But the ship is already falling apart. The Seriema (beloved name, awful bird, lovely ship, an anagram of "'ere's Sami," almost) is not just short on crew. It is rancid with neutron rot and brittle with metal fatigue. The fission reactor is at the end of its life. The fusion engine is on the verge of corroding right through its housing and bouncing around on its feeds like a marble. It needs a teardown and a rebuild, a keel-up mechanical massage, and no one will offer Sami the kind of favors to oblige that kind of work.

Tan can afford to notice debris that's fifteen kilometers and one second away from killing them, then spend forty milliseconds steering them out of the way and still have twenty-four spare perceive-react cycles to clean up any problems. Sami would get four, maybe.
"I love you, man," Sami says.
"I'm Tan the man," Tan says.

She throws a can of frozen tomato juice, but she's still wearing her armor, so it goes through the bulkhead and lodges in a storeroom. Sami hisses like a cat. "Stop knocking holes in my ship!"

Captain Sami and Tannuk try to repair the fusion drive, but it is obviously hopeless. To their credit, they seem very practiced at attempting the hopeless.