It is very unusual for Amina to admit that she has completely overlooked a vitally important detail. And yet.

Apparently Adah had been arranging for her evacuation with greater than anticipated success. Outside the window, across the galaxy, two ships are synchronizing their orbits to catch their evacuees when they’re flung out of the spin from the Moldy Donut. Amina wishes she could see the ships. She knows that they’re there. She is aware of their presence from monitors displaying the exterior view on both sides of the gate.

But outside the enormous bank of windows that flank either side of the docking platform Amina sees only stars and Anzion’s ring. The golden halo of dust that orbits close to the star that gives the system its name feels like a mockery right now. It’s beautiful, and a rare sight to see in all the galaxy, but Amina would much rather be looking out the window at the pair of spaceships as they dance into position.

Sometimes, living in space is a very confusing thing. There’s really no escaping that fact.

Amina glances ruefully at the metal band on her wrist, clearly labeled for Anzion.

How did she ever miss this?

It doesn’t matter. If all else fails, they’ll just have to find a way to manually hook a tether. They’re getting Adah to a medical facility. That’s all there is to it.

Amina hunts down the escape hatch. Thankfully, after all the horrible luck they’ve suffered, there are actually three actual spacesuits to choose from in the locker next to the hatch. There’s no guarantee of a proper fit, but the chemical paint on the gaskets reveal no wear. Everything is still safely unexpired.

The carpenter wrangles one of the suits out of the closet and pulls it over to her coworker. Vasko sits with her still, making certain that she remains somewhat alert and lucid.

“Time to get dressed for your date,” Amina displays a somewhat broken smile.

Adah does not respond immediately, laying on her back and staring blankly at the ceiling. Slowly, ever so slowly, she pushes herself up onto her elbows.

“Someone really came?” Adah looks amazed, and Amina can’t quite understand why. She was sure that the project manager had somehow arranged the two ships that her clipboard was reporting were engaged in a delicate dance hundreds of light years away from Amina’s point of view. It feels like magic.

And then Amina remembers that their team includes a computer technician that previously worked remote support. She has a suspicion, but opts not to confirm it. It’s better not to know.

Amina and Vasko manage to get the top half of the suit onto Adah without jostling her leg overly much. They are less successful when assembling the lower half of the suit. Amina double checks the security of the tourniquet before pushing the barely connected limb into the

Adah briefly stops being much of a human and devolves into a loosely assembled sack of bones that is only capable of screaming. Oh how she screams.

With the lower half of the suit in place, Vasko expertly runs the tests on the seals. His work is efficient and he completes the task at hand in a way that Amina recognizes as the officially approved guidelines for occupational health and safety in space.

It doesn’t register with her that this fact has any bearing on their current situation.

Amina is not precisely capable of actually lifting Adah by herself. She needs help. There are too many things she simply cannot do alone.

So far, Vasko has been, in his most humble opinion, very helpful and humble and truly kind. He’s gone out of his way to assist the crew that will cause him to lose access to his current home even though doing so is truly a detriment to his living situation. He has only done so out of the kindness left in his heart after all the other things that had gone so horribly wrong. So he’s pretty well confident that he could find an excuse to be elsewhere when they pop the hatch on the emergency exit.

Everything else has broken, and broken quite horribly. It would not surprise him in the least for the emergency escape hatch to fail too. He carries the injured woman to the emergency exit hatch airlock and places her gently on the floor.

Pale, with eyes locked on the tiles, Adah focuses on the speckled patterns in the floor to keep from screaming again.

“Hey, I know it’s asking a lot,” Amina begins to speak, and he’s pretty thoroughly flattened by the hesitance in her voice. Stay strong man, you don’t have to say yes to whatever she asks. She’s not going to ask you for a heroic sacrifice. “But what do you see out the window?”

Vasko sighs deeply and looks into space. Danijela, his ship, is still parked with an impound tether locked in place and keeping her in a stationary orbit not far from the Moldy Donut. At this distance she’s not much more than a sparkling smudge of gray, her blue paint not standing out at this distance.

His hovering reminder of all his failures is right there. She’s in easy reach - if only he had the funds to repair her hull damage. Closer at hand, two additional ships maneuver around each other with bright bursts of their positioning thrusters.

“Objects in space,” he grunts, reaching desperately for the pouch of clear vegetable-based alcohol that should be in his pocket and finds that it is not there. He can’t remember what he did with it.

“Maybe a little more specific?” Amina asks, looking hopeful. The alcohol continues not not be in his other pocket either. Vasko looks out the window again.

The two closer ships dance around each other to adjust their relative positions. One is a warship, powerful and sleek, that appears capable of atmospheric flight based on the actual wings built into her configuration. The other is a humble freight tug, with barely anything resembling the sleek and graceful conceptual ideal of a spaceship. She’s an ugly bug, clutching a mess of cargo containers to her center axle.

And hey, he recognizes that configuration.

“Some kind of warship and a three-man cargo hauler. Looks like a slower than light Antonov model with the optional spin kit for generating false grav when underway. And Danijela.” He sighs like a lovesick teenager, and contemplates trying to just jump out to her again.

“You actually see the ships?” Amina couldn’t look more surprised or hopeful or any of the things that could prod Vasko into something resembling action.

“Yeah,” he shrugs, “what else would I see? I came here through Venkyke.”

Amina grabs his shoulders in the next best thing to a hug. She can’t get her arms around him while he’s digging through his pockets. He removes several random objects from various locations on his person. These include a wide range of small tools, a half eaten sandwich, sealed ration packs of indeterminate age, and Amina’s favorite brand of candy bar: pure unadulterated sugar in stick form.

Vasko does not locate any additional alcohol for consumption. This is a massive disappointment. He prefers to have a drink on hand when visiting the doorway to his one true love.

Unfortunately for him, he instead finds himself on the receiving end of a hug. And now he pretty much has to listen to any additional requests she may have for him.

“Can you put on a suit and carry Adah out of the airlock? You don’t have to actually do a spacewalk, just kind of, pitch her into the abyss for the rescue ships to snag a hold of.” Adah’s request is not exactly reasonable.