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Nao, forcing him to keep up As she walked, she scanned the crowd around her If she was right, there h the gaps in the press of bodies, finding the places that opened for a moment as people crossed her path and each other’s She had spent six months on Ceres when she was thirteen and between ships, but the station was still a long way fro for a side corridor that she was almost certain ran between the wider pathways

AndMaybe the man, whoever he was, had just happened to be there when she was feeling particularly anxious She didn’t look back until her side corridor rejoined the larger flow of foot traffic frolance, and found the place she needed A currency-changing booth four meters aith opaque privacy walls made a little space in the flow of people like a stone in a river Without pausing, she walked to the dead space at its far side and leaned against it, her shoulder blades taking in the cool of thea little, a daes of her hair She made herself small and unobtrusive, and counted slowly backward from a hundred

At thirty-two, Wings hurried past her, his chin high, scanning the crowd before hiht metallic taste of fear filled her mouth, and she turned back into the booth, and then past it the other way, down the corridor she’d just left As she retraced her steps, her h possibilities Marco had finally decided to end their standoff, and the threat to Filip had been bait for the trap Or the security forces had been waiting all this tiht at last Or someone who’d watched the newsfeeds from Ilus toohis men to check up on her The last wasn’t least likely

Back in the ed down a cart and paid for a trip up three levels to an open park The wo the cart didn’t look at her twice, which was a relief Naoainst the hard forainst the decking as they took the ramp up, closer to the center of spin and farther from the port

“Go du-es someplace precise?” the driver asked

“Don’t knohere I’,” Naomi said “Knohen I’m there”

She’dher distributed classwork equivalency on Hygeia Station On Luna, her ould have gotten her engineering place shipyards Since it was just an equivalency, she’d known she had another three, et the jobs, even if she already kne to do the work

Marco had been part of a salvage and eia Station, then looped out into the Belt proper, scraping out rarecare, sometimes, of the wrecks of old ships that crossed their paths And maybe, the rumor was, some wrecks that were very, very new His captain had been an old man named Rokku who’d hated the Inner Planets as much as anyone in the Belt The creas the deepest flavor of OPA there was, not a military cell because no one had asked theolis, another of her adopted aunts, and trading out unlicensed work at the refining station for air, water, food, network access, and a place to sleep At the time, Marco and his cohort had see the saood as family to her

And Marco hi Dark eyes, dark soft hair, a Cupid’s bow ined it would to stroke a wild animal He’d haunted the corridors outside the station bar, too young still to buy, but et older people to buy for him on the few occasions he couldn’t convince the merchants to bend the rules directly The others on Rokku’s crew – Big Dave, Cyn, Mikkam, Karal – had all outranked Marco on the ship and followed his lead on shore There hadn’t been a particular moment when she’d become part of their crew She’d just fallen into orbit with the others, been at the sahed at the same jokes, and then at some point she was expected

When they cracked the seal on a storage gate and made it into a temporary invitation-only club, she was invited And then before long she was helping to crack the seal

Hygeia Station hadn’t been at its best in those days The Earth-Mars alliance had looked solid as stone back then The taxes and tariffs on basic supplies hovered just below too expensive to sustain life And sometimes above it The ships that ran there ran on air so lean they courted anoxia, and the black eia Station, while noloether by habit, desperation, and the bone-deep Belter respect for infrastructure

When Marco was there, even the old, cracked cera seeed what everything around hiirl named Naomi ould have sworn she’d follow him anywhere She was a woman now, and she’d have said that wasn’t true

But here she was

Bistro Rzhavchina was high up toward the center of spin Doors of rusted steel painted in sealant blocked the way in, and a bouncer half a head taller than her and twice as wide across the shoulders glowered as she passed through them He didn’t stop her Up this far, more of the station’s spin felt like lateral pull Water poured on the slant It wasn’t only the cheapness of the real estate that made these corridors thicker with Belters The Coriolis here started to have an effect just north of subli that Earthers and Martians ever beca in spin was a source of Belter pride, a mark of who they were and how they were different

Dark music filled the place, the rhythm like a constant, low-level assault The floor was sticky where it wasn’t covered with peanut shells, and the smell of salt and cheap beer filled the air Nao a seat sheltered froe Somewhere between fifteen and twenty people sat or stood around the place She could still feel their gazes on her Her jaw slid forward a degree, heron a scowl that was protective coloration as ainst vibrated with the bass