Early in the morning, station time, Trina picked her up from the hotel where she had rented a room for the night. They had found her a cabin (as they called the tiny one-room apartments on the station), but it would not be ready until later today. Together they took the lift inwards to the hub deck, which was close to zero gravity. This made it easier to move heavy equipment, the logical place for a shipyard. The lift deck still had 0.15 g, just enough to walk slowly and not hit the ceiling with every step. Trina's office was on the same deck. It had a large desk, a shelf and two magnetic chairs with straps. The side facing the shipyard was a single large window from floor to ceiling. From here, the shipyard looked more like the inside of a planet-wide junkyard. Nearly all floor space was covered with ships, from pretty nice to empty shells, stripped of anything that might get a second or third life on another ship. Which was even more impressive, given its size. The height was ten decks across to the ships sitting on the other side since it was a cylinder around the station's centre. There were ships on four moving work platforms to work at 0.15 g near the bottom, or at zero gravity near the hub where the largest airlock and where the ships could enter and leave. For too large ships that could not enter the shipyard at all, there were twelve docking ports and personal airlocks next to them. It must have been a very busy place once, designed to handle many ships at once.

But Trina had not exaggerated about her labour shortage. There were only five workers. She and Trina were by far the youngest, and half of them were older than the two of them put together. Even Trina went out into the hangar and got her paws dirty. To get anything done, they rarely worked on more than one ship at a time.

What she knew from the only book on spaceship maintenance she had read, was of limited use. Apart from the fact that the book mainly dealt with emergency repairs en route, it only covered the latest human standards. But the ships here were best described as ripe individuals, most of them older than a century. Their lack of an industrial base, even for something as basic as making a hull, was shameful. They really should have done better in the 200 years that their civilisation had already existed, given that they had inherited a planet and even this station and a lot of wealth from Hopkins II. But no, no ships of their own. Most of their ships were human-made, fitting as their race had once been derived from humans. And four of the five nearest inhabited systems were human worlds. So they applied human standards to all ships, even the non-human hulls. But even human standards were evolving, and while it was possible to interface across different standards, a lot of improvisation was needed all the time.

Still, repairing ships was as close to space as she could get for the time being. Motivated, she learned quickly. And for the first time, her body was not a disadvantage. Small and strong, with five long, slender fingers instead of four short, clawed ones, she was able to crawl into panels and make connections with her outstretched arms in places Trina and the others could hardly reach. Even the thin fur meant that less dirt stuck to her. Well, it stuck to her skin and it itched like hell. So she soon settled for long-sleeved shirts and used the shipyard showers as her cabin had a strict 0015 water timer.

And it was fun to work with Trina. She always made her smile with some witty remark, even when she was working on the plumbing, ugh, or after her big initial mistake that had fried a whole console. Like Trina, the other technicians were happy to have another pair of helping hands. By the third day, she had become the go-to specialist for repairing cables or connecting equipment in hard-to-reach places. Not the job she had imagined when she first arrived, but a good start. The others had their special skills too.

When brute force was needed, she called on the twins, Traxy and Tryxa. Both of them were even bigger than Trina, with shoulders twice as wide as hers, all muscle. Their yellow-black striped tiger pattern made them look elegant despite their strength. And even they were more feminine than her. They were identical twins, but Tryxa had a silver earring in her left ear and Traxy in her right. They were not very bright, but they made up for it with their strength and their great coordination, either because they were twins or because they were a couple too. And only ten years her senior, they were the youngest members of the team after Trina.

If she needed more in-depth advice on almost any component, she would ask Penny. She was a rather delicately built former office worker, still taller than herself. And she had pitch-black fur, even black skin on the inside of her ears. She was born outside any clan and had only seven years of basic schooling. But she had studied for a C-licence while working her way up from cleaning to courier services to the back office. But now, past 45, she was deemed too old for regular interstellar jumps and lived her dream through repairs and test flights. Life had made Penny grumpy, sarcastic and direct. But she was the most competent of them all, and her advice never failed. So it was Penny who did the final checks, which involved long checklists, during which she did not want to be disturbed.

Hence, she worked more often with Rarrar, the most typical cat of their group, with grey Samul fur and slightly smaller than Trina. A retired pilot, again not retired by choice. She was Samul, but from a low-tier tribe in the northern deserts. She had worked here for ten years and had handed over the test flights to Penny, mainly to avoid boring checklists. After 20 years of jumping between the stars, the appeal of jumping around the station was not great enough to bother with the checklists. She loved her work, but not to the point of overtime. Rarrar would drop her tools and head out at 6250, burning off any excess energy with Djanball, despite being in her mid-50s.

The last worker was Roberta, another retired pilot, and another low-tier Samul. Even older than Rarrar, with wrinkles, almost white-grey fur everywhere, and grumpier than Penny. The cat with the least social skills, she was told. Roberta knew this, though, and avoided any interaction. Every morning Trina gave her the day's tasks and she did them alone and on time. And that was the entire shipyard crew. They were indeed understaffed, and thus the list of ships waiting for repairs was epic. The few independent owners jumped out with broken ships to have them repaired elsewhere, and the others tried to bribe their ship's higher up on Trina's list. She did not envy Trina.

Apart from Penny, none of them knew much about the inner workings of the systems they were repairing. And none of them cared. It was not needed for flying and it was not needed for most repairs. They had to feed electricity, fuel, coolant or whatever to a device to its specification and patch systems to talk to each other. For programming, they had two AIs, Lenny and Bernie, both as old as the station. They were happy to chat and explain the inner workings of whatever they were working on. Not sure if it was because of their age, but they always gave her more information than she could remember while working on the task at hand.

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When she returned to her cabin in the evening, she got into her bunk bed in the small cabin she had rented. Her brain was tired from processing all the new information. And so exhausted from the manual labour that she had not even bothered to see if there was a local gym. She just fell asleep and was woken up early every morning by Trina, who picked her up for breakfast at the Blended Followers.

* * *

She was returning from another long shift. It was only the fifth day since her arrival. She hadn't forgotten her original purpose, she had checked out the shipyard's derelicts. Trina had not exaggerated: There were more than enough wrecks to choose from. She had begun to look up the specifications of some of them. Based on her current understanding of spaceship maintenance, she could make one of them spaceworthy again using other junk parts under the guidance of the AIs. But not in the near future, Trina's estimate of 50 days was certainly too optimistic by a factor of ten.

Traxy and Tryxa were still occupying the shipyard shower, so she went back to her cabin. In the lift, she sent a message to the old pilot of the shuttle to admit defeat. There was no reply, her message had not even been read after her shower. And now she had another problem: she had run out of clean long-sleeved T-shirts, and the sweater was too warm for the station. Her black trousers did not show the stains but were filthy with grease and sweat. She needed to buy more black shirts and trousers. But the present options were limited. She sighed and put on her sports uniform, black tight shorts with a yellow star on the left thigh and a black sports bra with a single star on the left side as well.

She hesitantly headed out, first to the laundry. Too nervous to blend in with the flow of people. She felt like everyone was staring at her, wondering about the small, muscular human-cat hybrid. Not that she was really revealing anything in her modest top and half-knee shorts; compared to the cats around her, she was rather conservatively dressed. It was just that everyone else had thicker fur. But one could see her skin and even the definition of her muscles under her thin fur. At moments like this, she wondered where all the aliens on this station were hiding. But no distraction around.

Thankfully, it was only a short walk to the laundry and from there to the 'Blended Followers'. The waitress already recognised her as a regular, even in this outfit, and nodded to the empty window table. Moments later she brought her favourite tea.

"Thanks, Trish." After she had felt like walking naked through the station, she wanted to try something new for dinner, original Fallerian food, fried insects. "Krataz arshu kletz today, please."

Trish nodded. "Something to celebrate?"

Her proud smile at remembering the correct Fallerian pronunciation faded. "No, not really. Just ran out of clean shirts."

"Well, you certainly look different. Oh, sorry, guests." Trish hurried to the entrance where a group of five humans were standing. Aliens, at least. On her way, the waitress pushed her considerable assets further out.

She sighed, added a little more spice to her tea and tried not to stare too hard at the aliens. It was the first time she was close to humans. When they looked in her direction, she turned her head and stared out of the window. By chance, she saw a ship jump in or out, just a brief flash against the stars. It rotated out of sight too quickly to make out any shape. But she liked to think that she had helped to repair this ship, as unlikely as it was.

"Hello," a human stood next to her table.

"Hello," she said, unsure. She was certainly curious to see the first human in the flesh so close. He smelled male, but differently, somehow more pleasant. The humans she had seen in the movies had never worn such formal attire, white shirt and black trousers. Well, apart from the legendary billionaire Hopkins II, who had created the cat-maids for his private pleasure world. But his face was nothing like Hopkins II's. She felt her body react to him and his scent.

"I am Ken. You are a most unusual and handsome cat."

She nearly spilled her tea. Blood rushed to her face, he could probably see it through the thin fur. "I? Good-looking? Keep your bad pick-up lines. Not interested." She should have guessed. The only humans who came here were tourists, attracted by the carefully cultivated image of cats as carefree, sex-crazed bimbos that served so well to keep the business going. Truth be told, it was not a difficult image to maintain, for it described not only the origin of their species but also too many of her fellow cats. Even her body did not agree with the rejection.

"Not even in talking?"

"Look, I just finished a 5000 shift repairing the inner plumbing of a jump ship. No energy left."

"Wow, great, I deal in ships too." This was a stubborn human. She was not sure how to react. Her body had used up its last energy reserves to become aroused by his scent. But he did not even notice.

"I am here for business. Not for pleasure."

At least that earned him a polite reply. "Sorry, I am really tired. And I am just a worker. But with any luck you might meet Trina from Samul here later. She runs the shipyard." She was not sure why and how she was avoiding him. She had not taken any suppressants, why should she? On the planet, males and females were separated in almost all situations. Most contact was through paid services. The idea of meeting a male by chance and forming a new tribe was beaten to death in romantic but completely unrealistic dramas. Besides, her appearance would scare off any male except the paid ones. Not sure how the legendary billionaire Hopkins II persuaded the first humans to become cat-maids to populate his private planet. And with his stupid harem idea, he made sure that only one male would be born for every ten females. Perhaps the increased libido was also part of his plan. But when he died and left the planet to them, these traits defined their species to this day. The sex-crazed cats. Even if her genes were more human, she still felt the turmoil inside. The first male to approach her, even if he was of the wrong species!

"Thank you, and sorry to disturb you, Miss?"

"Rerra," she replied reflexively, turning her eyes back to the stars. But her body betrayed her, her ears following his steps back to the table with his mates, her heart pounding and her tail, well, he must be blind. But compared to other cats, she would have disappointed him. Before her thoughts could wander further in that direction, Trish arrived with her food. "Enjoy."

"Thank you."

"Say, what did the human want?"

She looked up, "What do you think? 'Hello, most unusual and handsome cat.' His words."

"Looks like your new outfit worked on him."

"No, Trish, I'm too tired today."

Her eyes widened even more. "You turned him down? You really are an unusual cat. Do you mind?"

"Good luck." She gestured to their table. She had a hunch that Trish would have no luck with this human. With Trish and the human away, she relaxed again and enjoyed each of the crunchy insects on her plate as she looked out the window. The spicy sauce overpowered any lingering scent of the human.

The humans were still eating when she got up and this human, Ken, waved at her as she passed. She smiled back, though she doubted that her expression, ears and tail would register with him. Outside the cafe, she yawned heavily. Dead tired and still aroused, she passed by the laundry and picked up her few clothes. Back in her cabin, she threw her clothes on the floor and collapsed exhausted on the bunk bed. The pent-up arousal from the encounter gave her vivid dreams of making love to the human; although in her dreams he suddenly had Trina's head. She awoke to that and the sound of the doorbell.