"Then let's work."
The hallway swallowed the words and spit them back as footsteps. Solvent and ion tang; the lights in the ceiling kept their impatient rhythm. At Bay Three's hatch the lock light had cooled from doctrine to procedure. Vegeta didn't wait for it to be polite. He went through.
The bay had its sleeves rolled. Bolts re-torqued, ribs re-tapped, the collar inspected with knuckles and ears. The plate sat anchored like it had decided to be a continent. Driver B hummed on idle, heat curve neat as a line soldier.
The chief engineer didn't turn when he entered; she assumed he had and kept writing numbers into the corner of a display. "Room ate," she said. "No lies found. We commission now, or we pretend to be shy. I don't pretend."
"Commission," Vegeta said.
She nodded. "Then we follow the same law we wrote to get here. Holds first, then ladders, then end-cap. If anything sings, I cut."
He took the plate. The slab remembered him. The room closed its hand without jealousy.
"Baseline three-point-two," she said. "Up."
Air thickened. Ankles, knees, hips organized; tail countered. Breath—two in, boxed; out after the beat. The clerk stood out of the way with a bottle he wasn't sure had permission to exist.
"Hold three-point-six for thirty," she said. "Begin."
The weight arrived like an old suggestion with better arguments. Ten seconds behaved. Twenty scraped for drama and lost. At twenty-eight the right knee tapped once like a late guest and then left without being invited in.
"Thirty," she called. "Cut."
He stepped off, unpersuaded by light. Took one sip, because dehydration was an amateur's lie. Stepped back on.
"Again," she said. They did it again, and the room liked being honest twice in a row.
"Ladder," she said. "Three-point-two baseline. Pulse three-point-eight for one; hold three-point-six for ten; pulse four for half. Twice."
He let the band write the lines where bone meets habit. Three-point-eight bit, was stored. Ten seconds at three-point-six drew clean geometry down his spine. Four snapped and left like a debt paid exactly. Twice was an honest number.
[SYSTEM: Commissioning sequence—stage 2 complete.]
The corner of the engineer's mouth acknowledged good work without any of the gratitude she refused to spend. "End-cap," she said. "Quarter-second only. You say 'out' if the knee whispers."
"It won't," he said, because he'd taught it.
[SYSTEM: Overshoot armed—4.1g ≤ 0.25s. Consent?]
"Consent."
Her finger dropped. Verdict. Appeal. Precedent. Clean cut. The baseline caught him like a pact.
"Room commissioned," she said, pen tapping once against the mount. "Version one. If Command wants a ribbon, they can bring their own."
The clerk found his courage and his mouth. "Then I log it, Your Highness? Operational?"
"Operational," Vegeta said. Then, because the room had earned honesty, "It gets better tomorrow."
The engineer snorted soft. "So do we."
He stepped off the plate and stayed heavy by choice. "We go to the hull."
"Walk," she said, already snapping a copy of the driver spec to a slate. "We pass supply. They owe me bolts with heads that don't strip when looked at."
The corridor laid itself out like a lesson. Past the tank that bubbled at no one. Past the clerk jogging to keep the slate from falling. Past the sign that believed in EAST PAD. The elevator's cage accepted their weight grudgingly and lowered them into the smell of heated metal and fresh lies.
The pad hit the senses like a forge. Sparks wrote cold constellations against the hull's flank. The ship was a small thing with a big job: single-berth stretched pod, ribs exposed, floor rails bolted in like a decision not up for debate. Nappa stood on a ladder with a brace over one shoulder and the expression of a man who had found a better gym.
"Prince," he called, cheerful through grit. "We made the rails agree with each other. The frame needed manners. We taught it some."
"Teach it more," Vegeta said.
The supply sergeant—converted believer—materialized with a crate and a willingness to live. "Rude collar brackets," he recited. "Heavy bolts, the ones that don't strip when looked at. Driver bed on the way."
"Good," the engineer said. "You'll live a long time if you keep being useful."
Nappa thumped the hull with the back of his hand, listening. "This one wants to be honest."
"Then it will be," Vegeta said. He stepped into the mouth of the ship—no ramp fuss, just metal and distance. The interior smelled new and anxious. Rails waited; mounts blinked; wiring loomed in neat coils like disciplined snakes.
The engineer ducked in after him, measuring air with her eyes. "Plate goes here," she said, toe marking center. "Driver bed braces into the ribs, not the frame lies. Collar here. Tie the hatch into the slab."
Nappa's voice came from the doorway. "Slab?"
"We cut through to hard points," she said. "If the ship wants to be holy, it can do it somewhere else. Here it becomes structural truth."
The sergeant looked like a man remembering a different career and forgiving himself for it. "Driver bed incoming."
Two troopers muscled in a rectangular slab with conduit stubs and the patience of a thing about to become important. Nappa took one end with one hand because he enjoyed the math. They set it on the rails; the engineer crouched and started talking to it in bolts.
Vegeta watched without fidgeting. He didn't hover; he applied presence like a field. The crew moved faster than they could explain. The bed settled. Cables found ports. A diagnostic glow woke and tried to pretend humility.
"Power," the engineer said. "Not field. Just a hum to see if it lies."
The sergeant looked startled by the idea of a thing that didn't work lying to a woman who would catch it. He found the breaker anyway. "Power on."
The hum came up from the floor—low, patient, the sound of muscles before a lift. The bed checked itself, numbers rolling like soldiers across a parade ground with no audience.
"Good," the engineer said, hearing micro-wobbles no one else in the ship owned ears for. "We seat the bed and then the collar."
Nappa slid the first bracket to the hatch frame, shoulder a lever the frame respected. A trooper spun a nut. The bracket bit; the frame remembered its place.
Vegeta stepped to the bed and put a boot on it—not stepping up, just letting it feel the weight it would serve. "You want it humming in an hour," he said.
The engineer didn't pretend to be surprised. "You'll get a hum. You won't get a field worth trusting until we tie in the cutoffs."
"I'll take the hum," he said.
The clerk appeared in the mouth of the hull like a messenger bird daring gravity to be offended. "Your Highness—Command logged our 'operational' flag. They scheduled a 'courtesy review' in ninety-six hours and—this is verbatim—'encourage adherence to redeployment doctrine.'"
Nappa laughed, which made a rivet settle. "They encourage. How polite."
Vegeta didn't look away from the bed. "Tell them our doctrine is weight."
"Yes, Prince."
The engineer crawled out from under the bed and stood, wiping a black line across her cheek with the back of her wrist. "Seat it," she told the crew. "Then give me the rude brackets. If the hatch breathes, I want to hear it through the bolts."
They made the hatch rude. The collar sat square, right up in the door's dignity. It looked like an insult that had learned math.
"Power again," she said. "Listen."
The hum deepened a note. The bed felt like a promise being written. The rail anchors took the sound and didn't complain.
"Prince," Nappa said, half a grin. "You going to stand on your traveling planet while it's still pretending to be furniture?"
Vegeta stepped fully onto the bed, because the answer to that kind of question was not a sentence. The floor accepted his weight the way the plate had—without flinching. No field yet. Just the machine remembering it had a job.
[SYSTEM: New node detected—mobile gravity driver (uninitialized). Pairing possible. Pair?]
"Pair," he said.
A polite chime acknowledged the marriage. No glitter. Good.
"Hum holds," the engineer said. "Driver isn't lying. We'll bring up baseline at one when the cutoffs know your name."
"My name is on everything in this room," Vegeta said.
"Systems prefer signatures," she said, not looking up. "They're vain in their way."
The sergeant shuffled, then committed to a useful question. "Do we… seal and test at one?"
"We seal and test when I say seal and test," the engineer said, which was kinder than it sounded.
Nappa clapped the bracket with the affection of a man who liked when things admitted they were strong. "We can rig the cutoffs in twenty if supply 'encourages adherence' to my requests."
"Supply encourages," the sergeant said fervently, discovering a new religion as he ran.
The ship felt like a lung that had just learned what air was for. The hum held steady, a baritone line under the noise of work.
Vegeta looked at the mouth of the hull—at the strip of pad beyond, sparks like brief constellations, the ordinary world pretending it could go on without pressure—and then at the bed under his boots.
"Seal," he said.
The engineer didn't hesitate. "Lock."
The hatch drew itself shut. The new collar took the bite and made it a fact. The lock light inside the ship turned a color that meant nobody interrupts.
"Baseline one when the cutoffs say your name," she said. She held up the sensor slate without ceremony. "Hand."
He gave it. The unit bit his palm with a polite lancet; the screen purred. "Blood taken. Tail base."
He arched; the contact clicked. "Eyes. Voice."
"Vegeta," he said, and the ship learned the word.
[SYSTEM: Mobile driver paired to host. Safeties keyed. Baseline available: 1.0g.]
The engineer's finger hovered a breath over the switch because discipline is a muscle. "We bring it up and listen. If it lies, we cut. If it tells the truth, we ask for more."
Vegeta didn't blink. "Bring it."
The driver bed answered with a low, new note that came up through his boots and into the bones that had been waiting all day to hear it from a different floor. The air inside the hull remembered planets.
The room wasn't a room yet. It was a place that wanted to become one.
Vegeta set his stance and made it personal.
"More," he said.