Space station of the sluts

“It’s two problems, not one,” the tech said at last. He made a little closing gesture, touching his fingertips to the heel of his palm, and the dull sparks of active data vanished from his left eye. His right still gleamed, flicking, Megan knew, through pages and pages of station data. A strip on his breast read “L. Shaylan” in gray letters, real cloth sealed to the outside of his daysuit’s weave rather than an electronic display. That made sense — in a catastrophic station failure, bodies floating for days before recovery would lose even the tiny drip of power needed for a glowing nametag.

“That meteor that struck your station was filthy. You’ve got more atmospheric contamination than your life support system can filter. Your daysuits are providing secondary filtration like they’re supposed to, but the gasses are lightly radioactive as well as toxic. It’s not enough to hurt you, but once it’s inside the daysuit it starts interfering with the nanocomputers in the weave. Your people aren’t sick — or not badly sick, anyway — but they’re wearing suits that are reacting to bad data. And suit power is down for everyone due to the demands of the actual filtering, which is manifesting as general wearer exhaustion.”