There's Ursa Minor—find the handle, travel up… there, Alpha Ursae Minoris—Polaris. The north star, shining bright in the sky, was the first thing I always looked for to orient myself when I looked up into the night. Traveling south from Polaris, my dreary eyes spotted… hair? 

Short, black hair with faint green streaks splayed out in front of my face from my right, blocking my view of the stars, and I registered pinpricks of awareness returning to my head and cheeks as I slowly awoke. This time, I was laid down, strapped to a bed, as my hearing slowly returned, subjecting my ears to a deep voice that was far too loud for my current state.

"Lieutenant Lyndal, can you hear me?" the green-black-haired lady half-yelled. "Can—you can definitely hear me. Welcome back, Lieutenant. You lost a lot of blood back there. It's a miracle you made it to the nanite storage, and it's another miracle I was able to bring you back, Lieutenant." The fuzziness in my peripheral vision had finally disappeared, and to my left, I spotted familiar speckled brown hair.

"I should've noticed when you came in, you were dizzy and clammy and you almost fell over a few times, I should've noticed earlier, I'm sorry, honey," Ophelia blurted out. The engineer's olive face was once again stained with floating tears, and I had the irrational urge to reach up and wipe them away, even as my functional arm was strapped to the bed. That face was never meant to be tainted like that.

My voice came out raspy as I looked into Ophelia's eyes and responded. "Hey, hey, I should've noticed long before you did, Ophelia. Hell, I thought the dizziness was… n-nevermind. It's not your fault, okay?" I… didn't really know how to comfort people, like, at all, so I essentially repeated what Ophelia had said to me.

Short-green-black-hair spoke up again, glancing down at her watch before returning her cerulean eyes to me. "Lieutenant, you're going to be spending at least the next eight hours resting and letting those boosters filter out of your system. I know you engineer types always have a thousand urgent, critical tasks to attend to at any given moment, 24/7, but your job can be done without nearly killing yourself." 

A part of my brain felt around for my exoskeleton, hoping I could use it to break the restraints if necessary, but it had evidently been removed so the medic could access the fluid ports. Even if I could break out, it would probably make Ophelia and the green-black-haired medic lady very worried, and people worrying about me was something I liked to avoid at all costs. The engineer bunny has much, much more important things to worry about than me, after all, and… hell, she's probably got a better plan than I do for the whole station repair project. Oh, and every part of my aching body felt like complete and utter shit.

I sighed, turning my head towards my apparent savior, immediately registering a pale, slightly freckled face looking down at me with incredibly strong "do what I say" energy. 

"... fine," I began, "but Ophelia better keep me in the comms loop as to what she's doing out there. And… I feel like I should get your name… and where I am… and what time is it?"

"It's 4am UTC, you've been unconscious for three hours, we're in a medical post near Downs Forest, and I'm Acasta Harper, Nansen University paramedic." Acasta spoke quickly and concisely, and I got the distinct feeling that she was trying to hyperfocus on her work, the same as Ophelia and I.

"Thank you, Acasta. Really," I said, looking away afterwards to survey my surroundings, which were composed mostly of sterile white crash padding and assorted medical instrumentation, as expected. Five empty medical beds were arrayed in the room next to my own, while an offline medical pod sat at the far side, near an air lock.

"Just doing my job, Lieutenant," Acasta replied, the tiniest hint of a smile appearing on her face before vanishing just as quickly. That was kind of cute—

That train of thought was thankfully shot down when Ophelia said "I'll have to go outside to check on the power distribution hub. If I can repair the couplings, it should restore some semblance of power and atmospheric control to the university and this ring section and make all our jobs easier. If it turns out it's actually the reactor that's busted, well…" she trailed off, letting us infer the results.

"Let's hope not," I sighed. Both of us had basic training in thorium reactor operation, as was required for engineering service on an orbital, but Ophelia was an electronics technician, and I had specialized more into mechanics. Amanda was our foremost expert on reactor operation, and she was… don't think about that right now, Aspen. We were both qualified to go through reactor repair and restart, but not, well… experienced whatsoever.

I looked back towards Acasta and spoke as a few gears in my brain clicked into place. "Acasta? How's the university doing? Downs Forest is pretty close to the main campus." 

The paramedic looked down and sighed before replying, returning my gaze with empty eyes. "The university's in bad shape. I'll estimate two thirds of the students and staff are dead or dying, and the hospital there has lost atmosphere, along with most of the academic buildings. One of those bizarre plasma bolts tore through the evacuation shelter in Avon Hall, and there's nothing there anymore bar dust and vacuum."

I rested my head against the medical bed and sighed, using all my willpower to stop my tear glands from acting up again. I couldn't stop myself from conjuring a mental image of the mass death inflicted upon yet more helpless civilians—their minds, ideas, loves and futures, lost to the uncaring void. So many possibilities, gone in an instant… and instead of trying to save them, I had been aimlessly floating without a care in the world.

And here I was, useless again, strapped to a bed while I waited for my body to unfuck itself and unable to dedicate even a modicum of effort to doing my fucking job lest my heart finally give out. Great. Fuck.

Amanda probably would've rechecked the power couplings, found a shock recovery kit for herself and started organizing surviving personnel by now, but she was gone, and in her place was a bumbling, anxiety-riddled idiot who was missing an arm, was occasionally too gay to function, and always looked up to her for direction. Cruel fate is cruel, indeed.

"Aspen, honey," I faintly heard Ophelia call. "You're crying."

"... yeah, yeah, I am," I replied, feeling drops of liquid collecting on my face.

Ophelia reached out to wipe my tears away for me before they started pooling in microgravity, and I felt the soft cloth of her suit's undergloves gently brush against my face, provoking a slight flush in my cheeks and a dim soothing sensation in my stomach that vanished far too quickly. Hand, come back, please…

The engineer bunny sighed and looked towards Acasta, who had moved to lean against the wall with her arms crossed, probably waiting for me to finish being all emotional. Able to get a good look at her now, she was dressed in a thick gray coat that hung unzipped over a white shirt and utility vest adorned with pockets, while standard black magnetic boots lightly caked with dried mud worn over grayish-blue work pants secured her body to the floor of the room. An armband over her right forearm carried a blue Star of Life, and a necklace draped over her dress shirt carried a golden compass. A thin matte white exoskeleton ran along the backs of her limbs to a torso control unit which steadily flashed a LED to indicate it was online, occasionally coating the brightly lit white room in faint blue.

The paramedic tapped her foot impatiently on the floor as she began to speak to Ophelia. "Please hurry to the power distributor, Ensign Stewart. I can't treat anything past emergency medicine or accelerate Lieutenant Lyndal's recovery until the medical pod gets power again, and none of us know how long the backup atmospheric regulators are going to last for this section of the ring."

There I go again, wasting time for my friends and for the people on the station who actually need help. Good job, Aspen. 

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you, Acasta." Ophelia turned away and stepped towards a cabinet where her suit helmet and gloves sat, quickly putting them on as her ears folded down with a slight whirr. "Radio check," she said into her microphone, the sound instantly coming out of a speaker on Acasta's exoskeleton and from a regular radio handset that was secured by small straps to the wall beside me.

Acasta produced an indiscernible muttering sound into her own microphone, to which Ophelia responded with a thumbs-up from her right arm, her short frame and brown hair having completely disappeared under the deep navy blue NZRN combat suit, adorned with thermal and armor padding. 

"Where'd you get the suit from, anyway, Ophelia?" I asked, looking over and earning a groan from the musculature in my trainwreck of a neck.

The engineer's voice came out of the radio handset next to me instead of from her face, which made my brain do loop-de-loops for a moment. "It was just finished being repaired in the shop I went to to get my ears checked out, and, well… no-one else was using it when the ring was attacked. I, uh… don't really know whose suit it is, honestly."

Ophelia was feeling around the pistol sitting in her right thigh holster, checking it for ammunition, when Acasta trudged over at magboot pace, uncrossing her arms and looking over the engineer's pistol. 

"That's all you have for protection? I've seen some of those rogue nanite clouds around here," Acasta said, her face one of moderate worry as her eyes examined the small service pistol.

"Do you have anything better?" Meanwhile, Ophelia's face was hidden behind her visor, but I could clearly imagine her with her characteristic slightly open mouth and a raised eyebrow, and maybe I wanted to imagine her with flushed cheeks, too—

"There's a smart rifle and a few boxes of low-velocity ammo in a cabinet in the next room over, and I'm a terrible shot. You'll get more use out of it than anyone else." Acasta gestured towards an opened door leading to what I assumed was a storage room, and Ophelia nodded, walking through.

She returned something like thirty seconds later with an assault rifle slung over her back, a flickering green light on the upper receiver signifying it having connected to the exoskeleton's weapon management system. She then handed the pistol to Acasta, who gently took it with a quizzical look at the engineer. 

"Promise me you'll keep Aspen safe?" Ophelia asked through the radio, looking towards the paramedic.

That tiny hint of a smile I spotted earlier returned to Acasta's freckled face, and she replied "it's my job, after all… yeah, I promise," her face quickly returning to expressionlessness. 

"Thank you," Ophelia said as she stepped towards the air lock, her magnetic boots clicking on the hard floor at that familiar awkward pace. Acasta turned back towards me and eventually plopped herself down at a semi-functional workstation nearby as Ophelia cycled through the airlock, giving me a tiny wave as she left, which I returned with the best smile I could muster (a pretty shitty smile). 

I spoke into the headset on the wall beside me not even ten seconds after the air lock cycled. "How's the ring look?"

Ophelia's light voice sighed through the radio link, and replied "it's still completely and utterly fucked. I can't see any part of the ring that still has atmosphere, though there are some lights here and there, at the least… it's really unlikely that every other engineer on the ring is gone, and they're probably working on restoring power, the same as we are." Well, I was waiting to recover from hypovolemic shock and what was probably an emergency stimulant overdose, but thanks, Ophelia, for trying to make me feel included. 

"That's not a surprise," Acasta piped up from her desk, where she sat idly tapping her foot and hands. "We have to hope that central engineering isn't in the same sorry state, or the station is dead and gone," she muttered. Her deep voice betrayed creeping exhaustion, and I could see her fidgeting grow erratic as time passed.

I couldn't match the paramedic's fidgeting, restrained as I was, so I settled for gazing out the ceiling viewport directly out in front of me, cataloging the stars I found, which were hard to discern among the field of glittering debris that surrounded Nansen Ring. Polaris was first, as always, and despite the stress of the last 14 hours, I managed to calm myself down a bit in the distant starfield I always dreamed of visiting, one day.

Perhaps, in some bright future, humanity would escape the gravitational shackles of the inner solar system, and I'd be able to sail the endless stars… as of right now, of course, humanity's survival as a civilization seemed to be in doubt, and our immediate goal was to avoid a horrible, agonizing death in the vacuum of space.

"Ah… shit. I'm going to need your help here, Aspen, honey," Ophelia said wearily on the radio link, the distinct boot sound of a power grid control panel coming through the background.

"Ophelia? What is it?" I asked, shuffling on the bed to move myself towards the radio handset on the wall.

"Alright, I have a distribution box here that's had one of its cable couplings twisted, probably from whatever decelerated the ring spin, and I think I can get the box working again if I can repair the coupling and go through the restart procedure on the control panel… and, well, I was never taught the restart procedure. That was more Amanda's specialty."

Mainline distribution boxes always went through lengthy maintenance restarts, even more so if they were even slightly damaged, thanks to how complex they were designed—made to handle the massive power output of a station reactor and balance load across the ring with speed no human operator could match. I didn't have a manual or anything to pull from… so, Aspen's memory, don't fail me now. It would really, really suck if I caused my friend to irreparably damage critical power grid infrastructure because I fell asleep once in electrician training back in Wellington. 

I answered through the handset, stating "there should be a few spare couplings stored in the panel housing, check for those first and see if you can't replace the cable connection." I barely noticed Acasta moving her tracked workstation over to me, and when I looked over, the console's screen had been changed to a view of Ophelia's helmet camera, to which I whispered "thanks, Acasta."

The paramedic nodded and sat idly by my bedside as we watched Ophelia work, the distribution box lit by her bright helmet lights—the engineer first disengaged the damaged cable with a wrench to the securing bolts, and proceeded from there along the basic steps we were taught in engineering training. Turns out, even in a combat suit, an energetic augmented bunny girl with a self-tuned exoskeleton is pretty dexterous.

With a few twists and a click on the ring connector, the superconducting cable coupling was restored, and a gentle rippling passed through the cabling's scaled black skin, the telltale sign of flowing liquid nitrogen—at least one of the ring's sixteen liquid nitrogen tanks hadn't been breached, which was a very good sign. The distribution box's control panel still sat dead, though, so it was my time to actually contribute, for once.

"Alright, take a look at the control panel, there should be a red-rimmed cable port on the underside, about as wide as your thumb. That's the emergency port for portable power—plug your suit panel in," I relayed into the handset, watching through the console as Ophelia found the port. She then pulled out a small cable stored in her combat suit's left forearm, plugging it in and tapping her suit control panel a few times to start sharing power. Acasta sat at my side, intently watching the feed—she was so still and silent, it took me a moment to register that she was still breathing.

Ophelia replied through the link after the panel came to life, crackling with a faint blue light that displayed cursory information about the distribution box, most of which was some variant of either offline or unknown. "Done."

"There's a red distributor restart button in the bottom right of the screen, you can't miss it. Tap that, input your engineering authorization, and wait there until it starts the program," I said. Ophelia dutifully followed my instructions to the letter, almost as if we were a superior officer and a subordinate in the NZRN and not late-night drinking buddies who gushed to each other about women. I was never really the most uptight departmental leader, was I?

We all waited a few moments for the restart program to initialize, and the only things I could hear were the hum of the medical post atmospheric regulators, Acasta's soft breathing, and Ophelia's much deeper breaths as she stood in front of the giant distribution box, the only thing separating her face from soundless vacuum being a thin layer of aluminum oxynitride.

The program finished booting up, and I asked Ophelia to find a large metal lever on the switch panel below the glowing control panel, tipped with lime green rubber. She'd have to pull down the lime-tipped lever and flip a dizzying array of other switches in quick succession in order to manually swap out any damaged electrics within the distribution box, since the inbuilt restart and replacement system wasn't designed to run off emergency power from a suit or exoskeleton.

Ophelia did as asked, and the control panel read that the distribution box was ready to reboot, though without the audible clicking and whirring sound of swapping components that normally accompanied electrics self-repair, there was no way to confirm that it worked without dismantling the entire box panel, something the bunny engineer didn't have the tooling for.

"Start the actual reboot, and we'll just have to wait and see if anything fucks up in the middle of it," I relayed. Ophelia made a slight hum of acknowledgement, and she tapped a blinking button on the control panel. The three of us watched as socketed modules and lights across the open access panel slowly lit up, beginning with a yellow-coated box I recognized as the load control computer and ending with a few nondescript LEDs on a green cylinder about the same size and shape as a soda can, which I remembered to be a wireless communicator that tapped into the station network in case the distributor's landlines to the rest of the power grid were down.

"That… looks good," Ophelia hummed, before the control panel itself blinked and returned to the status homescreen. Of particular interest to me was an indicator labeled Main Reactor Power, which read ONLINE.

"Good to go, I'm surprised nothing was broken. With our luck, I didn't entirely expect the distribution box to still be in one piece," I said, as I watched Ophelia carefully disconnect her suit power, close the access panel and seal it. 

"You can let yourself be a little optimistic, honey. Soon, you'll be able to haul yourself off that bed and get back in the field with me, and with our powers combined, we'll be an unstoppable force of mechanical restoration," the bunny engineer giggled lightly. I felt my cheeks flush again, and looked away from the console to hide my face from… uh, something.

Acasta's tiny half-smile returned again as she looked at me, and I glanced over at her, muttering "what?" towards her gently freckled face and ocean-like eyes. Again, kind of cute—

"Nothing," the paramedic said, returning her gaze to the console, though the tiny smile remained on her face. I owe that woman my life, but I'd be lying if I said she wasn't a little weird. 

"I'll start following the cabling to the university now, see if I can't repair any breaks in the power lines. I'll keep in touch, you two, just get cozy back there," Ophelia spoke through the comms link.

"Stay safe," Acasta and I said at almost the same time, just a moment before the lights in the room flickered, and Acasta's eyes snapped towards a window on my right. I cranked my head towards the right, trying to glimpse whatever she had seen, but I wasn't able to spot anything against the background of stars and metallic debris as Acasta raised the service pistol on her lap into a ready position. I squinted my eyes repeatedly, trying to get a bead on what had spooked her, but by the time I realized the cloud of dust out the window wasn't a cloud of dust at all, a neon blue light sparked into life at the center of the floating, shifting mass, joined by a multitude of sibling lights shining against the void.