The engine room smelled of burnt copper and dying dreams.
Marcus stood over the grate. He looked down at the thing that used to be his best friend.
Narcissus was strapped to the engine block with ratchet straps. His massive, armored body was still. His chest—the part that had been flesh—was now a mess of wires and fused metal.
Two thick copper cables ran from the ship's main turbine directly into his sternum.
The interface socket was blackened. The skin around it was blistered from the heat.
"Status," Marcus said. His voice sounded hollow in the cramped metal box.
Galen didn't look up from his datapad. The physician was wiping grease from his eyes. His hands were shaking.
"He's stable," Galen whispered. "But only because he's empty."
"Define empty."
"We drained him," Galen said, tapping the screen. "Core integrity is at 4%. That's... that's life support, Marcus. That's just enough juice to keep his cybernetic heart pumping coolant to his brain. If we unplug him, the shock kills him. If we leave him plugged in, the ship's idle draw will suck the last 4% in an hour."
Marcus looked at the blue light in Narcissus's chest. It was a faint, dying ember. A pulse that skipped beats.
Thump... thump... pause... thump.
"He saved us," Marcus said.
"He's a battery now," Galen said bitterly. "We turned a man into a AA cell."
Marcus flinched.
He looked at Galen. He wanted to offer comfort. He wanted to say, We did what was necessary.
But the words died in his throat.
Because the UI in his mind flickered.
[SCANNING TARGET...]
Red text overlayed Galen's face.
Instead of [ALLY: GALEN - PHYSICIAN], the text shifted.
It became cold. Bureaucratic.
[ASSET: BIOLOGICAL ENGINEER]
[VALUE: HIGH]
[RECOMMENDATION: PROTECT ASSET FOR FUTURE R&D]
Marcus blinked hard. The headache spiked—a needle behind his eyes.
"Get out of my head," he muttered.
"What?" Galen asked.
"Nothing," Marcus lied. The text reverted. Galen was just Galen again.
But the feeling remained. The Board wasn't just fighting him with robots anymore. It was fighting him with language. It was trying to reformat his empathy into efficiency.
Clank. Sputter.
The ship shuddered violently.
The hum of the engine—the noise that had been keeping them alive—coughed.
A grinding noise. Metal on metal.
Then, silence.
The lights in the engine room died. Emergency red bulbs flickered on.
"No," Galen gasped.
He scrambled to the turbine. He checked the gauges.
"Seized," Galen said. "The pistons... they melted. The surge from the Fusion Core was too hot. It fused the drive shaft."
"Can we fix it?"
"We need a dry dock and a new engine," Galen said, dropping his wrench. "We are dead in the water."
Marcus ran for the ladder.
He burst onto the deck.
The silence was terrifying. The roar of the boiling sea was gone. The wind had died.
The Neptune was drifting in ink-black water.
"Report!" Marcus yelled.
Valeria was already on the bridge wing. She held a flare gun, but didn't fire it.
"We have zero knots," she said calmly. Too calmly. "Rudder is unresponsive. We are a raft."
Lucilla walked up to Marcus. She pointed at the sky.
The stars were back. But to the West, the unnatural twilight of the laser grid was brightening.
"The Blind Spot is gone," Lucilla said. "The grid is resetting. The cleaning cycle will sweep this sector again in twenty minutes."
"Current drift?"
"West," she said. "Currents are pulling us backward. Into the kill zone."
Marcus looked at the refugees.
They were huddled on the cargo deck. Wet, shivering, traumatized. They had watched Titus die. They had watched monsters board the ship.
Now, they watched the engine die.
Decimus stood guard, but his spear tip was wavering.
"We need to move," Marcus said. "Lighten the load. Toss the cargo."
"We already lost half the food," Valeria said. "Tossing the rest won't give us speed. The ship is heavy steel. It's the hull that's the problem."
Lucilla looked at the refugees.
She looked at Marcus.
Marcus saw the UI flash again.
[CALCULATING WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION...]
[OBSTACLE: EXCESS MASS]
[TARGET: EXPENDABLE BIOMASS]
The red box highlighted the group of wounded refugees near the rail.
Lucilla spoke. Her voice was flat. Logical.
"We are carrying two hundred passengers," she said. "Seventy are non-combatants. Thirty are wounded. If we offload the... non-essentials... we might float higher. Catch the wind."
Marcus stared at her.
"Offload?" he asked quietly. "You mean drown."
"I mean survive," Lucilla said. "The lasers don't care about morality, Marcus. They care about math."
Marcus stepped closer to her. The UI was screaming in his brain.
[SOLUTION: APPROVED]
[EXECUTE]
He grabbed Lucilla's shoulder. His grip was bruising.
"If you suggest that again," Marcus whispered, "you go over first."
Lucilla didn't flinch. She just looked at his hand.
"Someone has to say it."
"Hey!"
A scream from the deck below.
A woman stood up. It was Titus's mother. Her face was a mask of grief and fury.
She held a piece of jagged scrap metal—a shard of the crate that had crushed the food.
"I heard you!" she shrieked. She pointed the shiv at Lucilla. "You witch! You want to throw us away like garbage?"
The crowd stirred. Fear turned to anger instantly. Men stood up. They gripped their tools.
"They fed Titus to the machine!" the woman yelled. "Now they want to feed us to the sea!"
"Stand down!" Decimus shouted, stepping forward.
"Stay back!" The woman lunged. She swiped the metal shard at Decimus. It cut his arm. Blood sprayed.
[THREAT: IMMEDIATE]
[TARGET: HOSTILE]
The UI took over.
Time seemed to slow for Marcus.
A red wireframe appeared over the woman's body.
It highlighted her carotid artery. It calculated the angle of attack.
[TACTICAL SOLUTION: LETHAL STRIKE]
[WEAPON: VIBRO-KNIFE]
[PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS: 100%]
A ghost image of Marcus's own arm appeared in his vision. It showed him exactly how to throw the knife. How to end the threat in 0.4 seconds.
His hand drifted to his belt. His fingers touched the hilt.
It felt good. It felt easy.
Do it, the UI whispered. She is a variable. Remove the variable.
"NO!"
Marcus screamed the word aloud. He slammed his fist into his own thigh.
He broke the trance.
He vaulted over the railing. He landed on the deck between Decimus and the woman.
She lunged at him.
Marcus didn't draw his knife.
He stepped inside her guard. He grabbed her wrist. He twisted.
The metal shard clattered to the deck.
He didn't strike her. He pulled her into a hug.
She thrashed. She screamed. She tried to bite his armor.
"I've got you," Marcus said. "I've got you."
He held her until the fight drained out of her. Until she collapsed, sobbing against his chest plate.
"Nobody goes over," Marcus shouted to the crowd. He looked at Lucilla on the bridge. "Nobody."
"Then we die," Lucilla said.
"No," Marcus said. He pointed to the sides of the ship.
"The lifeboats. Cut them loose."
"To evacuate?"
"No," Marcus said. "We use the oars."
Ten minutes later, the Neptune looked like a galley from hell.
The emergency oars—long, heavy poles meant for the lifeboats—had been jury-rigged through the scuppers of the main deck.
Marcus stripped off his armor. He stood at the lead oar.
"Decimus! Port side! Valeria! Starboard!"
"This is insane," Galen panted, grabbing an oar. "This is a thousand-ton ship. We can't row a tanker."
"We don't need to row it," Marcus said. "We just need to drift faster than the current."
He looked at the refugees. They weren't passengers anymore. They were the engine.
"You want to live?" Marcus yelled. "PULL!"
He heaved.
The heavy oar groaned. It bit into the water.
Slowly. Painfully. The ship moved.
"HEAVE!" Decimus shouted.
"HO!" the legion roared.
They pulled. Muscles strained. Hands blistered instantly.
They rowed away from the sunset. Away from the encroaching light of the lasers.
For an hour, there was only pain. The rhythm of breath and wood.
Then, Valeria shouted from the bridge.
"Land!"
Marcus looked up, sweat stinging his eyes.
The fog had lifted completely.
A coastline appeared in the moonlight. Dark cliffs. White dunes.
But it wasn't quiet.
Flashes of light illuminated the clouds. Orange tracers arced into the sky.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The sound of artillery rolling over the water like thunder.
"That's not a harbor," Galen said, leaning on his oar. "That's a meat grinder."
"It's Syria," Marcus said. "Aim for the beach."
"The surf is too high!" Valeria warned. "We'll wreck!"
"Better to wreck on land than boil at sea," Marcus said. "Brace for impact!"
The current caught them. The Neptune was lifted by a massive swell.
They rushed toward the dark shore.
"Hold on!" Marcus screamed.
He ran to the engine hatch. He grabbed the straps holding Narcissus.
CRUNCH.
The ship hit the sandbar.
The sound was deafening. The keel snapped. The hull buckled.
Marcus was thrown across the deck. He hit the winch. Darkness flirted with his vision.
Water rushed in—cold, salty, violent.
The ship listed hard to port.
"Out!" Marcus gagged, spitting seawater. "Abandon ship!"
He crawled to the hatch.
"Galen! Help me!"
They grabbed the straps. They pulled.
They dragged the unconscious, half-dead body of Narcissus up the tilted deck.
They slid down the side of the broken hull.
They splashed into waist-deep water.
The surf pounded them. Sand filled Marcus's boots.
He dragged his friend onto the wet beach. He collapsed, gasping for air.
He looked up.
A spotlight blinded him.
Click.
The sound of a hundred rifles cocking in the darkness.
[THREAT: IMMEDIATE]
[LOCATION: EVERYWHERE]
Marcus squinted into the light.
He wasn't safe.
He had just invaded a war zone.