Judas sat in the maintenance bay, staring at a schematic of the station, running his finger in slow, absentminded circles around the sections still under their control. The list wasn't long. The mass driver was effectively dead in the water unless they found a way to access the systems without triggering the NSS lockdowns. The rations were untouched for now but had a long-term expiration date written into the future. The trams still ran. The personal Buddies could still answer dumb questions but nothing useful. It was a shrinking box, walls closing in just slow enough to give the illusion that there was still room to move.
Samson’s tablet, perched on a workbench nearby, flickered as he idly rendered and un-rendered a 3D model of the station, stretching it, rotating it, folding it in on itself like it was made of tinfoil.
“So,” Judas muttered, leaning forward and rubbing his face. “Talk to me, rubber duck.”
Samson’s voice was warm, if not particularly enthused. “About what? The weather? We could discuss food shortages, but I assume that’s not your idea of a good time.”
Judas exhaled through his nose. “No, just—humor me. What can we do? What’s still in our control?”
Samson tapped his digital fingers together, as if considering. “Depends on how broad you want to be. If you’re asking what physical actions are still within your capacity, I’d say quite a lot. You’re not in a cell. No one’s put a gun to your head. The station still needs you alive, at least in the short term.”
Judas shot him a flat look. “Let’s narrow that down. Systems. What’s still available?”
Samson complied, running through the same checklist Judas had gone over a hundred times in his own head. The Buddies were locked down. The security feeds were partitioned. Supplies were pre-scheduled and couldn’t be modified. No one was getting off Caliban. No one was calling for help.
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Then, casually, like it wasn’t even worth mentioning, Samson added: “The thrusters still work.”
Judas blinked. “What?”
“The station thrusters,” Samson said, with a digital shrug. “They’re operational. As they should be. They’re not something you can lock out remotely.”
Judas narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, can’t? The NSS locked us out of everything.”
“Not the thrusters,” Samson said simply. “That would be physically impossible.”
Judas leaned forward, setting his elbows on the table. “Explain.”
Samson rotated the schematic of the station, zooming in on the positioning thrusters spaced along the station’s hull. “They’re designed as a failsafe, not a privilege. No one builds a station like this with the ability to shut them off from a central authority. You can block them from an operational standpoint—refuse to fire them, issue overrides—but you can’t make them completely inaccessible. If you could, a single bureaucratic screw-up could turn a functioning station into a drifting deathtrap.”
Judas stared at the display. “So you’re telling me. The NSS, which has shut us out of every other system that could give us leverage, literally cannot deny us access to the one system that could physically move this place?”
“Not unless they start welding people to the floor, no.” Samson’s LED face flickered. “I’m guessing they didn’t bother restricting access because they assumed you’d never have a reason to touch them.”
Judas’ fingers drummed against the workbench. The NSS had locked them out of everything except the one thing that could change everything.
The thrusters.
He ran a hand through his hair. He could feel the shape of something forming in his head, the way an idea starts to crystallize before it even has words attached to it.
“What the hell can you even do with station thrusters?” he asked, mostly to himself.
Samson, to his credit, didn’t answer. Just waited.
Judas stared at the schematic, gears turning, the thought fully, completely assembling in his head.
Then he went still.
“Oh,” he said softly.
A pause.
“That’s what you can do with the thrusters.”
