Page 26 of Starlight, Starbright
My control fractures.
I lean forward, lowering my head until my forehead rests against hers. The gesture is instinctive, bypassing all conscious thought. Among my people, this is intimate. More vulnerable than kissing. It shares breath, shares space, creates connection without the barrier of sight.
I press my forehead to hers and my markings flood with gold. Every visible trace illuminates brilliant, undeniable gold that reflects off her skin, off the corridor walls, announcing to everyone present exactly what she means to me.
Gasps from the gathered crew. Footsteps retreating. Whispered conversations. I process these sounds peripherally while focusing on her. On the warmth of her hands. On her scent at this proximity, familiar now. On the way her breathing has synchronized with mine.
“Zoric.” My name, whispered between us.
“I choose you too,” I say. The admission costs nothing. Not anymore. “Regardless of consequences. Regardless of protocols. Regardless of what my people expect or what your people fear. I choose you, Paige Martin.”
We stand like that for several seconds. Then she pulls back slowly, her hand sliding from my face but her other hand still holding mine.
The corridor isn't empty anymore. At least a dozen crew members have gathered, witnessing this exchange. Some look shocked. Commander Tanaka, among them, appears unsurprised. Lieutenant Morris smiles openly. Two engineering personnel I don't recognize are recording on their personal devices.
I find I don't care.
I came to this assignment to prove integration was possible through logic and discipline. Instead, I've learned integration requires vulnerability. Trust. The willingness to choose connection despite risk.
I've learned this from her. The human chief engineer who sees my markings and calls them beautiful. Who sits beside me in crowded mess halls. Who takes my hand in defiance of hatred.
My carefully maintained protocols are shattered, my mission parameters irrelevant against the reality of what I feel.
PAIGE
The power grid is failing in sections. Not all at once. That would almost be better.
I watch the cascade on my display, deck by deck, system by system. Environmental losing capacity in Ring B. Life support pressure dropping in sections 4 through 7. Lighting failures spreading through the civilian quarters like dominoes falling in slow motion.
Two days until Christmas. Two days that we might not have if I can't stop this.
“Chief, I'm losing containment on the plasma feeds.” Jian's voice cuts through the chaos. She's at the secondary console, hands moving across controls, trying to redirect power that keeps disappearing. “Every time I compensate for one failure, another system drops offline.”
“I see it.” The display shows what I already know. Someone designed this cascade. Each failure creates the conditions for the next. Elegant. Methodical. The kind of thing that takes weeks to plan and seconds to execute.
The comm crackles. “Engineering, this is Medical. We're getting reports of temperature fluctuations in the civilian quarters. People are panicking.”
“Tell them we're working on it.” I pull up the environmental controls. The numbers make no sense. Power consumption shows normal levels, but distribution patterns are wrong. Like someone rerouted the feeds through inefficient pathways, creating bottlenecks and pressure points.
Another alarm. This one from structural integrity. Hull stress in sections that shouldn't be experiencing stress.
Jian looks up, her face pale. “Chief. If we lose structural integrity...”
“We won't.” I move to her station, scanning the data. The hull isn't actually failing. The sensors are. Someone's feeding false readings into the system, making us think we're falling apart when we're just wounded.
Clever. Make us so busy chasing phantom problems that we miss the real ones.
Music starts playing over the shipwide comm. Not alarms. Not emergency broadcasts. Music. Christmas carols.
The sound is tinny through the engineering deck's old speakers, but I recognize the melody. “Silent Night.” A choir singing in harmony, voices layered over simple instrumentation. I wonder if it's Giorgi Perrin. This feels like something he'd do—decide that people need hope even when systems are failing. Especially when systems are failing.
I blink hard, forcing my vision to clear. No time for emotion. Only time for solutions.
“Marcus, take over environmental.” I assign tasks, spreading my team across the failing systems. “Perrin, you're on structural sensors. Verify actual hull integrity, ignore the readouts. Yuki, comms and navigation. I want to know if we're getting accurate external data or if someone's poisoning that feed too.”
They move. My people are good. Exhausted, scared, but good.
I route power manually, bypassing automated systems that someone's corrupted. The work requires focus I barely have after days of investigation and fear. My hands shake slightly as I input commands. Not from fear. From exhaustion and the weight of knowing that if I fail, everyone dies. Environmental in Ring B stabilizes. Life support pressure equalizes. Small victories.
