Akiko lingered outside the common room hatch, one hand resting on the cold seam of the door. She could hear Kara's voice inside: low, steady, dictating something to one of the crew via comms. A quiet hum of authority.

She waited for it to end. Waited for her nerves to settle. They didn't.

Akiko adjusted the bandage under her suit, wincing at the tug of half-healed skin. No more delays.

She keyed the door and stepped through.

Kara stood at the far end of the room, bent over a nav console with a datapad in one hand. Her coat was slung across a chair, sleeves rolled up, grease along one wrist. She'd been fixing something herself. She glanced up, eyes narrowing slightly at the sight of Akiko.

"You've got that look again," Kara said dryly. "Like you're about to ask for something expensive."

Akiko managed a faint smile. "I'm getting predictable."

"That, or I'm just getting better at reading you." Kara set the pad down, folding her arms. "Well? Spit it out."

Akiko nodded, tail flicking with restrained nerves. "Yeah. I've been working with Tanya on retrofitting the mining laser I pulled from the entity's station. It's got a lot of potential, but the power requirements are way beyond what I can handle with just my mana. That micro-fusion core is exactly what we need to make it work."

Kara's expression didn't waver. "Akiko, that core is worth more than half the salvage we pulled from the pirates. If we sell it, it'll cover repairs, supplies, and pay for everyone on board. You're asking me to risk all of that on an untested weapon."

Akiko took a step forward, her ears flattening slightly as she met Kara's gaze. "I know it's a big ask, Kara. But think about it. Without me, we wouldn't even have that core. The pirates would've shredded the Driftknight if I hadn't been out there taking the hits and keeping them off your back."

Kara's eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn't interrupt.

Akiko pressed on, her voice gaining strength. "This isn't just about the fight with the pirates. The system's heating up, Kara. Conflicts are escalating, and we're going to run into more situations like this. I can't keep relying on luck and foxfire to get us through every battle. If we upgrade the laser, it'll give us a real edge, something that could save all our skins the next time we're outnumbered."

Kara leaned back slightly, arms still crossed. "You're assuming the next fight will go the same way. That this laser will even work like you hope it will. What if it doesn't? What if it malfunctions, or worse, what if it damages the Driftknight?"

Akiko hesitated. The weight of the question sank in. But she stood her ground, tail swishing behind her.

"I get it," she said. "It's a risk. But everything we do out here is a risk. Salvaging from pirates, running from Ashara's inspectors, taking jobs from Tarek, it's all risky. At least this gives us a chance to be better prepared for whatever's coming. And if it works... it could pay off way more than just selling the core."

For a long moment, Kara said nothing. Her gaze scanned Akiko's face, unreadable.

Then she sighed, uncrossing her arms. "You're damn persuasive, I'll give you that. But I'm not making this call on blind faith. You've got until we reach the rendezvous to prove this thing has a chance of working. Show me something, anything, that makes me believe this isn't just another one of your wild gambles."

Akiko's ears perked up, hope flickering in her chest. "You've got it. I'll work with Tanya and make sure we've got something to show by then."

"Good," Kara said, her voice firm. "But if this blows up in your face, Akiko, you're going to wish you'd let the pirates take you."

Akiko grinned faintly, despite the tension still simmering. "Understood, Captain."

The Driftknight's workshop was a sprawl of half-disassembled machinery and floating tools, the air thick with the scent of scorched plating and lubricant. Akiko floated near the main test bench, one leg hooked through a magnetic loop while she calibrated the mana inductor coils. Tanya hovered across from her, a diagnostic wand in one hand and a skeptical expression in the other.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Voltage holding," Tanya muttered, eyeing the readout. "But your core's still spiking off spec. You sure it won't overload when we couple it?"

Akiko gave a tight smile. "That's what the integration test is for. Besides, 'blow up once, shame on the design.'"

Tanya groaned. "Don't quote fusion jokes while I'm holding a conduit, please."

The micro-fusion core pulsed dimly at the center of the assembly, hooked into a snarl of diagnostic cables and suspended above the stripped-down shell of the mining laser. Arcane sigils shimmered along one edge, like frost blooming through the circuitry.

Akiko reached out and adjusted a converter ring. "Mana's harmonizing with the pulse frequency. It's working."

Subskill Acquisition (Magitech Integration): Harmonic Resonance Matching – 36.3% milestone achieved.

Before Tanya could answer, the hatch slammed open.

"By the moons," Joran whistled. "That the new cannon?"

Akiko nearly dropped the stabilizer pin. "Don't touch anything."

Joran ignored the warning and drifted closer, eyes wide. "I heard you were up to something, but I didn't think you'd have it halfway built already. You got range numbers yet? Power draw? Recoil dampening?"

"It's not a cannon," Akiko said sharply. "Not yet. It's a dangerously open fusion core coupled to unstable arc mana in a partially re-tuned industrial frame. If you touch the wrong lead, you'll vent the room into space."

Joran hesitated mid-drift, catching himself on a nearby rail. "...Right."

Tanya nudged a floating wrench away from his outstretched hand with the back of her wrist. "Seriously. You want to play with weapons, wait until it's cased."

Joran raised his hands. "Fine, fine. I was just curious."

Akiko sighed and floated back to the panel. "Curiosity gets you a plasma bath."

She turned back to the open shell, hands steady but her heart thudding. The fusion core hummed beneath her fingertips, and for a moment she could feel it. Feel the potential it represented for her.

The workshop lights flickered uneasily as Tanya routed power from the micro-fusion core into the prototype.

Akiko hovered near the coupling rig, eyes narrowed. "Flow is unstable. Power's coming through, but it's… twitchy."

Tanya glanced at the telemetry. "That's not a technical term."

"Tell that to my instincts," Akiko muttered. "It's like the whole thing's waiting for an excuse to—"

Zzzt!

A sharp arc of energy cracked across the coupling. Akiko yelped, tail flaring out in a poof of dark fur, and bounced into a drift of tools with a clang.

"—explode," she finished from inside a floating pile of wrenches.

Tanya slapped the shutdown control, frowning as the residual mana curled like smoke off the rig. "Okay. That was… less contained than I hoped."

The door slid open.

Kara stepped inside and froze at the scene: sparks still dying, diagnostic screens scrolling error after error, and Akiko awkwardly detangling herself from a coil of cabling.

Kara's eyes narrowed. "I told you to test, not reinvent the reactor."

"We were testing!" Akiko said quickly, ears still twitching. "It just... well, it hates me."

Kara knelt beside the rig, eyeing the charred housing. "Is this thing supposed to be smoking?"

"It's more of a guided chaos loop," Tanya offered. "We're iterating on the problem. Which is to say, it's a problem we can fix."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "Before or after it punches a hole in the Driftknight's hull?"

There was an awkward pause. Akiko floated upright, tail still puffed, arms crossed.

"I'll get it under control," she said.

Kara didn't answer immediately. She just looked at the damage, then back to Akiko.

"You'd better."

Then she turned and left. The hatch slid shut.

"…So," Akiko said after a beat, "what's the damage?"

Tanya sighed. "The mana channeling torched half the regulators. The core's fine, but the interface? We're back to square one."

Akiko exhaled, letting her head fall back against the bulkhead. "Perfect. Just the result I wanted."

Tanya floated over and handed her a static brush. "Want to do your tail, or should I?"

The test bench was dark now. Silent. Scorched regulators and melted couplings lay scattered like the wreckage of a doomed experiment. Tanya floated beside the bulkhead, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the last diagnostic reading still flickering in orange across the screen.

Akiko didn't speak. She was crouched in front of the exposed rig, gently brushing a carbon-scored plate with the static brush, her movements slowed to a defeated rhythm.

"It's not the design," Tanya said at last, voice flat. "We ran the numbers twenty different ways. Field bleed, energy return, conversion threshold. It all works. In theory."

Akiko nodded, not looking up. "It's the materials."

"Yeah." Tanya kicked off the wall and drifted down to crouch beside her. "Reclaimed alloys from a pirate hulk. Half the latticework's got microfractures. The mana conducts through it like wildfire."

"Too wild," Akiko muttered. "We're trying to run god-light through a leaky pipe."

The silence stretched, filled only by the soft hum of the Driftknight's systems and the faint shudder of maneuvering thrusters. Somewhere forward, they were shifting course, heading into position for the rendezvous.

Akiko exhaled slowly, tail now half-deflated. "We're out of time, aren't we?"

Tanya nodded. "Kara wants us prepped for the drop. No more tinkering until after we see what Tarek's contact is offering."

Akiko leaned back against the bulkhead, eyes tracking the tangled loop of wiring above them. "Then we table it. For now."

Tanya gave a wry shrug. "Unless you're hiding a cache of pre-attuned alloys somewhere, I don't see another option."

Akiko said nothing. Her gaze had gone distant, reflective. Thinking. This would still be here when they came back to it. They just needed something... more.

The lights dimmed slightly as the ship shifted into final approach.

"I'll pack it up," Tanya said, reaching for the nearest casing.

Akiko hesitated for a heartbeat longer, then nodded. "Yeah. Let's get back to work."

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