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The station was small against it. It was dark except for the faint pulse of the emergency lighting running along its hull. Its purpose had been served and now it looked derelict. Its subjects had been forgotten. But that's why the Emberkind crew was here.

Charlie could see the structural degradation even from the shuttle. She could see the panels slightly misaligned, what looked like a communications array dark and cold, and even the docking lights flickering instead of holding steady as they arrived. It seems they got there just in the nick of time.

"Backup power at twenty-one percent," Maren reported from her console. "Rate of degradation suggests we have half an hour before the zero-G field in the observation bay fails."

"That's half of the initial projection," Reyna said from her seat.

That only meant one thing. "The degradation is accelerating," Charlie said. The numbers were trying to tell them something, and Charlie worried that maybe it was something no one wanted to hear. "The power curve isn't linear. It's exponential decay."

Charlie looked across at Reyna. "Captain, we may very likely have less than a half hour."

That was when Reyna looked at her for the first time since she'd moved back to her seat. Charlie didn't see anything in her gaze except leadership. But something about that made Charlie feel hollow.

Charlie didn't have long to dwell on that before Reyna said, "Then we don't waste time. Team, let's get this done."

After landingand then collecting the equipment and instruments required for their mission, they disembarked and found the Aetherfin in the observation bay on the station's upper level.

Charlie walked through the dark corridors of the dying station, her hands trailing along the walls out of habit, reading the structure through the glove covering her fingertips. It wasn't the same as touching it directly, but she could still feel the metal here was different from the Emberkind's. Older, a much colder temperature she could feel through her gloves. The materials felt generalized, as though this station was only constructed to serveits purpose for a short time.Function over care,Charlie thought. She started to realize the Emberkind felt like a ship people loved and tended to, down to its last maintenance log. But this station felt like a building someone was planning to discard.

When they reached the observation bay, Tavi went to the panel next to the bay door, plugged in his datapad, and navigated through its systems. After a moment, the door opened, and Charlie stopped breathing.

The zero-G field was still holding, barely, a sphere of weightlessness in the center of a high-ceilinged chamber lit only by the creatures inside it. And the creatures...

Three Aetherfin drifted in the failing field, graceful and elegant in only the way superior beings can be when those around them fail in comparison, and know it. Their wingspans stretched eight, maybe nine feet, translucent membranes rippling with slow, hypnotic grace. They reminded Charlie of manta rays back on Earth, the way their bodies undulated with that same effortless, wing-like motion, gliding as though the medium they moved through was made specifically for them. But where manta rays were solid and dark, the Aetherfin were luminous, their bodies shifting through colors that Charlie struggled to even name, pale blues deepening to violet, silvers catching what little light remained and scattering it into prisms, bioluminescent veins threading through their fins like rivers of light mapped across a living sky. They moved the way clouds move, if clouds were conscious and beautiful and made entirely of light.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" Maren asked, approaching Charlie and pulling her from her reverie. Charlie looked over at Maren as she approached. Behind Maren, she noticed Torvax, Tavi, Kess, and Reyna walk through the bay doors and into the space, taking a moment to admire the Aetherfin as well. Charlie returned her attention back to Maren.

"Beyond beautiful," Charlie admitted. Maren chuckled.

"I suppose they are. They're easily one of the most beautiful species I've ever had the pleasure to work with, at least in my experience here with the Emberkind. And they're even more magnificent beyond their physical features. One of my favorite facts about them is that they navigate entirely by magnetoreception. Their homeworld has no solid ground, just endless atmosphere, so they evolved to sense magnetic fields the way you and I sense light. Right now, they can feel the Emberkind's magnetic signature. They already know which direction is home."

"That's incredible."

'You say that word a lot.'

'What word?'

'Incredible.'

'You sure are tracking my vocabulary with impressive exactitude.'

'Incredible' is an incredible word to note.'

'Well, things here keep being incredible.'

"Good word," Maren commented, looking over at Charlie. Charlie startled, then found her eyes trail over Maren's shoulder searching for Reyna, but she'd moved into position by the module with the other members of the team.

"Ready to get started?" Maren asked, pulling Charlie back once again. "You're handling the whole process once we're back on the Emberkind, but we could use your help over here with the loading, if you'd like?" Charlie's eyes lit up.

"Yeah! Absolutely. Lead the way."

The containment housingfor the unit holding the Aetherfin was exactly where Maren's memory said it would be, inside a modular unit bolted to the station's framework, its own backup generator humming weakly beneath the floor. This was the part the team knew how to do, but extra hands were always welcome, especially to help the team move quickly when there were time constraints. Charlie reveled in the fact that she could be a part of this mission, a part of the Emberkind crew and their sanctioned vessel that rescues intergalactic species across the universe.

The weight of that finally hit Charlie square in the chest, causing her to rush to her position.

Maren directed her to the power systems where Charlie's job would be the bypass itself, connecting the containment housing to the shuttle's auxiliary power so the zero-G field would hold during transit. A cable and a converter. Five minutes of work, if that. Charlie did it in three.

Maren handled the release sequence. Four metallic thuds echoed through the bay as the docking clamps disengaged. Torvax and Kess positioned themselves on either side, their combined strength guiding the housing through the station's corridors toward the shuttle dock. Tavi monitored the zero-G field from his datapad, calling out stability readings with each step.