"Okay, calm down, everybody!" All the flashlights in the bay flicked around toward the sound of Asuka's voice, spotlighting her as she turned slowly, trying to make eye contact with everyone. "Try not to panic."

Oh, sure.  Kamala's hearts pounded harder moment by moment. We've got no air, no power, and the whole station's gone. There's no way out. Yeah, don't panic. Sure. Fuck me.

She tightened her grip on Roger and tried to stop her trembling before she shook herself apart. She'd spent the last several months trying to get him interested in her, and now that he had finally started to respond, they were going to die.

Someone nearby sobbed and Kamala glanced over her shoulder. Her friends Seth and Marissa hovered above her workbench, holding one another. Seth's face had turned grim and ashen, and Marissa was weeping uncontrollably.

"Try to remain calm," Asuka said, raising her voice enough to drown out all the other sounds in the bay. Even though she appeared to be a teenager, she was at least eighty years old, an adult brain installed in a cybernetic body that looked no older than fourteen. Despite her youthful appearance, she was on the station's security crew. She'd recently been involved in a fight with several assassins who'd boarded the station, and had come here for a few repairs.

If she'd still been on her way here when … whatever the hell it was happened...

Kamala wasn't sure which was the luckier group--she and the rest, or those on the station … wherever the hell it was.

"We have some pilots here, right?" Asuka continued.

"Over here," a voice on the far end of the bay called out. The flashlights whirled around to illuminate her for a moment. Lydia Tilman, callsign "Tits." The reason for which was obvious enough.

"Here, too," a male voice came from behind her, and the flashlights moved again. Archie Pierson, callsign "T-Bone."

Asuka waited for someone else to speak up. When no one did, she said, "Any others?"

Silence, except for low murmurs rippling around the bay.

"Okay, then. We've got four shuttles here. Any of 'em working?"

"Just two," T-Bone said. "One needs a few upgrades, but is functional as-is, and the other was waiting to ferry a repair team over to the construction station."

"The air in here won't last long. How about the shuttles?"

"Well, with a pilot and a half-dozen passengers, about thirty-six hours." He looked around and ran a hand through his hair. "We've got, what, a couple dozen people in here?"

"We're fucked," someone behind Kamala whimpered.

"Squeezing that many people onto the shuttles," Tits muttered, shaking her head. "It'll cut us down to almost nothing. An hour or two. Maybe three."

A new voice spoke--Omega, another security guy, basically a human brain in a charcoal-colored, robotic body. "We should go out and take a look. Maybe we've just broken off from the station, and it's still nearby. Out there, we can at least see what's really going on."

Silence again.

Kamala frowned. Not quite silence. There was a faint rattling, pinging from the walls and floor. "Hey, do you hear that? Sounds like debris bouncing off the hull."

"Yeah, that's probably parts of the station that got torn off. And who knows what else we might be drifting through--dust, rocks, asteroids."

Something struck the hull with a resounding clang. Kamala twitched and almost let out a yelp. Roger put his hands on her upper shoulders.

"Okay, that's not good." Asuka pointed at the two pilots. "Alright, everybody, if there's anything you absolutely need, grab it now, and head for the shuttles. If we're lucky, the station will be nearby -- or at least a habitable part of it."

"And if it's not?" Seth muttered.

"Well, we'll have an hour or two to figure out our next move." Asuka shrugged. "We won't have nearly that long if we stay here."

Roger patted Kamala's shoulder. "Come on. Let's get going before we hit something big enough to kill us all."