Chapter 5 - Misfire

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

—Isaac Asimov

Luca checked his hands. They were steady, which was good enough for now, even if he didn't trust it.

He ordered everyone toward the hangar. The UER shuttles had launched five minutes ago, which meant they'd be crawling up the Triumph's ass within the next couple of hours.

His head throbbed. [Systems Analysis Burst] was on a 24-hour cooldown, and so, apparently, was his entire skull. Every heartbeat sent a fresh spike behind his left eye. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the next ten minutes.

"Everyone, grab your uniforms and gear up," he snapped. "Right now."

The hangar was a disaster zone, like Joey had warned. Crates and equipment boxes were stacked everywhere and the air still tasted like soot from the electrical fire. But there, near their dropship, the Percival, sat the uniform crates from Zoe and Emily's shopping spree.

Ryan hesitated. "Shouldn't we be figuring out—"

“We are figuring it out. First step? Protection. Put your uniform on.” Luca tore into the box with his name, ignoring the blood trickling down his nose. Inside was a white bodysuit with silver trim, crisply folded and way too clean for a guy with blood drying on his upper lip.

Emily stood in his oversized red hoodie, the one that hung almost to her knees, watching him with those big green eyes of hers.

"Wait, here?" She swiveled, scanning the hangar like she expected something to jump out at her.

"Take your boxes to your cabin if you want, Em, but they're coming, and we've got no time to waste." Luca stripped without ceremony, pulling his ruined shirt over his head. "Let's go."

That got everyone moving.

Privacy was a luxury they couldn't afford, not with enemy shuttles closing in. Ryan was already down to his boxers. Danny fumbled with his orange hoodie like he'd forgotten how undressing worked.

Emily grabbed her uniform and nudged Zoe. "Come on. Our cabins aren't that far."

Zoe grinned, rolling her eyes. "Well, if the UER are about to blow us to bits, might as well get a last look." She leaned against a crate, arms folded. "Go on, boys, don't mind us."

"Not funny, Zo." Emily grabbed Zoe's arm. "We're changing in private." She rolled her eyes at the guys. "Let's go!"

They disappeared through the hangar doors.

Luca shook his head, biting back a grin. Zoe was going to get them all killed, and it wouldn't even be in combat.

He turned back to his uniform.

The white bodysuit was Gore-Tex layered over neoprene, compressed tight, with reinforced panels at knees and elbows and an elastic weave that promised a vacuum-proof seal in a pinch. Professional gear for professional idiots. He stepped out of his jeans.

Getting into it was a full-body argument. The suit stretched but compressed everything, digging into every scar and muscle knot with zero margin for comfort. Emily had bragged about cut-and-friction protection, smartsuit properties, but right now the slick fabric bit into raw blisters on his palms and his nose was still leaking blood onto pristine white material. Luca yanked the zipper up.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath. He was going to fight the UER looking like a injured mall cop in a space onesie.

Danny adjusted his uniform, dark blue trim making his red hair look even brighter. "These are actually pretty comfortable," he said, flexing experimentally.

Danny looked entirely sincere. Danny could fall asleep in a dumpster and call it cozy.

"Should be, considering what we paid," Zoe said, reentering with Emily close behind. Both zipped up and their new boots on. Zoe looked like she'd been wearing hers for years. Emily looked like a recruitment poster, which Luca noticed and then immediately stopped noticing.

"Alright, listen up." Luca forced himself to focus. "We need the main thrusters online, and we need them now. Zoe, Ryan, Chris, and Danny, you're on diagnostics. Emily, Joey, bridge for power management."

Ryan cracked his knuckles, grinning. "Finally, something I actually know how to do."

"Try not to blow anything up this time," Luca said.

"Where's the fun in that?"

---

The engineering team disappeared into the ship's guts, and the bridge went quiet, way too quiet, the kind of quiet where Luca's brain started listing everything that could go wrong, so he paced behind the command stations until the urge to scream faded into something manageable.

Shrink-wrapped chairs sat stacked against the bulkhead. Good, that was something to do.

"Joey, give me a hand." Luca tore plastic off the nearest chair. "Let's get these bolted down."

For the next hour, he and Joey wrestled command chairs into position, lining up mounting brackets and cranking bolts until his forearms burned, one bolt after another after another. His brain shut up when his hands had work. At her station, Emily coordinated with the team below, rerouting power and watching their struggling systems.

The radio crackled. It was Ryan.

"Luca," he said, like he was delivering someone's death sentence. "This is worse than we thought. The sabotage runs deep. It wasn't only the ignition relay; they corrupted the diagnostic software and fried the primary fuel regulators. This isn't a quick fix. We're looking at a minimum of five hours before we can even attempt ignition."

Five hours was bad enough to make Luca's stomach drop through the deck. The UER shuttles would be here in two, maybe less. They were going to board a ship that couldn't move, crewed by seven people who'd been awake for way too long, wearing bodysuits they'd put on ten minutes ago.

"Can you do it faster?"

"Not unless you want us to skip safety checks and risk venting the core into the asteroid belt," Ryan shot back. "We're moving as fast as we can."

The comm line went dead. Luca stared at the console. His migraine pulsed once, hard, like his brain was making sure he was paying attention.

"We'll be ready for them." Emily didn't look up from her display.

She said it like she believed it. Luca wanted to believe it too.

Nobody said anything for a while after that.

"Headache still killing you?" Emily asked eventually, looking up from her display.

"Yeah," he admitted. "But at least doing this," he grunted, tightening a final bolt, "keeps me from going crazy."

Emily moved to the other side of the bridge, pulling power readouts onto the central display. Joey cleared his throat. "Bodysuit vitals are now live," he said. "Your heart rate spiked when she walked past."

Luca looked at him. "Seriously?"

Joey shrugged. "Hey, these suits are synced to the medical bay system. You wanted full vitals monitoring in case someone passed out or got shot."

Emily gave a small snort but didn't turn around. "You checking all of us, or just Luca's spikes?"

His ears burned.

Joey grinned. "Strictly scientific, I swear."

Heat crawled up the back of Luca's neck. He kept his eyes on the bolt, kept turning the wrench, and absolutely did not look at anyone. "Do you mind?" The words came out tight, half-strangled by the migraine pounding behind his eyes. He wanted to say more. He couldn't. His skull wouldn't let him.

Emily shot Joey a look from her console. "Want to keep your vitals stable? Stop talking."

Joey coughed. "Yeah, yeah. Understood, XO."

"Power's stable." Emily tapped the screen in front of her. "Battery readings are solid. Internal grid's responding. If the team downstairs gets propulsion online, we're mobile in under an hour."

That pulled Luca's focus back where it belonged. He tightened another bolt and tried to breathe through the headache.

A few minutes later, she knelt beside him, close enough that he caught the faint clean smell of the new bodysuit and something warmer underneath. "You ok?"

He looked up. Those green eyes again, right there, and his brain just quit working for a second. He dropped his voice low, side-eyeing Joey two stations behind them. "Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Didn't expect to be doing any of this. Not this soon."

She nodded slowly. "None of us did. We're going to be fine."

He forgot to look away. She didn't either. The migraine, the sabotage, the UER shuttles bearing down on them, all of it just sort of went quiet for a beat too long.

"You two know this is all getting logged, right?" Joey called from the rear console, voice dripping with fake innocence.

"Joey," they both said at once.

Luca snapped his head around and gave him a look that could have peeled paint off the bulkhead. Joey grinned anyway, completely unbothered.

Static crackled from the radio, then Zoe's voice came through clean. "Fuel feed pressure is nominal. Plasma injectors are cold but responding to test signals."

Emily reached out and tapped the console, pulling up the same data on the forward screen.

"Uh, I think the relays are good. Probably." Danny's voice followed, way more hesitant. "I mean... I'll double-check the secondaries to be safe."

"That's the confidence I love to hear, Danny," Luca cut in. "Let's try not to explode, okay?"

Emily frowned at her readings. "Containment looks good. Power's flowing to the manifold."

"Ignition circuits testing clean," Zoe cut in, all business now. "Magnetic containment stable. We'll need to do a manual startup, but fuel pump pressure is... actually better than I expected."

It was better than expected. The bar was underground, but sure, he'd take it.

Luca went back to the next bolt. Emily was crouched beside her panel, one knee bent, fingers absently tapping her thigh as she chewed the inside of her cheek. He watched that for about two seconds longer than he should have before dragging his attention back to the wrench.

"Manual startup?" He sat back on his heels. "What happened to automatic?"

"Automatic needs the ship's computer to have full diagnostic data on every component," Danny explained, like he'd decided patience was the move. "Which we don't have. Perhaps that's why Zoe keeps frying the electronics every time she tries igniting the thrusters."

"Hey!" Zoe's protest crackled through. "I resent that!" A pause. "It means we do this by hand."

Emily caught his eye, then hit the radio. "Alright. Confirm when you're ready to begin pre-burn procedures."

"Got it," Ryan's voice came through, deeper and more solid than the others. "Zoe's taking lead. I've got safety interlocks and manual overrides. Danny's on redundancy checks."

"You're letting Zoe take point?" Luca said into the mic. Zoe, who had fried the electronics at least twice already. Zoe, who was currently their best option. That was the state of things.

"I can still tackle her if she messes up," Ryan answered. "Engineering teamwork." He swore he heard Chris scoff before Ryan turned off the radio link.

Luca shot Emily a look. "This doesn't exactly inspire confidence."

"Hey, bridge," Zoe's voice came back, completely deadpan. "I heard that. Choosing to take it as a compliment."

"Can confirm," Joey snorted. "Zoe's heart rate just spiked."

"Joey," Emily said, but she was smiling.

Luca rose to his feet and stretched, the bodysuit pulling tight across his shoulders. The bridge felt smaller with the chairs bolted down, more real, like it was actually becoming theirs. The light from the forward displays caught Emily’s eyes, and for a second he forgot there were enemy shuttles inbound.

"Once we’re flying," he said, keeping his voice low, "we’re going to have to figure out a real shift rotation. People are running on fumes."

She nodded without looking up. He grabbed the wrench and moved to the next chair.

One bolt at a time. That was how he kept from losing it.