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Minka Shokat lay flat on her back beneath her fourth-generation Wayfarer class-C airship and cranked on the bolt that held the resistor plates to the bottom of the hull.

"Give it up, you obstinate son of a dung-eating general," she snarled, using both hands and pushing on the wrench as hard as she could. "Give it up or I'll slice off your sensitive parts and let the birds peck at them."

The bolt held fast. Minka squirted a little oil on it. This was what happened when your ship was so old that no one made parts for it anymore. If you couldn't get to the junkyard when something fell off or broke—and with her schedule, she couldn't—then you just jury-rigged something and hoped for the best. This bolt had been crammed into the resistor plates when the old one had broken off. But now she needed to get the plates off and see what was shorting out behind them. If only—crank—the bolt—craaaank—would come out.

A drop of oil fell onto her safety glasses and she swiped at it, smearing it across her field of vision. Great. The bolt was still stuck and now she couldn't see.

She put her feet against the edge of the plate and shoved. The rolling creeper shot out from under the airship, stopping only when it bumped into a pair of fringed, pink leather boots.

That would be her copilot, navigator, scheduler, accountant and friend, Anjali Tilak, who, Minka saw from her position lying on the creeper, was holding a clipboard.

"Trouble, boss?" Anjali asked. "Is the obstinate son of a dung-eating general not cooperating again?"

Minka laughed, standing up to pull off her safety glasses. She carried them over to the cracked sink and sprayed a little dispersant on the lenses, then wiped them with a clean rag.

"I can't get the damn bolt off," she said. "And I have to get in there because I'm getting a warning light for the hagiographic output. Nice boots, by the way."

Anjali smiled. "Thank you. The Mission Stockpile had a new shipment of confiscated items. I got them really cheap. Can I help with the resistor plate? Or maybe if we lifted up the interior floor we could get to the hagiographic simulator that way?"

Minka went to the small food dispensary that leaned precariously against the far wall, opened its access door, considered the few selections and took out a bottle of water. A modern dispensary—or a working one, anyway—could serve food fresh or cook it for you, all at the touch of a button and the glance of a retinal ID scan. Here at All Galaxy Air, Anjali had found a small, broken dispensary at the junkyard. They'd hauled it back, cleaned it up and now they filled it with whatever they needed or could get. No retinal scans required.

Minka took a slug from the bottle and then carefully dripped some of the water into the pot of a bedraggled plant. Its thin branches sagged under the weight of a strand of four lights that seemed too big for it. She gently lifted a branch and then let it down again. She sighed.

"I'm afraid it would take too long to work our way down to the hagiographic simulator if we started from the inside," she said, turning back to Anjali. "And we might jostle some wires while we're about it too."

Anjali rolled her eyes. "Yeah, we for sure don't want to do that. Well, we're scheduled to take off in a couple of hours. Can we be ready?"

"We'll be ready." Minka's voice was grim. "If I can't get this bolt off myself in a half hour, I'll just have to rent—"

"Borrow," Anjali interrupted. "You'll have to borrow."