Watching the last warship of the Orion Guard vanish into the twisted, lethal shimmer of the jump point, Nova’s voice carried a tremor she couldn’t quite hide. A single tear broke free from her long lashes and slid down her perfectly sculpted cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.

  Behind her, Jack said nothing.

  He sat in his chair, staring blankly at the screen, watching everything unfold. He didn’t want to face it—but he couldn’t look away either.

  Nova walked over and waved a hand in front of his eyes.

  “Jack. Jack. What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m thinking about how we got here,” he said slowly. “Why do humans like killing each other so much. Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors were fighting on a blue planet, waging wars for land and resources for thousands of years. Now we’ve scattered across the galaxy, and we’re still at war. So I keep wondering—what was God’s purpose in creating humans in the first place?”

  “Maybe that’s an answer we’ll never know,” Nova said softly. “But humans have been looking for it for thousands of years—our origins, our meaning. We’ve never stopped thinking about it. I think, eventually, humanity will find that answer.”

  Jack lifted his head and looked at the woman with the ice-blue eyes. For a moment, he felt a strange sense of home settle over his soul.

  He moved before he could stop himself—reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his face into her lower abdomen, rubbing his cheek against her like some oversized, needy cat.

  Nova’s body went rigid. She froze.

  She’d never had physical contact with a man before. A strange sensation shot up her spine and straight into her brain, shattering all the math and physics formulas that normally lived there. Then a tingling rush flooded her whole body.

  A low hum cut through the air.

  Jack’s path toward self-redemption got abruptly interrupted. He let go of her just before Nova could flick off the safety on her energy pistol, then bolted, vanishing from her reach.

  Nova watched the direction he’d run in, and a small, wicked smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

  “Not bad, Fatty. You really can run.”

  Reading through the entire design archive in two weeks had been a direct order from Dr. Thorne.

  But his prized student had effectively kidnapped the old man’s new assistant.

  “Harsh teachers make good students,” she’d once told him.

  In her hands, learning became an art form of controlled suffering. Forget food. Forget sleep. Her favorite form of “motivation” was a short black polymer riding crop that left blazing red stripes across his meaty backside.

  The moment Jack saw her reach for the tool cabinet, every fake ache and carefully staged limp evaporated. He’d spring off the floor like a rabbit hit with a stun baton and scramble to the terminal, burying his face in the schematics with a look that was equal parts despair and deadly focus.

  【News Bulletin – Academy Broadcast】

  “The fleet’s breakthrough operation has been confirmed successful,” the announcer’s voice buzzed out of the lab speakers, flat and drained of emotion. Casualties remain high. A prior proposal to deploy unmanned derelicts and abandoned cargo vessels as decoy targets was discussed… but quickly rejected by High Command as ‘undignified’ and ‘incompatible with the Fleet’s honor.’”

  Jack snorted at the schematics in front of him.

  What a hell of a way to die, he thought. Killed for the sake of “elegance.”

  After the news of the fleet’s success, a tense calm settled over the lab.

  Jack used that breathing space to dig deeper into the more obscure sections of the design archives.

  But what fascinated him most wasn’t the machines.

  It was Nova.

  A month later, he was studying her the way a mechanic studies a stubborn engine.

  Every icy glare she used to dismiss him.

  Every shrill correction.

  Every cutting remark.

  All of it chipped away at the armor she wore.

  He’d found a book buried in the lab library: Practical Psychology and the Gentle Art of Everyday Pleasure.

  “Now this is real engineering,” Jack muttered to STARK-2 as he flipped pages. “Fixing engines just gets ships moving. Fixing moods? That’s what keeps people going.”

  He started wearing her down with questions—small at first, disguised as casual chatter.

  One night, after a brutal thirty-six-hour work stretch, Nova collapsed into a chair. Even in exhaustion, her posture was flawless, but her eyes were heavy, her defenses dulled.

  Jack seized his chance.

  He didn’t try to hypnotize her.

  He just talked.

  “So, uh… Nova,” he said, pretending to focus on his schematics, “when you’re not torturing poor fat mechanics like me, what do you do for fun? Paint? Sing? Collect skulls?”

  Her lips twitched, but she didn’t look up.

  “I… don’t have hobbies. My work is my hobby.”

  Jack grinned.

  “Ah. So your idea of fun is yelling at me until my ass turns red. That’s… one hell of a pastime.”

  She shot him a sidelong glance.

  “It’s better than wallowing in cowardice. Don’t you think?”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He raised both hands in mock surrender.

  “Fair point. But seriously—no friends? No one to hang out with?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “I don’t need friends. People are… unreliable.”

  There it was.

  A tiny flicker—loneliness hiding behind disdain.

  Jack leaned into it.

  “That’s kind of sad, you know. Even I have, like, one or two friends.”

  (Inner monologue: STARK-2 counts as half. Sergeant Brock, who never smiles, counts as maybe another half. So… yeah. That’s about it.)

  “Though… yeah, okay, half of them only want free repairs.”

  That earned him the smallest exhale of breath—almost a laugh.

  Jack grinned wider. He could feel the crack in her armor widening.

  “You know what you need?” he said. “A drink. Seriously. You look like the type of terrifying goddess who secretly has zero alcohol tolerance.”

  The glare she shot him could have frozen a star.

  But her silence betrayed her.

  “…Maybe,” she said at last, so softly he almost missed it.

  Jack pounced.

  “Oh-ho! That’s a ‘yes.’ C’mon, Nova. Just one night. Drop the ice queen act. You can even yell at me while you drink.”

  Her gaze softened by the tiniest fraction.

  “One drink,” she muttered. “But if you annoy me—”

  “You’ll shoot me. I know, I know,” Jack said quickly. “You’re the curse of my life.”

  The bottle was contraband, hidden in Jack’s toolbox—Stardust Whiskey, a black-market special from the Martian colonies.

  Made from valley-grown grain laced with helium-3 dust, it had a metallic edge to it. Illicit nano-yeast did the fermenting, amplifying the flavor like a sensor amplifier gone wild.

  One swallow was like swallowing fire—sharp, scorching heat up front, followed by a wash of honey-sweetness, finishing with a bitter, earthy aftertaste that numbed the tongue and blew out your senses.

  Perfect for a woman like Nova. Ordinary alcohol would just ricochet off her.

  They poured it into mismatched lab beakers.

  At first, Nova drank the way she shot at the range—stiff-backed, controlled, tiny sips.

  But alcohol has a way of loosening screws.

  Slowly, her sharp words slowed and warmed. She leaned back, and by the time she finished the second beaker, her pale throat was tipped back, her eyes half-lidded.

  “You’re… infuriating,” she muttered, almost laughing.

  “And you,” Jack said, his own cheeks reddening, “are a person. Surprise.”

  She stared at him, eyes unfocused and far away.

  For a long time, neither of them spoke.

  Then she stood, swaying a little.

  “You want… entertainment, don’t you?” she whispered. “Fine. Watch closely.”

  The air changed.

  You could almost smell champagne, feel the brush of warm stage lights, hear a phantom orchestra tuning up.

  The lab lights dimmed into something softer, golden. The glow washed over her white lab coat, turning the sterile room strangely intimate.

  Her hand rose, slowly, to the buttons of her coat.

  One by one, they came undone.

  The coat was about to slip from her smooth shoulders when Jack stepped in, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her into a dance.

  Nova, tipsy and off balance, looked up into his eyes—and suddenly they were deep, dark, and steady as an ocean trench. Every movement he made laid down a quiet, unshakeable sense of control.

  STARK-2, bless its treacherous circuits, changed the music to a slow, lingering jazz track.

  Jack took her cool, boneless hand into his broad, warm palm.

  What he gave her wasn’t just warmth.

  It was safety.

  Nova’s body drifted closer almost of its own accord. For a moment, the whole world went quiet.

  Their steps began to move—not showy, not fancy. Just close. In sync.

  Nova’s footwork was awkward at first. She was completely swept up in the sudden, surreal romance of it all. There was a hazy, dreamlike shimmer in her gaze as she studied the man in front of her, as if seeing a new world opening up.

  Her cheeks flushed with excitement. Her breathing quickened. Under Jack’s steady lead, she slowly relaxed, her body softening, letting itself fall into his rhythm.

  Every turn, every near-brush of contact, lit another fuse in the fire she’d been tamping down for years.

  Something shot up her spine, smashing all her equations to pieces.

  For the first time, she didn’t feel like the cold genius wrapped in armor.

  She felt like the heroine in a movie—glowing, alive, spinning at the edge of reality.

  Nova stopped being a genius. She was just a pair of red shoes, dancing on the knife-edge of a dream.

  Time slid by. The music swelled.

  Jack guided her into one last smooth, intimate spin and pulled her tight into his arms.

  In that moment, their faces were inches apart.

  Close enough to feel each other’s breath.

  Nova’s eyes drifted shut, completely lost. Jack bent his head to her ear and murmured something—maybe it was nonsense, maybe just a scrap of cheap sweet-talk, but in that moment it was a spell.

  His breath seared its way into her mind, and her heart unraveled.

  Everything else faded into the background blur.

  On that makeshift dance floor, they were the center of the universe.

  One of them is flying in a fantasy.

  The other was dragged down by reality.

  This dance was the most dangerous—and the most intimate—moment in their entire relationship.

  When the music finally faded to its last note, they stood frozen in the middle of the lab, holding each other, neither willing to let go.

  Nova slowly opened her eyes. The light in them was bright enough to set the night sky on fire.

  Jack’s face was carrying something harder to name—a tangle of affection, desire, and a quiet, disbelieving joy.

  Beep.

  The lab’s alloy door hissed open.

  Dr. Thorne’s cold face appeared in the doorway.

  Jack’s blood turned to ice. Nova went rigid.

  The fog in her eyes shattered into sharp clarity. She glanced down—still fully clothed—then glanced up at Jack.

  She was still pressed up against his broad chest.

  “What… what was I just doing?” she whispered.

  Before Thorne could speak, Jack blurted:

  “I just got here, sir! Miss Nova—uh—was testing the thermal stress limits on standard uniforms! I told her it wasn’t safe! You can’t dance in a lab!”

  He backed away quickly, using his bulk to block Thorne’s view and flicking a quick wink at Nova as he did so. Then he grabbed the Doctor by the arm and tugged him back out into the corridor.

  The alloy door slid shut.

  Nova buttoned her coat again, shoulders dropping slightly as she exhaled. Her cheeks flushed with a mix of embarrassment and the tiny taste of freedom she’d just allowed herself.

  Her heart was still beating too fast.

  From that day on, the lab became Jack’s renovation project.

  While working on optical camouflage, he’d stare up at the harsh white lighting above them and grimace.

  “This place is as white as a morgue,” he complained, voice steeped in mechanic’s disdain. “No wonder everyone’s on anti-depressants. Keep this up, and I’ll need some too.”

  He hacked into the lab’s lighting control system.

  Using the newly approved holo-projectors and some basic refraction tricks, he didn’t make himself invisible.

  He made the ceiling disappear instead.

  That afternoon, when Thorne walked into the lab with a pack of miserable-looking researchers in tow, they all stopped dead.

  The ugly white alloy ceiling was gone.

  In its place stretched a deep, bright blue sky from 21st-century Earth, drifting with soft white clouds. A few virtual seagulls lazily circled near the air vents, riding the AC currents.

  “What… is this?”

  For once, Thorne’s granite face actually cracked.

  “This is ‘visual neuro-calming therapy,’ Doctor,” Jack said, poking his head out from behind a server rack, screwdriver in hand, expression perfectly earnest. “My research shows that looking at the open sky increases dopamine output by 15%, which in turn raises research efficiency by 12%. It’s science.”

  Thorne stared at him for a long moment, opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  He finally settled for a faint, irritated grunt.

  “…Don’t waste too much power.”

  But that was only the beginning.

  Jack didn’t stop.

  He dug around in the system’s forgotten corners and unearthed a flagged, half-buried text: Social Engineering From Beginner to Expert.

  Nova seemed to see right through his new tricks—but she never called him out.

  Instead, one morning, she shook her empty mug in his direction and gave him a look.

  “Fatty. Coffee’s out,” she said calmly. “You know I need two cups every morning to keep my processing online.”

  That smile she gave him was more terrifying than a drawn gun.

  It was an invitation to conspiracy.

  Jack understood immediately.

  He ducked into the storage room, took a deep breath, and channeled every new trick he’d learned.

  Using his best imitation of Thorne’s “get this done or I’ll have you shot” cadence, he called the logistics department over a secure line.

  Thirty minutes later, a crate of contraband “Siren’s Breath” aromatherapy—Deep Siren Essence, rumored to make people dream of Earth’s oceans—and two bags of real Arabica coffee beans (not the motor-oil synthetic powder crap) were delivered to the lab door by a very nervous logistics officer.

  That afternoon, the lab smelled like coffee and distant oceans.

  Nova wrapped her hands around a steaming mug.

  For the first time in a month, she worked without a frown on her face.

  Watching from the corner, Jack quietly ticked off a task on his terminal.

  Thirteen brushes with death had taught him one crucial lesson:

  If you want to live like a human in this fucked-up war, running fast isn’t enough.

  You have to learn every dirty trick in the book—

  and then use them to carve out a little bit of clean, fragile happiness.

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