By the fourth day, the routine felt like it had always been there.

  Breakfast was becoming our ritual. I'd gotten better at navigating the ChefPro's bizarre naming conventions, and Rosalia had mastered tea preparation, with the focused intensity she applied to everything. We sat across from each other, eating in comfortable silence punctuated by occasional observations about the asteroid field visible through the viewport.

  "The light patterns are different today," Rosalia noted, gesturing with her fork toward a particularly large tumbling rock catching the system's star at an angle. "The rotation must have shifted."

  "Orbital mechanics," I said. "Everything's always moving. Slowly, but constantly."

  "I find it oddly reassuring."

  "Yeah?"

  "Predictable change," she explained. "The universe operates according to comprehensible principles, even when nothing else does."

  I considered that while chewing a cube of synthesized egg. "That's... surprisingly philosophical for breakfast."

  "I contain multitudes," she said primly, then smiled at her own joke.

  We finished breakfast in that same comfortable quiet. The kind that didn’t need filling.

  After the meal, we split according to schedule. She went to the medical pod, me to the gym. The routine was comfortable now, familiar in a way that felt almost domestic.

  By mid-morning, we'd reconvened in the fabrication bay of Hyperion Deep. The Reizen floated beyond the station's viewing ports, tethered and waiting for its transformation.

  "I have been considering yesterday's incident," Rosalia said as we reviewed the technical specifications on her datapad. "You are clearly uncomfortable with EVA work after yesterday’s drifting situation."

  I scratched the back of my head. Just thinking about the tether made my palms clammy. The memory was too fresh. The station shrinking in my visor, the helpless drift.

  "Yeah, well. It's one thing to know intellectually that I won't drift away again. It's another to convince my body of that."

  Rosalia's expression softened slightly. "A perfectly reasonable response to trauma," she said matter-of-factly. "I propose a division of labor. I will handle the external attachment point installation. You focus on fabricating the hull addition itself."

  "You sure? That's a lot of EVA work."

  “I am comfortable with external work,” she said. “And, given recent events, it is entirely rational for you to… take a break from EVA.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I promise not to crash anything in here while you’re out.”

  “I appreciate the effort,” she said dryly.

  We went through the checklists together. I walked her through the anchor installation sequence one more time, making sure the venting routines that had shoved me into open space yesterday were fully locked out. She suited up, sealed her helmet, and cycled out through the airlock with a calm efficiency that made me feel both proud and vaguely guilty at the same time.

  Once the status indicator turned green and Rosalia was outside, mag boots engaged, vitals steady, I let out a breath and turned my attention to the hull section design with an enthusiasm that surprised even me. This wasn't just repair work, this was creation. Art, even.

  The basic parameters were simple: create an ornamental housing for the oversized cheatlight drive that would appeal to wealthy buyers. Make it look intentional, prestigious, valuable.

  Simple parameters. Infinite possibilities.

  The expansion section that would house the rebuilt cheatlight drive sat in pieces across the main fabrication bay on Hyperion Deep. Structurally, it was boring: reinforced lattice, inert shielding, a grid of honeycomb supports. Everything the engineering VI loved. Everything that would make a naval architect shudder.

  The outside, though?

  The outside was my playground.

  I had proposed something practical—a smooth, minimal bulge, maybe with a few tasteful accents. Rosalia had tilted her head, considered, and then said, “If we must add a non?standard structure to a royal vessel, it should, at the very least, look intentional. And ideally impressive.”

  Impressive, in her vocabulary, meant “wealth and status you can see from orbit.”

  Hyperion Deep’s storage was full of rare alloys and decorative materials I had looted over years of late?game play: trophies I had bought because they were pretty and never used because I had had no one to show them to.

  Now I had both a pretext and an audience.

  I pulled up a holographic model of the Reizen with the new drive bulge grafted under her belly. The simple grey crescent sat there, fine, functional, ugly.

  “All right,” I muttered to myself. “Let’s commit a war crime against subtlety.”

  I started with the base shape: a crescent shell that would wrap around the drive module, bridging smoothly into the existing hull. I specified a structural layer in sane, boring alloy, then overlaid it in something a lot less subtle.

  The fabrication queue chimed as I dragged ingots from virtual inventory into the model.

  White?gold first. Thick.

  The external shell became a sweeping crescent of polished white?gold, curving around the bulge like a half?open arm. In the display, the simulated light rolled over it in a soft, almost liquid sheen.

  I etched patterns into it: lines radiating from the center of the crescent like stylized sunbursts, repeating motifs that would catch light from different angles.

  Then I added veins.

  Thin inlays of rhodium traced along the sunburst lines, bright silver against the warm white?gold. I specced them with a low?intensity luminescent coating: in the vacuum, they would emit a dim, steady light, just enough to make the whole thing glow like some religious sculpture drifting through space.

  In the middle of the crescent, I dropped a dome.

  Ionized niobium?titanium alloy formed a shallow bubble, surface polished to a mirror finish and then treated to shift colors in an iridescent wash: deep blues at the edges, purple at the apex, hints of green when the angle changed. In motion, it would look like liquid metal, like a little contained aurora.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Okay,” I murmured. “That’s the sun.”

  It still felt like it needed a centerpiece. Something ridiculous. Something that said, “Yes, a monarchy paid for this.”

  So I added a phoenix.

  I sketched the basic shape over the lower half of the crescent: a bird rising from the sun, wings spread forward along the hull. Its body and head extended along the direction of travel, like an old?Earth prow figure carved under a wooden ship’s bow.

  The main structure was, again, in practical composites. The visible surface was pure gold.

  I gave the phoenix a long, sweeping neck, head raised, beak slightly open in a permanent cry. Its wings curved back along the new section, feathers overlapping in layered panels that would hide the joints between the added bulge and the original hull lines.

  Along the edges of the feathers, I overlaid rhodium plating. Thin, bright outlines that would stand out against the gold like thin ice on fire.

  For the beak, I hesitated, then dragged one of the rarest things from inventory: a small block of isotope?pure rhodium. In game terms, it had been an absurdly expensive cosmetic trophy: “the most reflective substance in the known universe,” according to the flavor text. Here, it was still stupidly expensive and still pointless, but it made the model look incredible.

  The beak became a sharp, impossibly bright spear at the very tip of the phoenix’s head. In the render, it caught a simulated starbeam and threw it back like a tiny, angry lighthouse.

  I zoomed out.

  Under the Reizen’s elegant hull, the crescent of white?gold wrapped around the cheatlight bulge like a rising sun, etched with radiant lines of glowing silver. The central dome shimmered blue and purple. The phoenix, all gold and light, seemed to burst from that sun, wings sweeping back along the underside, beak like a shard of captured star.

  It was absurd.

  I loved it.

  The engineering VI pinged a query about mass distribution. I tweaked internal supports, added a few hidden counterweights, and got it to shut up.

  “Reizen external aesthetics updated,” the station announced blandly once I pushed the design to the fabrication queue.

  “Understatement of the year,” I said.

  Lucas would call this absolutely ridiculous. Claire would love it. And they'd both be right.

  Usually, thinking about them brought a bout of loneliness. This time, because I was no longer alone, it actually felt good. Remembering them felt like honoring them, not clinging to a loss.

  The industrial fabricators began their slow, precise dance. Sheets of white?gold extruded and cut, rhodium inlays etched, the colored alloys of the dome laid down layer by microlayer. The phoenix itself needed more work: some of it could be built as modular segments, but the fine feather patterns and the final polish would require manual finishing.

  Which was fine. It gave me something borderline ridiculous to focus on while Rosalia played with actual danger outside.

  Hours passed in focused work. I lost myself in it.

  I sanded and polished curved plates until they reflected my face back at me with unsettling clarity. I checked fit tolerances between gold feather segments and rhodium edge pieces. I argued with the VI about the need for an internal mount shaped like flame tongues instead of simple brackets.

  From time to time, Rosalia checked in over comms.

  “Anchor point twenty?three installed,” she reported at one point. “Tolerances within acceptable range. I am moving to twenty?four.”

  “Copy,” I said, tightening a clamp on the phoenix’s left wing. “You are doing great.”

  “I am hardly performing brain surgery,” she said. “This is tedious.”

  “Hey, I almost died doing that tedious job yesterday,” I said. “Respect the tedium.”

  “I respect your renewed appreciation for safety protocols,” she replied.

  By the end of the work block, she had finished all the exterior anchor ports. The new drive housing was ready to be hoisted into place the following day.

  The phoenix, meanwhile, lay in three major segments on the bay floor, gleaming even under the harsh fabrication lights. The dome sat cradled in a temporary frame, its surface shifting colors as I walked past.

  Rosalia stepped back into the bay, helmet under her arm, hair damp with sweat where the seal had pressed against her skin. She stopped dead when she saw the ornament.

  “Nicolas,” she said slowly. “What is that.”

  “That,” I said, failing to hide my grin, “is how we turn a structural compromise into an asset.”

  She walked closer, boots clicking on the deck, eyes taking in the details.

  “The crescent is… bold,” she said. “Very… solar.”

  “Sun?burial, sun?crest, sun?kingdom,” I said. “On?brand.”

  Her gaze moved to the dome. “And this is… unusual.”

  “It will look like liquid light when we are under rotation,” I said. “Trust me.”

  Then she looked at the phoenix.

  Silence. Her fingers hovered over the feathers without touching.

  “An imperial phoenix,” she said softly. “Rising from the sun.”

  “Figured it fit,” I said. “You know. Rebirth. New life. Selling your old one for parts.”

  She studied the beak. The rhodium glittered like ice and chrome and impossible mirrors in one.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

  “Isotope?pure rhodium,” I said. “Most reflective substance in the known universe. Or so the item description claimed. I am finally getting my money’s worth.”

  Her lips parted in something between amusement and disbelief. “You are truly determined to announce ‘I am rich beyond measure’ from every possible angle.”

  “Well,” I said, “if someone is going to come after us anyway, might as well make them jealous first.”

  She laughed, quiet and genuine.

  “It is outrageous,” she said. “My father would have bankrupted his kingdom to commission something half this elaborate.” After a pause, she added,"I personally find it excessive to the point of vulgarity. But I recognize that is precisely the aesthetic that will maximize our sale price."

  "You hate it," I said.

  "I hate that it will work." With a wry smile, she added: "The Empire's nobility has deplorable taste."

  Flight training that afternoon went smoother than previous sessions. Rosalia seemed to have taken my diaper suggestion seriously. Or at least, she settled into her seat with less obvious anxiety. I kept the maneuvers gentle. No surprise rolls. No diving between asteroids. Just smooth, predictable flying that let her focus on sensor operations.

  "Contact at bearing two-seven-zero," she reported. "Approximately eight hundred meters. Velocity suggests natural drift rather than active maneuvering."

  "Good catch. Classifying?"

  "Scanning..." A pause while she adjusted filters. "Metallic asteroid. Very dense. Composition suggests iron-nickel core."

  "Excellent detail work."

  We continued the exercise, threading through the field at a pace that let her focus on sensor work rather than fighting nausea. She called out three more contacts over the next twenty minutes—two accurately classified, one she had to double-check before confirming.

  Her confidence was building. More importantly, her hands had stopped white-knuckling the console.

  "You're getting really good at this," I said during a break.

  "Thank you," she replied. Then, with a small smile, "It is easier to focus when we are not on a collision course with a heavy obstacle."

  "That’s for next week,” I said jokingly. Then, more seriously, “you need to be able to focus in situations of high stress.”

  "I am aware," she admitted. I noticed her hands trembling slightly on the controls.

  We flew for another hour before returning to the station. As I docked the Mahkkra, I caught myself thinking about how natural this was starting to feel—the routine, the partnership, the gradual building of skills and trust.

  This could actually work. We could actually do this.

  That evening's recreation period involved another episode exchange—one of Chester and Frilda for one of Nth Dimension. Rosalia was starting to anticipate Chester's most absurd moments, occasionally muttering "ridiculous" under her breath with what sounded suspiciously like fondness.

  When we finally called it a night, I found myself looking forward to the next day. Not just the work but the partnership itself. The rhythm we'd found.

  The station felt more like home than it had any right to. Maybe because I wasn't alone anymore.