Chapter 5: After the Flood
Six hours of uninterrupted sleep felt like cheating.
I woke in Cole's bunk — my bunk — with the disorientation of a man who'd fallen asleep expecting jump alarms and woke to silence. No klaxons. No FTL hum shaking the bulkheads. Just the constant, baseline murmur of a ship in transit and the faint snoring of someone in the next cabin.
For three seconds, I expected my apartment. The water stain on the ceiling above my bed. The streetlight through cheap blinds. The distant sound of traffic on Route 9.
Then the pain in my chest reminded me where I was, and who I was wearing.
Day six. Or seven. Counting has become academic.
I sat up. Slow. The shrapnel wounds protested but without the sharp urgency of the first days — healing, finally, now that my body wasn't being flung through FTL jumps every thirty-three minutes. The system had been doing something to the tissue, I was sure of it. Microscopic repair work that didn't show on Yusuf's scans but made the difference between "should be dead" and "healing remarkably fast."
Speaking of which.
System. Status report.
The interface materialized — cleaner now than the corrupted mess of Day Zero. Still damaged, still incomplete, but functional. Text rendered in steady blue against the grey of Cole's cabin wall:
[SYSTEM STATUS: FRAGMENTED — 31% FUNCTIONAL]
[HOST STATUS: RECOVERING — INJURIES: MODERATE]
[SYSTEM ENERGY: 78/100]
[REGENERATION RATE: 2.1/HOUR — IMPROVED]
[SYSTEM LEVEL: 2]
[AVAILABLE MODULES:]
[— PERSONNEL ACQUISITION MATRIX: LEVEL 1 (ACTIVE)]
[— FLEET INFRASTRUCTURE PROTOCOL: LOCKED (REQUIRES LEVEL 5)]
[— THREAT ASSESSMENT NETWORK: BASIC (ACTIVE)]
[— AUTHORITY MANIFESTATION PROTOCOL: LOCKED (REQUIRES LEVEL 8)]
[— RESOURCE TRANSMUTATION VAULT: LOCKED (REQUIRES LEVEL 3)]
I studied the list. Five core modules, two active, three locked. The Personnel Acquisition Matrix was the recruitment engine — scanning people, evaluating compatibility, identifying who could be useful and how to approach them. The Threat Assessment Network was self-explanatory. The other three — infrastructure, authority, resource transmutation — were behind level gates I wouldn't hit for weeks, maybe months.
Show me the Personnel Acquisition Matrix.
[PERSONNEL ACQUISITION MATRIX — LEVEL 1]
[CAPABILITIES:]
[— PASSIVE SCAN: ACTIVE (1 SE/HOUR)]
[— — Range: Line of sight, 50 meters]
[— — Data: Name (if known), estimated age, surface emotional state, general health, threat level]
[— ACTIVE SCAN: AVAILABLE (10 SE/SCAN)]
[— — Range: Line of sight, any distance]
[— — Data: Attribute scores, top 5 skills]
[— — Cooldown: 30 seconds]
[— CYLON PROBABILITY: ACTIVE]
[— — Accuracy: 45% (±30% error margin)]
[— — WARNING: UNRELIABLE — HIGH FALSE POSITIVE RATE]
[— DEEP SCAN: LOCKED (REQUIRES PAM LEVEL 3)]
Passive scanning was already running — one system energy per hour, a background drain I barely noticed. It meant that everyone within fifty meters was broadcasting basic emotional data to me, whether they knew it or not. The Cylon probability scanner was active too, but with a forty-five percent accuracy rate and a thirty-percent error margin, it was worse than a coin flip. Useless for actual identification. The system knew what it was built for, but the damage had crippled its precision.
This is what I have to work with. A broken talent scanner and a gut-feeling machine for detecting killer robots.
I swung my legs off the bunk and started getting dressed. Cole's uniform fit better than it had on Day Zero — either my body was adapting to his dimensions, or the system's repair work was reshaping me at a level I couldn't perceive. The thought was uncomfortable enough that I filed it and moved on.
[Cargo Hold B — Day 7]
Petra Dunn was already working when I reached the cargo bay. She'd been on shift for two hours, according to the rotation log — which meant she'd been on shift for five, because Dunn didn't believe rotation logs applied to her.
The system's passive scan registered her as I crossed the bay floor:
[DUNN, PETRA — SURFACE READ]
[EMOTIONAL STATE: IRRITATED / CONTROLLED]
[HEALTH: ADEQUATE — FATIGUE MODERATE]
[THREAT LEVEL: NONE]
Surface-level data. I needed more. I stopped behind a stack of supply crates, out of Dunn's line of sight, and focused.
Active scan. Dunn, Petra.
[ACTIVE SCAN — DUNN, PETRA]
[SE COST: 10 — REMAINING: 68/100]
[AGE: 34 — ORIGIN: TAURON]
[ATTRIBUTES:]
[— COMMAND: 61/100]
[— COGNITION: 68/100]
[— CONSTITUTION: 57/100]
[— CHARISMA: 44/100]
[— CUNNING: 52/100]
[— CONVICTION: 71/100]
[TOP SKILLS:]
[— LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT: 8/10]
[— SUPPLY CHAIN OPTIMIZATION: 7/10]
[— PERSONNEL COORDINATION: 6/10]
[— INVENTORY SYSTEMS: 7/10]
[— CRISIS MANAGEMENT: 6/10]
[COMPATIBILITY: 73%]
[LOYALTY INCLINATION: LOCKED — REQUIRES PAM LEVEL 3]
[CYLON PROBABILITY: 2.3% (±30%) — LOW CONFIDENCE]
The numbers confirmed what I'd already suspected. Dunn was exceptional at her job — logistics management at eight out of ten was specialist-level — but undervalued. Her charisma score was low, which tracked with what I'd observed: she was blunt, practical, and terrible at office politics. Her conviction was high, meaning she'd commit fully once she believed in something. The trick was getting her to believe.
I tucked the data away and approached openly.
"Morning."
Dunn glanced up from her data pad. The look she gave me contained several layers of assessment.
"You slept."
"Six hours."
"Congratulations. You look almost human." She turned back to her pad. "Bay two inventory is off by sixteen units. Someone's either stealing or miscounting, and I need to know which before Vasquez asks for numbers."
"I can take that."
"You're on light duty."
"Light duty means I don't lift heavy objects. It doesn't mean I can't count."
The corner of her mouth twitched. Not a smile — Dunn didn't smile — but the ghost of one.
"Fine. Bay two. Report back by thirteen hundred."
I took the assignment and headed for bay two, but I stopped after ten paces and turned back.
"Dunn."
She looked up again. Patient but not infinitely so.
"Your cargo rotation schedule. It's pulling double coverage on port bays and leaving starboard under-resourced during third shift. If you swapped the C-team and D-team assignments and staggered the changeover by forty-five minutes, you'd eliminate the overlap and free up two crew members per shift."
Dunn's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. Her data pad lowered.
"You worked out my rotation schedule."
"I had six hours of sleep and nothing to read."
"And you think you can optimize it better than the woman who built it."
"I think you built it during a crisis with no sleep, and now that the crisis is over, there's room to refine. Twenty percent workload reduction, minimum."
The silence stretched. Dunn studied me with the careful attention of someone who'd survived thirty years in Colonial logistics by knowing when someone was selling her garbage versus offering genuine value.
"Twenty percent."
"If I'm wrong, you lose nothing. If I'm right, your shift ends an hour early."
More silence. Then she did something that surprised me — she pulled a spare data pad from under her workstation and slid it across the desk.
"Rotation data's on there. Access code is DUNN-4471. You have until tomorrow morning."
"What do you want in return?"
She fixed me with a flat stare.
"What makes you think this isn't the test, Cole?"
I took the data pad and left. Behind me, Dunn's eyes followed me across the cargo bay floor. I could feel the passive scan registering her emotional shift — curiosity replacing irritation, the faintest trace of something that might, with time and evidence, become respect.
[Cole's Quarters — 0300, Day 8]
The rotation schedule took four hours to optimize. It should have taken longer — Dunn's original was good, built by a professional who understood supply chain dynamics — but the system helped. Not overtly. I didn't summon holographic spreadsheets or run AI analysis. But when I stared at the numbers long enough, the system offered gentle nudges through my visual cortex: efficiency percentages appearing next to crew assignments, conflict points highlighted in amber text, optimal swap suggestions that dissolved before I could consciously read them.
The result was a schedule that looked like the work of a talented logistics officer — which is exactly what it needed to look like. Nothing superhuman. Nothing suspicious. Just good enough to make Dunn wonder where Marcus Cole had been hiding this kind of talent.
I transferred the finished schedule to the spare data pad, walked to Dunn's workstation, and left it there. The cargo bay was running a skeleton crew at 0300 — two workers stacking refugee supplies, neither paying attention to a logistics officer dropping off paperwork.
Back in my quarters, I pulled off Cole's boots and sat on the bunk. My feet ached. Not the distant, muted ache of a system-managed body, but the real, grinding discomfort of feet that had been standing on steel decking for eighteen hours.
Small joys. The phrase surfaced from somewhere — a writing guide, a self-help book, the kind of thing Wade Hargrove would have scrolled past on his phone between meetings. But it landed differently now. The bunk was narrow and the mattress was a joke, but it was horizontal and mine. The cabin smelled like recycled air and industrial cleaner, but it was quiet. Safe. A box in space where no one was shooting at me.
I let myself enjoy it for exactly thirty seconds. Then I opened the Cybele's crew manifest and started planning.
Dunn is the first. She has to be. She runs the cargo operations, which means she controls supply flow for five hundred people. If I can bring her in — not as a recruit, not yet, but as someone who trusts my competence — then I have a foundation to build on.
Marsh is the second angle. He's an engineer with skills the Cybele needs, trapped under a captain who won't give him resources. If I can fix that — even partially — I have an engineer who owes me more than a favor.
But I can't move too fast. Two interventions in a week — the loader, the schedule — is already pushing the envelope for a logistics officer who just survived a chest full of shrapnel. One more "coincidental" display of competence and people start asking questions I can't answer.
The system flickered in agreement:
[OPERATIONAL SECURITY ADVISORY:]
[— CURRENT COVER: STABLE]
[— RISK FACTORS: LOW (2 NOTABLE ACTIONS IN 7 DAYS)]
[— RECOMMENDATION: MAINTAIN LOW PROFILE FOR 48-72 HOURS]
Noted.
I closed my eyes. Sleep pulled at me — real sleep, the kind that came from a body finally given permission to rest. The last thing I registered before unconsciousness took me was the data pad on the desk, its screen glowing faintly with the crew manifest I'd been memorizing.
Five hundred and eighteen names. And somewhere among them, the first threads of something that might — if I didn't die, didn't get caught, didn't screw it up — become worth building.
When I woke five hours later, the disorientation hit again. Three seconds of expecting a water stain on a ceiling three universes away. Then the pain. Then the reality.
Day eight. Still here. Still him.
I dressed and headed for the cargo bay. The rotation schedule would either be on Dunn's desk or in her recycling bin. Either way, I'd know where I stood.
Dunn's shift ended an hour early that day. First time in a week.
Author's Note / Support the Story
Your Reviews and Power Stones help the story grow! They are the best way to support the series and help new readers find us.
Want to read ahead? Get instant access to more chapters by supporting me on Patreon. Choose your tier to skip the wait:
Noble ($7): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public.
Royal ($11): Read 17 chapters ahead of the public.
Emperor ($17): Read 24 chapters ahead of the public.
Weekly Updates: New chapters are added every week. See the pinned "Schedule" post on Patreon for the full update calendar.
Join here: patreon.com/Kingdom1Building