Heat Inside the Hold

"You have six minutes before the cladding expands," the console announced.

The climate alarm buzzed with a flat, dry rattle. It sounded like an angry hornet trapped inside a tin cup.

I did not need the monitor to tell me the splice bay was dying. My shirt was already glued to my spine. The air smelled of scorching copper coils and stale duct insulation.

The digital readout on the bulkhead read twenty-four point six degrees Celsius.

Standard tolerance was twenty-one degrees. At twenty-six, the refractive index of the gel shifted. The thermal expansion of the granite isolation table would throw the micro-positioners out of true. My zero-point-eleven-degree cleave on the blue primary fiber would twist into junk.

"Come on," I muttered, jamming the titanium driver into my breast pocket.

I grabbed the maintenance stool. The overhead supply vent had seized shut. The secondary pneumatic baffle was supposed to dump emergency chilled air from the central engine loop. Instead, the actuator rod was frozen in the housing, choked on salt crust.

The airlock door hissed open behind me.

Kenbara did not knock. She never knocked.

She stepped into the bay carrying a heavy bronze spanner and two chilled cans of club soda. Her dark curls were pinned up in a messy knot with a plastic zip tie. A smudge of gray graphite marked the bridge of her nose.

"Your ventilation sounds like a dying tractor, Massi," she said.

"The actuator locked up," I said, stepping onto the stool. "The intake baffle is pinned at five percent."

"I heard the chiller bypass shudder through the deck plates two decks down." She set the soda cans on the floor by the door, steering clear of the granite slab. "You're baking the glass."

"I am aware."

"Chief Tahraoui is on the phone to the bridge right now. He thinks your clean room is on fire."

"Tell him it's just the climate manifold."

Kenbara tossed the bronze spanner into the air, caught the shaft, and moved to the duct trunking. "He won't care. If you pop a thermal fault code, he logs an operational delay."

She set her boots against the frame and reached up. The overhead access hatch sat seven feet above the non-static rubber flooring.

The heat in the enclosed bay was climbing fast. Twenty-five point one degrees.

Sweat ran into my eyelashes. I blinked it away against the sleeve of my heavy work shirt.

"Take the smock off," she told me. "You look like you're about to pass out on your diamond cleaver."

"The room requires lint-free cotton."

"The room is currently an oven. Strip down or cook."

She did not wait for my permission. Kenbara unzipped her heavy navy coveralls down to her hips, tied the empty sleeves around her waist, and stood there in a ribbed gray tank top. Her bare shoulders glistened with a thin sheen of perspiration. The strap of her sports bra showed against her collarbone.

My pulse kicked against my throat.

I unbuttoned my outer technicians smock and threw it onto the spare swivel chair. Underneath, my cotton undershirt was damp and clung tight to my ribs.

"Happy?" I asked.

"Ecstatic. Now give me a boost to the secondary intake."

"Use the stool."

"The stool is too short, genius. I need leverage on the bypass lever."

She grabbed my forearm to steady herself. Her fingers were slick with heat, but her grip was iron.

"Hands on my waist," she commanded. "Unless you want me kicking your laser rig on the way down."

I hesitated for half a second.

"Zerroui. Move."

I stepped behind her. I placed both hands against the sides of her waist. Her skin through the thin cotton shirt felt like a furnace. The muscles along her ribs flexed as she shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet.

She weighed almost nothing, but she was pure wiry tendon.

"On three," she said. "One. Two."

I lifted.

She caught the overhead structural rib with her left hand and shoved the bronze spanner into the baffle linkage with her right.

"It's seized solid," she grunted, her shoulder blades knotting under the gray fabric. "The pneumatic piston won't vent."

"Look at the relief valve," I called up, my face inches from her lower back. Her scent was sharp salt, sandalwood soap, and warm skin. "There is a manual bleeder pin on the left side of the brass cylinder. It's quarter-turn."

"I can't reach the pin with the spanner in the linkage."

"Hold the bracket," I said. "I have the titanium driver."

"You're going to drop me."

"I don't drop things, Kenbara."

"Famous last words."

I adjusted my grip, sliding my left arm around her hip to lock her against my chest. Her hip bone pressed into my ribs. She went rigid against me for a single heartbeat, her breath catching in the stifling air.

I pulled the calibrated driver from my pocket with my free right hand. I reached up over her shoulder. My forearm brushed the bare curve of her neck.

Her hair tickled my temple. She smelled intensely of heat and the sea outside.

"Watch the optical carriage below us," she murmured. Her voice had dropped half an octave, losing its mocking edge.

"I see it," I whispered into the hollow beside her ear.

I found the recessed bleeder pin by touch alone. Three years on cable ships meant I knew the pneumatic valve geometry blindfolded.

The pin was stuck in the closed detent. If I torqued the titanium shaft sideways, the tip would shear off.

"Kenbara. Pull the spanner toward your left elbow. Relieve the mechanical load on the pivot."

"Pulling," she gasped.

Her bicep bunched. She hauled back on the bronze tool with everything she had.

The mechanical bind eased by a fraction of a millimeter.

I felt the pressure drop through my fingertips. I set the driver's hardened tip into the set screw, aligned the torque axis, and twisted forty-five degrees counterclockwise.

The valve hissed.

A jet of hot, oily pneumatic air blasted across the back of my hand. The pressure line vented with a sharp mechanical thud.

"Now!" I told her.

Kenbara wrenched the bronze spanner downward.

The heavy steel baffle broke free with a loud metallic clatter. The internal spring snapped the duct wide open.

A torrent of chilled, dry air roared out of the intake vent.

It hit us like an ocean plunge. The freezing draft rushed over our damp skin, plastering our shirts to our chests and sending a sudden, violent shiver through both of us.

Kenbara let go of the structural rib. I lowered her carefully back to the rubber deck matting.

Her boots touched down. Neither of us stepped back.

She turned in the narrow circle of my arms. Her chest rose and fell in fast, ragged breaths. A drop of sweat traced down the side of her throat, catching in the hollow between her collarbones.

My hands were still resting lightly against the sides of her waist. I could feel the rapid drumming of her heart right through her ribs.

My own heart was hammering against my breastbone.

"You really don't drop things," she said softly.

"I told you."

She looked down at my hands on her hips. She did not pull away.

The digital readout on the bulkhead chirped a polite green confirmation.

The numbers were falling in rapid tenths. Twenty-three point eight. Twenty-two point four. Twenty-one point zero.

The amber alarm extinguished. The humidity monitor leveled off at forty-four percent.

Over on the granite isolation table, the blue primary optical fiber rested undisturbed in its magnetic carriage. The perpendicular cleave was still flawless.

Kenbara leaned back against the shuddering ductwork. She picked up the edge of her gray tank top to wipe the sweat from her forehead, completely unbothered by her bare midriff.

Then she looked up at me.

For the first time since she had walked into my splice bay seventy miles off the coast, there was no joke in her eyes. No mocking smile. No caustic barb waiting on her tongue.

Just the steady, calculating weight of her attention.

"You're far more stubborn than you let on, Massi," she said.

"Is that a complaint?"

She bent down, picked up one of the chilled cans of club soda, and pressed the icy aluminum against my bare collarbone.

I flinched at the cold shock.

Kenbara smiled, slow and dangerous.

"Not even close," she said.