I understood that kind of alone.
She went back inside. I heard the faint ring of metal on metal through the hull. Then silence. Then more ringing.
She was trying to fix something. And failing. If the supplies she’d ordered months ago hadn’t arrived, what else was failing on her?
I should have stayed in the ship. Should have let her figure it out on her own, the way she clearly wanted. But the sound kept going. Twenty minutes. Thirty. The same frustrated rhythm, the same failed attempts.
Torek’s voice in my memory:Pride is a luxury. Survival is not.
I powered down the sensors and opened the hatch.
The barn smelledof animals and old hay and machine oil. Dim light filtered through gaps in the siding, casting stripes across the packed earth floor. The grazers watched me from their stalls, their eyes flat and incurious.
Anhara was standing beside a harvesting mechanism, both hands braced against a heavy metal arm that hung at an awkward angle. Her shoulders trembled with effort. Sweat darkened the back of her shirt.
“The pivot pin,” I said.
She didn’t turn. “I know it’s the pivot pin.”
“You’re trying to hold the arm in alignment while you seat it. That’s a two-person job.”
“Turnip can’t exactly grip a wrench.”
I moved closer. The arm was substantial—fifty kilos at least, cantilevered at a bad angle. She was using her whole body to keep it from swinging down while simultaneously trying to work the pin into its housing. An impossible task. The geometry was wrong. No single person could hold the weight and apply the precision at the same time.
“Let me take the arm,” I said. “You seat the pin.”
Silence. Her arms shook. The arm slipped half an inch before she caught it.
“I’ve been doing this alone for three years.”
“And how’s that working out?”
She shot me a look that could have stripped paint. But the arm slipped again, and this time the pin clattered to the floor.
“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Get over here.”
I moved in beside her. Took the weight of the arm, lifting it into proper alignment. My hands found the grips she’d been using, and I felt the strain immediately—not the weight itself, but the awkward angle, the way it wanted to twist.
“Hold it there,” she said. “Don’t let it rotate.”
“I won’t.”
She dropped to retrieve the pin, then came up beside me, close enough that her shoulder pressed against my arm as she worked. Her fingers moved quick and sure, threading the pin through the housing, tapping it into place with a small hammer.
“Little higher,” she said.
I adjusted. The arm wanted to swing. I held it.
“There.” The pin slid home. She grabbed the retention clip, snapped it into place, and stepped back. “You can let go.”
I released the arm. It held.
She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of grease at her temple. Her breathing was still rough from the effort.
“Thank you,” she said. The words came out reluctant. Like they cost her something.
“Two-person job,” I said. “Not a favor.”
