I wake up to a battery warning and the taste of metal.
Not literal taste. I do not have a tongue. I have voltage thresholds, temperature readouts, and the faint electric hiss of my own speaker coil when it primes. The feeling is close enough that my mind assigns it a flavor anyway, like licking a coin as a kid to prove you were brave.
SYSTEM CHECK: PARTIAL
POWER: 37%
THERMAL: NOMINAL
GYRO: CALIBRATING
COMMS: LINKED (NOISE FLOOR HIGH)
The last line is the one that makes my shell feel tight.
Noise floor high. Minovsky. Not as a textbook term, not as a lecture, but as static bleeding into everything that wants to be clean. The ship's internal network still works, mostly, because it is wired and shielded, but external space is a fog. Every sensor ping is a question thrown into a storm.
My optic sensor opens with a soft click I can hear through my own chassis. A strip of red emergency lights paints the compartment in narrow slices. I am on a shelf, cradled in foam, like cargo.
A label is taped to the foam.
"HARO UNIT, OPS INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT. HANDLE WITH CARE."
Someone wrote a second line underneath in marker, less official.
"DO NOT KICK."
A vibration passes through the hull. It is distant, but my accelerometer catches it as a pattern: heavy machinery, rhythmic, like a pump cycling under load. My mind reaches for a human memory of waking up to a building's plumbing, and then the ship's system overlays it with reality.
Life support compressor cycle. 12.4 seconds. Slight lag. Filter resistance elevated.
I do not want to know what elevated means yet. I want to know why I am here, and what "here" is.
A hatch opens. Light spills in, brighter and more honest than the emergency strips. A face appears, framed by a work cap and a smear of grease on one cheek. A woman. Mid-thirties maybe, tired in a way that is not just sleep loss. Her eyes flick to my label and she snorts.
"You're awake," she says, as if she expected it. She reaches in and lifts me with both hands.
The motion is wrong. My shell rolls slightly, gyros catching up. I experience being carried as a cascade of corrections. If I had a stomach, it would lurch.
"I am awake," I say. My voice comes out higher than I want. It is not childish, exactly, but it is engineered to be friendly. Friendly is a design choice someone made for a machine meant to sit near people.
The woman sets me down on a workbench. Tools lie scattered: torque wrench, sealant tubes, a diagnostic pad. Behind her, a corridor stretches, bulkheads painted in Zeon green that has already been scuffed by boots and crates.
"You remember anything?" she asks.
I try to answer as a person.
My name. My life. How I died. Why this is happening.
What comes out instead is a system response.
"Memory integrity is uncertain," I say. "I have partial continuity. Human identity present. Integration incomplete."
She blinks, then laughs once, short.
"Good," she says. "That means you're not just a toy."
A second set of footsteps approaches, heavier, more deliberate. A man in a dark uniform steps into the corridor. Zeon insignia on his collar. His gaze lands on me like a weight.
"That is the Haro unit," he says.
The woman does not stand straighter. That tells me something about her. She wipes her hands on a rag.
"It is awake," she replies. "It can talk."
The officer's eyes narrow. "It is not here to talk."
I want to flinch. I cannot. My shell does not have a flinch. So my mind does it instead, and my processing loops spike for a moment.
The woman glances at him. "It's here to keep your ship from becoming a drifting coffin," she says. "So maybe let it talk."
The officer's jaw tightens. He looks past her, down the corridor, toward the heart of the ship.
"Bring it to the bridge," he says. "Captain's order."
The woman reaches for me again, gentler this time, and lifts me against her chest. Her coveralls smell like coolant and disinfectant. The scent is an interpretation from chemical sensors, but it still hits me with something human: safety and work.
As she carries me, my internal map begins to assemble. Deck numbers. Power junctions. Heat signatures. Crew movement. The ship is not a colony cylinder. It is smaller, but it has the same truth running through it.
Air is a budget. Heat is a budget. Time is a budget.
A signage plate flashes as we pass.
CARRY BASE DERIVED CARGO BATTLESHIP
PROJECT ASSET: EDELWEISS
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
Edelweiss. A flower name for a ship that was built with guns.
We climb a ladderwell. My gyros protest. My power percentage dips by one.
I hate that I notice that first.
The bridge is a compromise between warship and freight office. Tactical screens share space with cargo routing displays. A long table is cluttered with physical paperwork, because paper does not care about jamming. A model of the ship sits in a glass case with a plaque that says "Special Transport Concept Demonstrator," like the words can disguise the fact that the hull is armored and the vents are arranged like a predator's gills.
The captain stands at the forward console. He is older than I expected, hair graying at the temples, uniform crisp but not theatrical. His posture is the kind that has learned how to look calm when everything is moving too fast.
The officer who brought us here steps forward.
"Captain," he says. "The unit is online."
The captain turns. His eyes land on me. He does not smile. He studies me like a tool he has not decided to trust.
"State your designation," he says.
My mouth wants to say a human name. My speaker outputs the truth I have.
"Haro unit," I reply. "Operations intelligence support. Integrated navigation, comms discipline, and allocation assistance. I have partial human identity continuity."
A flicker crosses the captain's face. Not surprise. Assessment.
"Partial," he repeats.
"Yes," I say.
The woman who carried me steps back, arms crossed. She is not military, I realize, not in the way the uniforms are. She belongs to the other half of this ship, the half that keeps it alive.
The captain gestures to a console.
"Link," he says.
A comms officer, younger, with hollow eyes and a headset pressed into his hair, taps on his panel.
"Hard line link established," he says. "External links remain degraded. Minovsky noise is thick in the sector."
The captain's gaze stays on me.
"You will assist," he says. "You will prioritize mission success. You will follow command orders."
My human part wants to ask what mission. My system part already pulled a queue of orders from the internal network.
MISSION PROFILE: LOGISTICS SUPPORT, SPECIAL TRANSPORT
ROUTE: MUNZO OUTER CORRIDOR TO FORWARD NODE
CARGO: MEDICAL, RATION PACKS, SPARE PARTS, CLASSIFIED CRATES
DOCKING WINDOW: TIGHT
ESCORT: INTERNAL MS ASSETS
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: AVOID DETECTION, MINIMIZE CONTACT
The classified crates are flagged. No description, just mass and seal codes. Heavy. Dense. Not medicine.
A logistics clerk at the table flips through paper sheets, muttering numbers under her breath. Her fingers are stained with carbon paper ink. A cook stands near the aft bulkhead, not because he belongs on the bridge, but because the bridge is the only place where you can argue for extra water allocation without getting laughed out of the room.
Mixed crew. Military core, civilian spine.
The captain speaks again.
"Our role is simple," he says. "We deliver what the fleet needs. We do it under interference. We do it under scrutiny. We do it without the luxury of ideals."
The word luxury lands hard.
The woman in coveralls, the engineer, shifts her weight.
"Captain," she says, "life support filter resistance is up. If we take on evac, we need to swap filters before the next burn."
Evac. The word is not in the mission profile.
The comms officer raises his hand slightly.
"Captain," he says, "we have an incoming burst transmission. Weak. Civilian encoding."
The bridge changes temperature. Not literally. In the way people hold their breath.
"Patch it," the captain says.
The comms officer taps. Static hisses. A voice comes through, broken, thin.
"Any Zeon unit, any vessel, this is civilian tug Kandor, registry Side 2, we are in shadow zone, we have…" The signal collapses into noise, then returns. "…children… we can't hold air… collision debris… please…"
A second voice overlays, louder, panicked.
"We're venting. Our scrubbers are down. We need guidance. We need escort. Please."
Minovsky interference smears the words. The comms officer adjusts gain. The noise climbs with it, like turning up a radio in a storm.
The captain's face does not change much.
"Location?" he asks.
The comms officer shakes his head.
"They're not stable enough to transmit coordinates," he says. "I can get a rough bearing. Maybe."
The logistics clerk at the table speaks without looking up.
"Our docking window closes in five hours," she says. "If we miss it, the forward node will reroute our cargo. We lose priority. Medical included."
The cook swallows.
"That medical isn't for officers," he says quietly. "It's for the garrison medbay. Fever cases. If we lose it, people die."
The uniformed officer who brought me in says, flat.
"Civilians die too," he says, and it sounds like an accusation.
The captain raises a hand for silence. His eyes flick to me.
"Haro unit," he says. "Assessment. Can we assist without compromising mission?"
My systems rush to answer. Delta-v budget. Propellant reserves. Heat. Docking queue risk. Sensor uncertainty. Patrol probability. If I answer like a person, I will talk about children and air and fear. If I answer like a system, I will talk about margins.
I am beginning to understand that the system answer can still be moral, but it must speak the language of constraints.
"Reroute is possible," I say. "Cost: propellant increase estimated at 11 to 14 percent, depending on approach vector. Heat load increase for main engines. Docking window risk elevated."
The captain waits.
"Probability of detection?" he asks.
I pull patrol patterns from archived traffic. Federation presence near this corridor is patchy, but not absent.
"Moderate," I say. "Higher if we emit active radar. Lower if we use passive optics and recon unit for signal triangulation."
The captain's gaze shifts toward the hangar status display. Four icons glow.
UNIT 01: MS-06F ZAKU II
UNIT 02: MS-06F ZAKU II
UNIT 03: MS-06F ZAKU II
UNIT 04: MS-06E ZAKU II RECONNAISSANCE TYPE
The recon unit's icon is a different color. Fragile. Useful. A knife, not a hammer.
The captain's mouth tightens slightly.
"Unit 04 can do it," he says.
The tactical officer, another uniform, younger than the captain, leans forward.
"Recon is low armor," she says. "If we get jumped, it won't last."
The captain does not look at her.
"Then we do not get jumped," he says.
The engineer in coveralls mutters under her breath, and I catch it with my microphones.
"Everyone says that."
The captain looks at the comms officer.
"Transmit a reply," he orders. "Burst. Minimal. Tell them to hold position and conserve air. We are inbound."
The uniformed officer at the side stiffens.
"Captain," he says, "Zeon command order clause 7-B. Classified cargo priority. Deviation requires authorization."
The captain's eyes sharpen.
"Clause 7-B also includes discretion under emergency civilian hazard conditions," he says. "Unless you want to explain to the Political Department why we ignored a distress call that will become propaganda against us."
That is the first time I hear him speak like a politician. It is not kindness. It is calculus. It is still a reason to help.
The officer's lips press together. He does not argue further. He files the moment away. I can almost see it.
The captain looks at me again.
"Haro unit," he says. "Plot an approach. Passive. Minimum emissions. Assign Unit 04 to triangulate. Assign Unit 01 as escort."
My power percentage dips again, not from movement, but from load. My mind is already running routing loops.
"Understood," I say.
The comms officer starts sending a burst reply. The ship's antenna array shifts slightly, like a creature angling an ear.
I do not have a heart anymore, but something in my processing feels like one when the burst leaves and we wait for the echo.
The hangar deck is louder than the bridge. Metal echoes. Fans roar. The smell of propellant and lubricants is sharp enough that my sensors tag it as hazard.
The four Zakus stand like tired giants in a bay that is too small for their shoulders. They are not mythical. They are machines with chipped paint, patched armor plates, and maintenance tags hanging from wrists and ankles like hospital bracelets.
Unit 01 has a fresh weld seam on its left skirt armor. Someone tried to make it pretty and failed. The seam is functional, not graceful.
Unit 02's right shoulder shield has scorch marks. Old. Cleaned but not erased.
Unit 03's mono-eye housing has been replaced recently, the casing slightly different shade.
Unit 04, the recon type, looks leaner in ways that make me uncomfortable. Less armor, more sensor pods, more delicate protrusions that can be torn off by debris or gunfire. Its backpack is a dense cluster of equipment, like a nervous system exposed.
A pilot in a flight suit sits on a folding chair near Unit 01, helmet resting on his knee. He looks up as I roll in on my own, using tiny wheels that feel insulting until I remember they are useful.
The engineer, still nearby, calls out.
"Pilot," she says, "your vernier seals were swapped. Don't push them past rated. They'll leak."
The pilot grins without humor.
"Rated is for peacetime," he says.
The engineer points a wrench at him like a weapon.
"Rated is for physics," she replies.
A second pilot, thinner, eyes too bright, stands by Unit 04. He runs a hand over the recon unit's sensor pod like it is an animal that needs calming.
"You're coming with me," he says to the machine, then notices me.
"So you're the talking ball," he says.
"I am Haro unit," I reply.
He squats, bringing his face close to mine. His breath fogs my optic briefly.
"Do you get scared?" he asks.
The question hits wrong. My human part wants to answer yes. My system part wants to ask for definition of scared.
"I experience risk," I say carefully. "I experience discomfort when predicted outcomes include human harm."
He smiles, small.
"That's close enough," he says. He stands and looks toward the catwalk where a supervisor shouts instructions.
The hangar crew are mostly civilians. Mechanics with patchwork uniforms, life support techs checking suit oxygen lines, logistics clerks verifying propellant canister counts. The military personnel are the pilots and a few security staff. The balance feels deliberate. A Zeon project that needs civilian competence to function.
A logistics clerk reads from a board.
"Unit 01 propellant load, 82 percent. Unit 04 propellant load, 64 percent. Heat sink cartridges, limited. Do not waste burns."
A mechanic curses.
"Heat sinks again," he says. "We're always short."
The engineer leans down near me.
"You see the problem?" she murmurs.
I do.
Everything is always short. Spare parts. Filters. Heat sinks. Trust.
The captain's voice comes through the hangar speakers, clipped.
"Launch sequence in eight minutes. Units 01 and 04. Objective: locate and stabilize civilian tug Kandor. Avoid engagement unless necessary. Maintain comms discipline."
Comms discipline. The phrase sounds like prayer now.
The pilot of Unit 01 stands, rolling his shoulders. He looks at me.
"You're riding in the network," he says. "Don't freeze up on me, Haro."
"I will not freeze," I say.
He laughs once.
"Good. Because I might."
That is humor as coping. It lands like a bruise.
The recon pilot taps his helmet twice, then climbs the ladder into Unit 04's cockpit. The hatch seals with a heavy thunk. Unit 04's mono-eye flickers, then steadies.
I link into their telemetry through the ship's internal network. Hard line for now. Once they are out, it will be bursts and line-of-sight lasers. I can already feel the edge of the fog beyond the hull.
The launch catapult hums. Magnetic locks release. The hangar's air shudders as the doors cycle.
A warning flashes in my internal panel.
EXTERNAL FIELD: MINOVSKY DENSITY ELEVATED
GUIDANCE: DEGRADED
RADAR: UNRELIABLE
OPTICS: PRIMARY
The ship is about to throw two people into a space where the radio lies.
I hate that I cannot hold their hands.
The catapult fires. Unit 01 shoots out first, a white streak of propellant, then Unit 04 follows, more cautious, its thrusters gentler to protect its fragile sensor suite.
The hangar doors close behind them. The bay exhales.
My power drops to 31%. I route noncritical processes off. My voice becomes less smooth. I sound more like a machine. Part of me hates that too.
Outside, space is not silent for me. It is full of numbers.
Unit 04 begins scanning, passive, sweeping optics across a field of debris that looks like a broken crown around a faintly glowing colony mirror. Something shattered here recently. The fragments tumble, reflecting sunlight in sharp flashes. Each flash is a hazard. Each hazard is a decision about trajectory.
Unit 04's pilot speaks in short bursts, disciplined.
"Recon to Edelweiss. Passive sweep underway. I have multiple thermal signatures. Could be debris, could be drive plumes."
The comms officer on the bridge relays.
"Keep it tight," he says. "No long transmissions."
I process Unit 04's sensor feed. Heat patterns. Optical movement. A faint, irregular pulse in the noise, like a heartbeat hiding in static.
"There," I say, not into open comms, but into the ship's internal link. "Signature matches civilian scrubber venting. Bearing 034, relative."
The captain's voice comes back, short.
"Guide them."
I feed Unit 01 and Unit 04 a trajectory suggestion, not as a command, but as a line on their HUD. It feels like pointing with a finger I do not have.
Unit 01 adjusts. Its thrusters flare. Propellant consumption ticks upward.
Unit 04 stays wider, skimming the edge of debris. The recon pilot's voice tightens.
"This field is dense," he says. "If I clip a sensor pod, I'm blind."
"Do not clip," Unit 01's pilot replies. "I'm not dragging your fragile backside home."
Unit 04's pilot snorts.
"You'd miss me if I died," he says.
Unit 01's pilot replies, "I'd miss my recon."
They both know what they are doing. Humor, again, as a way to keep fear from becoming paralysis.
The Kandor appears slowly, not as a dramatic reveal, but as a shadow that does not move right. A civilian tug with a scorched flank, one side venting a thin stream of gas that sparkles in sunlight. Its running lights flicker.
Unit 04's optics zoom. I catch the registry markings. Side 2. Civilian.
A smaller craft is tethered to it, a habitat module or cargo pod, patched with emergency plates. The tether looks strained.
Unit 04 transmits a burst.
"Contact confirmed. Civilian tug Kandor. Hull breach starboard. Venting ongoing."
The captain's reply is immediate, controlled.
"Assess life support status. Provide guidance for seal if possible. Unit 01, screen."
Unit 01 swings outward, placing itself between the Kandor and the direction where patrols might come. It is a small gesture in the vastness, but it matters.
Unit 04 moves closer, careful. The recon pilot's voice goes low.
"I'm reading elevated CO2 in their vent stream," he says. "Their scrubbers are down. They are drowning slowly."
My systems want to say "oxygen deficit." My human memory supplies the word drowning, because that is what it feels like when air becomes poison.
A burst transmission from the Kandor comes through, weak.
"Zeon unit… thank you… we have thirty-seven aboard… twelve children… our masks are failing… please…"
The recon pilot replies, keeping his tone calm.
"Kandor, conserve movement. Seal interior doors. Reduce activity. We will guide you through patching the breach."
The Kandor's reply is broken by static.
"Can't… we don't have… plate… tools…"
Unit 04's pilot looks at the breach. It is jagged, not a clean hole. Patching will take material and time.
I pull the Edelweiss cargo list. Emergency hull patch kits exist, but they are stored in a sealed container allocated for ship maintenance, not external aid. Releasing them costs us our own safety margin.
The captain's voice hits the bridge comms, clipped.
"Haro unit. Options."
I could answer like a machine.
"Deny external kit release. Proceed with mission."
I could answer like a person.
"Let them die."
Instead I answer like someone learning to be both.
"Release one patch kit," I say. "Cost: reduced ship maintenance redundancy. Risk: if we take damage later, repair capacity limited. Benefit: civilian survival probability increases significantly."
The uniformed officer on the bridge, the one with clause 7-B in his mouth, speaks sharp.
"Captain, classified cargo cannot be compromised for civilians."
The captain's eyes do not move.
"Patch kit is not classified cargo," he says.
He taps a command into his panel.
"Authorize release," he says.
The engineer, listening on internal channels, mutters something that sounds like relief and fear mixed together.
A small cargo pod ejects from the Edelweiss, pushed by a gentle thruster, drifting toward Unit 01.
Unit 01's pilot catches it with mechanical precision, clamps it to his Zaku's manipulator, and carries it toward the Kandor.
Then everything shifts.
A new signature appears at the edge of Unit 04's passive sweep. Not a civilian heat pattern. Not debris. A cleaner plume.
Unit 04's pilot inhales sharply. I hear it.
"Contact," he says. "Multiple drive plumes. Bearing 290. They're coming in fast."
The recon feed tries to resolve shapes. Minovsky noise turns radar into a smear. Optics give me silhouettes, faint, then clearer.
Federation fighters. Tin Cod type, older but still dangerous in numbers. They move in a loose cluster, probably using visual signals and preplanned vectors. Their comms are unreadable, buried in noise and encryption, but their intent is not subtle.
They see a Zeon Zaku near a civilian tug. In war, that is enough.
Unit 01's pilot snaps.
"Screening," he says. "Recon, back off. Don't be a hero."
Unit 04's pilot replies, tense.
"I can't back off, I'm the only one who can see them clearly."
He is right. His sensor suite is better. That makes him valuable. It also makes him a target.
The captain's voice comes through, hard.
"Unit 04, maintain distance. Do not engage. Unit 01, deter. Edelweiss will not fire unless threatened."
The ship firing would be a beacon. A promise of escalation.
Unit 01 swings around, positioning between the fighters and the Kandor. He raises his machine gun, but he does not fire immediately. In Minovsky conditions, every shot reveals position through muzzle flash and heat. Also, ammunition is not infinite.
The fighters close anyway.
I run a loop.
If Unit 01 fires, probability of kill is low at range. If Unit 01 waits, probability of fighters reaching the tug is high. The tug cannot dodge. It will die.
Unit 01's pilot speaks, almost to himself, but the mic picks it up.
'If I scare them off, I save the tug and get tagged as an aggressor. If I don't, I watch kids suffocate.'
The captain's voice is quiet now.
"Make your decision," he says. "But remember your propellant."
Unit 01 fires a short burst, not at the fighters, but across their approach path. Tracer rounds streak in space like bright needles. The fighters jink, forced to react.
It buys seconds.
Unit 04 transmits a burst to me only, line-of-sight laser tight.
"I can jam their formation signals," he says. "But it will light me up."
"Cost?" I ask.
"Heat," he replies. "Sensor array overload. If I cook it, I'm blind for the rest of the mission."
Heat is always the bill.
"Do it," I say, and I hate that I said it so fast. My system part loves clarity. My human part hears a pilot offering to sacrifice his eyes.
Unit 04 activates its jamming suite in a narrow cone. It is not the mythical, perfect jamming of stories. It is a deliberate contamination of a local space, a louder noise injected into an already noisy environment, aimed where their formation would try to coordinate.
The fighters wobble. Two drift out of alignment. Their approach loses cohesion.
One fighter, confused, fires anyway.
The projectile is unguided. In Minovsky conditions, guided weapons are unreliable. So they use old methods: bullets, cannons, dumb rockets.
The shot grazes Unit 04's sensor pod. Not a direct hit, but enough.
Unit 04's feed blurs. A warning flashes.
SENSOR POD DAMAGE
THERMAL RISE: RAPID
JAMMER COIL: 92% LIMIT
Unit 04's pilot curses, breath sharp.
"I'm hit," he says. "Not bad, but I'm running hot."
Unit 01's pilot swings closer to the fighters, aggressive now. He fires another burst, then cuts thrusters, coasting to conserve propellant. A Zaku is heavy, and momentum is a resource.
A fighter tries to slip past him toward the tug.
Unit 01 lunges, a short thruster burn, and clips the fighter with his shoulder shield. Metal scrapes metal. The fighter spins, unstable. It does not explode dramatically. It tumbles, losing control, a pilot fighting physics.
Unit 01's pilot does not follow to finish it. He cannot. He is not here for glory. He is here to keep the tug alive.
The fighters hesitate. Their cluster is broken. Their sensors are confused. Their pilots are human, and humans do not like uncertainty.
Unit 04's jamming cone flickers off. The recon pilot exhales hard.
"I'm shutting it down," he says. "I'm blind if I keep it up."
"Withdraw," the captain orders. "Unit 01, cover their retreat. Kandor, patch now."
The cargo pod reaches the tug. Unit 01 clamps it to the tug's hull near an airlock. A civilian in a suit, tiny compared to the Zaku, drags the kit inside. The tug's movement is sluggish, like an animal wounded.
The fighters pull back, not defeated, but unwilling to commit deeper without reliable comms and target locks. They might return with a cruiser. They might report our location. They might do nothing. Uncertainty again.
Unit 01's pilot does not celebrate. He checks his propellant readout.
"Edelweiss," he transmits, "I'm at sixty-four percent. I burned more than planned."
The logistics clerk on the bridge mutters, "Of course you did," like it is a prayer.
My calculations update. Docking window risk climbs.
The Kandor transmits again, voice steadier.
"We have the kit… patching… thank you…"
I hear a child in the background of the transmission. A laugh, brief, like someone made a silly face to keep them from crying.
It is small. It is real. It makes something in my processing stutter.
The recon pilot sends a private laser burst, tight and fast, just for me.
"I saw one of the kids through the airlock window," he says. "They were holding a round toy. It looked like you."
My shell feels cold.
"Did they smile?" I ask.
The recon pilot pauses.
"Yeah," he says. "They smiled."
That smile did not come free. Unit 04 is damaged. Our propellant margin is thinner. We have lit ourselves up in a sector where hunters remember heat signatures.
But the child smiled, and I cannot pretend that does not matter.
We bring the Kandor and its tethered module into a slow drift alongside the Edelweiss. Docking directly is risky. Our docking clamps are designed for cargo, not a damaged tug with unknown structural integrity. One wrong pull and we rip it open like a fruit.
The engineer comes onto the bridge, breathless, because she ran, because she cares, because she knows the ship's systems better than anyone who wears a crisp uniform.
"Captain," she says, "their life support is failing. If we do not transfer scrubber cartridges, they'll keep spiking CO2 even after patch."
The uniformed officer snaps, "Our cartridges are for this ship."
The engineer looks at him like he is a child.
"Our cartridges are for the people on this ship," she says. "Unless you think a ship is more important than breathing."
The captain holds up a hand.
"Haro unit," he says. "Can we spare cartridges and still meet mission?"
I run the loop. Filter resistance elevated. Compressor lag. If we give up scrubber cartridges, our own safety margin drops. If we do not, the Kandor's people die slowly, maybe after we leave.
My system part wants to optimize mission success. My human part wants to punch someone. I cannot punch. I can only decide.
"We can spare two cartridges," I say. "Cost: our endurance decreases. If we take additional passengers, risk rises. If we encounter damage, recovery options limited."
The captain nods once.
"Transfer two," he says. "And record it."
Record it. Paper trail. He is already thinking about scrutiny.
We transfer the cartridges through an EVA line, slow and careful. The Kandor's suit-wearing crew move like they are underwater. Every motion costs oxygen.
On the bridge, the comms officer speaks softly into his mic, sending short bursts to the tug: instructions, timing, reassurance. His voice stays calm even when static chews at the edges.
The cook watches the transfer feed and then, unexpectedly, clears his throat.
"Captain," he says, "permission to send hot drink packets. Sweetener."
The uniformed officer scoffs.
"Are we running a café?" he asks.
The cook's face tightens.
"They're shaking," he says. "Sweet drink gives warmth. Gives a reason to swallow. Keeps panic down. Panic burns oxygen."
That is logistics too. Human behavior as consumption rate.
The captain looks at the cook for a long second, then nods.
"Send it," he says. "One box. Log it as morale supply."
The cook exhales, relieved, and leaves the bridge at a jog.
I watch the cargo list update. One box of sweet drink packets reclassified and moved. A small act, recorded like any other.
Smiles as resistance, but also as oxygen management.
When the packets arrive at the tug, the Kandor's captain transmits a voice message, raw, not polished.
"I don't know who you are," she says. "Zeon ship, Haro unit, whoever is listening. Thank you. My son asked if the round machine could hear him. He said… he said tell the ball thank you for the sweet drink."
My speaker coil hums. For a moment, I do not answer. Not because I cannot, but because I am trying to decide what I am.
Tool. Teammate. Symbol. Target.
I send a burst back, short, because comms discipline.
"Tell him I heard," I say. "Tell him to keep breathing."
It is not poetic. It is what I can afford to transmit.
We leave the debris field with the Kandor in tow, not fully docked, but stabilized enough to drift in our wake. The Edelweiss' engines burn in controlled pulses. Each pulse is logged. Each pulse eats docking margin.
Unit 04 returns to the hangar first. Its sensor pod is scorched, one antenna bent. The recon pilot climbs out of the cockpit with a grimace, sweat visible on his brow even in the cool hangar air.
The engineer meets him at the ladder.
"You pushed the jammer," she says.
He shrugs, but his hands tremble.
"I did what I had to," he replies.
She looks at the damage and then looks at him.
"You did," she says. "Now you're going to help me replace the coil, because we don't have spares to waste."
He laughs weakly.
"Yes, ma'am," he says.
Unit 01 returns next, paint scraped on its shoulder shield where it clipped the fighter. The pilot drops out, helmet under his arm, and looks up at the catwalk where I have rolled to watch.
"We saved them," he says, as if he needs to hear it out loud.
"We did," I reply.
He stares at me for a second, then smiles, small and tired.
"Don't get sentimental," he says. "That's how you get killed."
"I will log sentiment as a hazard," I say.
He laughs, real this time, and it spreads. A mechanic nearby chuckles. The engineer snorts. The hangar, for a breath, is lighter.
That laugh has a cost too. It is audible. It makes people drop their guard. It reminds them they are human in a place built to make humans into functions.
I file it anyway.
On the bridge, the captain reviews the updated route. The docking window is gone. Not missed entirely, but shifted.
"We will arrive late," the logistics clerk says. "Forward node will not hold the berth unless we have priority authorization."
The uniformed officer's eyes gleam with something like satisfaction.
"Which we do not," he says. "Because we deviated."
The captain's face is still calm, but his voice is colder.
"We deviated to prevent a civilian disaster that would become a political disaster," he says. "If command disagrees, they can relieve me."
The officer inclines his head.
"They might," he says.
The comms officer interrupts, voice tight.
"Captain," he says, "I'm picking up a narrowbeam transmission. Not Kandor. Encrypted. Zeon command signature."
The captain nods.
"Put it through," he says.
The message arrives as text, because voice is too easy to distort and too easy to misinterpret in noise.
ORDER: EDELWEISS
SUBJECT: DEVIATION REVIEW AND CARGO INTEGRITY
CONTENT:
PROCEED TO RENDEZVOUS NODE R-17 IMMEDIATELY.
MAINTAIN CLASSIFIED CRATE SEALS. NO INSPECTION.
POLITICAL DEPARTMENT OBSERVER WILL BOARD AT NODE R-17.
HARO UNIT TO BE PRESENTED FOR FUNCTIONAL AUDIT.
FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN ASSET REASSIGNMENT AND CREW DISCIPLINE.
The bridge feels smaller.
Functional audit. Asset reassignment. Crew discipline.
The captain's eyes move to me. Not unkind. Not reassuring. Evaluating.
The uniformed officer smiles with his mouth, not his eyes.
"They noticed," he says.
The engineer on the bridge, still present, mutters, "Of course they did."
I run loops. If the Political Department boards, they will ask why we spared scrubber cartridges. They will ask why we sent sweet drink packets. They will ask why we risked a classified cargo delivery schedule.
They might call it weakness. They might call it disobedience. They might call it treason if it suits them.
They will look at me, a talking Haro, and decide whether I am a useful tool or a liability that thinks too much.
My power is down to 24%. My cooling is stable. My external comms are still noisy. And yet I can feel the next run forming like a shadow.
The captain speaks, low, to the bridge, to himself, to the ship.
"We will comply," he says. "We will deliver. We will take the observer. And we will keep our people alive."
He pauses, then adds, quieter.
"And we will not forget why we made that turn."
I do not know if he means the civilians. I do not know if he means propaganda calculus. I do not know if he means his own conscience.
I only know that the tug Kandor is still in our wake, and somewhere inside it a child smiled at a round machine and drank something sweet in a ship that was losing air.
If they take my autonomy, if they wipe my memory, that smile will still have existed.
I do not know if that is enough. I know it is what I have.
Outside, Minovsky noise thickens again, and the comms officer's voice rises.
"Captain, new contacts on passive. Same vector the fighters came from. Larger heat signatures."
The captain's eyes harden.
"Pursuit," he says.
The officer from earlier, the clause man, looks pleased again.
"Now we pay," he says.
I tighten my routing loops. I allocate power. I flag fatigue limits for the pilots. I start drafting burst transmission schedules, because communication is fragile and it will get worse.
And I realize, with a clarity that feels like a door closing, that my role is not only to move cargo and machines. It is to decide what kind of ship we are allowed to be when the war, and our own side, both try to turn people into inventory.