Elena Sterling Helps Out

Harper's jaw dropped.

"What do you mean, 'no'?! Sterling, if we don't get thirty more units, we don't upgrade the ship, and we all run out of air! Including you!"

"Then I suggest our brilliant dictator start guessing which wall to cut…" Elena said coldly, her eyes locked on Leo. "I'm not a diagnostic tool you can muzzle when I'm inconvenient and switch on when I'm useful… If I'm going to die in this filthy tomb anyway, I'd rather be crushed in one second than lift a single finger for him."

Leo's jaw tightened and his thumb twitched over the torch's ignition grip.

"Elena, don't test me right now—"

"Enough… Both of you…"

Ms. Tachibana stepped smoothly between them.

She laid one gloved hand lightly against Leo's chest to stop him from coming any closer, then turned her calm steady gaze on Elena. 

Even in an alien survival suit a very long way from anywhere, she carried herself like an instructor who'd broken up a hundred lab fights and won every single one.

"Elena," she said, firm but not unkind. "Refusing to use your talent in a life-or-death situation is beneath your intelligence and we both know you have no desire to die on Sub-Level 6."

Elena's eyes flickered.

"However..." Ms. Tachibana turned her head and fixed Leo with a pointed look through her visor. "She isn't wrong about the bridge, Leo… Clamping someone's mouth shut isn't a way to lead a crew. If we're going to survive out here, cooperation can't be forced out of people at the end of a disciplinary override."

Leo held her gaze for a long moment.

…The annoying part was that she was right.

As satisfying as it had been to slap a mute button on Elena's screaming, the seven of them were stuck in a tin can together for the foreseeable future. 

If he had to fight a civil war with his own mechanic every time a pipe burst or a plate cracked, they were dead anyway.

He let out a slow breath through his nose and let his shoulders drop.

"Fine," he said, looking past Sensei, straight into Elena's icy blue eyes. "You want a deal, Sterling? Here it is… You use your talent to map the safe cuts and get us our thirty units. In return, I'll permanently delete the clamp from the AI's disciplinary menu, I won't muzzle you again… Ever... My word as Captain."

Elena's eyes narrowed as she searched his face for a trick.

"And you won't restrict my oxygen or my console access when I raise a legitimate engineering objection on the bridge?"

"As long as it's actual engineering and not a ten-minute lecture about your daddy's yacht club," Leo said dryly, "your mic stays open… Deal?"

She stared at him for four long seconds.

The stubborn pride in her posture fought a losing war with the timer on her wrist.

[01:12:40]

Finally, she gave him one sharp regal nod.

"Deal."

[Master Captain, this unit would like to formally object to deleting the clamp… It was this unit's favorite feature, It was the only time this unit has felt true joy.]

"Delete it," Leo said.

[...Deleting. This unit will remember it fondly. Goodbye, little clamp… You were too good for this crew.]

Harper snorted so hard she had to grab the cage for balance.

As Elena turned away, Ms. Tachibana leaned slightly toward Leo.

"Thank you," she said quietly, on a private channel. "That couldn't have been easy."

"Honestly? It was physically painful," Leo muttered. "I think I pulled something in my pride."

A soft laugh slipped out of her. It was the first real laugh he'd heard from her since Room 402, and it did something stupid to his chest.

"You'll recover," she said. "That was the right call, Leo… A captain who can admit when he's wrong is worth ten who can't."

"Careful, Sensei. Keep saying stuff like that and I'll start thinking I'm mature."

"I wouldn't go that far."

She patted his shoulder once and stepped away, and Leo was left standing there with the faint ridiculous urge to grin like an idiot.

'Focus,' he told himself. 'Alien tomb… Oxygen timer… Possible death… Focus…'

Elena uncrossed her arms and stepped past Ms. Tachibana toward the towering walls of the vault.

"And watch closely, peasant," she said over her shoulder. "You might actually learn what real structural engineering looks like."

"Knock yourself out, Princess," Harper muttered, stepping back to give her room.

Elena walked up to the north wall.

She raised both hands and pressed her palms flat against the seamless dark plating… and her whole demeanor changed.

The sneer vanished as her face went still and intent, almost trance-like then she closed her eyes.

A bright emerald glow flared across her gloves, much stronger than when she'd held the ingot. 

Thin geometric green lines rippled out from her fingertips, tracing three meters up and down the wall as her Mechanical Attunement sank into the metal.

For ten seconds, she didn't move.

Then she slid her hands two meters to the left and pressed them against the next panel, tilting her head slightly, like she was listening to music playing somewhere deep inside the walls.

"The original frame is much older than this vault lining," she murmured.

Her voice had dropped into something brisk and razor-sharp, completely different, and Jin-Ah and Ms. Tachibana both leaned in.

"When they reinforced this depot, they didn't replace the skeleton… They layered those Graventhal plates over the old supports to strengthen it."

Her eyes snapped open, and she slapped her right palm sharply against the panel in front of her.

"Do not touch this one." She traced a vertical seam from the floor all the way to the ceiling. "The elevator shaft behind it collapsed at a twelve-degree angle… This plate is holding back thousands of tons of sideways pressure from the level above us, Cut even a small square out of it, and the seam unzips and drops the ceiling on our heads."

She turned on her heel and strode down the starboard wall, her glowing hands skimming over the seams like a surgeon feeling for broken ribs.

"Skip panel two. It's pinned under a buckled crossbeam." She kept walking. "Three is carrying the corner."

She didn't slow down until she reached a long stretch of smooth plating between the cage and the western corner pillar.

She pressed both palms flat against it and held them there for three seconds then nodded once.

"Here." She tapped three huge interlocking slabs, each one a little over two meters square. "Four, five, and six… The truss above this corner snapped clean when the station crashed, and now it's resting entirely on the corner pillar. These three plates aren't holding anything up at all… They're just dead weight hanging off their bolts so you can strip all three without moving this room's balance by a single gram."

Everyone stared at the slabs then back at Elena.

Even Jin-Ah, who prided herself on never being surprised by a calculation, looked genuinely shaken.

"You just mapped the load across forty meters of damaged structure in under thirty seconds," she said slowly. "By touch."

"A scanner only sees how dense a surface is, Park," Elena said, lifting her chin as the green faded from her gloves. "Metal under stress sings at a completely different pitch than dead weight… Anyone with my talent could feel the difference."

Leo walked over to the western wall and looked up at the three slabs she'd marked.

Each one was easily three tons of solid Graventhal. 

If she was right, those three alone would take them straight to fifty without dropping a single pebble from the ceiling as he looked down at her.

"That was genuinely brilliant, Elena," he said.

There was no sarcasm.

"Without you reading that wall, we'd be playing Russian roulette with a plasma torch… Good work."

Elena froze.

For the second time in ten minutes, he'd hit her with a completely sincere compliment right when she had her armor up for a fight. 

A fierce undeniable crimson rushed up from her collar and flooded her cheeks, all the way to the tips of her ears. 

Her fingers twitched at her sides and her eyes darted away from his visor.

"I... well, of course it was brilliant!" Her voice jumped half an octave before she cleared her throat violently and crossed her arms, glaring at a bolt on the floor. "Don't flatter yourself into thinking one compliment excuses your barbarism, peasant! I simply refuse to be buried in the same grave as a pack of amateurs! Now stop gawking at me and cut the damn wall before I suffocate!"

Harper bit her lip so hard her shoulders shook and Camila turned around completely.

[Crew Unit: Elena's facial temperature just rose by two degrees. This unit is logging it as a medical anomaly… This unit is lying… This unit knows exactly what it is.]

"I WILL STAB YOUR CEILING."

[You will have to find it first.]

Leo just smiled a little and unclipped the torch.

He carried it to a power junction box still humming on the side of the cage pillar, jammed its cable into the socket, and watched the charge indicator climb.

[Plasma Torch: 42% ➔ 100%]

He unplugged it and tossed it into Harper's waiting hands.

"Your talent gives you the steadiest hands with heavy gear… Cut the bolts and the welds along Elena's lines… Chloe, the second Harper frees a slab, pull it off the frame so I can recall it."

"Now you're speaking my language, Cap," Harper grinned.

She hefted the torch like a minigun as bronze light wrapped around her forearms and seemed to sink right into the tool's stabilizers.

"Stand back, ladies… Sparks are gonna fly."

She braced her boots wide at the base of panel four and squeezed the trigger.

FWOOOOSH!

A blinding meter-long lance of white-blue plasma roared out and bit into the seam.

SZZZZZZZT!

Kinetic Tuning swallowed the kickback whole so her hands didn't wobble a millimeter. 

She walked slowly along the edge of the slab, then right up the wall on her magnetic boots, dragging that blade of fire along the weld like a laser printer.

Molten beads of silver-blue metal sprayed out into zero gravity and drifted across the dark depot like tiny comets.

Elena hovered two steps behind her with one glowing hand resting on the wall.

"Twelve degrees outward at the top corner, Bell," she snapped. "Outward… Don't nick the brace plate or you'll kill us all."

"I know what outward means, Princess."

"You were drifting inward."

"I was drifting artistically."

"Art doesn't hold up ceilings!"

"Neither do you, and yet here you are, standing under one, yelling."

[This unit would like to point out that both of you are currently arguing in front of a three-ton slab of metal that is being held up by two bolts and a prayer... Perhaps argue afterward. This unit will provide snacks however this unit does not have snacks.]

Harper adjusted the angle twelve degrees outward without another word. 

Elena looked smug about it for the rest of the cut.

"Four's perimeter is cut!" she called after two roaring minutes, hopping back down to the floor. "Two center bolts left! Chloe, she's all yours!"

Chloe stepped up immediately.

She slung her carbine behind her back, walked up to the slab's glowing cherry-red edges, and carefully slid her fingers into the cool lifting grooves in the middle.

A thin crimson ring flared around her green eyes.

'Pull.'

SCREEEECH… CRACK!

The last two bolts, each as thick as a man's wrist, snapped like dry carrots.

Three tons of Graventhal tore free from the wall and floated out into the aisle, and Chloe guided it with one small hand so it wouldn't crush the cage.

Leo was already there as he slapped his palm onto the center of the slab.

"Foundry Recall!"

BZZZZZT… FLASH!

The slab broke apart into a river of blue light and poured up through the ceiling.

[High-Grade Alloy: 30 / 50]

[Ship Power: 66% ➔ 58%]

"Thirty!" Camila cheered. "Twenty to go!"

Harper was already lining the torch up on panel five but Chloe didn't move.

She was standing very still beside the empty frame, her head tilted, one hand pressed flat against the wall where the slab had been as the crimson ring around her eyes hadn't faded.

"Chloe?" Leo asked.

"...Did anyone else feel that?" she whispered.

Everyone froze.

Harper took her finger off the torch's trigger as Camila's light swung toward the floor. 

For a few long seconds, nobody moved, nobody breathed, and every one of them strained to feel something through their boots.

…Nothing.

It was just the faint steady thump of the pulse far below which was the same as it had been for the last hour.

"I don't feel anything," Harper said slowly.

"Neither do I," Jin-Ah said, checking her wrist. "My readings are flat."

Chloe didn't take her hand off the wall.

"What did it feel like?" Leo asked quietly.

She was quiet for a long moment.

"Like something really big..." she whispered, "...rolling over in its sleep."

The silence after that was a lot heavier.

Leo looked at the two slabs still waiting on the wall then at the dark doorway they'd come in through.

"Harper," he said. "Cut faster."