Chapter 5 - Misfire

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

—Isaac Asimov

Luca’s hands were steady as he ordered everyone toward the hangar. The UER shuttles had launched five minutes ago, which meant they would be here within the next couple of hours.

His head throbbed. [System Pulse] still had nearly twenty hours left on its cooldown, and so, apparently, did his entire skull. It made him feel like absolute shit. It didn’t matter. There was no time to think about the pain, no time to think about anything.

“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, stood the uniform crates from Zoe and Emily’s shopping spree.

“Hold on,” Ryan said. “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.

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 from wall to wall.

“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.”

Boxes scraped across the deck, loud enough to jab at Luca’s headache as everyone moved.

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, 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!”

Emily tugged Zoe through the hangar doors and out of sight.

Trying not to smile, Luca shook his head and turned back to his uniform.

The white bodysuit felt like tech-woven armor. It was Gore-Tex layered over neoprene, compressed tight, with reinforced panels at knees and elbows and an elastic weave meant to keep the suit vacuum-sealed in a pinch. Professional gear for professional idiots. He stepped out of his jeans.

Putting it on was pure struggle. 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. Luca yanked the zipper up.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

Danny adjusted his uniform, dark blue trim making his red hair look even brighter. “The compression’s actually pretty comfortable. No pressure points,” he said, flexing experimentally.

“Should be, considering what we paid,” Zoe said, reentering with Emily close behind. Both had zipped up and pulled on their new boots.

“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, leaving Luca with Emily, Joey, and way too much quiet. He paced behind the command stations. Standing still wasn’t an option. He looked at the shrink-wrapped chairs stacked against the bulkhead.

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

For the next hour, Luca and Joey fought the command chairs into place. They wrestled mounting brackets into line and cranked bolts until his forearms burned. Each wrench turn was one less thing to think about. At her station, Emily coordinated with the team below while she rerouted power and watched their struggling systems.

“Luca,” Ryan said over the radio, like he was delivering someone’s death sentence. “This is worse than we thought. Whoever hit us didn’t stop at the ignition relay. They corrupted the diagnostic software and fried the primary fuel regulators too, so we’re looking at five hours minimum before ignition is even on the table. Somebody really wanted us stuck here.”

Luca’s stomach dropped through the deck. Five hours meant UER shuttles would be crawling all over them. “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. The sprint was over. Luca looked at Emily, who’d heard the whole exchange.

“We’ll be ready for them.” Emily didn’t look up from her display.

“Joey, check the hangar. Anything marked weapons or combat gear, bring it up here.”

Joey set down his wrench and left. For a while after that, Luca kept turning bolts while Emily worked at her station.

Joey came back twenty minutes later empty-handed. “Nothing useful. The crates are stacked three deep, and half the labels are buried. We’d have to unpack the hangar.”

Luca stared at the wrench in his hand. Everyone else had a system to save. He had fucking chairs.

“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. Luca looked up without meaning to. She caught him, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and turned to the screen with her lips pressed together.

Joey nodded toward the wrench. “You stopped trying to murder that bolt.”

Luca caught himself grinning. “Do you mind?”

Joey raised both hands and went back to his bracket.

“Power’s stable.” Emily tapped the screen in front of her. “Chris got the transfer controls rebuilt, so life support has its backup feed again. We’re still down two scrubber drives, but the batteries are solid and the internal grid’s responding. If the team downstairs gets propulsion online, everything else is ready. We’ll be mobile.”

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 mixed with something warmer underneath. “You ok?”

He looked up. Those green eyes were right there again, 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. For a few seconds, he stopped thinking about the migraine, the sabotage, or the UER shuttles bearing down on them.

Static crackled from the radio, then Zoe’s voice came through clean. “Fuel pressure’s good. Injectors are cold but answering.”

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 said. “Let’s try not to explode, okay?”

Emily frowned at her readings. “Containment looks good. Power’s flowing to the manifold.”

“Ignition circuits are clean, and containment’s stable,” Zoe cut in, all business now. “It’ll be a manual startup, but fuel pump pressure is... actually better than I expected. We can fly this.”

Luca went back to the next bolt and tried not to stare at Emily crouched beside her panel, one knee bent, fingers absently tapping her thigh as she chewed the inside of her cheek.

“Manual startup?” Luca looked up from the bolt. “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. That’s probably why Zoe keeps frying the electronics every time she tries igniting the thrusters.”

“Hey!” Zoe’s protest crackled through. “I resent that! It means we do this by hand.”

Emily looked at him, 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, and Danny’s on redundancy checks. Try not to blow my engines out, Zoe.”

“You’re letting Zoe take point?” Luca said into the mic.

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

Sitting back on his heels, Luca shot Emily a look. “This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

“Hey, bridge,” Zoe’s voice came back, completely deadpan. “I heard that. I’m choosing to take it as a compliment.”

Luca rose to his feet and stretched, the bodysuit pulling tight across his shoulders. The bridge was starting to feel smaller, even with only the three of them. The light from the forward displays reflected in Emily’s eyes, and for a second, he didn’t want to leave this spot.

“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.”

He moved to the next chair. One bolt at a time. That was how you kept a ship together.