This part of the station was the best kept, Sonya noticed right away. Clean and in good repair. Corridors painted in bright and cheerful yellows, soothing greens, and sky blues. Branching corridors ran off to either side, with the doors to living quarters standing open in warm invitation to neighbors, to friends. A warm, spiced-meat aroma filled one passage, and she knew that someone was cooking a meal nearby. Actually cooking—no replicators here.

Several Resaurians stood around talking, seemingly oblivious to the danger they were in. They evidenced little surprise seeing a pair of humanoids under escort through their living area. Only when the station shook with a new tremor did they glance around self-consciously. As if wondering what they should be doing to help.

“They don’t know how bad it is, do they?” she asked Es’a.

“They know. But we’ve lived with the fear of this day all our lives. Panic will help no one.” He gestured to an open double-wide archway. “In here.”

They passed from the corridor, stepping out onto grassy lawns, looking up into an ochre sky. Fruit-laden trees spread thick branches overhead, offering rest to a number of brightly feathered birds and shade from the blazing orange sun to the Resaurian young who slither-ran and played on the pale grasses. Sonya stopped in amazement. This was the largest space-born arboretum she could remember seeing in her career, obviously coupled with holographic technology to complete the illusion of a true outdoor park.

Rennan Konya found his voice first.

“Dozens. Hundreds.” He counted the smaller Resaurians with their blue-green scales and slender upper bodies. Nearby a larger youth picked at the beginnings of his shedding. Beneath a dull, waxy peel of skin, his scales were coming in dark and coral red. Rennan watched with fascination. The full implications were just beginning to hit. “There are no survivors from the original prisoners, are there?”

Sonya knew the answer, but let Es’a take it. “No,” the Resaurian admitted. “Finding a way to lessen the time dilation was one of our first priorities. It gave our forebears a chance to escape before too much real time passed on our homeworld.”

Ulsah slithered up and nestled against him. He wrapped an arm around her. “We solved our infertility problem not long after.”

And then dealt with overpopulation concerns, diminishing resources, and the very real stress of raising families in such a contained environment. Sonya glanced over to a picnic spread where two youngsters ate food while playing atonal music from a small portable device. It looked so normal, it tempted her to smile. “You’ve kept everyone conditioned for an indoor-out-door life, in case escape ever happened.” She approved.

“So what is the issue?” Rennan asked her. “We get back in touch with the da Vinci, and you engineers work your miracles and get everyone out of the Demon.” He looked to Es’a. “You tell your people not to sabotage the attempt this time, and we get you home.”

Sonya shook her head. “For a Betazoid, you can be fairly dense at times, Rennan. Es’a’s faction did not sabotage our escape efforts. S’eth’s faction did. For the same reason they originally resisted the attempt to use the station’s anchoring shields to attempt an escape. They will not endanger their children, no matter how strong their drive for personal freedom.”

“It is worse than that,” Es’a explained. “Our forebears were the forward-thinkers of their generation. Many of us—most of us—remain true to that predisposition. But some traditionalist behavior creeps back into our culture here. S’eth fights to preserve what he has known his entire life.”

“And there is a real danger,” Sonya admitted. “S’eth’s father discovered it. The power distribution system is set up in a carefully calibrated manner that any radical change in gravitational pull outside the shielding will cause harmonic fluctuations and force a feedback surge into the fusion reactors.”

Rennan looked at Sonya. “Let me guess. Boom?”

“More like a fizzle. Lights out.” Which meant shields dropping that suddenly exposed the entire station to the full gravitational effects of the black hole. “The tidal forces would rip the station to pieces. That’s what I’ve been working on for the past few hours.”

“About done?” he asked with a wry smile.

Not asking for much, was he? Sonya felt a sudden urge to punch the man. She did smile this time, when Rennan stepped back into a wary stance. She also liked the way his hand came up to protect his gut, where she had earlier slipped in an elbow. Served him right.

“Just about. I’m using an application developed by La Forge and Brahms. I think it will hold up.”

“You think?”

She nodded. The station shook again. Was it her imagination, or were the tremors getting worse?

Rennan shifted uneasily, then shrugged. “Good enough for me,” he decided. Reaching out slowly, he rubbed a thumb against the outside of her ear. It came away dark with grease. “Since you’re going to play the diplomat,” he said, “you should look the part. What’s your plan?”

Sonya rubbed the flat of her palm against the same ear, making certain the last of the smudge was gone, and helping hide her flush of embarrassment. Turning to business, she looked to Es’a, who waited patiently with his mate and a growing number of Resaurian adults.

“I think,” she said slowly, her plans forming even as she spoke, “we should arrange for a reunion.”