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As she stood surveying the roo to wake up, Bobbie had a sudden lasses she hadn’t even known she earing were snatched away, leaving her blinking in the light Here she was, cli out of bed after three hours of sleep to meet with one of the most powerful women in the solar systeotten her quarters shipshape and that she really wanted to beat one of her coworkers to death with his brass pen set Oh, and she was a career overnence had been et back to Ganyiest idea who that soht be

The abrupt and crystal-clear vision of how far off the tracks her life see and sleep deprivation returned, leaving her with only the disquieting feeling that she’d forgotten to do so important

She dressed in the prior day’s uniform and rinsed her mouth out, then headed out the door

Avasarala’s nized at least three civilians fro there on Earth One of them was the ht, Avasarala’s boss and possibly the second most powerful man on Earth The pair were in an intense conversation when she came in, and Avasarala didn’t see her

Bobbie spotted a small clump of people in military uniforms and drifted in their direction until she saw that they were generals and aded course She wound up next to Soren, the only other person in the roolance, but so about the way he held hi charm, powerful and insincere It struck Bobbie that Soren was the kind of h, but she’d never trust hiht, no, she’d never be drunk enough

“Draper!” Avasarala called out in a loud voice, having finally noticed her arrival

“Yes,a step forward as everyone in the roo to look at her

“You’re s under her eyes so pronounced they looked less like fatigue andliaise Call your people”

“What happened?”

“The situation around Ganymede has just turned into the shit-stor war”

Chapter Twenty-One: Prax

Prax knelt, his arms zip-tied securely behind him His shoulders ached It hurt to hold his head up and it hurt to let it sink down Aht he was dead until he saw the zip-ties holding his arms behind his back The nonlethal round their kidnappers had fired into the back of the mechanic’s head had left an enormous blue-and-black lump there Most of the others—Holden, some of the Pinkwater mercenaries, even Naomi—were in positions much like his own, but not all

Four years before, they’d had a moth infestation A containray-brown miller moths had run riot in his doenerated phero-wave full-spectru units The moths came too close, and the heat killed the had fouled the air for days, and the scent was exactly like that of the cauterizing drill their abductors were using on the injured Pinkwater man A swirl of white smoke rose from the formed-plastic office table on which he was laid out

“I’h his sedation haze “You just go ahead, finish that without me I’ll be over …”