"Higher," he said.
"Not today," the chief engineer said, and the word landed like a tool. "Baseline to one. We open the door when the room remembers its manners."
She eased the dial the way you ease a weapon back into a holster—never pretending it wasn't still a weapon. The hum softened a fraction; the weight did not vanish so much as get stored.
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 1.0g. Session state: standing by.]
"Unseal," she told the hatch. The light stepped down from doctrine to procedure. The door negotiated with its bolts, remembered the collar, and slid.
Pad air muscled in—hot metal, flux, the yard's big breath. Nappa stood there grinning like a necessary crime, grease along one forearm like war paint.
"Rails sing in key," he reported. "Yard stopped arguing and started learning. The rude collar's got cousins now."
"Good," the engineer said, stepping down to the pad. She slapped the hull once, the way you greet a beast that knows you. "Don't let anyone sell you quiet bolts. Quiet bolts lie."
The supply sergeant nodded like a convert. "Loud bolts only, ma'am."
Vegeta stepped out after them, the ship's deck trying to keep a piece of him and failing. Sparks lifted, died, became a smell. The hull stood with its new collar like a door that had gone to school and come home with dignity.
The clerk hustled up with a slate held like an offering to a very specific god. "Your Highness—log shows ground room operational; mobile operational. Ship systems request captain pairing. Command also—uh—left a 'courtesy ping.'"
"They can keep it," Vegeta said. "Pair the ship."
Inside the cockpit—small, honest, built around a single argument—the console woke. No colored pride, just the right lights. The chair did not try to flatter; it fit like a piece of armor that had already been used.
[SYSTEM: Flight core requests host pairing. Pair?]
"Pair."
A chime acknowledged the marriage. Thruster status flicked from idle to ready. Vectors lined up in neat white lines that could be ignored at will.
"Preflight," the engineer said, leaning in, slate under her arm. "Power feed steady. Cutoffs keyed. If you black out, the bed listens to you first, then to me." Her eyes tracked him, not the panel. "Preferably you don't black out."
"Preferably," he said.
Nappa thumped the collar affectionately with the back of his knuckles. "We clear the lane. Yard likes you. They won't admit it."
"They'll live longer if they don't," Vegeta said, hands on the yoke for exactly one second, long enough to tell it who it belonged to. "Seal."
The engineer stepped back, out of the mouth of the ship. "Lock."
The hatch drew itself shut and meant it. The collar took the bite without flinching. The cockpit's inner light turned the color that says don't be stupid.
"Baseline to one-point-two inside the bed," she said over the intercom, voice flat, professional. "Taxi under load so the floor learns your name while you're moving."
"Bring it," he said.
[SYSTEM: Mobile node baseline 1.2g engaged.]
The weight returned like a good habit. He set his stance on the driver bed behind the pilot's chair, balanced without holding on. The glass ahead showed the lane, the yard crew stepping clear without being told how. The thrusters whispered like they'd already done the math.
"Pad control gives you the world," the clerk said over comms with careful triumph. "Clear to lift on your own authority."
"That's the point," Vegeta said. He tapped throttle once, a knuckle-to-rib nudge. The ship slid forward, nose straight, no drama. Rails under the floor took the motion and didn't squeak.
Nappa's voice arrived, bright with work. "I'll run the ground room while you play sky-tyrant. We'll keep the mounts honest."
"Do," Vegeta said. "If Command asks sweetly, they can watch."
"They already did," the clerk said, the smile in his tone small and private. "I gave them our doctrine."
"What's that?" Nappa prompted, delighted.
"Weight," the clerk said, getting it right.
The lane opened, the pad edge becoming the thin line between ground and attempt. Vegeta set the ship's feet where he wanted them.
"Spool," he said.
The engineer's hands moved on her own board outside, not to fly it for him, but to make sure the things that carried his weight did not lie. "Spinning. Heat within bias. You are go."
He didn't count down. Counting was for people who needed permission from numbers. He brought the thrust up in a clean curve and let the ship decide if it was afraid. It wasn't. The pad fell like a polite habit broken.
The driver bed's hum deepened in his bones. He let the baseline rise by a neat notch.
"One-point-five," he said.
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 1.5g.]
The cockpit frame gave a small, approving shudder—structure reporting stress, not complaint. The collar held doctrine; the hatch respected the church it had been welded into.
"Climb," the engineer said in his ear, voice dry. "Don't invent gravity spikes before you clear air."
"Not inventing," he said. "Owning."
Sky made the old switch from industrial gray to the blue that thinks it's honest. The glass at the nose caught scatter and threw it back. Veins of cloud sheared past like someone tearing white cloth into bandages they didn't intend to use.
"Two thousand," the clerk reported because someone should. "Five. Eight. Ten."
Vegeta fed thrust without petting it. The bed under his boots kept the lesson going; the coil of his tail corrected tiny lies before they thought to become language.
[SYSTEM: Advisory—external acceleration increasing. Pairing stable.]
"Good," he said to both.
"Wind shear," the engineer murmured. "Minor. Your friend the collar will earn its keep."
It did. A ripple came and went; the hatch frame did not blink. The ship kept its line.
"Cutoff test at altitude," she added. "Not now. Later. When the sky stops pretending."
"Baseline one-point-eight," Vegeta said.
A beat. Then the weight stepped up inside the ship while the ship stepped up outside the world. His calves sang the song they had learned in Bay Three and decided it had a second verse. The cockpit remained honest.
"Fifteen thousand," the clerk said, reverent now. "Twenty. Twenty-eight."
Nappa's voice came flatter with distance and still cheerful. "Ground room says hello. Ribs say the same back. Don't crash."
"If I do," Vegeta said, "I'll do it heavy."
The engineer laughed once—more breath than sound. "Don't give the yard ideas."
Blue thinned. Black hinted. The line between them became a blade that did not care what cut it made. He kept the nose where it belonged and refused to let the ship hurry.
"Burn for vacuum in three," he said, because some numbers are tools. "Two. One."
He eased thrust to the curve that makes atmospheres into suggestions. The hull's tone changed—less air, more math. The driver bed under his boots stayed at one-point-eight, steady as a sentence spoken without adjectives.
[SYSTEM: Transition—upper atmosphere. External drag minimal. Mobile node stable.]
"Now you can try your toy," the engineer said, and it was almost a dare.
"Pulse two-point-two," Vegeta said. "Half a second. On my word."
"Armed," she said, finger already above a truth he was about to borrow.
He watched the black eat the blue without blinking. "Now."
The ship bit. He met it. Cut clean. No song. The hatch remembered doctrine. The bed remembered that its first job was to obey.
"Again?" she asked.
"Later," he said. "Two gives you data. Three makes you greedy."
"Agreed," she said, and he heard the respect in the word, which was not flattery.
The horizon stopped pretending to be anything but curve. Engines steadied into the long sound. Instruments offered vectors as if he intended to consult them.
"Course?" the clerk asked, because the universe likes to hear itself named.
"Out," Vegeta said. "Away from people with opinions. Then we turn that into 'back' on our schedule."
The engineer signed off the last yard channel. "Pad control says 'good hunting,' and 'don't bring it back broken.' In that order."
"They can have both," he said.
He stood on the bed and let the ship learn that its sky was going to be heavy now, every time, until it stopped being surprised by that fact.
"Two-point-oh," he said, for the hold. "Thirty seconds."
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 2.0g.]
Silence organized itself around work. Breath did what it had been taught. The hull stayed quiet because it had passed today's exam and wanted to be present for tomorrow's.
"Twenty-eight," the engineer counted with him, knowing he didn't need it. "Thirty. Cut."
He didn't step off. He didn't sit. He didn't tell himself a story about accomplishment.
"More," he said.