The next day started with Rosalia beating me to the kitchen again. I stumbled in, hair standing at odd angles, to find her already dressed and sipping tea with that infuriatingly composed morning-person energy.

  "Tomorrow," I muttered, "I'm going to wake up first."

  "One of these days," she replied, "you will stop blaming your bed for poor discipline."

  "That bed is a trap," I protested. "Anti-gravity, perfect temperature regulation. It's not my fault."

  "Of course not." Her lips twitched with amusement.

  Over breakfast, we mapped out the day's work.

  "The new hull section is ready," Rosalia said, reviewing the checklist on her datapad. "We install the drive into its sheath, attach the section, seal it, run basic tests. The calculations are straightforward."

  "Piece of cake," I agreed, loading my plate with the ChefPro’s version of a "traditional English breakfast." "We've been working up to this. We've got the procedures down."

  "The individual components all tested perfectly," she added.

  "Exactly. This is just assembly. Plug and play." I grinned. "Well, plug and weld and carefully calibrate. But close enough."

  She smiled back, and for a moment, everything felt right. We were making real progress. The Reizen was coming together. We were actually doing this.

  Today was going to be a good day, I could feel it.

  The training VI had a surprise for me. By completing more than half of my exercises at gold rank for six consecutive days, I'd unlocked a "mystery reward." Potential prizes ranged from new exercise routines to exclusive ChefPro recipes.

  "Loot boxes," I muttered, staring at the notification. "Of course this universe has loot boxes."

  Despite my complaints, I absolutely crushed the workout. Gold rank on everything except hypoxic yoga, which remained my nemesis. One day, I told myself. One day I'll crack that smug breathing exercise.

  While waiting for Rosalia near the Reizen's dock, I caught myself mentally calculating how many more sessions I'd need to unlock the next tier of rewards. What would the prize be? A new recipe? Maybe an advanced training module? The possibility made my fingers itch with anticipation.

  I froze mid-thought.

  *Oh no. It's working. The gamification is actually working on me.*

  "You look troubled."

  I jumped. Rosalia stood a few meters away, tool bag slung over one shoulder, watching me with concerned eyes.

  "I'm not troubled," I said, running a hand through my hair. "I'm being played by a fitness VI. And *losing*."

  I explained the concept of loot boxes, gamification, and variable reward schedules while her worried expression gradually melted into a grin.

  "So it's training you," she said, "like a laboratory animal?"

  "Worse. Like a gamer." I groaned. "And it's working. I'm actually excited about random fitness rewards. It could be a protein shake recipe. It could be a new stretching routine. It's basically a slot machine, and I know it's a slot machine, and I'm still pulling the damn lever."

  "But you are exercising more effectively," she pointed out, her grin widening.

  "That's not the point! The point is I'm being psychologically manipulated by an algorithm designed to exploit human psychological shortcomings!"

  She actually laughed. "Nico, if being manipulated makes you healthier, perhaps you should let it manipulate you."

  I opened my mouth to object. Stopped. "You know what? Fair point. Bring on the dopamine rewards. Exploit away, training VI."

  We were both chuckling as we entered the Reizen, tools in hand, ready for another day of ship repairs.

  It felt good. We were getting better at this. More confident. More capable.

  Everything was going smoothly. The new drive slid into its berth perfectly, mounting brackets aligned on the first try. We were making excellent time.

  Then we hit a small snag. One of the fuel line junctions wouldn't handle the upgraded power loads.

  "Easy fix," I said. "I'll swap the junction, you monitor from the bridge."

  "Acknowledged," Rosalia replied.

  I crawled through the narrow access hatches, humming tunelessly while I worked. This was routine now. We had this down to a system. I was elbow-deep in cabling, swapping the old junction for a new one, when I heard it.

  *Hisssssss.*

  Something cold and sticky hit my back.

  "What the… "

  White foam *exploded* from the wall vents. It hit my back, my face, my hair. Cold, slightly sticky, smelling like someone had weaponized mouthwash. The foam just kept *coming*, filling the engineering corridor like the universe's worst bubble bath.

  "Shit!" I tried to stand, slipped, cracked my head against the access panel. "Ow! Rosalia, what's happening?"

  Through the comms, I heard a strangled sound somewhere between professional concern and barely-suppressed laughter.

  "I believe," she said carefully, "we have triggered the automatic fire suppression system."

  I wiped foam out of my eyes. "There's no fire!"

  "The Reizen disagrees. The new junction is emitting a heat signature approximately eight percent above baseline. The ship is... addressing the perceived threat."

  The foam climbed higher. Hidden nozzles in the ceiling continued their assault. A repair drone trundled into the corridor, sensors blinking in confusion, then promptly vanished beneath the rising white tide.

  "Can you turn it off?" I asked, attempting to stand. My feet found no purchase; I went down again in an undignified sprawl.

  "I am attempting it," she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice now. "The interface requires multiple confirmations. The system is very committed to fire safety."

  "Of course it is," I muttered, spitting foam. It tasted like carbonated mouthwash. Disgusting.

  By the time Rosalia finally navigated the override menus, the entire engineering antechamber looked like the inside of a malfunctioning dishwasher. Foam clung to consoles, dripped from ceiling panels, pooled everywhere.

  I sat on the floor, back against the wall, covered head to toe in white foam. My hair had dried into stiff spikes.

  The elevator door opened. Rosalia stepped into the foam-scape, paused, and surveyed the carnage with perfect composure.

  "This," she said, completely deadpan, "is suboptimal."

  I lost it and started laughing so hard I couldn't breathe, shoulders shaking, tears streaming down my foam-covered face. The absurdity of it all, sitting in a sea of fire suppressant, looking like I'd lost a fight with a shaving cream factory.

  Rosalia tried to maintain her composure. Lasted about five seconds. Her professional mask cracked. A smile tugged at her mouth. Then she was laughing too.

  "We just triggered a fire suppression system," I gasped, "because of a slightly warm junction."

  "We nearly asphyxiated ourselves with *mint-flavored foam*."

  "The ship thinks we're a fire hazard!"

  "To be fair," she said, wiping tears, "we probably are."

  We spent the next two hours wrangling cleaning drones and scooping foam into containment bins, making increasingly ridiculous jokes the whole time. The "Great Foam Incident." The "Mint Disaster."

  "At least we're thoroughly testing the safety systems," Rosalia said.

  "Very thorough quality assurance," I agreed. "Can't have too much fire safety."

  By lunch, only a faint minty smell and some damp streaks remained.

  We grabbed sandwiches and settled in the operations center, still in good spirits despite being covered in dried foam residue.

  "If Lucas and Claire could see me now," I chuckled, picking foam flakes out of my hair.

  Rosalia looked up, curious. "Your friends from Earth?"

  "Yes. My guild members. We had a similar incident once. Well. Not similar, but equally ridiculous." I grinned at the memory. "Virtual expedition to repair our ship after a pirate attack. The game threw a series of engineering minigames at us."

  "Minigames," she repeated, amused. "Of course."

  "Lucas, who was always overconfident, insisted on handling the plasma conduit repair despite having the lowest engineering skill in our group. 'How hard can it be?' he said, famous last words. Catastrophically failed the timing challenge. His character got blown across the engine room, shields depleted, health bar flashing red."

  Rosalia's lips twitched. "And then?"

  "Claire, usually the most level-headed of us, laughed so hard she missed her own timing window on the coolant system repair. Caused a cascade failure that vented atmosphere from half the ship. We spent the next hour desperately patching hull breaches before our oxygen ran out, all while Lucas's character limped around with comically bandaged limbs."

  I laughed, shaking my head. "He turned that into an endless source of teasing. We still joked about it months later."

  "At least there's no one here to record my foam incident for posterity," I added, gesturing at the streaked bulkheads. "Though I suppose you could hold it over my head."

  "I would never," she said, utterly deadpan, in a tone that suggested she absolutely would.

  We finished lunch still chuckling about it. Just another funny story. The kind of incident you laugh about later with friends.

  The foam was already becoming a good memory. Entertaining. Like Lucas and the plasma conduit. Ridiculous, harmless, the stuff of inside jokes.

  "On the bright side," I said as we cleared our plates, "if something actually catches fire, we now know the suppression system works perfectly."

  "I am deeply reassured," Rosalia said, eyes sparkling with amusement.

  Just another quirky chapter in our ship repair adventure.

  The rest of the afternoon went smoothly. Almost.

  We were connecting the primary power coupling to the drive assembly when I lined up the connection, engaged the locking mechanism, and a shower of sparks erupted from the contact point.

  "Whoa!" I jerked back.

  "What happened?" Rosalia's voice came through the comms, concerned.

  "Power coupling sparked," I said, examining the connection. No visible damage. The lock had engaged properly. "Just residual charge finding ground, I think. It's seated now."

  I ran a scanner over it. "Yeah, we're good. Current flow is stable, no irregularities in the readings."

  "You are certain?"

  "Positive. Everything's nominal." I grinned. "The Reizen's just being dramatic. Wants attention."

  "A feisty ship," she said, and I could hear the amusement in her voice.

  "Exactly. Better than a boring ship. I like personality."

  We moved on to the next connection. The spark was already forgotten—just one of those things that happens when you're working with high-power systems. Not worth worrying about.

  The rest of the day flew by. Flight training solo. I was able to let loose and successfully navigate the densest part of the asteroid belt at high speed,field without scraping the hull, personal victory. then dinner, then our now-mandatory viewing of Chester and Frilda.

  Tonight's episode had the dynamic duo facing off against an elusive pirate band. Chester, through methodical analysis, set up a perfect ambush. Meanwhile, Frilda, incensed at being snubbed from the governor's ball, broke into said ball, accidentally exposed the governor as the secret pirate mastermind, seduced his son for information, and hacked the catering system to ensure every cake was shaped like male genitalia.

  We laughed until our sides hurt.

  "I aspire to Frilda's level of pettiness," I said, wiping tears. "Imagine being so offended you ruin an entire formal event with dick cakes."

  "The commitment is admirable," Rosalia agreed. "Every single cake. Even the decorative ones."

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  "*Especially* the decorative ones."

  We curled up on the sofas, enjoying the ridiculous show, feeling comfortable and relaxed.

  Tomorrow we'd test the drive. It would be fine. Everything had been going well. Little hiccups here and there, sure, but we were handling them. We were getting good at this.

  I went to bed smiling, already thinking about how to describe the foam incident in my eventual memoir. Great story material.

  The next morning started exactly like the previous one. Rosalia beat me to the kitchen. I stumbled in half-awake. We ate breakfast and reviewed the day's work.

  "Today's the day," I said, loading my plate with eggs. "Drive installation complete, ready for testing."

  "Final hull section sealing will have to wait," Rosalia said, "but the drive itself is ready. Cold runs in engineering went perfectly."

  "Zero anomalies," I agreed. "All diagnostics green. This is just verification with actual power flow."

  "Then we can move on to the hull work," she said. "We are making excellent progress."

  "Ahead of schedule, even," I pointed out. "Despite the foam attack."

  She smiled. "Despite the foam attack."

  After gym for me and medical pod for Rosalia, we headed to the Reizen with our tools, ready to wrap up this phase of the repairs. The hard part was done. This was just confirmation testing. Simple work. We had this.

  We stood on the Reizen's engineering deck, studying the newly-installed drive.

  "This is only a test-level activation," I said. "No jump. We stay well under any threshold where spacetime gets involved."

  "Your technical vocabulary continues to astound me," Rosalia said lightly.

  "We've got this," I said. "Cold runs were perfect. This is just verification."

  I took my position near the drive access. Rosalia settled at the control station.

  "Initializing at five percent nominal," she announced. "Engaging... now."

  The tone in the room changed.

  A low hum built from nothing, threads of sound weaving together just below hearing. The deck vibrated under my boots—subtle, almost pleasant.

  "Field stability?" I asked.

  "Within tolerance," Rosalia replied. "Energy draw is at expected values. No anomalous feedback."

  "Good. Bump it to ten percent."

  She increased power carefully. Numbers climbed on the screens. Analog telltales crept upward.

  For a moment, everything held steady.

  Then I heard it.

  A new note. Just a fraction off. The vibration under my boots took on an unpleasant edge.

  "Do you hear that?" I asked, frowning.

  "Yes," Rosalia said. "Minor harmonic fluctuation. Still within parameters, but."

  The fluctuation spiked.

  The hum sharpened into a throbbing pulse. The deck plates rattled. One of the analog needles jumped, slammed against the red line.

  My stomach dropped.

  "Shut it down," I said. "Now."

  "Engaging emergency cutoff," Rosalia snapped, hitting the big red control.

  Nothing happened.

  The noise thickened. The deck vibration climbed. I could feel it in my bones now, an unpleasant resonance that made my teeth ache.

  "Cutoff not responding," Rosalia said, and there was an edge in her voice now. "Relay is not… "

  A cascade of warning lights erupted across the panel. Red. Amber. Angry flashing. Secondary field coils reported phase errors. Primary containment flickered from "nominal" to "unstable."

  *Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.*

  "If the harmonics align with the hull resonance," I said, voice tight, "we're going to rattle this ship apart."

  "I am aware," she said. "Auxiliary cutoff engaged. No response. Hard power disconnect..."

  She hit another control. The board flashed denial.

  "Lockout?" I stared at the screen. "Now?"

  The engineering VI chimed in, calm and helpful:

  "Warning: automatic shutdown inhibited due to ongoing core stabilization subroutine. Please remain calm while… "

  "It thinks it's helping," I said, something close to panic edging my voice.

  The vibrations climbed. Tools rattled. A hairline crack *squealed* somewhere overhead. A panel cover shook itself loose and clattered to the deck.

  This was bad. This was *really bad*.

  "New plan," I said, adrenaline flooding my system. "We kill it manually."

  "How?"

  "Cut main power to the drive." I was already moving, sprinting to the primary power trunk.

  Heavy cables ran from the main bus into the drive assembly, bundled behind an armored panel.

  "Can you isolate section B?" I shouted. "Bus to drive only?"

  "I can attempt it," she said. "But the system keeps rerouting to preserve drive integrity."

  The hum was no longer a hum. It was a physical *shove*, pushing at my ribs in rhythmic pulses.

  My hands found the panel's quick-release levers. Yanked. They resisted, then snapped free. The cover fell, revealing the manual cutoff block.

  I grabbed the handle. It was locked with a physical safety pin.

  The deck bucked beneath my feet. Something aft groaned, the sound of metal under stress.

  My fingers fumbled with the pin. Finally got it. Tore it free.

  "Nicolas!" Rosalia called. "Field variance increasing. We are approaching critical resonance!"

  "I know!" I grabbed the handle and pulled.

  It didn't move.

  The VI chimed again:

  "Warning: manual disconnect attempt detected. This action may result in… "

  "OVERRIDE!" I snarled. "Rosalia, authorization code, now!"

  "Engineering VI, code Rainmaker Seven-Alpha," she snapped. "Authorization granted."

  Pause.

  "Override acknowledged."

  I hauled on the handle with everything I had.

  It shifted. Half a centimeter. The hum spiked.

  "Come ON!" Sweat dripped into my eyes. My arms screamed. "Come ON!"

  Metal shrieked. The handle fought me.

  It slammed down to "disconnected."

  For one horrible moment, nothing changed.

  Then the main hum cut off.

  The deck kept shaking but no new energy fed the system. The field collapsed with an almost audible ‘whumpf’. A coil popped a breaker. Overhead lights flickered, died, came back on emergency power.

  "Field down," Rosalia reported, voice shaking. "Containment stable. Multiple stress alerts but no breaches."

  "Anything about to explode?" My voice came out rough.

  "Nothing immediate."

  I let go of the handle. My hands were shaking.

  We'd almost died.

  I sat down hard on the deck, breathing too fast, staring at the now-silent drive.

  The faint smell of mint hung in the air. Residue from yesterday's foam.

  Yesterday, we laughed. Made jokes. Treated it like entertainment.

  We laughed.

  The foam. The sparks. All of it.

  Little warnings we'd dismissed because they seemed harmless. Funny. Just quirks of ship repair.

  But they weren't quirks.

  They were warnings.

  And we'd been too busy having fun to notice.

  My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

  "We need to assess damage," Rosalia said quietly.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  We walked the ship in silence.

  Portable scanners. Checking for cracks, blown systems, compromised seals. Every reading logged with mechanical precision.

  Don't think. Just work. Document. Verify.

  My hands kept shaking.

  Hairline crack in the aft stringer. Blown breaker in power distribution. Micro-fracture in a coolant line. All fixable. All within tolerance.

  We'd gotten lucky.

  By the time we finished, I felt wrung out.

  "We were lucky," Rosalia said quietly, staring at her datapad.

  "Yeah," I said. The word felt hollow.

  "We need better protocols," she started. "Incremental power increases, extended observation periods, multiple redundant… "

  "I know." It came out sharper than I meant. I closed my eyes. "I know. But I need... I need a minute."

  She looked at me. Something in her expression softened.

  "Of course," she said gently. "We can debrief when we're both… "

  "Thank you." I was already walking toward the exit, shoulders tight.

  "Nicolas."

  I stopped.

  "It's okay to be shaken," she said quietly. "I am too."

  I nodded and kept walking.

  The shower ran cold before I was ready to get out.

  I stood under the spray, trying to process.

  We'd almost died.

  The foam. The sparks. The warnings.

  We had laughed.

  Treated safety systems like jokes. Like it was entertainment.

  And today it almost killed us.

  My hands were still shaking when I turned off the water.

  — o0o —

  I found Rosalia in the foyer, sprawled on the sofa with gin and a distant stare aimed at the planet.

  She held up a second glass without looking.

  "Thought you might need this."

  I took it. Grabbed my own bottle, something fruity, and collapsed onto the opposite sofa.

  We didn't speak.

  Just sipped and stared at infinity.

  After what felt like an hour, I cleared my throat.

  "I'm sorry. For earlier. Walking out like that."

  "It's okay," she said softly. "I understand."

  "It's not." I stared at my glass. "I should have talked instead of running."

  Pause.

  "I'm not used to this," I finally said. "Where I'm from, things were safe. Pirates were news headlines, not reality."

  She stayed quiet.

  "Fighting pirates when I found you, that felt... abstract? Like playing the game. I was scared, but in control. I was doing something. And it felt familiar. Like I was still playing a game."

  "And today you weren't," she said.

  I nodded. "Today I was pulling a lever and hoping physics wouldn't kill us."

  "You weren't helpless. You saved us."

  "After almost killing us in the first place." My voice came out bitter.

  I took a long drink.

  "I thought I was being smart," I said. "Gamifying training. Laughing off the foam. Making jokes about sparks. Like it was all... entertainment."

  "We both did," she said quietly.

  "But it wasn't entertainment." My hands tightened on the glass. "The foam activated because we miscalibrated heat signatures. The coupling sparked because we didn't balance load distribution right. The drive almost tore the ship apart because… Well. We don't know what we're doing."

  I looked at her.

  "We've been playing engineer. Playing mechanic. But today wasn't playing. Today, if you'd been one second slower, or if I hadn't found that cutoff..."

  "We would have died," she finished quietly. "Laughing at our own incompetence."

  The silence was heavy.

  "I treat everything like a game," I said. "Fire suppression malfunction? Funny story. Power overload? Ship personality. Harmonics that could have killed us?"

  I laughed hollowly. "I didn't take any of it seriously until it was almost too late."

  "We," Rosalia corrected. "We didn't take it seriously. I was laughing too. Making jokes. Dismissing it all."

  "We're not engineers," I said.

  "No," she agreed. "We're not."

  Silence.

  "I've been thinking," I said after a long silence.

  Rosalia set down her glass.

  "Today shouldn't have needed to happen," I continued. "The foam should have been the wake-up call. Or the sparks. All those little things we laughed off."

  "You want to change the plan."

  I nodded. "We can't take the Reizen to the Empire. Not with us playing mechanics." I met her eyes. "We take the Mahkkra. Get citizenship. Hire ‘actual engineers’. Come back with people who know what they're doing."

  She stared at the viewport for a long moment.

  "I wanted to prove we could do this ourselves," she finally said.

  "Me too. But wanting something doesn't make it safe."

  "The warnings were all there," she said quietly. "Small things we dismissed."

  "Yeah."

  "Today was just... louder."

  "And we got lucky. Next time, we might not be."

  She turned to face me fully.

  "You're right. We need professionals."

  Relief washed over me.

  "I dislike abandoning the Reizen," she continued.

  "We're not abandoning her. We're being smart. We'll come back with proper help."

  A small smile. "Overconfidence and good intentions aren't enough."

  "Turns out, no."

  "So. Mahkkra to the Empire, hire mechanics, return?"

  "We seal the hull sections first. Basic preservation work. Then go."

  "No more experimental work without support."

  "No more laughing off safety systems."

  "No more assuming we know what we're doing."

  She raised her glass. "To accepting our limits."

  I clinked mine against hers. "To not dying from stupidity."

  "A worthy goal."

  We drank to that.

  We spent the next hour planning.

  Less optimistic than usual. More realistic.

  Routes. Stations with certified mechanics. What we could safely seal versus what needed professional oversight.

  It felt different. Soberer.

  We were learning.

  Painfully.

  But learning.

  — o0o —

  Dinner was pizza. Comfort food loaded with enough cheese to violate health regulations.

  "This is good," Rosalia said.

  "Heart attack on a plate," I agreed. "But comfort food."

  We talked about small things. Earth memories. Rosalia's formal dinners. Pizza places with hostile décor but transcendent food.

  Normal conversation. Grounding.

  After dinner, we returned to the sofas. The same view: planet, rings, stars.

  We didn't feel like watching Chester and Frilda. Comedy felt wrong.

  Just sat in comfortable silence.

  "Thank you," I said eventually.

  She looked over. "For what?"

  "For listening. For agreeing. For not making me feel like an idiot."

  "Recognizing our limits isn't idiocy," she said gently. "Ignoring today and continuing anyway. That, would be idiocy."

  Later, lying in bed, I stared at the ceiling.

  I'd nearly died because I didn't know what I was doing.

  We'd learned something, at least. Expensive lesson, but we'd learned it.

  I'd do better. Had to. No choice now.

  My thoughts drifted to my friends back on Earth. The guild. Were they looking for me? I hoped they were okay. Wherever they were.

  I closed my eyes. Sleep came eventually.