Chapter 56 · An expensive toy

The next morning they met at one of the outer dock hubs, where the traffic never quite stopped and no one paid attention long enough to ask questions. Cargo loaders drifted overhead in slow arcs, and the air carried the mixed scent of fuel, dust, and overheated circuits. It was the kind of place where deals happened quickly and memories didn’t linger.

Laro was already there, leaning against a battered cargo crate and looking like someone who had spent the night trying to outdrink a problem. His hair was damp at the edges, his jacket half buttoned, and his grin a few degrees past exhausted.

But he had it.

“A class two hyperdrive,” he said, tapping the datapad in his hand as though it might dissolve if he stopped touching it. “Mint condition. The kind the big liners use.”

Eli blinked. “A two? You’re serious.”

Laro nodded. “Traded half my last shipment and a favor I don’t plan on cashing in twice. Worth it, though. You could outrun customs with one of these. Or catch up to trouble, if you’re feeling nostalgic.”

Stent studied him with polite disbelief. “Installation will take time.”

“Won’t take any,” Laro said. “I’ve got the core ready. You just need to bolt it in.”

Eli smiled, a reflex more than joy. “Then let’s see if the Mynock feels like a promotion.”

The Lysatran sun had no mercy that morning.

The air above the tarmac shimmered, and the light came down hard enough to bleach the color out of everything it touched.

The Mynock sat in the middle of it all like a stranded insect—hull patched and heat-stained, the kind of ship that looked guilty even when parked. The plains beyond were flat to the horizon, nothing but rust-colored dust and the thin gleam of heat shields from distant docks.

Laro’s pace slowed as he crossed the field. The grin he’d worn all the way from the hangar died halfway to disbelief.

“That,” he said, stopping short, “is what you flew in?”

Eli shaded his eyes. “She got us out of the Unknown Regions.”

“She shouldn’t have gotten you out of a parking lot.”

Laro circled the ship once, mouth open, hands already gesturing like he was arguing with physics. “You came through the Chaos in this bucket? No escort? No shield housing? Stars, Eli—how many times did she nearly kill you?”

“Lost count,” Eli said. “We patched half her hull some weeks ago, scavenged a power coupler from a derelict at Cam’co Station, rewired the nav array with Ascendancy scrap, and patched the coolant lines using ration foil.”

He kicked a dent near the landing strut. “She’s stubborn, I’ll give her that.”

Laro crouched by the aft panel, knuckles brushing against the scorched plating. “Stubborn is one word for it.”

He climbed the ramp a moment later and stopped just inside, taking it in. The ship was… smaller than he’d expected. Not compact in the sleek, efficient way of courier craft—just tight. Two strides carried him from the ramp to the cockpit, and he had to turn sideways to avoid clipping a bulkhead that looked like it had been replaced more than once.

His gaze drifted past the pilot seats to the rest of it—if “rest” was the right word. Living space, galley, and sleeping quarters all shared the same narrow stretch behind the cockpit, everything within arm’s reach of everything else. Functional, barely. The cargo bay off to the side was worse: low enough that even he had to duck, more crawlspace than storage. He straightened slowly, looking back toward Eli with a new kind of understanding.

He stepped further inside, turning slightly as if trying to map the space in motion. His eyes flicked from bulkhead to bulkhead, then toward the narrow corridor leading aft. He looked for somewhere to sit, hesitated—there wasn’t much to choose from.

Eli jerked a thumb toward the side. “You can take that.”

Laro followed the gesture to the narrow bunk along the wall—Stent’s—and lowered himself onto it carefully, like he wasn’t entirely convinced it would hold. From there, he took in the ship again, recalculating.

“Eli,” he said at last, tapping the datapad, “this engine’s never going to fit in here.”

Stent, standing by the ramp, folded his arms, perfectly calm in the heat. “Define the limitation.”

“The limitation,” Laro said, pointing, “is reality. You’d have to cut half the frame out just to seat the core. She’s a corridor pretending to be a ship. The Mynock can’t handle it.”

The silence that followed pressed heavier than the sun outside.

Eli looked from the gleaming drive on Laro’s datapad to the little freighter that had carried them through storm and vacuum, through the Chaos itself. The hope that had been burning quietly in his chest all morning guttered out.

“So that’s it,” he said softly. “Answer to our prayers, and she’s the wrong size.”

Laro didn’t meet his eyes. “You could sell the core. Get a decent price, maybe rent something that won’t explode on ignition.”

Stent’s gaze stayed fixed on the horizon. “Renting is inefficient.”

Eli almost laughed, but the sound caught in his throat. He wiped a streak of sweat from his temple. “We finally found the thing that can get us moving again, and it’s two meters too wide. Figures.”

The wind rose, carrying a hiss of dust across the landing strip. For a moment the three of them just stood there—Laro sitting on the edge of the bunk by Eli, Stent unmoved as ever and Eli staring at the drive technical sheet as though he could will it smaller.

Laro broke first. “Maybe there’s another way,” he said quietly. “Something that already knows how to fly.”

Eli squinted at him. “Another way meaning what?”

Laro didn’t answer. He just stared past the cockpit for a moment, jaw tightening as if weighing a private argument. Then he jerked his head toward the parked speeder at the edge of the field.

“Hop in,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Eli glanced at Stent, motioning him to follow with a movement of his head.

The speeder kicked up a long, thin trail of dust as it tore across the plains. The spaceport fell behind them—rows of hangars shrinking into the haze, landing pads gleaming under the heat.

Laro drove without speaking. His face had gone distant, the grin replaced by something tighter, older. Wind flattened his hair, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Eli kept one hand braced on the console, the other shading his eyes. “You’re awfully quiet for someone with a plan.”

Laro’s mouth twitched. “You’ll appreciate it better when you see it.”

“That sounds ominous,” Eli said.

“It’s nostalgia. Different flavor.”

The speeder veered toward the outskirts of the port, where the paved lanes gave way to packed soil. The buildings here were older—corrugated walls, faded signage, the kind of places small traders used before they could afford better.

When Laro slowed near a long, low structure half swallowed by dust, Eli knew exactly where they were.

“This sector used to belong to my father,” he said, half to Stent. “Vanto Shipping’s first hangar. We ran a dozen shuttles out of here before the company could spell its own name.”

Laro parked beside the gate and killed the engine. “You remember,” he said quietly. “Good.”

Eli frowned. “What’s in there, Laro?”

“History,” Laro said. “And maybe a solution.”

He keyed the old door release. The panel fought him for a moment, then gave in with a groan that stirred a light shower of dust into the sunlight.

The hangar lights flickered awake one by one, revealing a spaceship shape half-covered in tarps and silence, walls lined with shelves full of all kind of spare parts and components.

Eli didn’t need to see the whole thing to understand. The hull lines were too graceful, the plating too clean to be anything ordinary.

Laro walked ahead, pulling the cover free in slow folds. “She’s called the Steady Hand,” he said. “Retired courier, class four freighter, dual-hull compression drive. Of the same model as Ma’s first ship. Bought her years ago as a hobby project. Figured I’d fix her up when business got boring.”

He looked back at Eli and smiled again for the first time that day—small, crooked, and full of reluctant affection.

“Never got around to it,” he said. “Guess this is her chance.”