“I read… 62.16 microns,” Junebug called, peering down at the ring attachment point through her engineering goggles. The sensors in the headset reported the measurement faster and more accurately than a set of calipers could. The handy devices could also read voltage and current and diagnose the effectiveness of any chip or component in the Highlanders maintenance database. It also provided ‘helpful’ notations which had been added by Neil in the subjective year or so since they had taken over the ship. These ranged from notations about what types of tools to use, to less helpful notations like ‘is trash’, ‘kill that junk dealer when next in system’, and perhaps most perplexing of all, ‘do not lick’. Sayeeda was not a skilled mechanic, but she helped out on enough field repairs, and routine maintenance that she was beginning to be a little more help than an unskilled pair of hands.

“Good enough,” Neil mumbled around the bolt he held between his teeth. He plucked the fastener free and fed it into his bolt driver, then placed the tip against the ring a few inches from the end.

“Still good?” he asked and Sayeeda glanced at the figures.

“48.01,” she replied. Niel nodded and triggered the bolt driver, the device whired and there was the sharp smell of ozone and hot metal as the self welding bolt bored through the ring and into the Highlander’s hull, locking the last ring in place.

“58.83,” Sayeeda reported and Niel nodded with satisfaction.

“They will expand and contract with heat and cold anyway, anything under 100 microns is fine,” Neil explained, peeling off his own goggles and wiping at his sweat soaked face with one sleeve. Both of them were dripping, though Sayeeda’s darker complexion seemed to do better in the desert sun. It was nearly local noon and the sun was a hammer overhead, worse yet the hull radiated back much of the heat like the element of an oven.  Still the job was done and Sayeeda wasn’t one to delay a necessary job just because it was unpleasant. Taya had arrived an hour ago, lenses in hand and  looking very pleased with herself. The final tweaking of the installation was done, all they needed to do now was to calibrate the rings in space.

“Alright lets take a break,” Sayeeda declared, peeling off her own goggles with some relief. She didn’t care for anything that decreased her peripheral vision, no matter how necessary it was. With Indra aboard, trouble could erupt at any moment and she didn’t wish to be caught unawares. Throughout the work she had seen men watching the ship, but in a place like this it was impossible to know how many worked for Sven, reported to Sven, or merely gossiped which got back to Sven. Knowing the cyborg, he would want to keep an eye on the Highlander and Neil, if only because he knew first hand the sort of spectacular disruptions the group was both capable, and likely, to cause. 

Neil and Sayeeda climbed up through the boarding hatch and headed to the main hold. Saxon stil seemed to be in his hibernation state, though Sayeeda noticed that the Hex’s coloration was subtly different and his massive musculature rippled occasionally as though his entire body was slowly respiring with his whole body.  The Hex was and impressive physical specimen Sayeeda was forced to admit. Since learning that Saxon might be attracted to her she had, well maybe not interest, but a certain intellectual curiosity. She shook her head trying to clear it of such useless wanderings.  

Indra sat with Taya at the table they had set up in the center of the hold. The space was less open than it had been now that the crates of weapons she had stolen from Canek were stowed and tied down, but there was still plenty of space. The woman looked casually stunning in some of Sayeeda’s cast of clothing and she chatted excitedly with Taya about some point or another to do with tracing noble decent. Junebug had forgotten that Taya was herself an aristocrat by birth, if not by fortune and position at the moment. It must be nice for her to have someone to talk to. Junebug wasn’t always the best at dealing with people and her own conversational skills were fairly basic. Even her education was narrow, consisting essentially of high school and then a hyper focused military academy. As for the rest of her education, well, it wasn’t that she hadn’t learned things, it's just those things you didn’t talk to other people about, not if you were sober anyway.

“Are we ready to go?” Indra demanded as Neil and Sayeeda approached the table. Rather than answering Sayeeda snatched up one of the canteens of water and drank deeply for several seconds before splashing some water on her face and neck to clean away dust and grit.

“Not yet,” Sayeeda admitted looking around in vain for something to eat. Indra looked indignant.

“But you said the repairs would be finished!” she snapped. Junebug nodded sagely, taking a deep breath and reminding herself that this woman was her employer and that she had been through alot in the past few days and weeks. To call what Neil and Sayeeda had done to the ship ‘repairs’ was also a bit of a stretch but the womans meaning was clear.

“Unfortunately no sane ship captain is going to let us just fly up and hook onto their freighter,” she explained, judiciously not stressing that no sane spacer would attempt this in the first place.

“There is a Megafreighter due to leave in about twelve hours, the Karma Hazu,” Junebug plowed on before fresh objections could be raised. “

Taya has put together a computer virus that will tell the Karma Hazu’s sensors not to report us to the ships AI or officers, they will technically see us, it just wont report anywhere. One of its cargo shuttles should be landing here in an hour or so, then all we have to do is upload it to the shuttle.”