Chapter 14: Steel Remembers
Day 1 of the thirty-day clock began with sparks, not words.
Karl stood on the station's inner docking ring, visor cracked open, watching Selene's crew cut apart the first of two battered shuttles. Plasma torches hissed, carving hull plates into manageable sheets. Each piece—once part of a corporate logo, now just bright alloy—floated toward magnetic sleds where Rios the bot waited, shears trimming edges square. The sound was a constant metallic sigh, like the station itself exhaling seventeen years of dust.
The plan was crude: weld a cradle around Folly's spine, strap four shuttle plasma drives to the aft end, and bolt armor harvested from shuttle bellies over critical areas. They called the hybrid "Hearth-Hammer" because it would be built in a garden and meant to break bones. Karl didn't care what it was called as long as it flew and bit.
Miguel headed propulsion. He spent the morning inside Folly's engine bay, mapping thrust vectors. The four shuttle drives would feed through a common manifold hacked from an old fuel freighter. If pressure balanced, they could deliver 0.15 g sustained—double Folly's current push. If pressure failed, the manifold would explode and take half the ship with it. Miguel called that "acceptable risk." Karl wrote it in the log anyway.
Selene handled hull. She marked cut lines on Folly's dorsal plates where armor would overlap like scales. Each scale needed holes drilled for explosive bolts—jettison panels to vent outward if the ship took a plasma hit. "Better to shed skin than hold heat," she said, voice echoing inside a respirator. Karl watched her work, saw sparks reflect in her eyes like tiny suns. She had lost a son to pirates years ago; the steel remembered for her.
By 18:00 the first drive cradle took shape—U-shaped ribs welded to Folly's frame, alignment pins drilled to half-millimeter tolerance. They lifted shuttle Drive-One into place with chain falls and pinned it. The engine hung like a black egg in a steel nest. Karl ran a hand along the nozzle, feeling the chill of inert alloy. Soon it would burn hot enough to slice space.
Rios recorded everything, lenses flashing green whenever a weld passed inspection. At shift end the bot presented Karl with a gift: a palm-sized disk cut from scrap, edges polished smooth. Etched into the surface—steady tool-bit strokes—were thirteen tally marks. Twelve for the dead, one for the living. Karl tucked the disk into the same pocket that held basil, paper, and Lina's list. Metal against metal—promise against promise.
Day 3 brought the first crisis. They tested the common manifold at 30 % pressure. A weld seam split, venting plasma gas in a white jet that carved a ten-centimetre gouge across the deck. No injuries, but the bang echoed through the station like a gunshot. Miguel cursed for five minutes straight, then began redesigning the joint. Selene simply started cutting a new plate. Karl logged the failure and added a note: "Steel teaches lessons in scars. Learn or bleed."
That night they ate in the dome—fresh lettuce, tomato slices, packets of re-hydrated protein masquerading as chicken. Five humans shared a table welded from scrap tubing. Conversation was sparse but warm. Miguel told stories of Lina—how she once rewired a fried nav console with hairpins during a school competition; how she hated trumpet blues but loved old salsa vinyl. Laughter surprised them, bright as weld sparks. Karl realized he hadn't laughed in months. The sound felt foreign, then necessary.
Day 5 – armour day. They lifted curved plates—each massing 90 kg—and bolted them over Folly's critical bays: reactor, bottle, hydroponics pod. The plates overlapped like turtle scutes, gaps sealed with reflective tape. When finished the frigate looked patch-work crazy, half salvage-yard, half knight. Selene christened the look "peasant armour—ugly, cheap, life-saving."
Day 7 – weapons. Haven-3 had no munitions locker, but it did have industrial tools. They converted a plasma cutter into a short-range lance—coil focusing, 40 kW beam, effective 2 km. Mounting it required cutting a hole through Folly's prow and welding a gimbal ring. The lance stuck out like a spear, ugly and proud. Ammunition was limited only by reactor output; if the bottle ran dry the lance became a paperweight. Karl accepted the trade.
Day 9 – software. They hacked the station's old navigation core and transplanted the chips into Folly's computer, boosting processing speed threefold. Target tracking, intercept solutions, burn optimisation—now calculated in milliseconds instead of heartbeats. Miguel loaded a pirate profile: Vulture's known acceleration curve, mass estimate, weapon range. The screen spat back a firing solution: close to 800 m, lance the drives, board if surrender. If not, keep lancing until debris. Cold math for cold work.
Day 10 – naming. They gathered in the dome under grow-lights, Rios present, trumpet blues playing soft. Selene held a can of spray paint scrounged from medical supply—sterilised, she claimed. She handed it to Karl. "Captain gets the first stroke."
He shook the can, walked to the prow where fresh armour gleamed. For a moment words failed. He thought of Lina's basil, of Rios's candle, of forty-three seconds that refused to die. Then he sprayed—a single broad line, quick and sure. When paint dried they saw it: a crude basil leaf, veins suggested by negative space. Under it, smaller letters:
HEARTH-HAMMER
For the Echo, for the garden, for the twelve.
No one spoke. The bot recorded, green eyes steady. Miguel placed a hand on the hull, whispered, "Steel remembers." Others followed, palms flat, five heartbeats syncing to the same rhythm. Karl felt the ship take the pulse and hold it—metal learning life.
Day 12 – live fire. They towed a scrap plate into open space with a tether, backed to 1 km, and powered the lance. Reactor hummed, coils whined, beam lanced invisible—then the plate glowed cherry, slagged, parted. Cheers echoed inside the hull. Karl allowed a grin. "First blood to us."
Day 15 – final strip. They removed every non-essential from Folly: extra bunks, second coffee urn, decorative trim from the cockpit. Each kilo bought 0.3 m/s delta-v. When the scale read 1 620 kg lighter, Selene declared, "She'll sprint now."
Day 18 – crew assign. Five humans, one bot:
- Karl – captain, pilot, lance fire control
- Miguel – propulsion, damage control
- Selene – hull integrity, EVA lead
- Jun – comms, sensors, data hack
- Tala – medic, quartermaster, bot liaison
- Rios – garden keeper, hull patch assistant, morale mascot
They signed the roster with a stylus on raw steel; the scratches would weld permanent when time allowed.
Day 20 – shake-down burn. They lit all four drives for sixty seconds. Acceleration climbed to 0.15 g, pushing them into couches. The manifold held, welds cool, lance steady. Karl logged: "Hearth-Hammer flies straight, bites hard. Ready for war."
Days 21-25 were drills: suit don in under two minutes, damage control parties, lance targeting on moving drones built from scrap and attitude thrusters. They failed often, improved fast. Sleep was short, dreams were practice. The forty-three-second heartbeat now lived inside every action—counted during welds, during meals, during toilet breaks. Rhythm of purpose.
Day 26 – paint finish. They coated the scorched hull in matte black to reduce visual signature, left only the basil leaf untouched—green against night, visible only when starlight struck. Rios sprayed a tiny 13 next to the stem, thirteen lives riding one leaf.
Day 28 – ammunition. They filled two crates with makeshift gifts: cutting strips repurposed as breaching charges, epoxy canisters as seal bombs, nutrient bricks as humanitarian bribes. Everything labelled in Lina's honour.
Day 29 – war council. Around the mess table—welded back together for the occasion—they projected the star map. Vulture's last known vector pointed toward a brown-dwarf cluster 12 light-hours away—a hunting ground of dead ships and dark gravity. Transit time at 0.15 g: eight days. Fuel reserve after brake and fight: 9 %. Enough for one pass. No second chances.
Karl laid the rule: "We take drives first, life second. If they surrender we hand them to Meridian law. If they draw weapons we finish them. No souvenirs, no slaves, no mercy for the merciless."
Five heads nodded. Bot chirped once. Decision locked.
Day 30 – final hours. They walked the hull in EVA, checking every weld, every bolt. Karl paused at the lance, placed his gloved palm against cool alloy. He whispered, "For Lina, for twelve, for the garden." The metal felt alive under his hand—steel remembering names.
Inside, he opened the paper log and wrote:
Day 88 – Hearth-Hammer complete. Black hull, green leaf, thirteen beats. Crew five plus bot. Mission: hunt Vulture, free any prisoners, come home breathing. We leave at zero-six-hundred. Steel is ready. Question is—am I? Answer doesn't matter. We go anyway. – Karl.
He closed the book, turned the lights low, and let the station's spin rock him toward sleep. Tomorrow they would burn toward a brown dwarf and a ship painted night. Tomorrow the garden would send its fruit to war.
Outside, the lance pointed star-ward like a finger accusing the dark. Inside, five hearts and one ticking leaf counted down: forty-three, forty-two, forty-one… to ignition.