"Next," he said.
"One-point-eight baseline for thirty; pulse two-point-two on my mark," the chief engineer answered, voice all plumb line. "Contact remains on the edge. We do not let strangers set tempo."
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 1.8g. In-flight ladder armed.]
He centered his stance on the driver bed, tail a tight counterweight inside the sealed cockpit. The black outside was unarguable; the hum beneath his boots carried a language they'd taught it.
"Pulse," she said. "—Now."
The bite came and left; baseline took him back like a contract.
The clerk's tone narrowed, respectful and precise. "Contact drift holding bearing. Range… closing slowly only because we are. No broadcast ID, just heartbeat pings."
"Autopilot off," Vegeta said. "I'll write the arc."
"Autopilot disengaged," the clerk confirmed, careful with relief. "Manual on your authority."
The ship responded to his hands like a tool that wanted to be worth its metal. Nose down one degree; starboard thruster feathered; the vector curled toward a pass that touched range without offering vulnerability. He did not step off the bed to fly; the bed learned that flying was work too.
"Minor side-load," the engineer warned. "Trim left thruster two percent to keep the collar bored."
He gave it. The collar stayed doctrine-red and quiet.
"Baseline holds," she added. "Good. Pulse on the turn in three… two… now."
He met the bite mid-arc; ribs boxed; breath banked; the cut clean. The ship kept posture. Somewhere aft a bolt remembered its job.
[SYSTEM: In-flight pulse under maneuver—stable.]
The contact coasted up the glass from nothing to a sliver: a dull cylinder no longer than a man, canted, rolling lazy. No running lights. A single pupil of a transponder blinked like it was trying not to be seen.
"Visual," the clerk said, bringing it up on the secondary pane. "No drive. No docking ring. Ridges along the flank—maintenance grips or… cut points."
"Could be a maintenance pod," the engineer said, unimpressed. "Could be a shaped gift."
"Gifts explode," Vegeta said. "We don't accept them."
The forward scan wrote a tired line across the pod. Composition: alloy, old. Heat: soft, alive only the way sun-warmed scrap is alive. Magnetic signature: a stubborn heartbeat that wasn't a heart.
"Vector to pass within fifty," he said. "No closer until it proves it likes being seen."
He rolled the ship a whisper. The pod kept its lazy spin, an insult to the idea of intent.
"Baseline to two-point-oh for twenty," the engineer said. "If something sings, I cut."
"Bring it."
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 2.0g.]
The floor deepened. He let his bones hold it and kept the nose on the arc. Ten seconds behaved. Fifteen flirted with drama and was denied. Nineteen tasted like work on purpose.
"Twenty," she said. "Cut to one-point-eight. We'll pulse on the nearest point if it stays shy."
"Nearest in ten," the clerk counted. "Nine. Eight…"
"Pulse armed," the engineer said. "Two-point-two for one. You don't blink at the toy; you blink at my voice."
He didn't blink. "Now."
The bite and the turn shared the same second and minded their manners. The pod slid across the nose and down the port side of the glass, maybe twenty ship-lengths away, enough to be rude without being brave.
"Magnify," the clerk said softly, obeying himself.
The cylinder's flank filled the inset screen—pocked, scraped, paint stripped by a thousand navigational sins. Under grime and pitting: a stencil bled through. Not letters. Shapes like someone's idea of geometry had learned to enjoy punishment.
The engineer hissed without breath. "I know that paint. Frieza's logistics template. Obsolete, but not forgotten."
Vegeta did not smile. "Dead things with his mark have a habit of being alive when you treat them wrong."
"Or when you treat them right," she said. "Hold thirty at one-point-eight. No pulses while we decide."
He held. The pod kept rolling. The transponder's shy tick tapped the air, brave enough to persist, not brave enough to announce.
[SYSTEM: External object—proximity class C. EM quiet. Advisory—move scan band wider.]
"Widen," he said.
The pane obliged: no escorts, no wake. Just a cylinder and the kind of silence that tries to sell you a story.
"Electrostatic," the engineer said. "Readings show a hair of surface charge. Could burp when touched. Could burp when bored."
"Flicker test," he said. "Under load."
"Armed," she said. "One-tenth cut—flick."
Weight gone, weight back, joints not lied to. The ship kept line.
The pod's transponder answered to its own boredom: a slightly louder ping, not a scream, just a man clearing his throat in an empty room.
"Nearest passes in five," the clerk said; the number felt like a door someone could shut if they bothered. "Four."
Vegeta eased starboard thruster a breath; the ship slid a clean meter of idea. He did not step off the bed to make it easier; easier was the wrong language to teach a machine.
"Three," the clerk said. "Two."
On one the pod hiccuped—a parasite EM tick, small and bright. The cockpit's lights didn't dim, but the hair on the back of a lesser man's neck would have tried to write poetry.
"There," the engineer snapped, already doing the thing she'd tell you she was about to do. "Flicker cut now—cut—re-engage."
The field vanished. Nothing moved that shouldn't. The field returned. Breathing went back to being a tool.
[SYSTEM: EM transient absorbed. Safeties nominal.]
"Good," she said, a word given to the room, not to luck. "It burps at hailing distance. It learns manners if we're the ones teaching."
"Bring us to twenty," Vegeta said, meaning meters, not seconds. He feathered the thrusters and drew a box around stupidity that he did not intend to enter.
The pod rolled, and as it rolled it showed more stencil: triangles and bars that had been a sentence once, before the universe sanded the grammar. One line came clean—a symbol every soldier who wanted a pension learned fast: inventory seal.
He kept baseline under his feet, a country he refused to leave. "Mag tether?"
The engineer already had the coil in her hands on the secondary pane, its head dog-eared and ready to bite. "We don't throw metal at lies," she said. "We tell them where to land. You keep one-point-eight. You do not improvise. If it loves you back with electricity, you say 'out.'"
"Or?" he asked, because teaching the room this question had value.
"Or I cut you off and send the tether alone," she said.
The clerk's voice had gone smaller to make room for doctrine. "Range twenty-five… twenty-two…"
"Pulse?" the engineer asked without looking at him, testing whether he'd try to set a trophy on top of a live problem.
"No," Vegeta said, and the no was heavy enough to satisfy the ship. "We work."
The pod's shy ping ticked again. It sounded like a heartbeat that didn't know what a body was for.
"Range twenty," the clerk whispered.
"On my mark," the engineer said to the coil. "Three… two…"
The pod rolled, and the roll lined the stencil up for one clean word where geometry got honest—Frieza's shipping mark, old and ugly, the kind you stamp on things you think are yours until someone carries them away heavy.
"—One."
Vegeta didn't blink. He didn't step off. He didn't lower the weight under his boots by a gram.
"Grab it," he said.