Over the ear wire, Markos listens to Adah rambling about things that make hardly any sense at all. She builds checklists, discards them, builds new lists, and then plants a non sequitur about liking to spend time maintaining her miniature tree as a hobby. It takes him a few minutes to realize that he is listening to probably half of a rambling conversation being held by someone on the brink of collapse.

Recognizing that, Markos uses a tech support override code for her clipboard to see its traffic. It’s not something he does regularly now that he’s off the support work queue and actually completing field work in the flesh. But the security team never did get around to revoking his remote technician credentials.

What he spots while viewing her screen shocks him as sure as the zap that lit the vent on fire. And that was plenty of shock for one day.

Adah is requesting an emergency evacuation. Adah has, to his knowledge, never requested any kind of evacuation for a team member. What could possibly be going on down there?

And then Markos uses his context cues, as the programming the kids watch would suggest, and decides that this clearly means that Adah is the one who requires the evacuating. He watches responses ping in to her message box. He shouldn’t read them. They’re not his to read.

But the messages are sitting unread, and this is an emergency situation. The clipboard is unlocked, so if he had been there physically he could have just taken it from her hands and looked. The ethics of digital intrusion don’t seem like they ought to apply in a disaster scenario.

On the wire, Adah makes a shuddering gasping sound and then whispers that it hurts so much. That makes up the computer technician’s mind. If he gets any trouble for reading her messages, then he will weigh it against his conscience and that sound will inform him that it was the right choice to make when he made it.

It comes to every great surprise that each of the message replies is an offer of assistance. Not one of the ships on the Venkyke side within range of the message transmission has declined the request. Each rather requests detailed instructions on how to proceed.

Markos checks and rechecks the information available to him, and locates two ships already in orbit. He sends a quick stand by message to the rest and asks the those two what their estimated time of arrival could be.

Both snap back an almost instant response, and then he watches as their communications crew members actually get in touch with each other without prompting. Markos wishes he had access to the actual traffic control views. He even wishes he were actually phased to the Venkyke side instead of Anzion so he could look out the window to see the two ships coordinating together as backup.

He then realizes a dire error. They will not actually be able to dock while the life support systems are still rebooting. The docking hatch doors will not budge. It’s a safety feature, not a bug, that the doors cannot accidentally be triggered to open to empty space or a ship on the wrong phase, or any other horrible tragedy caused by a mistimed opening of the doors that keep the void out and the precious air in.

Markos sends Adah a message. Markos sends the two ships a similar message. There is a very slight delay before they begin communications again. Instead of organizing docking procedures, the two are now locked in discussions of intercept orbits.

Curious, he checks the details available on both of the two ships. One is a freighter, going by the name of Haulin’ Sass, and her pilot has the unenviable job of aligning four separate engines mounted on control arms to match the rotation of the Moldy Donut. The database shows that this is a vessel that cannot enter any kind of atmosphere. It is not much more than a cockpit with space for a three man crew to hot bunk through shift changes. The engine arms attach to a center pole to which airless containers cling with enormous magnetic clamps.

Markos is impressed that she would have felt capable of making the offer at all. A ship as small as Haulin’ Sass does not have the air reserves to handle additional passengers easily.

The second ship is even less of an expected choice. Something Something Light the Atmosphere on Fire is a military ship, one of the Moldy Donut’s very own light pursuit vessels. She’s an air-breather, capable of landing on true ground if that’s called for in her duties. Something Something Light the Atmosphere on Fire is a much larger mass than the little freighter that could, but with her hull design requiring some resemblance of aerodynamics, she is not designed with the same precision maneuverability. Something Something Light the Atmosphere on Fire has to maintain a rear-engine, and includes a faster-than-light drive, which both serve to limit her to fewer degrees of movement than Haulin’ Sass has available with her unlinked engines.

This poses something of a conundrum. Something Something Light the Atmosphere on Fire has plenty of air. She’s dragging a component of marines around space with her, and has a much larger crew to support herself on her missions. She has all the space a desperate repair crew could desire. But her powerful engines leave some finesse to be desired. Something Something Light the Atmosphere on Fire can dock with the ring gate successfully, but only when assisted by drones. The docking drones are not available to help maneuver a ship when the available ports are all disabled. Safety mechanism. Can’t be helped.

Haulin’ Sass doesn’t need assistance to dock. She could easily match rotation with the Moldy Donut and not create any issue at all for kicking Adah out an airlock and stepping into their docking tube. Haulin’ Sass, however, doesn’t have the air to spare.

Markos works through a series of messages between the two, and together they create a plan of action.

And before that plan is put in action, a ping on his own clipboard alerts Markos to the fact that the vent has been successfully detected. The failure alerting process begins its agonizingly slow system check, requiring a confirmation check from the backup network for each node. Failures reported must be manually notated and cleared. Markos has to disconnect from Adah’s clipboard to focus on his own work.

He despises every second of it.