The Ethical Engineer

Jason DinAlt, a weary medic on the frontier world of Pyrrus, is forced to stitch together the battered bodies of two combatants whose fights are raw, brutal, and entirely hand‑to‑hand. The perpetual skirmish outside the city walls and the incessant internal tension make his job feel like an endless battle against chaos rather than a pursuit of peace. As he navigates broken bones and broken morale, the uneasy truce between the human settlers and the alien Pyrrans hangs by a thread.

Into this strained atmosphere steps Meta, a Pyrran engineer whose mind processes only one thought at a time, yet she is beginning to sense a strange, unfamiliar feeling for Jason. Their fraught encounter is interrupted by a distant ship appearing on the horizon, promising either relief or further complication for a community already stretched thin. The story probes the thin line between survival and morality, asking whether coexistence can ever truly be engineered when emotions run wild.