Etiquette for Mechanics

Why would an imperial picket boat delay firing a kinetic slug when it already held a three-point sensor lock on an open dorsal plate? Velskr hung eight meters above the star-manta's exposed neural trench, fighting the violent pitch of the nickel-iron carapace, wanting nothing more than to jam five tons of braided grav-cable into the steering conduits before that hesitation ended. The answer arrived as a blue telemetry strobe bouncing off his visor: the gunners were waiting for the leviathan's respiratory roll to clear their firing arc. They had thirty seconds before the hull aligned with the battery.

"Torvund, bring the skiff down another meter!" Velskr shouted over the suit channel. "If that cable slips into the dorsal hinge, it will shear like wet copper!"

Above him, the battered hunter-skiff hovered upside down against the black, its repulsor skids whining against the manta's heavy grav-wake. Torvund sat in the exposed control cradle, his velvet-trimmed pilot coat soaked in hydraulic fluid. He adjusted his gloves with meticulous care before touching the lateral trim.

"Patience is the foundation of high-table dining and heavy salvage, Velskr," Torvund said, his aristocratic cadence crisp despite the static. "A gentleman does not drop an alloy yoke into a nervous manifold without an invitation. It lacks grace."

"A thirty-millimeter rail slug lacks grace," Brannar barked from the skiff's open cargo bay. Having reeled himself back up on his harness line the second the targeting ping flared, the siege-gunner now leaned over the sill, his magnetic boots locked down as he wrestled the heavy winch drum. "Six to one the picket's first volley splits this dorsal plate in half and sends us tumbling into the core. Any takers? Torvund? You have three months of dock fees riding on our funeral."

"I do not wager against my own craftsmanship," Torvund replied smoothly. He dipped the skiff's starboard thruster, compensating for a sudden surge of magnetic shear from the beast. "And you are crimping that grounding shunt with the blunt end of a pry bar, Brannar. A vulgar display. In the provincial courts of Mor-Vann, a mechanic caught using improper leverage on a sacred conduit would be sentenced to three weeks of liturgical calligraphy."

"Good thing Mor-Vann is six sectors back and currently under blockade," Brannar grunted. He kicked the winch release. "Cable's dropping! Catch the damn yoke, harpooner!"

A thick coil of superconducting copper and phase-meshed steel tumbled through the vacuum. Velskr pushed off his magnetic anchor, catching the guide-ring with one gloved hand. The mass nearly tore his shoulder from its socket, but he planted his mag-boots into an armor seam, absorbing the shock through flexed knees.

Beneath his soles, the four-kilometer leviathan shuddered. The extracted neural transponder swung from Velskr's equipment harness, its severed housing dead and dark, but the wound in the manta's carapace remained raw. Sheets of sapphire luminescence pulsed through the translucent tissue lining the trench. Each pulse coincided with a heavy muscular twitch that flexed the neighboring armor plates like closing jaws.

If he mistimed the placement, the closing plates would crush the bridle's primary housing into scrap.

Velskr wiped frost from his visor. He studied the rhythm of the sapphire flare. The dorsal hinge breathed on an eight-second cycle: four seconds of expansion, two seconds of static tension, two seconds of violent contraction.

"Telemetry lock is tightening," Brannar called out. "Targeting beacon just jumped to solid amber. Ten seconds until the battery cycles."

"Hold the cable tension," Velskr said.

He leaned directly over the gap between two massive interlocking slabs of nickel-iron. The plates groaned, grinding against each other with enough kinetic energy to flatten a frigate. He waited through the expansion. The blue glow swelled beneath the tissue. Three. Two. One.

At the apex of the plateau, during the brief two-second stillness before the crush, Velskr drove the bridle's twin cobalt anchors deep into the nerve cluster.

He did not use the pneumatic hammer. Relying on the tool would take four seconds he did not have. Instead, he swung his own body weight onto the primary lever, throwing his momentum downward. The magnetic teeth bit into the conductive tissue. Blue sparks erupted along the contact pads, arcing across his chest plate. With his free hand, he slammed the bypass breaker into the coupling socket, locking the circuit before the plates slammed shut.

The armor plates slammed together with a deafening vibration that traveled straight through his boots into his marrow. The bridle's housing held. The braided cables remained intact, locked firmly within the channel.

A rush of cold relief washed through him. He had placed the anchor with millimeter precision, surviving the crush that would have sheared an imperial docking clamp.

"Bridle is seated!" Velskr shouted, gripping the twin grav-reins extending from the housing. "Torvund, feed forty percent baseline power through the secondary loop!"

"Delivering power with utmost decorum," Torvund answered.

The skiff's auxiliary generator hummed, sending a controlled trickle of graviton flow down the tether. At the base of the bridle, the magnetic solenoids expanded, sinking deep magnetic roots into the manta's lateral nerve corridors.

The beast responded instantly.

Instead of another wild, convulsive shudder, the leviathan's giant port pectoral fin swept upward in a majestic, calculated curve. A low vibrational tone vibrated through the hull plating, rumbling in Velskr's chest. On his wrist terminal, the manta's lateral thruster vectors lit up green. For the first time since they had boarded the runaway leviathan, they were not just along for the ride. They held the helm.

"Port thrusters responding," Velskr laughed, bracing against the sudden surge of acceleration. "She's taking the bridle!"

"Do not celebrate the seating of the saddle before the beast leaves the yard," Torvund remarked, though his voice carried a quiet note of professional satisfaction. "Now, if you would kindly direct our steed three degrees off the ecliptic, you might notice that the picket ship has resolved its firing solution."

A pale blue lance of kinetic energy flashed through the vacuum two hundred meters off their starboard flank. The rail round punched through a tumbling asteroid chunk, vaporizing millions of tons of iron ore into a cloud of glowing white ash. The shockwave rattled the skiff's outriggers, sending Brannar stumbling against his ammunition crates.

"That was their ranging shot!" Brannar yelled, scrambling back to his siege lance. "Next one takes our dorsal fin! Steer us, Velskr, or I'm putting fifty marks on us becoming an expanding cloud of iron filings!"

Velskr hauled on the port grav-rein, channeling an extra five percent current into the steering solenoid. The four-kilometer manta banked smoothly, its vast wing occulting the stars as it slid beneath the cover of an ancient shattered refinery hull. The second rail slug passed harmlessly overhead, detonating against an abandoned solar collector.

"We have cover," Velskr said, wiping sweat from his brow. "Torvund, plot an egress line through the lower debris drift. We can lose them in the shoals."

Before Torvund could acknowledge, a sharp pneumatic hiss vented from the carapace beneath Velskr's boots.

Ten paces forward, four heavy oval spiracles opened along the manta's centerline. These were not exhaust ports for the beast's plasma digestion. From the dark recesses of each vent, mechanical housings slid smoothly into the vacuum.

Six sleek, disc-shaped machines floated into the void. Each was roughly the size of a gunboat's boarding pod, plated in burnished bronze armor and bristling with high-intensity plasma cutters. Their primary sensor clusters pulsed with rhythmic amber light, locking directly onto the newly installed bridle.

"Automated anti-parasite drones," Brannar said, leveling his siege lance toward the closest disc. "The beast thinks our bridle is a tapeworm. Permission to blow them out of the sky?"

"Hold your fire, Brannar," Torvund's voice cut in, suddenly sharp and completely devoid of humor.

Velskr looked up at the skiff. Torvund was staring down at the hovering drones, his knuckles white against the control yoke.

On the curved flank of the lead drone, illuminated by the flashing amber sensors, sat a deeply etched heraldic seal: a silver raptor clutching a broken compass rose inside a ring of seven gear-teeth.

"Those are not wild defense drones," Torvund said quietly. His voice carried an unfamiliar weight that silenced the comm channel. "That is the personal crest of House Valdemar. My father's private foundry mark."

The six drones did not charge. They formed a tight defensive perimeter twenty paces above the bridle, their plasma cutters idling in standby mode, waiting for an encoded response.

Brannar lowered his weapon by a fraction of an inch, his eyes darting between Torvund and the drones. "Your family built the immune system on an imperial doomsday beast? Torvund, you have about five seconds to tell us whether we should salute them or vaporize them."

Velskr held the grav-reins firmly in both hands, feeling the thrum of the giant beast beneath him and the cold watchfulness of the six hovering sentinels above. The picket ship was still circling the debris field outside, and the choice of their next move rested squarely between Torvund's past and their only route to freedom.