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“I’ve decided to keep the Behe out soil and supplies to start far on the dru kahuna But it looks like we’ve got a thousand planets opening up for exploration, and having the only gas station on the turnpike is too sweet a position to walk away from If you and your creant to help out with the effort, escort soht be a few contracts in it for you So that’s the official part Talk about it with the others, and let me knohat decisions you come to”
Fred Johnson nodded once to the camera, and the screen fell to the blue emptiness and split circle of the OPA’s default Holden looked over his shoulder She saw him see her
“Hey,” she said
“Hey”
They were silent for a ize too, to walk down the path Fred Johnson had just showed her, but she couldn’t quite
She waited to see whether Holden would reach out to her When he didn’t she pulled herself back doard the crew quarters Her stoht and uncomfortable
They weren’t friends They wouldn’t be, because soht
She’d have to be okay with that
Amos smelled of solvent and sweat Of all the crew, he was the one most like the people she knew Soladad and Stanni And Ren He ca on, the mask pushed up over his forehead He smiled when he saw her
“You did a number on the place,” Amos said She knew that if the occasion arose, he would be perfectly willing to kill her But until that moment, he’d be jovial and casual That counted for esteel”
“I didn’t at the end,” she said “It ran out of power The locker in the airlock was alla bulb of the fake coffee fro over to the table “That was pretty i, theof his great hunched shadow Hephaestus, the s in his underworld It was the kind of association Clarissa Mao would ht about the temperature of the arc, the coether She could have both of those thoughts, but neither were really hers
She was on the float now Later, when the ship was under way and thrust gravity pinned her to the deck, she’d still be on the float Her world had been constructed around stories about who she was Jules-Pierre’s daughter, Julie Mao’s sister, the crew lead on the Cerisier, instrueance Now she was no one She was a piece of baggage on her old ene from one prison to another, and she didn’t even resent it The last time she’d felt this nameless, she’d probably been in an amniotic sac
“What was the proble What’s the probleets stuck Ever since you crumpled it up Binds about half open”
“Did you check the retracting ared
“Sometimes these door actuators put on an uneven load when they start to burn out We probably swapped out four or five of theht,” she said And then ato kill me, aren’t they?”