"Burn," he said.
The ship obeyed like a sentence finished in steel. Thrust came up in the body, the sound of intent through ribs and rails. The driver bed followed inside the tenth, a shadow baritone under the engine's roar-that-wasn't, because good machines don't shout if they can help it.
[SYSTEM: Thrust–bed sync: ±0.05g. Mobile baseline: 2.0g (in-flight).]
"Hold," the chief engineer said, which wasn't advice. It was a place to stand.
He stood. Knees honest; hips set; ribs boxed on two; breath paid after ten. Outside the glass, dead pocket black learned about motion without the benefit of sound. Inside, the wrapped pod on the port rail sat like a swallowed sin with a receipt stapled to it.
"Heat curve within bias," the clerk reported, voice steady now that he had learned what kind of room he lived in. "Rails quiet. Collar at seventy-seven Celsius, climbing on model."
"Collar gets a prayer and a wrench," the engineer said, dry. "I'll give it one of those it believes in."
She flicked a guarded cover, rolled a quarter-turn on a remote retorque for the hatch frame bolts, listening more with her jaw than her ears. The collar's number curved a fraction flatter, the kind of correction you only get if you enjoy insulting metal into behaving.
"Better," she judged. "Baseline holds. No pulses until we pass the ramp kink."
Vegeta didn't answer. The weight was an argument he had already won and intended to keep winning for the length of the burn. Autopilot was off; course was his chest lined up with the nose, hands barely on the yoke. The ship stayed where told.
"Ramp kink in six," the clerk said. "Five."
"On four," the engineer said, "we introduce a pulse to teach the bed to accept insults without inventing religion. Two-point-two for one. Consent?"
"Yes."
"Four," the clerk counted.
"—Now," the engineer said.
The bite stacked clean on top of thrust, cut clean beneath it. No song. No sulk. Baseline returned at two like the deck had decided to be a law and a friend.
[SYSTEM: In-flight pulse under acceleration—stable.]
"Again? No," she said to herself, and because she was herself, he didn't push. "You get one bite in a burn tail, not two. We're writing a habit, not a story."
"Pocket edge in seventy seconds," the clerk said. "Comms noise warming up out there. Inside we're church."
Nappa's voice hopped the line from planet like a thrown wrench hitting the right part. "Ground room says the ribs are bored. I told them they could be tired later. Bring your souvenir home and I'll hold it while your room insults it."
"If I let it inside, it's because I intend not to let it outside again," Vegeta said. His breath kept time without needing time told to it. Two in; box; out after ten. Repeat until math makes a shape in muscle and stays there.
The collar ticked one more degree; the engineer's finger hesitated above the retorque and didn't press it—discipline is knowing the difference between control and fidgeting. "Thermal creep stabilized," she said. "Tether quiet. Shroud quiet. The wrapped lie has manners for the moment."
A soft, irrelevant murmur flickered at the comm panel—outside life trying to assert that it existed. The pocket still ate most of it. What got through sounded like gossip in a language you decided not to learn.
"Safety drill under burn," the engineer said. "Flicker cut one-tenth. Re-engage. Breath stays where I told it, not where your pride wants it."
"Do it," he said.
"—Flick."
Weight gone; weight back. Hands didn't tighten; tail corrected the quarter-breath drift of a living hull becoming data and then a ship again.
[SYSTEM: Vacuum flicker during burn—nominal.]
"Good," she said, which in her dialect meant you get to keep doing that. "Ramp tail in twenty. Clerk, count it."
"Nineteen," the clerk said, glad to have a job. "Fifteen. Ten."
"Hold two-point-oh through the tail," the engineer said. "No pulse. We don't show off when a machine is busy surviving."
Outside, the black put a curve under their line you could only see if you refused to blink. Inside, sweat obeyed gravity and manners both; it stayed where told, a line down the spine that didn't request attention.
"Tail in three," the clerk said. "Two. One."
Thrust stepped down by exactly the numbers it had promised. The bed followed, as he'd ordered it to learn. His stance didn't change because it didn't have permission.
"Cut to one-point-eight," the engineer said when she was satisfied that all the songs were in tune. "Let the ship breathe. Later we ask for more."
[SYSTEM: Mobile baseline 1.8g.]
The weight softened without conceding. The pocket's far edge arrived in the way night arrives after day—inevitable because of orbits, not consent. The comm panel's static became a smear of actual voices fighting physics; Command's metronome knocked, polite as a debt collector who learned a better salary somewhere else.
"Pocket exit," the clerk said. "Noise returns. Command ping waiting politely like a toothache."
"Log it," Vegeta said. "Don't answer it."
"Yes, Prince."
Nappa again, content to be useful without being in the room. "When you point your nose at M-seventy-six, don't crash into the part where someone keeps score. Bring me something I can lift first."
"Noted," Vegeta said.
The engineer drew a rectangle on her palm with two fingers, wrote a number inside it like a dare. "We can run one more ladder under coast before approach," she said. "One-point-eight baseline, pulses at two-point-two. If something sings, it's your joints, not my ship."
"My joints don't sing," he said.
"Good," she said. "I like working with literate bones."
"Course," the clerk said, softer now that he liked math. "M-76 vector captured; approach buoy registers idle… wait." He pinched the display. "A wake—old. The buoy sniffed something in the last twelve hours."
"Frieza traffic?" the engineer asked.
"Could be," the clerk said. "Could be a ghost writing yesterday on purpose."
"We treat both the same," Vegeta said. He rolled the ship one degree, enough to make its personality admit which version of straight it liked. "Ladder."
[SYSTEM: In-flight ladder armed—baseline 1.8g; pulses 2.2g × 1s.]
"Pulse," the engineer said. "—Now."
Teeth; cut. Baseline accepted him. Black ahead gathered itself from nothing into a thing with intention: a logistics buoy's far blink like an old lighthouse that hates sailors.
"Rep two—now," she said.
He met that, too. The hull kept its vowels. The collar stayed a sermon. The wrapped pod tried and failed to remember being important.
"Rep three—now."
He slid right a half foot, and the bed appreciated that he understood superstition and physics aren't enemies if the superstition is just do both sides, fool.
"Rep four," she said. "No trophy at the end. End-cap comes later when we remind the buoy that it doesn't have jurisdiction over your weight."
He took the last bite and left it where it belonged. Baseline held.
[SYSTEM: Ladder complete.]
"Coast," the clerk said. "Approach buoy contact in two minutes at this vector."
"Let it do the talking," the engineer said. "We listen. We don't answer with anything but mass."
"Baseline two-point-oh for twenty," Vegeta said, because listening isn't the same as waiting.
[SYSTEM: Mobile baseline 2.0g.]
The weight came back and brought a chair. He didn't sit. He told his bones what their job was and they did it. The glass gathered a feeble blink that knew too much about bureaucracy and not enough about men.
The buoy woke like a startled animal that remembers being a guard dog. A ping touched the ship—thin, officious, carrying the stamp of Frieza's chain even after someone had tried to sand it down.
The clerk's voice earned his pay by not changing. "M-76 perimeter says 'identify' in a dialect that thinks you owe it a story."
"Let it think," Vegeta said.
The engineer's hands hovered over the bits of ship other people mistake for personality. "We approach on an angle that lets us leave with dignity," she said. "We do not trail a parade behind us."
"Baseline holds," he said. "When it asks again, it'll learn our doctrine."
The ping came again—this time narrower, more like a finger than a hand. The wrapped pod on their rail stayed prayer-quiet; the shroud's extra lip did its rude job.
"Identify?" the clerk repeated from the buoy, because someone had to say the word so the ship could have a reason to ignore it.
Vegeta didn't answer the buoy. He answered the only thing that mattered.
"Closer," he said. "And keep the room heavy."