diff --git a/haiku_rag_slim/haiku/rag/reranking/vllm.py b/haiku_rag_slim/haiku/rag/reranking/vllm.py
index 4a5e4d22..a2b40087 100644
--- a/haiku_rag_slim/haiku/rag/reranking/vllm.py
+++ b/haiku_rag_slim/haiku/rag/reranking/vllm.py
@@ -28,7 +28,9 @@ class VLLMReranker(RerankerBase):
         self._model = model
         self._base_url = base_url
         # One client reused across rerank calls (connection kept alive).
-        self._client = httpx.AsyncClient()
+        # Multimodal document batches can take far longer than httpx's 5s
+        # default timeout to score.
+        self._client = httpx.AsyncClient(timeout=httpx.Timeout(120.0))
 
     async def aclose(self) -> None:
         await self._client.aclose()