“Replacement relay is a week out, since I had to purchase it with credit. Nothing I can do.”
“The bots?”
Sam shook his head and gave a quick, mournful glance to one of his precious bots, sitting still and lifeless against the wall. “Can’t fix what isn’t broken. They just won’t start. Seems like a software problem, but combing through all that is going to take more time than I’ve got.”
Holly sat down at the console and closed her eyes. Three days. Even if she drained her personal savings, everynitshe had left, it wouldn’t cover the parts and materials needed to bring the station up to code. And even if she could, the timeline was impossible. Some of these repairs took weeks, not days.
“If we fail the inspection,” she said, her eyes still closed, “we’re off the registry.”
“Yes.”
“And if we’re off the registry, no travelers find us. No income. No way to fund repairs.” She opened her eyes. “The station dies.”
Sam said nothing. He didn’t need to.
The elevator doors opened behind them, and Holly turned to see Rasker step into the control tower. He wore his travel clothes, slightly rumpled, and there was a weariness about him that she recognized. He had been gone since yesterday morning, departed without telling anyone where he was going, and Holly had not had the energy to wonder about it until now.
He’d been disappearing for a day here, half a day there, always returning with the same unreadable expression and his d-pad tucked tightly under an arm. He helped when he was present. He carried water, he ran diagnostics she asked him to run, he swam the flooded caverns twice more to check conditions. But something about him had shifted since the festival. He had not touched her since that night, aside from quick brushes on the arm or pats on the shoulder. He watched things with an intensity that unsettled her, and she couldn’t tell if he was calculating or concerned. Both, maybe. He was still aconsultant, after all. And the station he’d been sent to acquire was collapsing in front of him.
“Where were you?” Holly asked. She hadn’t meant it to come out sharp, but it did.
“Following up with something.” He crossed the room, his eyes narrowed at Holly’s and Sam’s exceptionally dark expressions. “What’s happened?”
“See for yourself.” She handed him the d-pad that still displayed the inspection notice.
His jaw tightened as he read. “Not much time,” he murmured.
“Notenoughtime.” Holly ran her hands through her dirty hair. “We’re in trouble.”
Rasker was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Holly and Sam, and his voice was careful. Measured. “When I was down in the caverns, I saw debris near the main conduit junction. Twisted metal. Shattered composite. I stand by what I said—it didn’t look like a pipe that failed from age. It looked like it was blown apart from the inside.”
Holly stared at him. “An explosion.”
“I’m not an engineer. But that’s what it looked like to me.”
She turned to Sam, even though they’d been over this before. “Could pressure buildup have caused that much damage, or are we looking at a different cause?”
Sam spread his hands. “As I told you before, an old conduit under extreme pressure can rupture violently. It canlooklike an explosion.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But the pressure reading I flagged at the festival wasn’t high enough for that kind of eruption. Not on its own.”
“So something else caused it?” Holly asked.
“Maybe,”Sam replied. “Or maybe the conduit was weaker than the specs suggest. There’s no way to know until the caverns are drained and I can examine it.”
“If it was sabotage,” Rasker said, “you can appeal the inspection. File for a delay while an investigation is conducted. It could buy time.”
“My lawyer said the same thing, but we’d need to offer some proof that it was sabotage,” Holly said. “We have none.”
Rasker’s silence was answer enough. The recordings he’d taken in the caverns showed a ruptured conduit in a flooded system. Old pipes. Old station. It looked exactly like what it was supposed to look like: neglect.
“Holly.” Rasker stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I have a lead on Complete Respite’s operations in this sector. If I can establish a connection between their tactics and what’s happening here, it changes the game. It gives you leverage.”
She heard the words, but they arrived muffled, as if traveling through water. A lead.Leverage. The game. She was so tired. Her body ached and her eyes burned and the inspection notice sat on the console like a death sentence, and the man she had slept with six days ago was talking about leverage while her station fell apart around her.
“Stop. I can’t, Rasker.” She briefly pressed her fingers to her aching eyes. “I just…can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Rasker shifted. “Holly?—”
“I’m sorry. I know you think someone is doing all this, and maybe that’s true, but I’m already down one rabbit hole trying to repair virtuallyeverything,and I—I can’t go down another one. Your conspiracy theories are?—”
