The ship is already screaming when you wake. Not a drill-clock: a real alarm, chopped into pieces by the spin.

You bounce off the sleep-bin pad and miss the handrail on the first grab. Starling is tumbling. The little research ship was supposed to be a quiet classroom in Earth orbit. Instead the corridor keeps trading places with the ceiling. Your junior-cadet badge floats, then slaps your collarbone.

Lights die to rusty emergency strips. KILO, the ship computer, does not finish a sentence. “Solar energetic—safe mode—bus undervolt—” Then a hiss of static, because the storm has already arrived. Fast particles from the Sun, a solar energetic particle event riding a coronal mass ejection, have slammed the hull. Cameras snow. Screens blink. Somewhere an engine that was mid-burn has cut off like a held breath. The shove died mid-throat. Worse: when the bus dipped, a small yaw jet stuck open for a few ugly seconds before the valve closed. Storms do not spin ships. Stuck jets do. Dead burns drop low points.

Earth smears past the tiny porthole: blue, black, blue. You cannot trust that window. You cannot trust the star camera either. The ship smells like hot dust and the ghost of mint gum.

Captain Mira Chen’s voice punches through a handheld, not the ceiling. “Cadet. We are hit. Systems are off. Do not be a hero with the engine. Hands on rails.”

One way is life-support alley, where Dr. Okonkwo keeps air from turning mean. The other is the breaker wall, a row of switches that look like they could wake the whole ship if you were brave and slightly wrong.

Your socks find a foothold. The spin tries to steal it.