.:.:: FEY AYAN ::.:.

  After talking to Ootu, Ayan shut down her strataglider's comm-screen and stared into the distance. Then she slowly swung first one leg out of the cockpit, then the other, but halfway through the motion she froze and sank back, perching awkwardly on the craft's edge.

  She tried to think of the report she would have to compose for Leonidas Hail, the owner of Kabus. These reports were usually littered with words like , and . He liked those words. They helped him understand things as he saw them already.

  But the words "two Torchers dead"? He wouldn't like those. Not one bit.

  Ayan shuddered, then did what she normally did in these situations: give herself a deadline for the dreaded report. Thirty-two hours after returning to the Hub should give her enough to time to find some phrases to soothe her boss.

  She stared at the canopy, and Kabus stared back. The long-glow night on top of Pinnacle S-CO-8 had been a pleasant experience. Sat with her back against the strataglider, a small meal of old expedition rations, the gloves she'd found beside her, and the wondrous view of a sea of violet-tipped blue-green, the mist rising up. It was followed by an unsurprisingly uncomfortable sleep in the strataglider.

  And now dead Torchers and an alarmingly miscalculated tidal event.

  She sprung out of the cockpit and rummaged around the storage compartment for breakfast. Okay, technically it was lunch. A nutritional disc of...something anyway. Hub caterers were always experimenting with new designs. This one was "wild berry", according to the wrapper. She washed it down with the last of the tea in her flask.

  Just as she was crushing the wrapper into her pocket, she heard a distant hum. She froze, her hand still in her pocket, and squinted at the sky. There, a small dot was growing larger by the second.

  Marlo had sent the follow-me-hover.

  Ayan quickly cleared away some space around her and began gesturing to the follow-me. It was automated, and its recognition systems were not the best. If you didn't pose at just the right angle and make just the right beckoning movements, it would fly right past you.

  The follow-me slowed its approach and stabilized about three meters in front of her. The boxy, utilitarian craft had none of the sleek design of the stratagliders, just a gray metal shell with the Hub's faded logo stamped on its side and an array of sensors that vaguely resembled a cheerful face.

  "I have a delivery for you," it announced.

  "You may make the delivery," she said.

  Its belly panel split down the middle and the two halves slid apart, revealing a cargo compartment. Inside, two packages were secured in foam padding: a medium-sized metal case with the Engineering Department's orange stripe and a smaller package wrapped in canvas. The follow-me lowered the containers on its mechanical arm, depositing them gently on the ground before retracting.

  "Please confirm delivery," it chirped.

  "Delivery confirmed," said Ayan, waving it goodbye. "Off you go."

  She watched it turn and head for the Hub, then knelt beside the metal case and opened it. It contained an entire momentum control unit, beautifully cushioned with impact foam. It was new and gleaming.

  It was also the wrong part.

  "Oh, Marlo," she muttered. The very specific and clear note she had sent him had included the part code and an image of the broken part, which was in fact a compensator mechanism.

  Closing the case, she went over to the canvas-wrapped package. She unwrapped it and out tumbled a ration pack, anti-allergen medication, and a set of Q-mask filters. She picked them up, then stared at the distant horizon. The wrong part, but the right filters. It was classic Marlo. Attentive to the small details of human comfort while missing the larger technical needs.

  She reached for her comm-unit.

  "Marlo, this is Ayan."

  His response came quickly, as if he'd been waiting for her. "Chief! I was just about to call. Did the follow-me arrive?"

  "It did," she said, keeping her voice neutral. "With the wrong part."

  A pause. "Wrong part? But I sent exactly what Maintenance recommended for a stabilizer leak."

  "Never mind." She sighed. "Tell you what. Contact Tidal Dynamics. I know they're eager to go out and check their data traps to see where their calculations went wrong. Ask if they can pick me up once they're done. It would save us having to send the follow-me again."

  "I can do that." He paused. "Are you sure you're okay out there, Chief?"

  Ayan glanced at her pack where Gyllon's gloves were safely stored. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me."

  "Will do. Anything else?"

  She looked toward the hole in the pinnacle's side that she'd explored yesterday. "No. Ayan out."

  She pocketed the comm-unit and gathered the new Q-mask filters, carefully fitting one into her mask. The filter clicked into place with a satisfying snap. Then she secured her climbing gear, double-checking each buckle and clasp. At the edge, she looked down at the dense canopy below. Yesterday's discovery had been pure chance. Today would be deliberate.

  She took a steadying breath and descended to the hole near the pinnacle's base. As she squeezed through the narrow opening, the musty darkness of the pinnacle's interior reminded her of something else. Of another enclosed space, years ago, with a different kind of darkness...

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  ?

  The tight confines of the environmental control junction were off-limits. Ayan knew this. At twelve years of age, she was old enough to know her permissions on Penumbra Station. But she was also young enough to slip through access panels that others barely knew about.

  Tonight's mission was calibration. The air in the lower sectors had been growing stale, and Ayan thought the problem was at this junction. She stared at the control panel, frustration building as she tried again to make sense of the interface. This was her third attempt this week. The first time, she'd accidentally triggered an alarm and had to flee. The second time, she'd managed to access the system but couldn't figure out how to adjust the parameters.

  "Come on," she muttered, tapping out what she hoped was the right sequence. The panel flashed red, and a warning message scrolled across the screen.

  ACCESS DENIED: IMPROPER SEQUENCE

  Ayan fought the urge to slam her hand against the wall. She had studied moldy old maintenance manuals she'd found discarded in recycling and even memorized the diagrams, but the actual implementation was proving far more complex than she'd imagined.

  She tried again, this time attempting a different approach. The screen flickered, then displayed a series of distribution graphs. Progress, finally. She peered at the charts, trying to identify which controls affected the lower sector airflow.

  Just as she thought she might be getting somewhere, the entire display suddenly shifted to a system diagnostic. Warning indicators began flashing.

  ALERT: SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. DISTRIBUTION NETWORK UNSTABLE.

  "No, no, no," she whispered, frantically trying to backtrack. Whatever she'd done had made things worse, not better. The indicators were now showing a complete shutdown of air circulation to multiple sectors.

  So focused was she on trying to fix her mistake that she didn't hear the footsteps until they were nearly upon her.

  "Step away from the controls." The voice was deep and authoritative.

  Ayan froze, her hands still on the panel, calculating her escape routes. The access panel she'd used was too far away, and the main door was now blocked.

  "I said, step away."

  Slowly, Ayan turned. The security officer who stood there was tall, his uniform crisp despite the late hour. His face was stern beneath neat dark hair.

  "I was trying to fix it," she said, lifting her chin. "The air in the lower sectors has been getting worse for weeks. Nobody's doing anything about it."

  The officer's eyes narrowed as he glanced at the flashing panel behind her. "Well, now you've shut down air circulation to three sections." He moved past her and quickly input a sequence of commands. The warnings ceased, and the display returned to normal parameters.

  "Oh," she said. "I didn't mean to make it worse."

  The officer turned to face her. "Name?"

  "Fey Ayan." No point in lying. He could check the records easily enough, though there wouldn't be much to find. Kids like her existed in administrative limbo: acknowledged enough to receive basic rations, but not important enough to track too closely.

  "You don't have clearance to be here," he said, studying her. "This is a severe security violation."

  "Nobody with clearance cared enough to check it," Ayan replied, frustration showing through her fear. "People are getting headaches. They're so cranky, they've started fighting. The carbon dioxide levels—"

  "How do you know it's carbon dioxide?"

  "I... I found some old environmental manuals in recycling. I read about the symptoms."

  "So you diagnosed the problem correctly, but your solution was to break into a restricted area and potentially disrupt life support for the entire station?"

  Ayan stared at the floor, anger and embarrassment warring within her.

  The officer sighed, then turned to the panel. "If you want to adjust air distribution, you don't start with the main controls. You need to access the calibration subsystem first."

  He tapped a sequence on the panel, bringing up a different display. "See these figures? They show the current distribution ratios. Hmm..." He peered more closely. "You're right. The lower sectors are indeed receiving less than the standard allocation. To correct it, you need to adjust these parameters here, then confirm the changes here."

  He tapped out some commands. Ayan watched, trying to memorize each step.

  "There," he said as the display showed balanced distribution across all sectors. "Fixed properly. No alarms, no shutdowns."

  "How did you know how to do that?" Ayan asked. "You're security, not maintenance."

  A small, wry smile. "Why does everyone think we're just muscle? I was an environmental systems engineer before I transferred to security. Now, about your unauthorized access..."

  Ayan braced herself.

  "I should report this," he continued. "At a minimum, it's trespassing in a restricted area. At worst, it's tampering with life support systems."

  "I wasn't tampering. I was trying to fix something that needed fixing."

  "With no training and no authorization."

  "Because no one else would do it! No one cares."

  The officer regarded her for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly.

  "Here's what's going to happen. I'm logging this as a routine inspection. System irregularities noted and corrected. But im return, you will answer me something, Ayan. If you had succeeded in accessing the system properly, would you have known which parameters to adjust? The correct ratios to set?"

  She wanted to say yes, but his sternness drew the truth from her.

  "No. I was going to try different settings until it seemed right."

  "And you would have have killed people."

  Ayan looked at the floor, at the officer's boots. They were old and worn.

  "Yes," she said quietly. "I would have."

  "Okay, at least we've got that straight." He sighed. "Look. If you're genuinely interested in helping by learning how these systems work properly, I'm usually in the Contractors' Canteen after the third shift's end. Name's Gyllon."

  He turned and headed toward the door, then paused. "But if I catch you in here again before you know what you're doing, I will report it."

  Ayan stared at him, uncertain. "Why would you teach me?"

  "Because most people assume I'm just a trigger-happy security contractor, not someone who understands things. They'll think the same about you. Just a forgotten kid from the lower sectors, right? Proving them wrong is..." A small smile crossed his face. "Satisfying."

  With that, he left, the door sliding shut behind him. Ayan stood alone in the junction, bewildered by the encounter but with an unfamiliar feeling taking root inside her. She didn't go to the Canteen that week, pride and suspicion keeping her away. But next month, she found herself standing awkwardly at its edge, scanning the sparse crowd.

  Officer Gyllon was at a corner table, datapad in hand. He gestured to the seat across from him.

  "The water pressure," she said in a rush. "It's dropping below minimum standards in sections C through F."

  One bushy eyebrow rose. "And want to fix it?"

  "I want to how to fix it."

  The eyebrow lowered. "Good," he said, sliding the datapad towards her. "Let's start with how water distribution systems are structured, and then we'll move on to diagnostic protocols."

  It became a routine. Ayan would notice a problem, like resource allocation discrepancies, security blind spots that left the vulnerable exposed, maintenance issues in the forgotten sections of the station, and Gyllon would help her address it. Sometimes he would implement the fix himself through official channels. Other times, he would supervise as she made the corrections.

  He never officially acknowledged their arrangement. Never filed paperwork claiming responsibility for her, never tried to move her into proper quarters or make her register through official channels. And when other station kids began to appear at their lessons, scrappy, underfed, and resourceful like her, Gyllon simply made room, extending his quiet protection to them all.

  ?

  Ayan blinked away the memory, refocusing on the pinnacle's dark interior. Drawing her light from her belt, she began a sweep of the chamber.

  "I know you left your beacon behind," she murmured. "And I'm going to find it."