Six days since arrival.

Metal groans. Power lines hum. Things skitter in the pipes.

Yaraskis picks her way through rubble with a double armload of scrap. She's finally growing out of Drekh scale, lower arms regrown all the way down to her talons, but she's still slight enough to duck through the smallest shafts of their new home.

An orbital station, ancient and damaged, but fixable, everyone thinks. The station hasn't been inhabited for a very long time, but Yaraskis catches herself looking over her shoulder repeatedly.

Her spine prickles as an eerie mechanical voice speaks above her head; some old message for Humans, Karrho said. Nothing to worry about. But… unsettling all the same.

It's a relief to get to the workshop. She kicks at the doorframe. "Scrap delivery."

Karrho is smaller than Yaraskis, still true Drekh. Even so, people pay attention to him because he hatched with eight eyes. That means he's handsome, one-in-a-million lucky. And he's sharp. He was in on the plan from the beginning. Yaraskis only got tapped because she's his egg-cousin.

Karrho gestures without looking up from his screens. "Put it anywhere."

The workshop is one of the creepier rooms on the station, in Yaraskis's opinion. It's filled with metal tables bolted to the floor. They had had to clear out a whole pile of empty Vex bodies before the room was usable. Yaraskis tries not to touch anything as she sets down her bundle.

"What are you working on?"

"Analyzing some old mechanical blueprints. If we can splice into the systems, there's as much to use up here as down on the surface. And there aren't any Vex up here. No Hive. No Lightbearers."

"No Kells," Yaraskis says firmly.

"No Kells." Karrho adds, "Plenty of Ether if these blueprints hold true, though. There's this machine. It's in two parts—one collects energy, one uses it. We just need the collector for the Servitors, and we're set for life."

He tilts one of the screens her way.

Ether for life, up here in the cold dark. It makes everything worth it, the overwhelming feeling of fear as they escaped from Europa, the careful navigation around the hazards on the station as they work to make it livable.

And yes, Yaraskis might get shooed out of engineering meetings she doesn't understand, but nobody will cut off her arms for insubordination.

She flexes her lower hands and leans in to study their future.