Standing inside a crawlspace conduit, Sonya Gomez leaned out from the open maintenance hatch, sweat stinging at the corner of her eyes as she strained to reach the microspanner that lay among a spread of tools on a nearby table. Her fingertips brushed the narrow handle, shoving it a few millimeters farther away. In her other hand she clutched at a pair of power regulator feeds, pinching them together at just the right place, and she dreaded the idea of letting them go now.

Eyeing one of the nearby Resaurians, she licked her dry, chapped lips. “A little help here?”

Ulsah turned away from her own workstation, uncoiling very carefully and moving slow. She saw which tool Sonya needed, picked it up, and gingerly handed it over as if it were the most delicate thing in all the world. The grip felt odd in her hand, created for the more delicately boned fingers of a Resaurian. She would make do.

“Thanks.”

Ulsah nodded. She glanced nervously at her station’s panel of displays, hugged herself around her middle with long, thin arms. It was a familiar gesture. “Is there anything more I can help with?”

Sonya wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. Her skin felt greasy, and far too warm after an hour in this oven of an engineering space. “Iced tea?” she asked. Ulsah studied the tool spread, as if trying to figure out what that might be. “Never mind. Not until I need another tool.”

Delays like this were costing her, in time as well as a rising frustration level. Her engineering sense told her that the tool tables were mounted perfectly for the wide Resaurian shoulders, accessible from any one of three possible maintenance panels. Sound ergonomics, really. But she was also used to her equipment being laid out a certain way, where she could snag the exact tool she needed without looking. She needed an assistant, but hadn’t thought to ask for one at the time. And other than Ulsah, only the guard at the door with his plasma welder wasn’t extremely busy.

Hopefully he would remain that way.

Bending back to task, all of her aches and bruises protesting, Sonya fused the power regulators together in a way that their small electromagnetic fields would complement each other rather than work in competition. A small victory, yet a possibly vital one. She bit down on the spanner’s handle, holding it in her teeth while she used a small tester from her back pocket to test the output. Perfect.

The tester went back into her pocket. The microspanner she let drop from her mouth, and then licked the taste of machine oil from her lips and spat dryly. “Dirty job.” But someone had to do it.

Es’a waited at her shoulder when she turned back. Sonya started at the appearance of the frail-looking Resaurian, then swore. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“We learn to move silently,” the alien lisped. His voice was frailer than most, full of a hissing accent that reminded Sonya of a serpent’s warning. “It is hard to give up.” He took the spanner from her, replaced it on the table, and handed her a fusion cutter when she glanced at it. He was very good at reading body language.

“Thank you. Have you learned anything more about my friends?”

“No. Reports from the upper decks come down slowly. We have no time to waste. This must get done before your friends alter the shield strength again.”

That much Sonya agreed with, especially as a new tremor shook the station. The station’s fusion reactors provided power along one of three different trunks. If she could not calibrate their flow patterns to within a micron, Es’a assured her, bad things would happen. She turned away, using the fusion cutter to open a flexible conduit along its entire length. The work was slow, but not taxing. “You know, you could try talking with S’eth. Make him understand your position.”

“More than one hundred years, my people struggle against his people. No talking is possible.”

Sonya shook her head. A century of stubborn refusal to negotiate. A hostile stalemate where each faction waited for the other to make a mistake. S’eth in control of life support and the shield generators. Es’a with foodstuffs and the fusion reactor rooms. What kind of division could turn a people so savagely against each other? “Is S’eth really so unreasonable?”

“He listens to none of us. His way is to keep things as they have always been. Our way is to search for a better life. To improve and to grow and to escape!”

“And another generation of traditionalists and radicals are born,” she said.

She felt S’eth recoil behind her. “What is that you say?”

Sonya handed back the fusion cutter. She felt the frown hang heavy on her face, wondering why what she had said bothered the Resaurian so much. Surely they had seen this for themselves. “I said that you’ve created here the exact same situation that caused you all to be banished in the first place. The overly cautious. The determined forward-thinkers. Only this time, instead of Klingon occupation throwing your culture out of whack, you did it to yourselves.”

Es’a looked ill. Not that he ever looked extremely healthy. The Resaurian hung his head low, letting it sway back and forth. Membranes rolled up over his eyes, giving them a white cast. “They did this,” he admitted. “We have done this as well.”

It seemed an odd choice of phrasing, but Sonya had too much work ahead of her to puzzle it out now. And she needed a break. Climbing out of the crawlspace, she brushed her hand against a torn and filthy uniform. She had long since discarded the jacket and was now wearing only the undershirt. Soon, the gold engineering color would be completely lost to a pallor of grease and dust-gray.

“You are finished?” Es’a asked.

“Refresher station.” She held her grimy hands out, then nodded toward the door. “Getting hard to hold tools properly. I’ll be right back.”

He nodded. And the guard at the door stepped aside when she thumped him on the shoulder.

Down a short, dimly lit corridor she found facilities meant for the Resaurians, but she managed adequately. As well as washing out some of the grime burning at the corner of her left eye, Sonya used a handful of water to slick her hair back, wetting it as protection against the humid engineering spaces. She stared into a mirrored wall, seeing the dark circles under her eyes, knowing that she had only hours to find Es’a’s problem and help fix it. Part of her mind worked on the repairs that were likely to be needed—necessary—if anyone on the station hoped to see real space again. But another part kept turning over the small clues she’d picked up over the last few hours.

“They did this,” she whispered aloud, repeating Es’a’s words. “We have done this as well.”

Ulsah’s behavior. Her awkward shyness.

A new generation of traditionalists and forward-thinkers.

No!

Sonya pushed herself away from the mirrored wall. She hit the door hard, slamming it back with a bang, and sprinted for the engineering space and its maze of conduits and workstations. Her feet pounded an alarm against the steel deck. She knew what it was that S’eth—and Es’a—had kept from her. The stakes were going up, high enough to force either side to take the most drastic action available if they could not be brought to some kind of arrangement. She had to start things moving right away.

Which was the last thought to race through her mind, before arms reached out of an open doorway, grabbed her by her shoulders, and pulled her into a darkened room.