Vel had sort of hoped he would say something cool when he woke up.

Instead he says "aaaaaaaaaaaa goddammit to hell aaaaaa."

"Be not alarmed," repeats the voice, and then the chamber makes a different whirring noise and a series of different lights come on inside it. "A hatch release device resteth above thy head."

There is, in fact, a handle above his head. 

Vel pulls it! 

The chamber opens up to the outside air, which is, in fact, something he can breathe. A light snaps on from below him, and then he'll be able to see three Alteri peering down at him.

"Don't move," says a young female voice. He won't be able to see its owner; she must be elsewhere in the room. "It'll be worse if you do."

Goddamn goddamn goddamn goddamn. 

So. Mission failed, Sher's probably dead, aaaand he's about to get murdered by a bunch of bug aliens. 

Vel holds very still. 

"Thank you," says the girl. "You'll only be killed if you're stupid. Where are you from?"

One of the Alteri points a weapon at his throat.

"Prithee, I do not know. I have lost my memory."

The bug holding the weapon chirps something unintelligible.

"You have one more chance," reports the girl. "I assume I don't need to explain that your companion can be tortured without being killed."

Companion? Who? Sher. 

Sher would want to be tortured to protect Elara.

"Again, mistress, I do not know what you are speaking of."

"Got it that time. Same name as the other. Niath."

Huh. That's interesting. Psyon, and she's helping them-- at least so far. 

He relaxes a minuscule fraction, but tenses his face as if his secret were discovered. 

"Mistress, pray, what is Niath? I have not heard of this place ere now."

"Can we do anything with a name?" blinks one of the Alteri, in Confederate One.

"It's not a planet. Likely a ship. If they kept the official name we can search the records - "

The Alteri switch languages and chirp at each other for several seconds, then appear to come to a consensus. The consensus involves stabbing Vel in the neck with a syringe. His vision goes dark and his limbs feel very heavy.

When Vel wakes up he is somewhat disappointed to discover that he is not dead. 

He is not dead! He's sitting in a chair in a different room, this one with horribly plain beige walls. His legs are strapped to the chair, but his hands are free. There's an Alte in front of him. Vel will be able to tell that the Alte is a krial. Vel probably can't tell that he's bored. There are two Liars sitting at a table off to the side. One of them is a teenage girl; her clouded, obviously blind eyes mark her as a psyon. The other is a man, maybe forty-five.

"Your implant has been replaced with a new one," blinks the Alte, with the panel of seven lights on its thorax. "You are being transferred to House Atekri. You will be given a number when you receive an assignment. It is in your interests to be honest about your capabilities. You may speak."

Goddamn goddamn goddamn. He thought he was free.

It was nice while it lasted. 

He wants to ask "where's Sher?", but his old instincts have come back to him. He asks, "What do you need from me, sir?"

"Do you have skills? I assume you had an assignment at your previous House?"

At his previous house he was ten and therefore spent half his time sorting garbage and the other half of his time learning about medicine, which he had very gratefully not studied for the past twenty-five years. 

His last job had been advising Ndongo. But no Alte would employ a Liar to do that.  

It would have been really convenient if that one nice psyon had told him what lies she had said so he could coordinate. 

"Garbage sorting," he says, because it seems safe enough and he does, in fact, have the requisite skills. 

He feels a brief stab of pain as he realizes he will probably never see Sher again.

"How impressive," blinks the Alte. "Well, if that's all you can do. Recommendation?"

"Spacer," she decides, signing Confederate One with her hands.

It's impossible to tell whether this psyon is the same one as the other, given that they all have the same face and the same voice, but she has the same tone.

"On what grounds?"

"Smart enough for it. Experience with tools. Engineering team needs people. If he flunks out you can always move him later; if you put him in waste disposal you'll never know whether you had something else."

Um. UM.

He thinks about his motion sickness as loudly as possible. And his lack of dexterity. And (--Sher doing somersaults in zero gee, Sher pushing aside a too-slow subordinate to fix a machine himself, holding on tightly to Sher as he kissed him so he didn't float away, Sher Sher Sher) his limited and failure-ridden experience in space.

"You sure?"

"Yup."

This Alte is really bored with this job.

"All right. Trial spacer. We'll give crew six two weeks to determine whether he's worth training up. Your number is - " he consults a screen he's holding. "Atekri Spacer 83462. Repeat it back."

"Atekri Spacer 83462."

What in the nine hells, he thinks as distinctly as possible. 

"Good. You report to 572061 Atekri. The psyon can show you."

The restraints at his legs snap open.

The psyon gets up and waits for him by the door, putting a hand up to be sure of when she's reached the wall.

Vel follows, continuing to think about all the ways in which he is a terrible choice to be a spacer, and trying but failing to leave out all the memories of Sher. 

She takes him down several hallways and stops at a large door, which opens with a key code. The room is full of triple bunk beds on one side, some with curtains and some without. At the other end there are tables and chairs. The room is housing about seventy percent of its theoretical full capacity, which is still pretty packed.

" - Imrainai, can you deal with that one?" says a woman wearing overseer stripes, as soon as she sees him.

"Hi!" says a different woman, this one with entirely too much cheer. She did not, in fact, need to be told to deal with the situation before attempting to deal with the situation. "Did you need something?"

"I am well, I don't think I need anything."

"Vel?"

The action Vel does next has no word in Etra La but on some cultures on Earth is called "glomping."

"Thou art well-- thou art alive-- I thought thou wert dead-- they said they had tortured thee-- I thought I would never see thee again--"

As Vel expected, Sher catches him without any apparent discomfort and hugs him as tightly as possible.

"Art thou hurt-- art thou okay-- I missed thee like words cannot say-- I love thee-- never again leave me- I was going to jump out the airlock--"

"Fie! No. Even if I'm dead, don't jump out an airlock."

" - so he's the same as the other," says the psyon, despite the fact that she would really like to escape out the door right now and leave these people to their theatrics. "Cargo on one of the ships that disappeared in this area before they found Earth. Liars called it the Niath. Way old. Found the two of them still in cryo and, well, finders keepers."

"Thou wouldst have theatrics too if thou thought thy husband were dead and now he is alive."

"That would imply that many other things had also gone wrong," she says, deadpan.

Sher laughs. He does not let go of Vel. "I guess from the language shifts that we've been in cryosleep, oh, about four hundred years, so I fear we may need some time to understand the new technology."

"Sure, of course. We can show you what we're doing here. Are you sure you don't need anything, that seems like, uh, an eventful recent history."

Sher makes a noise that implies that what he needs is a Vel and, oh, what a coincidence, here he has one.

"I need to lie down in my bunk and have nothing important happen for, oh, eight hours." His stomach rumbles. "...And probably food, I apparently haven't eaten for four hundred years."

"OK, cool. I, uh, I can get you six hours and at least one thing that isn't a nutrient block. Probably."

"I have not actually had a nutrient block since I was ten, I fain would have one for nostalgia."

"What is a nutrient block?"

"They taste horrible."

Parael slips out the door while they're talking about food. She doesn't leave listening range, but she gets to her post, where she can hear the thoughts of everyone in the barracks for crews six, four, and two.

"They really, really do," agrees Imrainai, and goes off to get them a pair of nutrient blocks and some vegetables from the greenhouse. Normally she would eat her greenhouse ration herself, or at least give it to Taz or Ves, but they seem like they've had a rough time of things, and she'll get another chance in like a week.

It takes her about five minutes to come back. "So you're - where are you from, exactly?"

"I was dropped off on Earth when I was ten. Sher hath lived there his entire life. Then we were kidnapped by Alteri on a ship called Niath and put in cryosuspension for a few hundred years, and then we came hither."

"Thou wouldst not have been able to keep it secret forever."

"Huh. I guess ships did go missing in this area..."

She doesn't sound entirely convinced, but she does feel like it's probably best not to press the issue right this second.

"We have been in cryo for centuries, I doubt thou wouldst have heard of the missing ship."

"Oh, sure, I don't know any specific ships that've gone missing. I mean, except the ones I do know. It's just, the people on Earth didn't know anything about the Alteri before ten years ago, so it's weird that they've been taking people for - "

She frowns.

"How did you learn Etra La without knowing what a nutrient block is?"

"Because when I got dropped off there I didn't speak Kimbundu, so Sher picked up Etra La from me. And I didn't talk about nutrient blocks because wherefore would I talk about nutrient blocks?"

"This," Asher says, his mouth full of half-chewed nutrient block, "is disgusting."

"But why would they - I'm sorry, y'know what, you don't need this right now, you should sleep. They have us on fourteen-hour shifts right now and you don't want to go into one of those without at least a nap."

"Uh, yeah, about those fourteen-hour shifts-- I have something important to tell you."

"Yes?"

"Neither Sher nor I have any idea how to be a spacer."

Sher successfully hides his "I hate this and I am going to kill you" facial expression from everyone other than his husband of fifteen years.

"...OK. That's fine. We can train you up. I can fix this," she says, with the air of someone who has very little idea how to fix this. "You should still sleep. I should sleep. Uh, I don't know if they did centuries ago but the chips they use now have sleep monitors, and if you don't get at least four hours in every twenty-four - maybe more for you, I'm weirdly functional on four - then after a certain number of infractions they take you out of the barracks and move you to the pods, and you just don't want to go to the pods to sleep, they're really boring."

"Do not fear. I'm useless, but Sher is good."

"You'll be OK. We can cover for you."

"No, we can't," says the woman from earlier, who has finished whatever else she was doing. "They pull a third of their own weight in two weeks or they're out."

" - you can't learn the basics in two weeks, you've gotta give them, I dunno, four or six or something."

"We don't have six weeks. I'm Atekri Spacer 572061. Do either of you remember your numbers?"

"83462," Vel says, because he used to be a slave and he remembers things. 

"73264, and thou art 572061, and Imrainai was 97816, and the serial number on yond bulkhead is 3525-351251." Sher pauses. "Vel told you I was good."

"Good. Finish eating and go to sleep. I don't have time to train anyone else, so - actually, Imrainai, you're going to check up on them no matter who I assign, aren't you."

"Probably! I found this cool trick where if I wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle and then go back to bed within a certain amount of time then the monitor doesn't count it, and it wrecks my sleep schedule but I'm trying to train my circadian rhythm to - "

"Can you just please sleep. You're perfectly competent to train them in the basics, if working with Larana won't be a problem for you? Might give you some recovery time."

"...I can probably manage. Larana's not terrible."

In the meantime, Sher has climbed onto the top of the bunkbed and jumped off, falling face-first--

--only to land on his feet at the very last second.

"That's not showing off, it's his version of pacing."

"Well it's terrifying. I absolve you of responsibility for that one, but try to bring the sane one back in one piece, Rai. And go to sleep."

She leaves to attend to whatever other fires need to be preemptively dealt with.

"I am not mad."

"Thou learnedst to swim by telling one of the older kids to rescue thee because thou wert about to drown and then jumping off the highest diving board."

"I was a schoolboy. --And it worked."

"OK, so, that is good information! - in seriousness, if you do unsafe things during training, Larana's going to zap you. He's only OK if you don't give him a hard time. Also we could all die."

"I shall not do anything unsafe."

"Or things that are unsafe to other people without thine astonishing reflexes. --I apologize, he hath never been a slave, he doth not know."

"Well, hopefully the learning process isn't excessively painful." Hopefully she doesn't get zapped a bunch tomorrow, she hates getting zapped. "OK, so, my bunk is over there, if you really really need anything you can wake me up, but take into account the fact that I'm already teeeechnically under the sleep limit and that even if I fool the monitor I can lose about one more hour before the impairment from sleep deprivation becomes equivalent to intoxication.

- annnd I just realized how unsafe that is with new people. OK. New plan. Don't wake me, I'm gonna get a full six hours and skip composing, please be ready at the door by 0547."

"I shall do as thou sayest."

"Thank you! And I'm sorry about this, we're usually way better about things but everything has been insane recently. Uh. Goodnight then. Sher. Vel."

Sher gets into the bottom bunk next to Vel and says in Kimbundu, "I don't like it that you told them I'm incompetent."

"It buys us more time to catch up with the tech, and we can't let them know about"-- Vel almost says 'Elara' but worries that someone might catch the name--"our home planet."

"You could have told them I was a slave with my chip out."

"Everyone who sees the way you talk would know you were a free Liar."

"You mean human."

"No, I mean Liar. You're a Liar now, you have to get used to it."

"I could pretend to be a slave."

"I'm sure you could, General."

Sher made a noise like "mmmrmf."

"Seriously, I mean it, though. You act like a person who has been in charge for the past decade, because you have been in charge for the past decade, and you have to stop because it will get people tortured and you killed."

"I can, in fact, act."

"What would you do if an Alte ordered you to do something that was really stupid?"

"...Tell them politely that it was not a very good idea...?"

"Nope. You suck it up and do it anyway."

"But--"

"To the Alteri, you're not a person. You're a trained dog. No one wants a dog who's suddenly started having opinions about the most effective way to hunt rabbits."

"...We are all going to die."

"Speaking of, we are almost certainly being watched by a psyon right now."

"Yeah, I thought about that. There is no way in all the nine hells and twelve heavens that we will be able to keep up a facade that is impenetrable to psyons-- well, I could for a while, but I'm going to slip, and you're hopeless. But that psyon helped us, right? She didn't tell them about Elara, she got you assigned to the same job as me--"

"Yeah, as a spacer."

"I'm sure she has her reasons which we'll find out soon enough. So either she's got it covered, in which case there's no point in worrying about it and in fact we should talk about Elara so she has as much information as possible, or we're dead, in which case there's no point worrying about it. So I'm not going to worry about it." 

"Aaaaand I'm going to spend all day tomorrow worrying about how we're going to die."

"It'll be a change from worrying about puking in your spacesuit!"

"I hate you so much."

"Hey, nice psyon lady, Vel used to run half the government, do something with that."

"So, so much."

With that, Vel rests his head on Sher's shoulder and falls asleep. 

Cuddling in a bunk is not a very practical way to sleep. Tomorrow, they will sleep in their own separate bunks. But today he was enslaved and tomorrow he might die, so he thought it was worth the indulgence.

Imrainai sleeps for exactly six hours, then forces herself out of bed when her alarm sounds at 0537. A two-minute shower, a change of clothes, and half a nutrient block allow her to reach something resembling functionality, and she's ready to go at exactly 0546. She'll probably feel really good about herself by 0600. 

"So. All set?"

Sher grins. "I am refreshed, mistress, after last night's rest."

Vel is less happy.

"I hate thee. I hate thee so much. Wherefore art thou like this?"

"Good enough," she declares, and leads them out the door. It's important to be able to give explanations while you walk. "You have two weeks, so we're gonna cover biosuits and basic safety info and get you started on zero G navigation and how to use your tools, so at least you won't look wildly incompetent. You're just not gonna learn the engineering stuff in two weeks, at all, so we're not gonna try, but I can maybe get you to executing specific instructions that you get from Alteri on the ships. OK?"

Soooomeone has not met Sher. 

"I like this plan. It delays me vomiting!"

"Oh no, we're gonna start zero G today, zero G takes practice. But safety regs are really the thing to cover first."

They climb up a ladder. The upper decks have less apparent gravity than the lower ones, and then there's a central section of the ship that doesn't spin at all and accordingly has no centrifugal force to stick people to the floor.

She checks behind her to see how Vel's handling the shift.

Vel is clutching the wall and looks slightly sick!

Sher is walking along without apparently noticing the shift in gravity, notices Vel, tosses an arm around him, and gets him moving much more quickly. 

"The sickness is super common for people who aren't born spacers. It usually doesn't keep happening after enough practice. Helps to keep your head still. If you feel like you're gonna actually vomit then you can ask me to stop, holding still for a couple minutes usually fixes it."

"Keeping my head still never fixed it before but maybe twenty-five years on solid ground hath had a salutary effect."

"Maybe!" Oh man, they're going to kick him out just for motion sickness, and then he'll have to leave his husband, and she'll never get to learn anything about what earth was like three hundred years ago, and everyone will be sad. "Helps to focus on your breathing, too. Some of the other people probably have better tricks, we can ask them when we get back, OK?"

"It is everywhen worth a try."

As Sher helps Vel along the corridor, Vel can be heard muttering, "wherefore in the twelve heavens did that goddamned psyon make me a spacer?"

- ah.

Hm.

OK.

If Parael thinks it's important then Imrainai is going to get them through this. Somehow.

"You'll get zapped if you talk about people's decisions like that," she observes, and then leads them into an open room with padded walls. There are holes in the padding with hooks set into them, so you can secure yourself but you can't ram into them at high speeds very easily. Imrainai secures the end of her tether to one and then lets herself float. There's an Alte at the other end of the room, standing on one of the walls with the help of his magnetic boots. He's got a full biosuit on - this is still a zone that's optimized for human habitation, so it's full of toxic oxygen. She can't bow in zero G (that's one good thing about space, people are way less insistent about bowing), so she salutes, touching two fingers to her closed mouth.

     "You're on time," blinks Narana, through his suit. "You're 97816?"

"Yes, sir. 572061 couldn't do it, she's already on sixes and seventeens." She signs it, because you always sign Confederate One when you're communicating with Alteri.

     "I see. Is there some reason you chose not to measure them or explain biosuits when they were on the lower decks and could change into them without their materials floating off?"

Shit. Because she woke up less than twenty minutes ago, and because she didn't have time to consider it before she went to sleep, because she needed to sleep or she'd be impaired, because she'd done so little of the sleeping she was supposed to do earlier, because - "Because I'm an idiot, sir."

It's not a bad zap, all things considered - less than a second and definitely not full intensity, practically a firm handshake, the sort of thing that Mathrael or Parael would take without even blinking. But she's bad at being zapped, so she whimpers. She thinks that might be worse than the zap itself.

     "At least we know what we're working with," blinks Narana.

Sher's eyes are wide. He imitates Imrainai's salute.

Vel salutes as well.

"You will show them how to secure their biosuits after this session; tomorrow they will have them at the start. How much experience do the two of you have in zero gravity conditions?"

"None whatsoever, sir," he signs.

"Some, when I was a child, sir."

"That seems a logical place to start, then. Tether yourselves to the wall."

Vel takes a second to figure it out-- either Alteri ships work differently than Elaran, or they've changed the method in the past few hundred years-- but tethers himself pretty quicky.

Sher, of course, has no difficulty at all.

Narana takes them through a series of relatively basic exercises, making sure that they can successfully move from one wall to another at appropriate speeds and at appropriate angles, calling on Imrainai to demonstrate. 

Vel creeps through the exercises, reciting as a mantra in his head don't throw up, don't throw up.

Sher does exactly two basic exercises the way he was supposed to. After the third exercise is demonstrated, he instead travels from one wall to the other by doing sixteen somersaults. 

"That is incorrect, 73264. Repeat the exercise correctly. If you feel at any time that the exercises are too simple, you can request that the training be accelerated, but a second deliberate departure from instructions will result in punishment."

"Yes, sir." It is fairly difficult to be sarcastic in Confederate One, a language which for humans mostly involves holding up different numbers of fingers, but somehow Sher manages. 

From then on he executes every single exercise flawlessly.

Vel only vomits once! So that's good. 

"Excellent job, 73264. 83462, you seem likely to have difficulties with this work. My commanding officer has confirmed the initial recommendation to train you for spacer work, so you will make another attempt tomorrow, but if the motion sickness does not subside within a week then I will pursue a transfer to a more suitable assignment. The three of you will report to Room 455 at 0650. 97816, I hold you responsible for teaching them basic use of their biosuits and core tools by that time; I trust that I am not overestimating your abilities?"

"No, sir."

They are given leave to return to the lower decks, and Imrainai leads them back.

"You're lucky we had Narana," she says, climbing the ladder head-first again. She flips herself around with no trouble when she reaches the area of the ship that has apparent gravity. 

Sher does not even do a single backflip. 

"What is Vel going to get transferred to?"

"It's not a certainty. I'm not going to give up on training either of you until they make me."

"Thou shouldst give up on training me unless thou hast some miracle cure for motion sickness I have not heard of ere now."

"I am skilled at zero g! --Which was a complete surprise to me, I assure thee. Wherefore did I have to spend so much time on exercises?"

"I'm gonna talk to medical about nausea meds. And you didn't have to, Sher, you were offered the chance to skip things and you chose not to take the subcommander up on it. The intended lesson was not 'never suggest possible efficiency gains', it was 'do not ever ignore direct orders without even explaining what you're doing'. That's basic, way more basic than jumping off walls, and if you can't credibly signal it then you're not going into space - or for that matter anywhere, before you get any clever ideas about transferring wherever they may or may not put Vel. You'll just be dead."

Sher is quiet for a bit.

"You have a crush," he whispers in Kimbundu. 

"I thought you were going to yell at me about somersaults."

"Nope. Everything in the whole world is awful and I'm going to enjoy this."

She's not really frustrated by people talking in languages she can't speak; that sort of thing happens all the time around here.

"I'm gonna take Vel to medical before we practice biosuit and tools stuff. Sher, do you wanna tag along or head back to the barracks and spend a few minutes with everyone else?"

"I shall stay with Vel."

"Cool." So they go to medical, and Imrainai talks to the nurse on duty. "Hey, this is Atekri Spacer 83462. He's got zero G motion sickness. Might clear up on its own, but in case it doesn't, do you have anything anti-nausea?"

     "Sure. I'll give you a few options so you can see what works?"

"Sure." She frowns at the room of medicines as the nurse fills a couple little vials with tablets. "Is medical usually this thin this time in the morning?"

     "No, there was an injury on deck two. One of the psyons."

"Oh. One of the little ones?"

     "No, the teenager. Not a suicide, though, I think she just didn't see the machinery."

"Oh."

      "Mhmm. 83462, can you remember instructions for each of these, or do you want them printed out for you?"

"Better to have the printout, I think."

So he gets a little slip of paper that says how much he should take of each thing and when he should take them. They won't actually give him more than two days of any one thing, so if any of them work for them he's going to be coming to medical a lot. When they're done, they head down several more hallways to get to the area of the ship that stores spare biosuits and uniforms.

"You should always ask for a printout," Imrainai tells them on the way. "It's the only way to get paper."

"I know."

"Good job," she says cheerfully. "Do you guys just want to measure yourselves? On a planet the Alteri would do it, but there are certain advantages to being horrifically understaffed."

"Wherefore not?"

Sher has memorized twenty serial numbers, thirty room numbers, the complete layout of the parts of the ship they've been on so far, and all of Vel's medication's dosing instructions. He has not thought about Elara all day. 

Memory palace techniques involve associating numbers with images that are highly memorable, a term which here means "disgusting, taboo, or sexual." When he came up with this plan, shortly after meeting his first psyon, he hoped that this would give him-- and maybe Vel-- more cover. No psyon would want to look into a mind full of feces, violence, and truly horrifying sexual fantasies. 

Imrainai has long since given up on fooling the psyons, though she does modify her thoughts for their sake - her thoughts are more story-shaped, more coherent than they otherwise would be. She has already come up with five alternative backstories for Sher and Vel that technically don't contradict anything she knows about them, though most of them seem supremely unlikely. She keeps having to pause to actually talk to them, though, so the stories are full of holes and don't hang together quite right. She keeps mentally apologizing to anyone who might be listening, and does her best to try to keep spinning whenever she has a free moment. It's sort of terrible how even the youngest kids have to constantly listen to everyone's thoughts - can't turn off telepathy, so they hear everything, even the thoughts about feces, violence, and truly horrifying sexual fantasies - but maybe she can give them at least one good thing to listen to all day.

She hands Vel and Sher a pair of tape measures and lists the measurements that they should take. 

Sher and Vel measure themselves!

She wades through stacks of materials for appropriately sized equipment, handing them pieces when she finds something appropriately sized and in apparently working condition. "Cool. Eventually you'll need to be able to put these on and run through all your standard checks in ninety seconds, but for now just focus on putting them on correctly. Do you need a demonstration?"

The biosuits are a little different from Elaran biosuits of three hundred years ago. "I suspect we shall figure it out."

"'Tis better to have a demonstration."

"OK, cool." So she picks up a spare in her size and strips off her indoor jumpsuit, leaving her in her underwear. She puts the spare on with all the efficiency of someone who knows how to do it in ninety seconds, though she slows down and narrates what she's doing at any point that she thinks might be tricky. 

Vel and Sher strip down and put on their biosuits. They are both significantly more efficient than you'd expect from someone putting on a biosuit for a first time, and both make gestures as if they are about to press buttons or strap on straps that aren't there.

"You're pretty good! You should practice a few more times to get used to this make, but I am very optimistic about both of you."

Sher and Vel learn how to put on the biosuits much more quickly than could reasonably be expected!

This is convenient! In that case she'll walk them through the safety checks they have to do (yes, every time, even if you've just checked it a few hours ago) and still have extra time to go over the functions and uses of all of their basic tools. 

Sher and Vel continue to be mysteriously quick on the uptake and prone to making very strange mistakes!

Eventually Imrainai declares that it is lunchtime, and that they're going to eat in the cafeteria, mostly because she never has time to eat in the cafeteria and the cafeteria sometimes has something that passes for actual food. There are Alteri guards on duty, occasionally declaring that one of the groups needs to leave or that such-and-such Liar needs to watch what it says or does, but they confirm that Imrainai is on a modified schedule today when she gives them her number, and they don't bother her much after that.

"So your options aren't great, compared to Earth food, but if they ever take the spacers off of fourteens then you'll have soup and vegetable bread to look forward to on top of the nutrient blocks. Also conversation, which is important, because without it we wither and die."

"Hast thou any idea how long it shall be until we are off fourteens?"

"Nope." She sits down at one of the tables and takes a sip of her soup. There are no spoons. "It's been this way since I got here. In theory we might go back to twelves if we get enough extra manpower, but at this point I think we're basically going to be overworked until we die or the gate is fixed, whichever comes first."

"What is the gate?"

"Big metal ring in space that dictates every aspect of our lives. The gate is... we think it might be capable of teleporting ships. If it were working."

If any psyons were watching right now they would find out a lot about Elara. 

If the gate worked, they could return home. They could bring all the other slaves home. They could be free.

Vel and Sher have known each other for long enough that they don't have to talk to convey complex information.

"'Tis quite interesting. Hath the gate ever worked?"

"Dunno. They must have some reason to think it did, given how much effort they're putting into fixing it."

"Mayhap one way Sher and I could be of value is as another pair of eyes on the plans."

"I don't really have access to any actual plans. I guess someone probably has plans, somewhere, though I doubt they know very much of what they're looking at."

"Harrum. As well, Vel and I did not have experience in natural philosophy on Earth and may be as ignorant as anyone."

"Yeah. We can cover some basic physics and electrical engineering stuff after lunch, if you want, that seems like a decent use of time too."

Vel and Sher, figuring that that conversation was over, begin to argue about land value taxes. It has the feel of a very old argument. 

Imrainai listens as she eats her soup. She doesn't understand it all, but it's interesting that they have opinions on the subject at all. It's not the sort of thing that Liars tend to have opinions on. 

After lunch, she covers physics concepts and gets out some kits with wires and batteries that children play with when learning to use their tools. This is how you cut metal, this is how you seal it back up without fire, this is how currents work. She covers the use of their comms and which frequencies their work crew uses and then takes them back to zero G in their new biosuits, drilling them on movement and proper comm use at the same time, waiting to see whether the first kind of meds are helping Vel any.

Despite Sher's claim, Vel and Sher appear to know exactly as much as Imrainai does about electrical engineering and physics, although Vel is slow at math. 

Sher moves in zero g like an unusually talented born spacer. Vel looks pretty queasy a couple times, but does not vomit. 

Well, that makes it easy then. She keeps testing them until pretty late at night, but eventually she declares their first training day over and walks them back to the barracks.

She briefs Mathrael on their progress before going to bed, expecting that her assessment will make it back to Narana, who will weigh it when making his own recommendations. She re-braids Ves's hair, then lets Ves re-braid her own, telling her and the other children a story as she does. She chats with people and checks in to see if anyone needs her to cover anything for them. 

She gets six hours of sleep, which is really impressive for her, and is ready to continue training in the morning. In a few days she asks them if they feel like they're ready to work as part of the group, out in space, not doing anything complex but at least moving with the rest of the work crew.

"I think we'll be fine."

"All right. Don't get careless out there. You're both doing really well, you know, I didn't think it would be anywhere near this easy to get you guys up to. speed."