Tyrol’s eyes.
“Don’t seal it.” The kid with the hose stared.
“Sir, the magazine” “There’s two men in there and a better door.” Marko pointed past the forward hatch, tracking the route only he could see.
“Shore the feed hatch, vent aft, we pull them through B-deck.
We’ve got” he made it look like a guess, like instinct “under four minutes.
Move.” Tyrol held his look for one long beat.
Then: “You heard him.
Cally, get the shoring gear.
Socko, vent controls, aft access.
You” he jabbed a finger at the kid “hose on the forward bulkhead, keep it from spreading.
Dabrowski, you’re with me.” They moved.
Marko’s hands found the tools before his brain caught up pry bar, shore jack, the small hydraulic ram they used for hatch compression.
Tyrol was beside him, matching his rhythm, and for thirty seconds the only sound was metal on metal and the crackle of fire eating itself alive on the other side of the bulkhead.
“Feed hatch shored!” Cally’s voice, tight but steady.
“Vent cycling!” Socko, somewhere aft, his tone all business and no jokes.
The overlay tracked it in real time: pressure dropping in the passage, the fire starving, the two men still breathing but not for long.
Marko dropped the jack and grabbed the hatch wheel.
“Tyrol B-deck access, now.” They cracked the secondary hatch the one the book didn’t call for, the one that only mattered if you knew exactly where the men were and exactly how the vent flow would push the smoke.
The passage beyond was clear.
Marko went in first, low and fast, and found them: two crewmen, one unconscious, one barely hanging on.
“Got ’em!” Tyrol was right behind him.
Together they dragged both men through the hatch, into clean air, onto the deck where Cally had a mask ready and the DC kid was staring like he’d just watched someone walk into a sealed compartment and back out alive.
The fire collapsed.
Without fuel, without air, it folded in on itself and died with a low hiss that sounded almost resentful.
The vent system pulled the last of the smoke aft, the shored hatch held, and somewhere deep in the ship’s bones the magazine sat cold and untouched.
Marko came off the deck with singed gloves and his chest still tight from the Bearing drain.
The two crewmen were breathing.
One of them older, soot-streaked, eyes still clearing looked up at Marko with something too raw to be gratitude alone.
“How’d you know we were there?” His voice scraped like rust on steel.
Marko met his eyes and gave him the only answer he had that wouldn’t sound like a lie.
“I heard you.” The man’s look said he didn’t believe that but didn’t have a better answer.
Tyrol stepped in, all business.
“Get them to sickbay.
Cally, Socko, secure the passage and run a post-check on the magazine feed.
Dabrowski” He stopped.
Looked at Marko the way a man looks at a tool he’s just realized he doesn’t fully understand.
“Good ear.” “Chief.” The green crewman was still staring.
So was one of the saved men.
Marko could feel it their eyes on his back, a question half-formed behind each stare that nobody knew how to voice.
He’d been seen.
The ship lurched again.
Somewhere on the net, DC Central was screaming for bodies at three more frames.
Tyrol’s radio lit up and the Chief was already moving, snapping orders, pulling the party toward the next crisis.
Marko followed.
His gloves were ruined.
The cold behind his eyes hadn’t faded.
And as he fell in with the rest of the deck gang, the overlay flickered once brief, unbidden and printed a block he hadn’t asked for.
FIX WITNESSED.
HOLDING.
STANDING WATCH ADVANCED.
He blinked it down.
The Board kept score.
And somewhere behind him, in the smoke-stained passage with two men still breathing who shouldn’t be, the first tick of a suspicion he couldn’t see was already rising.