"Grab it," he said.
"On my word," the chief engineer answered, voice a straight line. The coil gun's head nosed out under the cockpit lip on the ship's port side; its cable lay like a patient snake ready to be honest. "Baseline one-point-eight holds. If the pod burps, I flick you and you don't complain."
He didn't nod. He stayed on the driver bed, tail a tight counterweight, ribs boxed, breath banked where it could do math.
"Three," she said. "Two. Send."
The tether spat a hard silver line into the black. For a second it was a needle sewing two different problems together; then the magnet head kissed alloy and locked with the clean, right sound all metal aims for when it wants to be worth its existence.
The pod answered by trying to be interesting. A bright little EM tick coughed off its flank—petty, hopeful.
"Flick," the engineer snapped.
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—safety cut (0.1s).]
Weight vanished and returned in the time it takes a new thought to die. He did not move. The ship kept posture. The pod finished its cough and remembered that no one had asked for a speech.
"Tether is good," the clerk said, because someone should declare a fact that already had the decency to exist. "Cable tension within spec."
"Bleed its spin," Vegeta said.
The engineer's hands made two small choices on her board. The tether head tightened and twitched—tiny, timed—opposing the pod's lazy roll. The cable hummed; the pod complained by becoming less of a story and more of an object.
[SYSTEM: External reel—stable. Hull stress negligible.]
"Bring it to the hardpoint on the port rail," she said to the coil. "No drama. No heroics. We like simple."
The ship drifted a breath on his touch so the coil didn't have to pull alone. The pod slid toward them in a line that would have been rude if it hadn't been invited. Out the glass it grew from nail to tool to coffin-sized truth. The Frieza stencil flashed and hid as the last of its spin bled out.
"Range five," the clerk said, quiet. "Four. Three."
The engineer toggled the hull hardpoint hungry. "On two," she said. "Two. Now."
Metal met metal and decided neither had been lying today. The mag-collar grabbed and stayed grabbed. The tether slackened its pride and became a leash.
The pod answered with a bigger ping this time—still shy compared to a distress beacon, but louder than a bored thing has a right to be.
"Shroud," the engineer said, already moving a hand that wasn't physically in the hull but moved like it owned everything touching it. A tight roll of foil-laminate unfurled from a cradle near the hardpoint, floated. The coil flicked it with the kind of finesse you only get when you enjoy your job; the blanket wrapped the pod like a rudeness with physics behind it.
"Baseline two-point-oh for twenty," she added without looking away. "Because we don't let junk decide how heavy we are."
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 2.0g.]
He set his knees the tiny fraction narrower that two requires; ribs boxed on two beats; breath out after ten. The ship's deck took the ask and turned it into law. The hull, now holding a quieted lie, forgot to sing about it.
"Shroud's seated," the clerk said, relief threaded through precision. "Ping amplitude down to noise. We're its only church for the moment."
"Scan," Vegeta said.
The side pane magnified a corner of the pod the shroud left visible for exactly this purpose: the plate—corroded, pitted, still proud. The engineer's finger traced the raised geometry the way you read a scar that remembers the fight. Triangles and bars. A circle with a slash a degree off ninety. Stamps that aren't letters but are worse.
"Inventory seal," she said. "Lock protocol version two. If you open it wrong, you don't explode; you tell someone far away a story about where to come find their mistake." Her mouth went harder. "Route code… seven-C chain. The old way they fed the border depots."
"M-seventy-six?" the clerk ventured, voice none of the way toward eager and all the way toward precise.
"Looks like it," she said. "Third character is scarred, but the math fills it. M-76 is the depot line that used to run field kits and driver parts out past—"
"Past places Frieza assumes don't say no," Vegeta finished. He watched the black beyond the glass, where you can keep anything if people are lazy. He stayed on the bed. He did not entertain the lie that this decision wasn't heavy.
[SYSTEM: External object secured. Advisory—breach risk: high (beacon on wrong attempt). Suggestion—defer open until shielded room available.]
"We open it later," the engineer said, reading the suggestion and hating agreeing with it. "In your ground room, with the walls rude and the door ruder."
He nodded once. "Plot us a dead pocket before M-76. No witnesses, no polite lanes. We train while the ship learns to carry thieves."
"Dead pocket… marked," the clerk said. "Between lanes. No nearby transponders. Course set. Manual or course-hold?"
"Course-hold," Vegeta said. "No improvisation. We keep the weight."
The engineer put two fingers on her board and made the tether's logic remember respect. "Pod is mute. If it tries to talk again, I add more rude blanket and staple it to the hull with bolts that don't care about design."
"Good," Vegeta said. "We pulse."
"Two-point-two for one," she said instantly, because if pride is your currency you spend it on work, not trophies. "Offset left. Now."
The bite arrived, slotted into his ribs, left. The baseline at two took him back like he'd paid his dues.
He slid half a foot left. The bed liked his manners.
"Again," she said.
He met the second bite in a cockpit that had decided air was a myth and function was religion. The collar stayed doctrine-red. The hull stayed the kind of quiet that costs effort.
"Back to one-point-eight," she said. "Thirty seconds. Then a pair—two-point-five for half a second, ten at two-point-oh, and another two-point-five. Consent?"
"Yes."
[SYSTEM: In-flight pair armed. Consent recorded.]
"First pulse," she said. "—Now."
The ship bit. He kept the turn of the new course flat and honest—no drama, no glee. The baseline at two returned. Ten seconds organized themselves into a stack he did not drop.
"Second pulse," she said. "—Now."
Clean. The bed had learned its language; the ship had learned to be a person you could give orders to without explaining your heart.
[SYSTEM: In-flight pair stable. External object: emissions damped.]
The clerk made himself useful by breathing in quiet and speaking in sentence. "Dead pocket in nine minutes. M-76 line reachable from there in—"
"Later," the engineer cut the math off, not because it was wrong but because it didn't pay this minute's bills. "We haven't asked the pod what kind of liar it is yet."
Vegeta watched the shrouded shape in the port pane—a wrapped insult with an old stamp. "It's the kind that teaches you who owns you if you let it."
"Then don't," she said. "Baseline two-point-oh for thirty. Then you get your end-cap and a sip of water and we remind Command that courtesy belongs to people who lift things."
He breathed into the thirty like it was a narrow hallway he intended to walk without scuffing walls. The ship obeyed. The pod stayed quiet under a foil doctrine.
"End-cap," she said. "Two-point-five for half a second. Consent?"
"Yes."
Her finger fell. Verdict. Appeal. Precedent. Cut. Baseline steady.
A tiny iris opened on the pod. It was the size of a coin caught in the light—a little lens peeking from under grime through a banged seam the shroud had not covered. It looked at them like a man looks at a knife he wants to pretend is a flower.
"There," the clerk said, a thread of alarm grounded by training. "Optics—small. Active. It found a hole in the blanket."
"Kill its voice," Vegeta said.
The engineer did not ask which voice he meant. She snapped two toggles; the shroud's edge bloomed a second layer; the coil flicked once and pinned it down over the seam like a brutal seamstress. A static whisper crawled the hull and vanished.
[SYSTEM: External emissions—null. Optics line occluded.]
"Better," she said.
The glass showed black and the wrapped thing clamped to their hull, both of which were honest in their own ways. The ship's hum kept law under his boots.
The clerk, because work breeds more work, spoke into his wrist and then into the room. "Course bent and held. Dead pocket in seven. We can make M-seventy-six after that by two short burns and one long one."
"M-seventy-six," Vegeta said, tasting the number like a bit between teeth. "Plot it behind the pocket. Training stays sealed."
"Yes, Prince."
"Stance right," the engineer said, eyes on a knee that had once thought about opinion. "One-point-eight baseline for sixty while they do arithmetic. Then we get clever, but only the right kind."
He slid right half a foot. The bed approved. His breath lined up with her count and ignored everything that wasn't it.
Outside, the dead sector showed them its favorite trick—nothing. Inside, they did the opposite—something, on purpose, repeatedly, until law formed.
Nappa's voice hopped the line from ground like a coin thrown just to hear the sound. "Ground room says if you bring that thing inside, it won't complain long."
"It won't come inside until the room is ready to make it quiet forever," Vegeta said. "We don't invite liars to dinner."
Nappa laughed, the kind that adds a bolt by existing. "Copy that."
[SYSTEM: Mobile session—stable. Course set: Dead pocket → M-76. Advisory—alternate to ground node within 8h for maximum adaptation.]
"Now," the engineer said at the end of the minute, because time obeys her if you hold it hard enough. "We stop introducing ourselves and start writing the day."
"Write," Vegeta said.
The shroud settled that last millimeter over the seam. The tiny lens stopped having ideas. The ship pointed its nose at a place where maps let you ask questions. The weight under his feet stayed a doctrine with his name on it.
"Turn us toward M-seventy-six," he said, not loud, not soft. "And keep the room heavy."