Chapter 132 · Decision

The storm-light outside had faded to a dull, trembling haze by the time the Faded Glory limped out of the resonance pocket. Power had returned in thin, stuttering waves — enough to keep life-support breathing, enough to warm the metal a few degrees, enough to wake Tee with a confused, indignant chirr.

Eli sat in the co-pilot’s chair, arms folded tightly across his stomach. Not because he felt cold anymore. Because something under his ribs felt wrong.

He inhaled once, testing it.

The pain responded with a small, sharp twist beneath the right side of his diaphragm. A hot pinch that faded quickly, almost shy.

Eli frowned.

Not now.

He straightened in his seat and pretended it wasn’t there.

At first Eli tried to explain it away.

Cold-induced cramping. Residual strain from the collapse. His body protesting four days without decent food or water or warmth.

But when he stood to grab a datapad, the pain shifted — not dull, not constant — a stab.

A quick, bright spike that made his breath catch.

“Agh—” He masked the sound into a cough the second it escaped, but too late.

Stent’s head snapped toward him. Alert. Focused. Sharp. “Are you in pain?”

“Just stiff,” Eli said, forcing a breathy laugh. “The fort bed wasn’t exactly ergonomic.”

“Describe it.”

“Stent—”

“Describe.”

Eli pressed a hand subtly to his right side, fingers digging under the edge of his shirt as if he could physically hold the pain still. “It’s nothing,” he lied.

Stent’s expression did not change. It didn’t need to.

Later, when Stent ran a diagnostic sequence on the primary emitter, Eli leaned over the console to help — too fast — and doubled forward, one hand bracing against the panel as a tight, nauseating throb hit under his ribs.

Not a spike this time.

A deeper, twisting pressure.

Stent paused mid-command. “Eli.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are perspiring.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“It is not.”

Eli swallowed hard, tongue dry, pulse ticking too quickly under his skin. He straightened slowly, breath tight, and forced his hands back to work.

The pain radiated outward now — toward his back, toward the base of his right shoulder blade — dull and hot and somehow wrong.

Stent watched him like a man watching structural stress lines form on a hull.

By mid-shift, the nausea hit.

Not violently. Not with the messy drama of poison or fever. Just a quiet, rolling wave that made the air feel too heavy and his stomach feel hollow. Eli pressed a hand against the console to steady himself, blinking hard.

Tee chirped a worried, questioning note and nudged his boot.

Eli bent down, patting the droid’s dome with a shaky smile. “I’m okay. Just… too much excitement.”

Another lie.

He could feel the lie sweating down his spine.

Stent turned from the pilot’s seat. “Sit.”

Eli stayed standing.

Stent’s tone sharpened. “Sit.”

Eli sat.

A few minutes later, the pain struck sharper, as though something grabbed his insides and squeezed.

Eli’s breath hitched. He hunched forward, fingers gripping the edge of the seat.

“Eli.” Not a question. A warning.

He shook his head. “It’s— it’s nothing. I just need water.”

Stent retrieved a bottle, pressed it into his hands.

Eli took a sip. Nausea rose instantly. He shut the bottle, swallowing hard. Everything under his ribs throbbed with its own pulse — hot, wrong, insistent.

Stent’s voice dropped low. Soft. Inevitable.

“You are ill.”

Eli kept his eyes on the floor. If he looked up, the truth might take shape.

“It’s just… a stomach thing,” he muttered. “From the cold. It’ll pass.”

Stent didn’t answer.

His silence said everything.

By the time the next pulse of pain came, sharper and deeper, Eli couldn’t hide it. His breath shuddered. His hand flew to his right side. His face tightened.

Stent moved toward him immediately. “Describe your symptoms.”

“I don’t— know—” Eli hissed through clenched teeth. “Right side— hurts— up, under the ribs— kind of sharp— and dull at the same time— radiates— feels like my whole— torso’s tied in knots—”

Stent didn’t touch him, but the steadiness of his presence carved out a small space of calm.

“You are experiencing a medical complication.”

“No,” Eli gasped. “Just— cramps—”

“Incorrect.”

Eli closed his eyes. Against pain. Against fear. Against the truth creeping in at the edge of his awareness.

They had no doctor. No scanner beyond basic biometrics, bacta patches and some vials. No treatment supplies. No medic-droid. No functioning infirmary. No way to confirm what was happening inside his body.

Just pain. And the slow gravity of realization.

Stent exhaled once, quiet and controlled.“This is no longer a matter of fatigue.”

Eli swallowed, breath shaking.“Stent… we don’t even know what this is.”

“Yes,” Stent said. “And that is what concerns me.”

He turned back to the cockpit, his posture shifting into something Eli had seen only in war briefings: command reasserting itself.

The probe’s debris trail still shimmered faintly on the sensors—tiny fragments of alloy drifting like dust motes in an invisible current. Enough remained that a handful of packets could be recovered, even through the corruption.

Eli hunched over the console, jaw clenched, right hand pressed just under his ribs. Every few breaths he shifted—small, involuntary flinches he tried to disguise as repositioning.

Stent saw all of them.

“Begin parsing the telemetry,” Stent said.

Eli nodded, fingertips trembling slightly as he keyed in the command. The first data set loaded. Then stuttered. Then collapsed into a mosaic of static and half-formed harmonic spikes. A dozen corrupted segments. Half timestamps missing. Waveforms bent into nonsense.

Eli stared at the display with the brittle focus of someone trying to force coherence onto a broken map. “We can still extract something,” he said.

“You are struggling to remain upright.”

“I’m fine.”

He wasn’t even convincing himself.

Eli swallowed hard and leaned closer to the flickering readout. His breath hitched. His side spasmed—sharp, violent—and he gripped the console with both hands, knuckles whitening.

Stent stood immediately. “Eli.”

“Just— give me a second—” He forced the words through clenched teeth.

Stent didn’t sit back down. He waited. Watchful. Still. Unyielding.

After several long breaths, Eli straightened again, sweat gathering at his hairline despite the cool air.

He pushed on. “We got the burst at 3.179 seconds,” he said, pointing to a section of waveform. “That’s real. That’s harmonic inversion. The structure existed. The lattice wasn’t— I didn’t imagine it.”

Stent didn’t dispute it. He stepped closer, studying the corrupted data. “This is insufficient.”

“For a conclusion,” Eli snapped. “Not for evidence.”

“You are drawing lines between fragments.”

“Because fragments are all we get, Stent. We’re a two-man crew on a corvette held together with optimism and stolen heat. Of course the data is incomplete.”

“Then the conclusion is simple,” Stent said. Eli froze. Pain tightened under his ribs again. “What conclusion?” he asked quietly.

“That we cannot derive hypotheses from this. Not with our equipment. Not with our power limitations. Not with your current state.” That last phrase struck deeper than the pain.

Eli slammed a hand onto the console—then winced immediately at the shock of movement. “Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t make this about me.”

Stent’s expression didn’t change. “The mission requires judgment.”

“I am using judgment.”

“You are using desperation.”

Eli’s breath trembled. He blinked hard, vision swimming for a moment. “We saw it,” he whispered. “We both saw the lattice. That wasn’t desperation. That was data. Real, living data. And it’s out there— it’s right there—”

He gestured weakly toward the canopy.

The storm pulsed, faint and distant, indifferent to them.

Stent lowered his gaze to the half-loaded telemetry packet. “This,” he said, tapping the corrupted waveform, “is not enough to justify continued operations.”

Eli’s face tightened. His hand drifted back to his right side. “Just give me time,” he whispered.

Stent shook his head once. Slow. Deliberate. “There is no time.”

The console emitted a single error tone. Data packet corrupted. Telemetry incomplete. Harmonic sample unreadable.

Eli sagged forward, breath shallow, pain radiating toward his back now—a hot, twisting ache he couldn’t ignore anymore.

Stent’s posture went rigid. “You need to lie down,” he said.

“No—”

“You cannot process data in this condition.”

“It’s not— that bad,” Eli lied, voice fraying.

“You are sweating through your shirt.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“It is not.”

Eli shut his eyes. The pain pulsed again—deeper, sharper, like a hot stone wedged beneath his ribs.

Stent didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t move closer.He simply said the truth:“We have reached the limits of what we can learn here.”

Eli opened his eyes, raw and wet at the edges.“Stent… we’re so close.” he pleaded.

“No,” Stent said. “We are at the end.”

Eli stared at the console. At the fractured data. At the storm. At the empty lines where theory should be forming.

His body throbbed in tight, tearing pulses, each one stealing another breath. He held onto the console with both shaking hands.

Stent held onto his resolve with both hands too. They stood there, locked in a silence thick with pain—intellectual, physical, emotional—while the storm trembled softly beyond the canopy.

And the truth settled: The mission was slipping through their fingers.

Not because of failure But because reality itself was drawing the line.