Rates tick under a degree a second, then under half. The carnival ride becomes a porch swing, then a chair. Starling is still not pointed at anything useful, but it is not writing spirals.

“Detumble hold,” KILO says.

Battery talk is uglier. Arrays folded against a tumbling ship are like solar picnic blankets left in a closet. They make electricity when they face the Sun, which they have not been doing. Heaters, fans, and the newly awake computer are chewing stored energy.

Mira unlatches the array talkback. “Wings first. We need the Sun in their faces. That is why we did attitude before this: so we do not sweep the arrays through a spin like windshield wipers.”

Jax’s tracker thumbnail flickers. A few dots almost look like a familiar dipper. “It might be clearing,” they say, hope first. KILO, unimpressed, still stamps the quality FLAG: FALSE STARS.

Earth is a cleaner crescent now that you are not spinning past it every two seconds. Cleaner is not the same as charged. Charged is wings on the Sun.