Seventeen days since arrival.

Karrho is busy all the time talking to the Vandals and Marauders too big to even look at Yaraskis. They're working together to build an Ether refinery, using old human blueprints from the station. He rarely has time for Yaraskis.

Yaraskis would make a terrible engineer. In her cocoon she dreamed of being a Captain, not a priest. She fetches and carries and mops up the old stains nobody else wants to touch, making the station livable again.

Day by day, their home fills up with comforting noise: the pleasant creak of cable ties stringing platforms together, the thump-click, thump-click of footwraps and claws on decking, of the arguments between the only two crewmembers who understand Servitor code.

It's nothing like a good solid warren—but it's safe, and that's good enough. And once they have Ether flowing in, it'll be even better.

Yaraskis tries to ignore the station-voice as she tosses a rag into the machine that is almost an incinerator.

From behind, a hand yanks at her hood. She yells. Its owner dodges her return swipe.

Karrho. "I need to talk to you. Something is wrong. I can't find Paskir."

Paskir is another engineer, big for a Vandal. Big enough that his former Captain was eyeing him as a challenger, which is why he agreed to steal a Ketch with them in the first place.

"Maybe he got lost. Or stuck in some goo." Whatever the Humans did on this station, it involved a lot of… liquids. Yaraskis disinfects her hands at least five times a day.

"He was going to help me with the nuclear power supply and never showed up. And I heard something in the halls." At her look, Karrho adds, "Something big!"

"Anything big would have starved long before we got here. Just wait, I bet he got stuck in one of the zero-gravity areas and he'll call for help soon."

"You'll help me look?"

She hooks an arm around Karrho and pulls him away from the almost-incinerator.

"If he doesn't turn up with an embarrassing story in the morning, we'll all look for him."

Karrho loves engineering. He should be a Servitor's priest or a Splicer. Yaraskis wants to be his Captain, assign him to the priesthood. She wants to get so tall that her head brushes the ceiling, and her arms are long enough to wrap around the whole crew.

It's better to be here than with the Houses.

It has to be better.