He didn't.
He didn't bow. He stacked his spine under the hand the room had made for him and made the hand admit it liked the job.
"Twenty-eight," the engineer called over the hum, eyes on graphs. "Twenty-nine. Cut in—"
"Thirty," Vegeta said.
The band obeyed his mouth first and her panel second. The hatch light held, hard and red. Nappa's grin had gone thin; that was fine. Thin meant real.
[SYSTEM: Hazard—brace load 97%. Wall panel resonance detected.]
The wall learned a new shape and tried to keep it. Metal complained in a voice the dampers didn't love.
"Three-point-six," Vegeta said.
The engineer didn't look up. "Three-point-five holds. We ride it for sixty, maybe seventy if the dampers—"
"Three-point-six," he repeated.
She weighed him against steel the way she'd done before and had the sense to argue with physics, not him. "Three-point-six for ten," she said. "Any noise I don't like and you step off."
He didn't nod. He didn't have to.
"Three-point-six," she told the harness.
The room took it personal. Sound thinned to a wire. The brace near the hatch whispered to itself and tried to start a choir; Nappa set a palm on it like a priest forcing silence.
"Five seconds," the engineer said. "Seven."
The left wall panel breathed inward—just a millimeter, just enough to matter. The engineer's hand cut the air. "Driver B down point four. Bring A up point two to hold the plate dead-center."
The tech's fingers moved. The song shifted key, less ugly.
"Ten," she counted. "Hold at three-point-six for five more—no, cut—"
The plate bucked under the load not by moving, but by wanting to. Vegeta didn't give it permission. He let every joint report, signed the report, filed it.
"Cut," she said again, already hitting the kill.
The field fell. He stepped off so the room couldn't pretend it had saved him.
A hairline crack had opened in the brace near the mount—nothing showy, everything honest. The wall panel popped back a breath and then hated itself for it.
Nappa was already leaning close, squinting like the crack had sworn at him. "That's new."
"It's a complaint," the engineer said, flat. She put her hand a centimeter from the line, felt the residual heat, and judged the lie from the truth. "We refit."
Vegeta rolled his shoulders, measured the taste of iron in his mouth, and filed it under useful. "Or we go again."
"We refit," she repeated. Not deference. Engineering. "We swap that brace, add ribs to the wall panel, and hard-mount Driver B direct to the slab instead of pretending the frame is a friend."
He let the words stand. "How long?"
"Forty minutes if supply behaves," she said. "Twenty-five if they don't and we steal their toys."
Nappa's grin found itself again. "I like stealing."
Vegeta turned his head. "Bring their toys," he said.
Nappa cracked his neck like a man warming up for a puzzle and jogged for the hatch. The lock light glared at him. He glared back.
"Unlock," the engineer said. The hard red softened. The door thought about being brave and then remembered it was a door; it opened.
"Be back before anyone misses you," Vegeta told Nappa's back.
"That's my favorite speed," Nappa said, gone.
The clerk hovered at the edge of the newly breathing doorway. "Your High—Prince—Command pinged again. The wording this time says 'gracious inquiry' and the font looks—"
"Tell them the room spoke," Vegeta said, not looking. "Tell them it asked for ribs."
"I—what—"
"Use other words," Vegeta said. "Ones you can keep."
The clerk blanched, rallied, and fled toward a comm panel like a man carrying a lit torch he didn't know how to put down.
The engineer was already sketching rib placements with the stylus on her palm, then transferring the thought to the wall with chalk marks that turned the panel into a plan. "Two ribs here, one here, tie them into the existing frame, then into the floor. Driver B comes off its polite cradle and grows up."
"You like when things grow up," Vegeta said.
"I like when they stop lying," she said.
Techs unbolted the failed brace with the hurried patience of people who had heard a room sing and didn't want it to sing again. The resin around the plate had set into a spiteful honesty; it didn't want to let go. Good.
Vegeta stood where he could watch and not be in the way. He didn't pace. Pacing was what you did when you admitted helplessness. Watching was weight in another direction.
Nappa reappeared with a rib on his shoulder, another under his arm, and a supply sergeant trotting behind him making noises that wanted to be legal. "You can't just—"
"We can," Nappa said, not even winded. "Look how good at it we are."
The sergeant spotted Vegeta and converted half a dozen thoughts into three words. "Inventory appreciates your… decisiveness."
"Inventory's welcome," Vegeta said. "If it wants to feel useful, send the damper brackets and the heavy bolts that don't strip when looked at."
"Yes, Prince," the sergeant said, discovering new spiritual beliefs on the spot. He ran.
Nappa dropped the ribs exactly where the engineer pointed. "Tie-ins?"
"Through the panel into the frame," she said. "Then into the slab at forty-five. No polite angles."
Nappa liked not being polite. He liked it loudly, with a ratchet.
The room changed shape. It didn't get bigger; it got more honest. The cracked brace came free with a noise like a man letting go of a lie. The new rib slid in and decided it had always lived there.
[SYSTEM: Advisory—muscle recovery window closing. Strain index forecasts reduced output for next set.]
Vegeta tilted his head a fraction, as if listening to something outside the wall. Then he put the prompt away because it hadn't earned space at the table yet.
He moved to the plate and set one boot on it, not stepping up, just feeling the machine's quiet. "You said Driver B straight to the slab."
The engineer nodded, all hands. "We stop isolating it like it's special. If it wants to play god, it can meet the floor."
She and two techs muscled the driver assembly onto a lower mount, the sort that didn't have patience for aesthetics. Cables rerouted with thick reluctance and then found their new truth.
The clerk came back, pale but breathing. "Command… sends regards. They scheduled a follow-up call in ninety-six hours and request preliminary data at forty-eight. They also said—this is the exact phrase—'We appreciate your initiative.'"
"They appreciate results," Vegeta said. "We'll give them those."
He didn't say in four days. He didn't have to. The room had picked its clock.
Nappa torqued the last rib into the slab until the tool made a sound like a promise fulfilled. "That one isn't going anywhere," he said with cheerful menace.
"Good," the engineer said. She tapped each tie-in, listening. Then she slapped the wall once, like a captain greeting a hull. "Mount Driver B diagnostics."
The driver hummed, woke, and checked itself. Numbers rolled the way numbers should when they aren't lying.
"Field resume at baseline," she told a tech. "Hatch—lock."
The light went hard red again. The door sealed like it meant it.
She turned to Vegeta. "We test at two to see if the ribs do what they promised. If they lie, we find out while we can still hear."
"Two," he allowed, stepping onto the plate. "Then three. Then three-point-six for thirty."
She didn't waste time telling him what he already knew he'd do. "Field to two. Bring it up clean."
The room pressed—not a shove, a hand between the shoulder blades, pushing him toward the version of himself that didn't have time for stories. He let it. Breath found the rhythm. The wall didn't sing. The braces didn't talk. The ribs sat with the satisfaction of things exactly where they belonged.
"Stable," the engineer said after thirty seconds. "Three."
The field climbed. He cataloged the small changes—the way the plate's voice lowered, the way the driver hum thickened, the way his calves and lower back started speaking a dialect they hadn't needed earlier.
"Three-point-two," she said, pushing ahead of his mouth because she knew him. "Hold for sixty."
He held. The room held. That was the bargain.
"Three-point-five," she said. "Fifteen seconds."
"Thirty," he said.
"Twenty," she countered. "You buy the other ten by not breaking my room."
He almost smiled. "Twenty."
She brought it. The band settled like a decision. The wall ribs answered like a choir that knew the song and liked the key. Nappa's hand hovered near the mount because habit, then dropped because trust.
"Twenty," she called. "Cut. Good. No lies, no song. Again at three-point-five for thirty?"
He stepped off and the floor tried to worship him. He didn't allow worship in his vicinity. He stepped back on. "Again."
They ran it again. The ribs stayed ribs. The mount stayed mount. His breath paid every debt on time and refused extensions.
Sweat had nowhere to go. It stayed instructed. The metallic taste in his mouth learned manners.
[SYSTEM: Protocol 'Pressure Sets'—Tier 2 available. Recommended sequence: 3.0g×180s, 3.5g×30s, repeat ×6. Accept?]
"Queue it," he said, which in his vocabulary meant stand where I put you until I call your name.
"Thirty," the engineer said. "Cut. We add five seconds on the third repetition if nobody lies."
"Then nobody will," Vegeta said.
A thunk sounded at the hatch—someone on the other side remembering how doors work and then remembering they don't, not right now. The lock light didn't blink. Good.
Nappa wiped an arm across his forehead and found it still dry where it should have run. "You still good, Prince?"
"Good isn't the point," Vegeta said. "Bring it back up."
They did.
Three cycles later, the ribs had earned names he didn't give them. Driver B's new mount told the truth about heat and never raised its voice. The engineer kept her count and kept her hands visible so the room didn't think she was lying to it.
On the fourth cycle, at second twenty-eight, something small in the wall tried hard to become interesting. The engineer's stylus froze in the air. "There," she said, pointing to a ripple that wanted to be a wave.
Nappa was already moving. "Got it."
He leaned weight where a brace met a rib, his palm the exact opposite of delicate. The ripple reconsidered its life choices.
"Thirty," the engineer said, cutting. "We've reached the failure point for the current brace set at three-point-five over time. That's good news. It means we can see it. We can fix it."
Vegeta stepped off and kept the room's gravity for himself. "Then we fix it."
"We add cross-tie," she said. "And we stop pretending the hatch frame is immune to math. It gets a collar." She flicked the stylus at the frame. "You'll like the collar. It's rude."
Nappa clapped once. "I'm going to marry this room when it stops trying to kill us."
The clerk chose that moment to survive his own courage. "Your Highness—the shipyard replied to my… your note. They can spare a small hull for retrofit. Single-berth. They asked who to assign."
Vegeta didn't look away from the plate. "Assign Bay Three."
The engineer lifted an eyebrow without sacrificing a second to surprise. "We build two rooms now?"
"We build two worlds," Vegeta said. "One I carry with me. One that keeps setting the size of the other."
She considered that, liked the math, and nodded. "Then I'll give them the driver spec and the mounts they don't know they need yet."
Nappa's grin went wolfish. "I'll give them their hull."
"Give them the ribs," Vegeta said. "If they cry about weight, remind them what their bones are for."
Nappa cracked his knuckles. "Yes, Prince."
The engineer snapped a line in chalk on the hatch frame—two inches out from the edge, a box that was going to become rude. "We can install the collar in fifteen. Then we go again."
"Then we go again," Vegeta said.
He stepped onto the plate while the techs fetched bolts and brackets, because standing still was what men with softer problems did.
The engineer looked up. "We're not powered."
"We will be," he said. "When your hands are empty."
She finished the chalk, tossed the nub to a tech, and wiped her palm clean along her coat. "Power to three."
The band came up like the tide that didn't care if you had other plans.
"Three-point-five," Vegeta said.
"Install the collar while he holds," the engineer told her crew, which made three techs swear and smile at the same time. She glanced at Vegeta. "If the frame complains, you step off."
"If it complains, it learns respect," he said.
Nappa took the first bracket, held it to the hatch frame with the casual precision of a man who could tear it off by mistake and didn't. A tech slid a bolt through; another spun the nut. The frame made a noise like a memory resolving.
"Second bracket," the engineer said. "Then the tie."
[SYSTEM: Tier 2 sequence queued. Consent required to engage.]
Vegeta watched the bracket bite home and the frame stop pretending to be special.
"Engage," he said.
The band listened, tightened, and the room leaned in to see what kind of man it had locked itself with.
"Three-point-five," the engineer confirmed, eyes on the graphs. "Hold for thirty."
"Forty," he said.
She didn't look up. "No."
He almost smiled. "Thirty, then."
The light over the hatch didn't flicker. The collar took its job and made it a fact.
At twenty-eight, the new tie bit home with a sound that could have been a promise or a threat. It didn't matter.
"Thirty," the engineer said. "Cut."
He didn't step off.
"Again," Vegeta said, and the plate taught the room what again meant.