"Closer," he said. "And keep the room heavy."
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 2.0g.]
The weight came back and brought its chair. He didn't sit. Knees honest; hips set; ribs boxed on two; breath paid after ten. The glass ahead fattened a starless blink into a thing with intention: a perimeter buoy waking like an old clerk at a locked door.
The ping tapped them—thin, officious, the shape of a question that didn't expect to be refused. IDENTIFY, in a dialect that assumed chains.
The clerk read it out because someone had to. "Perimeter requests identifier, route, and custody code."
"We have none they deserve," Vegeta said.
"Then we borrow theirs," the chief engineer said, voice dry. "Hold at two. Slide left half a foot at twenty seconds. Breath stays where I left it."
He slid left. The bed approved by not noticing.
She had the pod's plate magnified on the side pane, chalking the raised geometry with a fingertip in the air—triangle, bar, bar, off-square circle. "Seven-C chain, version two. Their old handshake is a dumb challenge-and-response: buoy throws a salt; you reply with a hash that includes the inventory seal geometry and the nonce stamped under the paint."
"We don't have the nonce," the clerk said, careful because he'd learned what language lives in this room.
"We'll make the buoy think we do," she said. She sketched a rectangle on her palm, wrote numbers into skin like an insult to steel. "Clerk, capture the next salt; give me its last four bits. I'll synthesize a mute token that says 'audit transit, do not query contents.' Minimal. No names."
The buoy pinged again—IDENTIFY—then tossed a jitter of noise that only wanted to be random.
"Salt last four bits… five, A, zero, three," the clerk said, already routing the raw to her slate.
"Good," she said. "We pretend our seal's geometry is blank and feed it the salt wrapped in version-two's stupidity. It will either grant us a corridor or escalate to a voice we can hear. Ready to transmit on my mark."
Vegeta kept the course by insult, not by labor. Manual stayed manual; the nose learned to like where it was pointed. The wrapped pod on the port rail stayed quiet under its rude blanket.
"Transmit," she said.
The clerk pulsed their lie—a small, grey code that was more refusal than consent. The buoy thought about it in the bored way things think when they haven't been paid in a while.
[SYSTEM: External query response sent: mute token.]
The buoy blinked. A new tone came—a fraction lower, like someone remembering a rule they never liked. A thin corridor painted itself across the dark: two guidance lines in cold spectrum, a door drawn on nothing.
"It bought it," the clerk breathed.
"It rented it," the engineer said. "Corridor might collapse if we breathe wrong. Hold two-point-oh for twenty. Pulse at two-point-two on my count. If their drone blinks, I flick you."
"Bring it," Vegeta said.
"Pulse—now."
Teeth; cut; baseline. He kept the small corrections in his hands invisible—half a finger, half a breath. A dot winked near the buoy like a sleepy eye—a maintenance drone unsure whether it liked this play.
"Drone eyelid," the clerk said.
"Flicker in three, two—flick," the engineer said.
[SYSTEM: Safety cut (0.1s) + re-engage.]
Weight vanished and came back where it belonged. The drone considered getting interesting and decided to discover obedience instead.
"Corridor holds," the clerk said, the relief tucked where it belonged. "Guidelines stable."
"Manual on bed," the engineer reminded, not because he needed it but because ships like to hear doctrine. "Slide right half a foot at baseline."
He slid. The bed liked his loyalty to both legs.
M-76 grew from blink to architecture—an outer shell of ribs and plates, half-lit like a factory caught mid-blink. Docking collars rested like rusted teeth along one lattice. One of them twitched in the old, automatic way machinery does when it hears a word it used to obey.
"Route markers," the clerk narrated like a man keeping a ledger. "Corridor wants us to dock five-east. That collar has power. Barely."
"Good," the engineer said. "If it fails, we know metal is honest. If it works, we know bureaucracy is lazy."
"Rep two," she added with a glance at the load. "Pulse—now."
He met it. The nose stayed on the chalk line. The buoy did not escalate. The corridor's threads held like string drawn by a bored god.
"Rep three—now."
Cut clean; baseline back. He set the angle by the small line of instinct that lives in the knuckles and the tail. The wrapped pod hugged the port rail like a sin they intended to convert.
[SYSTEM: In-flight ladder under approach—rep 3/4.]
The guidance threads fattened into marching ants along the collar's throat. The dock itself yawned a bare mechanical inch—ancient hydraulics trying to remember verbs.
"Rep four—now," she said.
He took it. The bed's hum stayed the same hum it had been since the first time he taught it to be a place, not a thing.
"Ladder complete," the clerk reported because procedure likes hearing itself done. "Corridor says 'maintain chain' and offers a handshake to the dock local."
"Refuse politely," the engineer said. "We'll speak in hardware."
M-76's outer plates slid past the canopy. Up close, its age had texture—streaks where thrusters had blown heat, rust-colors where paint forgot promises, a blackness in maintenance chasms that had nothing to do with vacuum and everything to do with neglect.
"Baseline one-point-eight for thirty," she said. "Last set before we touch metal. If something sings, it won't be my collar."
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 1.8g.]
The weight eased without conceding. He let the ship coast on the chalk line drawn by things that thought they still had authority.
The dock collar twitched again and committed—lips widening, old lights stuttering awake in a sickly ribbon around the throat. Inside its mouth, a recess lit that had once been for seals and stamps that lived on paper.
"Clerk," the engineer said. "Arm hardware-only docking. No chain. No data. If the dock asks for a story, we give it a bolt."
"Armed," he said.
"Twenty-five," she counted. "Thirty. Cut. Now: pulse pair to scrub the edges—two-point-five for half, ten at two, another two-point-five. Consent?"
"Yes."
"—Now."
The first stamp hit; left. Ten seconds stacked and paid. The second stamp landed like a brief promise and didn't steal.
[SYSTEM: Pair stable. Approach vector within tolerance.]
"Dock five-east opens its throat," the clerk said, the words almost fond. "It thinks we're coming home."
"We are," Vegeta said, without warmth. "We just own a different home."
He nudged the ship down the corridor's throat. The collar's guidance lamps fought through dust and old doctrine. The dock's mouth accepted the prospect of a seal. The wrapped pod on the rail hung quiet under law it hadn't written.
"Final correction," the engineer said. "Two degrees yaw left. Don't give it your name. Give it your weight."
He did. The ship aligned. The collar's inner ring spun an inch as if to pretend it still got to choose. It didn't.
"Contact in three," the clerk said. "Two. One."
Metal met metal. The sound came up through the driver bed before it came through the air—a right sound, low, almost pleased. Latches asked for a handshake. They got the bolt.
"Lock," the engineer said. "Hard. Then we let their air try to remember being air while we keep our room sealed."
The lock answered with doctrine. The ship didn't sigh; it refused to know how.
[SYSTEM: Docking pressure detected (external). Training mode: sealed. Mobile baseline: 1.8g.]
"Dock local is speaking," the clerk said, channel deportment held between two fingers. "Old AI. Words like 'chain-of-custody' and 'custody challenge' and 'present seal.'"
The side-pane showed a text gutter in a font that had bullied people for pay. PRESENT SEAL. CHAIN REQUIRED.
The wrapped pod tried to be important and failed. Its shroud whispered; its iris stayed blind.
The engineer curled one corner of her mouth. "We can feed it a corpse of a chain using the mute token and the pod's geometry. It might open the inner gate without introducing us to anyone who thinks they matter."
"Or we can force it," Vegeta said. He felt the urge to push breathing against steel until it learned; he shelved it in the place where discipline lives. "We do not break the room to break a lock."
"Agreed," she said. "Baseline two-point-oh for twenty while I teach it not to have an opinion."
[SYSTEM: Mobile node—baseline 2.0g.]
He stood in the gravity he'd brought to a place that had forgotten how to carry itself. Behind the glass, inside the ring, the inner gate loomed—thicker, darker, waiting with the self-importance of a door that used to get its way.
"Token ready," the clerk said. "Transmit?"
"Transmit," the engineer ordered, the word spoken like a wrench entering a bolt.
The gate's status lights had to remember how to be colors. Amber woke, blinked, considered getting scared, and chose boredom instead. A mechanism hummed—not loud, not proud, just awake.
"Present seal," the gutter repeated, stuck in a loop it had earned.
"Present weight," Vegeta said, to the room.
The inner mechanisms coughed a cold breath—air that had forgotten lungs. The collar held. The driver bed hummed the same hum it had learned under sky and in pocket; it didn't change pitch for doors.
A new line typed itself, slower, older: CHAIN OF CUSTODY—STATE CARRIER.
Vegeta did not give it a name. He gave it the only thing he believed in.
"Dock it," he said.
The ship pushed the last inch. The inner gate listened to the lie it had just been fed and chose to believe in habit.
Locks rotated, old and wanting to be noble.
The weight under his feet didn't move.