KILO slews the ship with wheels, small as a yawn. Sun sensors stay bright in the right quadrants. The arrays unfold with a vibration you feel in your teeth, then lock. Current climbs like a good report card.

“Array track,” KILO says. “Battery charge positive.”

Jax whoops once, then looks guilty for whooping in a storm. The killer-whale sticker is right-side up. That feels like civilization.

In the computer bay, a different number is getting worse: box temperature. In vacuum there is no air to dump heat into. No breeze. Spacecraft shed heat by radiating it from pale panels—radiators—the way a stovetop glows, only slower and on purpose. If those panels stay stowed, the computers keep their calories and eat themselves.

Mira flicks a glance at the thermal page, then at the nav page. “Both are hungry. Thermal is the one that fails quietly until KILO becomes soup.”