"Er'dox," she said, my name slightly mangled by human pronunciation but recognizable. She stood, putting herself between me and her people. Always protecting. Always the wall.
"Dana." I stopped several paces away, maintaining a non-threatening distance. "How are your people?"
"Five in surgery. Three more under intensive care. The rest are tired, scared, and processing the fact that we're cosmically fucked." She delivered it in flat Zandovian, no emotion in the words themselves, but I could hear the strain underneath. "So about how you'd expect."
"I came to begin evaluations. Captain Tor'van wants you integrated into Mothership's crew as quickly as possible."
"Right. Because we have to work off our rescue debt." Something sharp entered her tone. "Tell me, what's the going rate for cosmic displacement? How many years of indentured servitude equals one catastrophic wormhole accident?"
Behind her, several humans shifted uncomfortably. They understood Zandovian now, and understood exactly what their situation meant.
"That depends on your skills and the positions you're assigned to," I said carefully. "Captain Tor'van mentioned a minimum five years, but that's assuming basic labor positions. Specialized skills reduce the debt significantly."
"Specialized skills." Dana crossed her arms. "You want to know if we're useful enough to be worth feeding."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "I want to know what you're capable of. Your technology is completely unknown to us. The beacon you built, improvised, failing, but functional, suggests sophisticated engineering knowledge. I need to understand what your civilization developed, what skills you possess, where you might contribute to Mothership's operations."
"And if we don't have useful skills? If we're just refugees with no currency and no value?"
"Then you'll be assigned basic positions and work off your debt over a longer period." I held her gaze. "But I don't believe that will be the case."
Silence stretched between us, tension thick enough to measure. The other humans watched with the stillness of prey animals assessing predator behavior.
Finally, Dana's posture shifted slightly, not relaxation, exactly, but a millimeter of give. "Okay. What do you need to know?"
"Everything." I pulled a portable interface unit from my belt, activated its holographic display. "Your technologicaldevelopment, your scientific knowledge, your engineering principles. I've studied your beacon, the hybrid power systems, and the improvised transmission array. It shouldn't work. By any logical analysis, that configuration should have failed catastrophically. But it didn't. You made it work anyway."
For the first time since I'd entered the bay, something that might have been interest flickered across Dana's face. "You analyzed the beacon?"
"Of course. It's completely novel technology. The integration of incompatible systems, the creative application of limited resources—" I caught myself before I could launch into a full technical analysis. "It's fascinating from an engineering standpoint."
"Fascinating." She repeated the word like she was testing its weight. "Our survival beacon was fascinating."
"Yes. Because it represents engineering philosophy I've never encountered. Zandovian technology prioritizes efficiency and standardization. Your beacon prioritizes functionality regardless of elegance. Different approach. Different thinking."
I pulled up the schematics I'd extracted from the beacon before it finally died. "This interface here has three different power sources connected through a distribution hub that shouldn't handle that kind of variable input. How did you stabilize it?"
Dana moved closer to look at the holographic display, her people watching carefully. I could see her engineering instincts overriding her defensive posture as she studied her own work rendered in Zandovian technical notation.
"Manual load balancing," she said after a moment. "The distribution hub couldn't auto-regulate, so I monitored it constantly and adjusted power draw to keep things stable. Not elegant, but it worked."
"Manual monitoring for three weeks?"
"Someone always had eyes on it. We took shifts." She gestured at the power distribution schematic. "Your analysis is off here, though. That's not a standard interface. I built it from a medical scanner's power regulator and part of a life support system. The connections are improvised, not standardized."
I adjusted the schematic based on her correction, watching the system architecture realign. "You built functional technology from salvaged components with no proper tools?"
"I had a multi-tool and desperation. That's enough."
"That's extraordinary."
Dana looked up at me, something uncertain in her expression. Like she wasn't sure if I was mocking her or genuinely impressed.
"It's survival engineering," she said. "You do what you have to with what you have. Nothing extraordinary about it."
"I disagree. Most beings confronted with that level of resource limitation simply fail. You found solutions that shouldn't exist." I saved the corrected schematic to my database. "This is why I need to evaluate your skills. If you can do this with salvaged parts and no tools, what could you do with proper equipment?"
Behind Dana, one of the other women spoke, Jalina, I thought, based on medical records. Small, dark-haired, watching me with less hostility than Dana but equal caution. "You want her to work in Engineering?"
