Tavia forces Kael to face the unpaid crew compact before any reactor work starts. Kael wins a narrow vote by putti...
The first hatch inside Iron Hallow refused Kael Veyr's palm code and opened only after Mara Quell kicked the manual release with the heel of her boot. Stale air rolled out, cold enough to sting his teeth. Emergency strips flickered along the corridor, one alive for every three dead, and frost made pale veins across the deck plates.
"Welcome aboard your carrier," Mara said. "Mind the holes that used to be maintenance."
Behind Kael, twenty-three unpaid crew members crowded the access throat with tool bags, ration tins, and the crew compact displayed on Tavia Renn's slate. Juno Pax held a salvage drone against her chest like it was a nervous animal. Nobody moved toward the reactor stairs.
Tavia lifted the slate. "No work starts until the compact hears terms."
Kael had expected suspicion. He had not expected the compact to feel like a weapon aimed at his ribs.
"Terms are simple," he said. "We inspect the cold reactor, restart at minimum if Mara says it can be done, and use the first lawful salvage payout for back wages."
A man near the bulkhead snorted. "Salvage payout from what? The dust?"
Mara pointed her wrench down the corridor. "From whatever this repair log thinks is worth waking for. But he does not touch my reactor until the vote is real."
Kael nodded to Tavia. "Read it."
Tavia did not soften for him. "Motion before compact: permit limited reactor restart under Chief Quell, no weapons activation, no launch rail draw, no captain privilege draw, and any first external revenue goes seventy percent to back wages, twenty to fuel reserve, ten to emergency parts."
"Make wages eighty," someone called.
"Then fuel reserve dies before we leave dock," Kael said.
Tavia's eyes cut to him. "You do not get to bargain from the captain's chair. You do not have one yet."
"Good," Kael said. "Then bargain from the invoice. Iron Hallow burns cryo-slush by tonnage even for a dock shift. If fuel stays zero, Glasswake Bank does not need guns. They wait until we cannot move."
That changed the corridor. Anger did not vanish, but it turned toward the same enemy for one breath.
Juno raised her hand halfway. "My drones need power conditioning. If the reactor burps, their batteries cook."
Mara answered before Kael could. "Minimum output only. I will put the drone cradle behind a breaker and my body between him and the rail switches."
"I was not asking him," Juno said.
Kael accepted the hit. "You should not have to."
They climbed to the reactor trench after the vote opened. Iron Hallow's heart sat behind three layers of scarred shielding, a dark cylinder webbed in frost, old warning tags, and copper emergency prayers scratched by engineers who had not trusted software. Mara slid into the lower pit with two assistants. Kael stayed above the yellow line until she jerked her chin for him to approach the log screen.
"Read that aloud," she said.
The screen showed restart draw, coolant debt, failed safeties, and a route annotation buried under old naval shorthand. Kael traced the line without touching the controls. "Primary ignition is blocked. Auxiliary heat through port battery, then feed the regulator backward for eight seconds."
Mara's expression shifted despite herself. "You read carrier shorthand?"
"Maintenance tables. My family used to make me audit ships they never let me command."
Tavia heard it from the ladder. "Useful. Still not authority."
"No," Kael said. "But it keeps us from blowing the battery."
The vote closed at nineteen to eleven. Narrow, ugly, real.
Mara did not celebrate. "Hands clear. Juno, drone breaker open. Tavia, timestamp the compact."
The reactor restart began with a cough through the deck. Frost cracked from the trench rails. The lights brightened one strip at a time, then dimmed when the old carrier remembered how much of itself was missing. Heat touched Kael's face, thin as breath.
Someone laughed. Someone else cursed. The sound that followed was not loyalty. It was hunger sharpened by proof that the ship could answer.
Mara slapped the cutoff before the output climbed past the red mark. "Minimum. I said minimum."
On the upper screen, systems woke in gray blocks. Life support partial. Galley heat partial. Dock comm partial. Weapons bus locked. Launch rails locked. Fuel reserve zero point zero. Crew wage debt unchanged.
Then a hidden file unfolded beneath the repair log.
Juno leaned forward. "That was not there before."
Kael read the header. Blackwake Field salvage route. Pirate wreckage compatibility index. Reactor-control sister module probability: forty-six percent.
Tavia stepped down beside him, slate clutched tight. "Tell me that is not a treasure map."
"It is worse," Kael said. "It is a parts list with coordinates."
Mara stared at the glowing route as the cold reactor hummed under her boots. "If we chase that without wages, I shut it down myself."
"If we do not get fuel," Kael said, "Glasswake shuts it down for all of us."
The dock comm crackled alive before anyone answered. A bank voice, polished and remote, filled the trench.
"Iron Hallow transfer acknowledged. Glasswake lien review has begun. All fuel escrow attached to Lot Seventy-Seven is frozen pending receiver assessment."
The crew's first vote had woken the carrier just enough to hear the bank lock the tank.