Not surprisingly, Pattie and Zoë discovered that few conveyors and turbolifts had resumed operating. Any functioning automated transport was used to move wounded and security personnel. Voluminous civilian foot traffic moved slowly as thousands of night-cycle shift workers emptied out of work centers to return home. Weak emergency lighting further hampered progress; what hadn’t been bolted down or attached when the quake hit had been dumped on the floor. When an impatient Red pushing past had tripped her, Pattie nearly lacerated her lower limbs on the sharp edge of a dislodged wall plate. The occasional encounter with an anonymous squish or shattered bits continually reminded them to slow down, move carefully.

Though the mess meant inconvenience, Pattie knew their situation could have been far worse. From what little she could discern, the primary township structures had sustained little or no damage. A good cleanup crew could fix the situation. The farther she moved from the transport center, the more it appeared that new construction zones—near the treetops and spreading out horizontally from the mother-tree—had been hardest hit. Why this was, considering that those zones utilized the latest architectural advances, puzzled Pattie.

Without mechanized transport, traveling between branch levels required that they, and all others returning to their paddocks, climb up and down the peg-poles: meter-wide metal poles with half-circle shaped pegs protruding off opposite sides. Pattie had used Jefferies tubes and stairs on the da Vinci, but she found she adapted poorly to those designs. The peg-poles were better suited to the grasp of her multiple limbs and her body’s weight distribution. For Zoë, the peg-poles worked on the same principle as a ladder would, so she had little trouble keeping pace with the queue of Nasat above and below her. Pattie, as she descended, was reminded of how softs used the ladders connecting bunk beds. Maybe more Nasat might join Starfleet if peg-poles were integrated into starship construction. She made a mental note to suggest her idea to Captain Gold when she next saw him.

The protracted trip back to Zoë’s paddock gave Pattie plenty of time to think about her encounter with the Yellow. Though the humiliation had diffused, she still simmered over the Yellow’s labeling her as a quiet. Hearing that word—hearing herself labeled that way—again reminded her why she’d joined Starfleet. In the S.C.E., whatever a Nasat computer said she was, whatever her physiology identified her as being, didn’t matter. Her accomplishments defined her, not a defect in the language-processing center of her cerebral cortex. Because she had skills and experience the township needed, a label shouldn’t matter—especially at a time of crisis.

Instead of locking down the township, why hadn’t the Council ordered every available shell out of their paddock to start working? Clearing the rubble, helping the wounded to safety—whatever was needed. A threat to the mother-tree was a collective threat to all life in the canopy, Nasat, tiny-leafed neophatra, or multiwinged avian. All should be vested in finding answers as soon as possible. Waiting around for bureaucratic wheels to grind out an official all-clear notification wouldn’t solve the power problems or stabilize potentially damaged buttress roots. Whatever force had quaked the township’s mother-tree could resume at any time. Pattie wondered what this town-shipwide lockdown would accomplish; she twitched with impatience. We should be working this problem. Putting our ideas together.

She imagined their invisible foe, be it a natural force or a yet-unknown predator, lurking beneath lichen-covered branches, through vine curtains and nests, perhaps as far as the muddy forest floor. A destabilized fault in the planetary crust. A rotting buttress root giving way. A deadly infection seeping into the mother-tree’s xylem or phloem. Her kindred might have to explore new, nontraditional ways of dealing with the situation. But the problem wouldn’t be dealt with by sending frightened Nasat back to their paddocks to curl into protective postures.

A dull crunch—coupled with a groan—startled her. A cloud of bark dust and moss emerged from the ceiling. Looking up, Pattie watched as a synth-wood support beam began bowing. The quake must have compromised the structural integrity, she thought pragmatically. She knew the deck above primarily housed residential areas, sparing those below from heavy machinery and equipment, should the deck give way. Still, several hundred Nasat paddocks weren’t weightless.

Another groan and the peg-pole jiggled, nearly imperceptibly.

“Wrap yourself around the pole,” Pattie called to Zoë. “The ceiling might give!”

Eyes wide with fear, Zoë complied.

Bowing even more deeply, the groaning beam cracked visibly, sending a shower of splinters into the air. The peg-pole swayed. Nasat above and below them panicked, scrambling over Zoë and past Pattie. Others shrieked, waving at the ceiling, pointing and shouting.

With a roar, the beam snapped; a flood of debris filled the air. The weight of the collapsing ceiling bent the peg-pole, severing its connection with the pole above it. The pole tipped, swayed dangerously—but slowly—from side to side. Each sway dipped a bit farther, bringing them closer to the paddock structures below.

As they careened toward the ground, Pattie watched the paddock-huts growing larger with each meter. Her mind’s eye transformed the landscape and she saw the Orion hurtling toward the da Vinci in the turbulent atmosphere of Galvan VI. A wrenching shudder first threw her head back, then threw her forward, slamming her body against metal.

A blink. They’d stopped falling. She looked around. The scene shifted and she again saw the bend and shimmer dance of leaf tufts on supple branches in the forest outside. She respired humid air, air thick with pollen and orchid perfume, not the neutral, recirculated air of a starship. She knew this place. Or thought she did. She was on the homeworld. With Zoeannah. The peg-pole they had been climbing had crashed into a building complex that stood a good ten meters above the deck floor. At least that was where she believed she was.

Deceptive dusk light continually recast the shapes in her mind and she half wondered if some latent racial memory had merged with her present reality. Perhaps she was still somewhere aboard the dying da Vinci and in the shock and horror of it all, her brain deceived her senses by offering the comfort of home.

Home? To use that word to define this place struck her as odd. She felt more vulnerable, more exposed—more alone—in this elongated moment on her homeworld than she ever had while roaming the stars. Certainly Zoë must feel similarly. She dropped her gaze and saw Zoë, her expression pinched, her skin pale. A half-dozen escaping Nasat skittered over her on their way to a rooftop, only a few pegs away from Pattie. Even in the wan moonlight, Pattie could see the whitened skin across Zoë’s knuckles as she clenched the pole more tightly.

Not all the Nasat were as discourteous as those that had climbed over Zoë and they had politely queued up behind her. Zoë wouldn’t move without prompting.

“Zoë, can you climb?”

Tilting back her head, she turned her dark-irised gaze on Pattie, swallowed hard, and then nodded. She reached a trembling hand toward the peg above her. One more step and Pattie would be able to offer her a limb to hold on to.

“Keep coming, Zoë. I’m here and I’ll help you.” She watched, noting the extreme concentration etched on Zoë’s face as her friend raised a wavering arm, and then another, and another, until her hands were on the peg below Pattie’s lowermost legs.

“Up one more peg.”

Zoë complied, reaching for Pattie, who grasped her hand in her pincers and pulled the young woman up to stand on the peg opposite her. Pattie used her secondary limbs to maintain her own hold on the peg-pole.

“Let’s climb to the roof, okay?” Pattie said. “I’ll take a step, then you take a step.” They inched upward. Each time the leaning peg-pole vibrated, Zoë clung more tightly to Pattie’s pincers.

After reaching the roof, the pair took a brief rest, allowing Zoë a chance to collect herself. Her time in Starfleet had conditioned Pattie to handle ongoing disaster and trauma with relative calm. Steady reactions had become reflexive, even intuitive to her. Working as a civilian scientist provided very few life-threatening experiences for Zoeannah to cope with. For her, dealing with the ceiling collapse, especially on the heels of the initial tremors, took a bit longer than Pattie.

While Zoeannah rested, Pattie plotted out an alternate—and shorter—route to the lab. The sooner we have her home with Tarak, the better, she thought. Zoë could be tough, but many more mishaps would quickly deplete her emotional and physical reserves.

Soon, they resumed their journey, using jokes and small talk as a distraction from the chaos surrounding them. The conversation eventually moved around to Pattie’s plans for the weeks she would be on the homeworld while the da Vinci underwent repair at McKinley Station on Earth. As they climbed down the last peg-pole before the turnoff to Zoë’s paddock, Pattie called out to Zoë, “I was serious about helping out with the repair efforts, but I’m afraid if I just show up and volunteer, they’ll turn me away.”

“Pattie, you know your people,” Zoë noted sensibly. “They’re very focused on doing things a particular way and once they’re secure about an idea or a course of action, they don’t like making changes. You like to shake things up.”

“I’ll have to go to the top, then,” Pattie said. “What would it take to get an appointment with Governor Z4 Blue?”

“Hmmm. Might be difficult.” Zoë paused on the poles below Pattie to look up at her. “This governor has been slow to warm to the progressive reforms that the Planetary Council embraces. He still considers Tarak’s and my work to be a little fringe. He moves cautiously. Doesn’t like taking unnecessary risks.”

“That’s what should appear next to ‘Nasat’ in the Federation database: insectoid species that doesn’t like to take any unnecessary risks.”

“I’m not trying to discourage you from trying to help out; I’m just being realistic.”

“I know that,” Pattie said, her antennae curled pensively.

They touched down on the deck. Zoë looked noticeably grateful to have solid ground beneath her feet. She circled her head around, stretched her neck, and yawned. Looking over at Pattie, she said, “You okay?”

Pattie sighed. “Shells sometimes don’t make sense.”

“Neither do softs if that makes you feel any better.”

“That, I know.”

Zoë patted her shell kindly and started down the walkway to the lab.

For a few moments, she stood there, watching Zoë walk away, and thinking. The Nasat’s reflexive self-interest had always annoyed Pattie. Upon more thought, P8 Blue acknowledged that some of her present impatience with the Nasat might be a reflection of the time she’d spent around humanoids. Her Starfleet crewmates could be impulsive, but they would never be accused of cowardice. Better to act when you can choose your course than be compelled by circumstance to react—or surrender, Pattie thought. She had learned that behavior from watching her friends.

An unbidden thought came to her and she envisioned Commander Sonya Gomez commanding the da Vinci, carnage surrounding her on every side. Pattie still marveled at Commander Gomez’s single-minded determination to save the crew. What would the commander do if she were here? She wouldn’t wilt on the floor, waiting for the bridge’s ceiling beams to collapse and bury her. Neither would Captain Gold, poor Lieutenant McAllan, Doctor Lense, or any of the others. And Lt. Commander Duffy, Pattie paused to remember. He chose to make a difference. She marveled at the number of lives he’d saved because he refused to put his own interests first.

She could choose to make a difference. A meaningful difference. She could be frustrated with this backward, rural township she called home, or she could put the lessons she’d learned aboard the da Vinci into action.

She resolved to argue with as many Yellows, Blues, Greens, Browns, and Reds as she needed to—from the civil engineers and the bureaucrats to the officers. She would present herself to the township council. She would use every connection she had to land an appointment with the forest quadrant governor.

To have a substantive reason to be here, the potential to accomplish something constructive, excited her. She’d anticipated finding little more than a distraction from her worries about her crewmates. The more she considered her options—in the present and the future—the more sobering reality intruded. Honesty required she acknowledge that her S.C.E. future held a measure of uncertainty.

Realistically, some members of the da Vinci’s crew might be too traumatized to return to starship duty. Corsi and Stevens had struggled mightily when they lost Duffy. Captain Gold faced rebuilding a crew after losing so many, not to mention the heavy repairs his ship required. Even if what was left of the crew reunited, Pattie had no idea whether or not their relationships would ever be as they were before they lost so many comrades. If I can be an individual of action and help my people, then maybe all the events that brought me here might not have been a complete waste. I might be able to help build something good.

For the first time since she’d decided to come here, Pattie felt hopeful.