Three wrench taps traveled through the return-air duct into Sigrid Hedlund’s glove.
“Both here,” Ji-woo Han said over comms. “The trap has forty-three minutes at this loading. Less if we keep moving.”
The environmental technician tapped again. Metal answered metal across a door neither worker could open.
Sigrid clipped beside the rescue lead. His powered winch took the slack out of a cable, then waited on its brake. The release box still carried Lena Vasquez’s assessment hold.
Strike Day Sixteen was twenty minutes old. Two people on an air-repair assignment had become two people waiting for rescue. The station’s extraction cars remained empty. Its broken machinery kept taking workers anyway.
“We can draw it toward us,” the lead said. “Catch the lower edge.”
Lena put a task light across the upper frame. Its shadow bent around a bright buckle.
“Look where it wants to go.”
The door leaned outward at the top. Behind it, the damaged brace pressed against the return trunk. Sigrid followed the line of the winch cable through the service bay to the duct’s surviving corner.
“It weighs almost nothing here,” Lena said. “It still has all its mass. Release that corner and the frame will throw it.”
The lead shifted his lamp. “Secondary restraint first.”
“Stop the powered pull,” Sigrid said. “Isolate the drive. We review Lena’s load path.”
He opened the breaker and clipped his lock through it. No argument. Sigrid’s staff needed an order they could act on, not another disagreement between signatures.
Lena pointed past the distorted frame to the independent maintenance rail.
“Water bags. Two carts. Braked lines to those anchors.”
The rescue crew shored the damaged support while engineering checked the independent rail. Sigrid kept the bay clear until both checks came back. Each minute removed another number from Han’s estimate.
Lena strapped sealed water ballast bags inside two maintenance carts and rigged them to the rail on short, separately braked tethers. The carts would take the first movement through the restraints; their mass would resist acceleration while the brakes dissipated it. Nothing depended on their wheels gripping the floor.
“Not that eye,” Lena told a rigger. “Same frame as the door.”
He moved the connection to the next verified anchor.
Sigrid cleared the recoil corridor. A socket floated inside an open kit. She closed the lid and secured the case beyond the marked boundary. A loose lamp went next, then an empty cartridge sleeve turning slowly beside the ceiling. Personnel withdrew behind the sound frame.
She reached for a slate clipped to the door guard.
Its display still showed the abandoned inspection assignment. Twenty minutes. No adjustment to the loaded support.
She fastened it beside the rescue board, leaving the old task visible.
“Thirty-one minutes,” Han said. Her breaths crowded the words.
Dr. Molefe answered from the receiving team. “Rest against the rail, Han. Let him hold the patch. Ease the pace of your breathing. Tell me if the headache changes.”
The technician had pressed a repair pad over a torn duct seam. Its temporary clamp would not seat against the folded metal. Without the pad, their portable trap pulled contaminated air back through the split instead of circulating through the pocket.
Environmental confirmed the damaged branch isolated from powered flow. A manual bypass could connect the pocket to the measured cleaner service volume without restarting the trunk. Its two valves sat on opposite sides of the opening.
“Supply first, then return?” Sigrid asked.
“Together,” the environmental lead said. “Keep the differential inside the marked band. Separate them and you load the patch or the door.”
Lena took the far wheel. Sigrid clipped at the near one and set her boots against its reaction bar. Across the bay, Kavita Nair secured the pressure display where both women could read it.
“Quarter-turn,” Lena said.
The wheel resisted Sigrid’s palm. She added her other hand without shifting her feet. Its painted index reached the next mark as Lena’s stopped.
Kavita read the pressure difference. They waited.
Air hissed through the bypass. Dust lifted from the door seam, drifted sideways, thinned.
“Holding,” Kavita said. “Next quarter.”
On the third movement, Sigrid’s wheel tightened before the mark.
She could finish it. Another fraction, enough force through both shoulders. She had authorized whole shifts on a smaller hesitation.
“Mine is binding. Hold.”
Lena stopped. The pressure reading crept, then steadied inside the band.
The environmental lead checked the valve position against the local gauge. “Linkage under load. Back together to the last marks.”
They reversed. A dry click traveled through Sigrid’s wheel. The resistance eased.
They waited for the reading to settle and tried again, slowly enough for Kavita to call the change. This time both marks aligned.
Sigrid kept her palm against the rim while the hiss diminished. Han answered Molefe’s next question in a single breath.
The differential reached the release band. It did not straighten the frame.
Lena checked both cart restraints. The rescue lead tested the shores and the door’s secondary tether, then fitted a manual screw puller. Sigrid and Lena recorded their releases for that step alone.
The screw advanced. The upper edge moved with a crack.
Both carts strained against their braked lines. One shifted a hand’s width before its restraint checked it. The door stopped against the capture line, leaving a narrow wedge of darkness.
Nobody occupied the space it had crossed.
The lead secured blocking in the gap. Lena tested it before calling Han forward.
Han passed her instrument through first. Her sleeve caught on a torn seal. Sigrid freed it without pulling her arm, and Lena guided her harness past the edge.
The engineer emerged sideways, eyes shut against the lamp. A medical attendant took her transfer tether and drew her toward Molefe.
The technician stayed inside.
“Pad won’t hold if I let go.”
His shoulder lay beyond the crooked inner lip. His own tether led to the rear rail, safe against a fall but unable to draw him around that edge. Lena’s retrieval clip stopped short of his harness.
Sigrid set her wheel’s position lock. Lena did the same. Environmental confirmed stable bypass flow before either woman moved away.
From the near side, Sigrid could reach him through the lower gap. She pointed out the route to the rescue lead.
He checked the blocking, her harness and her emergency breathing set. A second rescuer took her backup line.
“Harness only. No farther than the sound crosspiece.”
Sigrid fed her tether below the door, lowered herself along the handhold and crawled into the short throat. Metal pressed against her shoulder. The technician’s glove shook against the pad.
“Keep your hand there.”
She passed Lena’s clip through his front ring, closed it and pulled back against the gate. Lena took up the slack from outside. Only then did the technician transfer off his rear tether.
The repair clamp hung crooked beside his wrist. Sigrid did not try to fix it.
“Ready to leave the pad,” she told environmental.
The lead isolated the torn section. Kavita called the stable reading. The technician lifted his hand.
Lena drew the retrieval line through its anchored guide while Sigrid backed out ahead of him. His boot scraped the inner lip. He rotated at her instruction, and the boot cleared.
The medic took his harness. Sigrid stayed clipped to the rail until her hands stopped trying to close on something.
Together, she and Lena checked the bypass position locks and fitted the paired control tags. The damaged branch remained isolated. Nobody called the station repaired.
A loosened guard panel hung against the door restraint. Behind it, a recessed maintenance reader glowed beneath a film of dust.
Lena angled the lamp while Sigrid opened its local inspection cache.
The image showed the brace before the fresh buckle. A timestamp occupied one corner. Sigrid searched its identifier in the maintenance packet released to the joint desk.
No attachment.
The reader’s synchronization history marked the image excluded from that packet. Beside it, an interval in the access log contained two boundary times and the words SECURITY HOLD. No entries between them.
Kavita had found the general restriction. Here were the missing image and the precise interval it concealed.
“Preserve this unit,” Sigrid said. “Photograph it in place. Both records.”
Lena clipped the loose panel clear of the display.
On the common board, two return fields changed to confirmed. Sigrid left the missing interval open beneath them.
If you enjoyed this story, you can follow the main story arc in The Exodus Rush, the first book in The Vethrak Requiem series.