Judas had been in plenty of meetings he didn’t want to attend, but this one had a special kind of weight to it, the kind that settled in the stomach and coiled there, waiting for something to go wrong. He arrived last, which wasn’t unusual—Dara always got places early, Tariq had nowhere better to be, and Ibrahim had a terrifyingly optimized sleep schedule that let him exist in a constant state of preparedness. Reya and Caleb were here too, standing near the back, their expressions caught somewhere between impatience and low-level anxiety.
The room was quiet. Not in the way rooms got quiet when everyone was deep in thought, but in the way that suggested there wasn’t much to say that hadn’t already been said. It wasn’t even an official meeting space, just a maintenance hub with the workbenches pushed aside, the smell of metal and solder hanging in the air. A single overhead light flickered in the corner like it had finally decided to join the rest of them in existential dread.
Dara was nursing a cup of coffee that had long since given up being anything other than warm disappointment in liquid form. Her Buddy, Hera, perched beside her in its compact frame, fingers clicking against the table like a metronome keeping time for a song no one wanted to play.
“Judas,” Dara said, barely looking up. “Congratulations. You’re last.”
“Didn’t want to deprive you of your favorite insult,” Judas said, dropping into a chair and stretching his legs.
Tariq let out a low chuckle, but it wasn’t the usual full-bodied thing—it was the kind of laugh you give when you’re not sure if anything’s funny anymore.
“So,” Judas said, looking around. “We talking union? Black market cigarette shipments? Or has NSS declared the concept of weekends inefficient?”
Ibrahim exhaled sharply. “Wouldn’t put it past them.”
“We’re talking about what we still have,” Dara said. She tapped the table with one finger, and Hera synced up the rhythm. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s a short list.”
“Alright,” Judas said, rubbing his hands together like he was about to perform a magic trick, “good news first.”
Dara snorted. “You found good news in this mess? Please, enlighten me.”
Judas pointed at Reya. “We’re still getting shipments.”
“For now,” Reya said, arms crossed. “Only the ones already scheduled, and I can’t request anything new. But yeah, food rations, water filters, critical machine parts—still coming. They’re not starving us out yet.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Tariq tilted his head. “Yet?”
She exhaled. “The way this is set up, eventually we’ll hit a dry spell. We don’t have control over what comes in or when. But rationing hasn’t started. They’re letting us stretch what we’ve got.”
Judas nodded, filing that under future problem. “Okay. What else?”
“We can still do maintenance,” Ibrahim said. “Basic stuff. If a junction box catches fire or a pipe starts venting, we can fix it. Scrubbers, pressure seals, waste management—it’s all still in our hands. Probably because they don’t want us suffocating before they figure out what to do with us. No modification work, though.”
Judas frowned. “How the hell are they blocking modification work?”
“They aren’t,” Ibrahim said. “They’re just making sure the only ‘approved’ repairs are the ones that keep the station running exactly the way it is.”
“And the way it is,” Dara said, voice dry, “is fucked.”
Caleb tapped his fingers against the table. “Trams are still running. Maintenance buggies, too.”
“So we can still move around,” Dara said. “Great. We can take the scenic route to our obsolescence.”
“Personal Buddies still work,” Ibrahim added, though he didn’t sound particularly excited about it. “If you want one to set a reminder or do some math, sure. But try asking them for security logs or access requests? Brick wall. It’s like they put up partitions—sectioned them off so they only know what we ask them to know.”
Judas chewed on that, then tilted his head. “What about station control?”
Ibrahim spread his hands. “You mean, like, life support? Still under our purview—barely. We can monitor it, adjust for minor fluctuations, but anything bigger than routine maintenance is locked down.”
“No,” Judas said, shaking his head. “I mean station control. As in, can we move this place?”
Silence.
Dara blinked. “Why the hell would we move the station?”
Judas shrugged. “We wouldn’t. But could we?”
Ibrahim frowned, considering. “I mean... technically yeah. NSS didn’t touch the thrusters, far as I know.”
Reya squinted. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because no one ever touches them,” Ibrahim said. “They’re for station-keeping, nudging us when we drift. No one ever moves a station like this.”
Judas leaned back, chewing his lip, letting that settle in his brain.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just doing it all piecemeal,” Tariq said. “Cut down on our ability to operate, little by little. If you take things slow enough, people don’t notice the knife until it’s in their back.”
Dara leaned forward, resting her chin on one hand. “That’s the problem. People are noticing. You can’t shut down half the station’s administrative access and expect everyone to just accept it.”
The station was still functioning. The mass driver was still humming along, steadily nudging the inevitable forward. The supply lines were still active—for now. But they weren’t in control anymore. Not of anything that mattered. He could feel it, a weight settling between his shoulder blades, a pressure that hadn’t been there before.
His gaze flicked to Samson, whose tablet was propped up on a nearby crate, screen dimmed but still glowing. Judas exhaled through his nose and looked back at the others. “Come on, let's go bother Viv.”
