The colony ship Ardent Star had been drifting for eleven days when Commander Yessa finally admitted they needed Kol.
He was the best paddler on the water world of Ceris IV — a man who had navigated bioluminescent rivers through storms that leveled titanium shelters. He understood fluid dynamics in ways no computer could replicate. The flooded lower decks needed someone exactly like him.
Yessa offered him a place on the crew with grudging respect, her jaw tight as she extended her hand. She had publicly dismissed Cerisians as primitive for decades, and bringing one aboard felt like swallowing glass.
Kol noticed. He always noticed.
"You wrote the Cerisian Competency Report," he said calmly, pulling on his water suit. "The one that called us 'technologically deficient.'"
Yessa said nothing.
"And yet here you are." He smiled without malice. "The hypocrisy doesn't bother me as much as you'd think. People need help, and I can give it. That matters more than your pride."
She watched him descend into the dark, flooded corridor, paddle cutting through the black water with impossible precision, navigating debris fields and collapsed bulkheads by touch and instinct alone.
Later, when the ship's journalist asked Yessa to describe the rescue for the colonial broadcast, she found herself wanting to dramatize it — to make it about courage and unity, to frame it as something noble. Instead she paused, looked directly into the recorder, and said simply:
"A man more skilled than me saved three hundred lives. I got out of his way."
It was the most honest thing she had said in years.