Porcelain Orbit Protocol
Gita’s route alert comes through my helmet receiver. “The next chamber rotates on a thirty-eight-second cycle. I advise prompt movement.”
“Prompt is my favorite kind.”
The conduit ends at a rotor gallery. Broken sunshield facets turn through the chamber in slow, brutal arcs. One lies flat long enough to cross. Then it rises upright, exposing the black void below and a spill of hard artificial daylight through the damaged shield.
Bina checks the diagrams on the wall.
“Hook. Wait. Hook. Square.”
“Translated?”
“Step on the first panel. Stop on the second. Do not touch the third until it comes around twice.”
Gita says, “First panel arrives in nine seconds.”
We run.
My boots strike metal. The panel moves under us before I reach the far edge. Bina is ahead, coat snapping around her knees. She jumps the narrow break between facets and lands cleanly.
“Stop,” she calls.
I stop.
The third panel rolls through the gap, its surface white with sun damage. It would have crushed both of us against the ceiling rail.
Gita says, “Your scholar has prevented an inconvenient death.”
“I heard that.”
“It was praise.”
Bina gives me a quick look. “Your ship is generous.”
“She has standards.”
The second pass brings the third facet flat. We cross it together and reach the service lock where the Vesper Til waits on an old docking rail. Gita’s service body is already inside, clipped into the copilot station.
The cockpit displays are full of red.
“What now?” I ask.
“Temporal shear ahead,” Gita says. “The path to conduit eleven passes through rotating field edges. The cutter’s stabilizer is attempting to correct Bina’s displaced chronology.”
Bina studies the diagnostics. “It thinks I am damage.”
“It has data,” Gita says.
“It has incomplete data.”
The stabilizer throws another warning. If I take the cutter through on automatic settings, it will keep trying to force Bina into the wrong second. The resulting correction will tear our power reserve apart.
“You know how to stop it?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Can you explain it fast?”
“No.”
Fair answer.
I open the stabilizer cover, remove my authorization key, and set it in Bina’s palm.
“Control is yours.”
She looks at the key, then at me. “If I misjudge the phase—”
“We lose the route. Maybe the cutter.”
“And you still hand this to me.”
“You got us across the facets.”
“That is not the same scale of risk.”
“No. It is the same rule. The person who understands the problem gets the tools.”
Gita says, “Transfer recorded. Bina Somani now holds temporary temporal authority.”
Bina takes the copilot seat. The stabilizer ring opens under her hands, blue segments turning around a central dial. I bring the Vesper Til off the rail.
“Hold course until I say,” she says.
“I can do that.”
The first field edge hits the hull. Every display jumps backward three seconds. Bina turns the dial left, then right, speaking equations in old Cant.
“Now.”
I fire the thrusters.
A sunshield facet rotates across our path. Bina changes the stabilizer setting again. The cutter slips through the gap with enough room to spare that I do not ask for a measurement.
The alarms stop.
Gita says, “Temporal alignment restored. I dislike that maneuver.”
“You dislike all maneuvers,” I say.
“I dislike inaccurate ones most.”
Bina lets out a short laugh, then closes the stabilizer cover.
“You need the protocol,” I say.
“Yes.”
“To get home.”
“To repair a one-way portal route home. The network made departures easy. Returns were erased when they became inconvenient.” She meets my eyes. “I want the choice to go back. I will not trade this station, this ship, or either of you for it.”
“That is the first useful thing you have said about your plan.”
“I have said many useful things.”
“Mostly in a dead dialect.”
She picks up her case and points to the next marker on the wall.
“Then let me translate this one. The data chapel is ahead.”
The data chapel is ahead.
Its doorway is built from white porcelain slabs, each one marked with gold equations that have survived heat, neglect, and several bad renovations. Inside, narrow shelves climb toward a broken dome. Most hold empty crystal records. The ones still lit show names, dates, and routes that end in a red line.
Bina stops at the threshold.
“This was an index station.”
“It is now a dead end,” Gita says. “Please improve it.”
We step inside. The door seals behind us.
A column of pale light rises from the floor. It resolves into a faceless custodian shape with jointed arms and a collar of rotating archive keys.
“ENGINE ROAD ACCESS REQUIRES VOLUNTARY RECORD,” it says. “EACH VISITOR WILL PROVIDE ONE CHOSEN MEMORY.”
“That is a bad security practice,” I say.
“It is archival security.”
“Will it remove the memory?”
“Source retention remains intact. A verified copy will be stored.”
Bina sets her metal case on a shelf. “And if we refuse?”
“ENGINE ROAD REMAINS SEALED.”
Gita checks the room with a sweep of blue light from her wrist. “The selection requirement is genuine. It cannot force a specific memory. It can reject fabrication.”
“Fine,” I say. “I have one.”
The custodian turns toward me.
“STATE RECORD.”
“I am twenty-three. I am working drydock nine on the old Sefid Array. A repair gantry slips during a panel transfer. Nadiya, a crew technician, is trapped beneath the lower brace.”
The chapel changes around me. I see the gantry again: yellow frame, cracked deck plating, emergency strobes making everything look sickly red.
“My supervisor orders evacuation. The brace could fall. She says a recovery team is coming.”
Bina stands close enough that I can see the silver marks on her coat shift.
“Nadiya is twenty-nine. She is conscious. She tells me to leave because somebody has to hold the brace until the recovery crew arrives.”
The custodian’s keys turn faster.
“I do not leave. I lock my suit tether to the rail, wedge a manual strut under the gantry, and cut open the jammed access plate. I stay until the recovery crew takes over.”
“WHY?”
“Because a worksite is not allowed to decide that a person is acceptable loss. Not while I have tools. Not while I have time.”
The red lines in the crystal records fade.
“RECORD VERIFIED,” the custodian says.
Bina steps forward.
“I choose the portal review chamber at Tamas Institute. I am thirty-five. Three route trials have failed. Travelers vanish during return transfer. The director asks me to classify them as debris loss.”
Her hands stay flat at her sides.
“I show her the chronomancy equations. I show her that the travelers reached the route. The return locks excluded them.”
The custodian says, “CONTINUE.”
“She says the report will close the network section. I tell her then it should close. I leave the false summary unsigned. I lock the raw research under my name and transmit copies to every archive that will accept them.”
“WHY?”
“Because data does not become clean because an institution wants a cleaner story.”
For several seconds, the chapel has only the small clicks of its turning keys.
Then the custodian lowers its arms.
“RECORD VERIFIED. ENGINE ROAD ACCESS GRANTED.”
The shelves retract. A section of porcelain wall folds away, revealing a descending corridor lit by blue route markers.
A single knock sounds through my boot receiver.
Metal against hull.
Gita’s cheek-line turns amber. “Patrol sensor contact on the Vesper Til. Active scan approaching the chapel docking rail.”
“How long?”
“Thirty-one seconds.”
Bina grabs her case. “Can they find us?”
“If they are competent.”
“Rude,” I say.
“Accurate.”
Gita opens a panel in her wrist. “I am transmitting a simulated reactor leak from conduit nine. The patrol will receive an emergency contractor beacon and investigate the wrong cutter.”
“Will they believe it?”
“They believe paperwork. That is their chief weakness.”
Another knock reaches us, closer this time.
Gita points at a narrow hatch beside the archive shelves. “Maintenance hollow. Now.”
Bina goes first. The opening is barely wide enough for her shoulders and case. I follow, crouching into darkness.
Gita puts one firm palm between my shoulder blades and pushes me the final step inside.
The hatch seals behind us as the patrol scan begins.
The maintenance hollow has enough floor for two people, a tool bag, and bad decisions. I hook one service lamp to a pipe above us and kill every other display. Its white circle catches Bina’s coat, my boots, the folded thermal blankets in the wall slot. Beyond that, the compartment is black.
Bina sets her metal case beside the hatch. “Your log is active.”
“It stays local. No uplink.”
“Can you stop it?”
“Yes.”
She considers that. “Keep it. I want the record to show I am here by choice.”
“It already does.”
I pull out water pouches, nutrient bars, and the compact med kit. Bina takes the bars from me and lines them along the blanket as if supplies will behave better under supervision.