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The body of Medina’s druht, extended ahead of her and behind She felt like she was hanging on to the belly of soates were only pinpoints of eerie and erratic light, as regular as a printed pattern against the surreal darkness below her The gates and the tiny dot of the alien station in the center of ring space It wasn’t her first time outside a ship in the slow zone, but she shuddered all the sa out at whatever velocity the station had given her until so her connection here ates and vanishing into whatever existed—or failed to exist—on the other side Normal, star-strewn space could feel like an infinite ocean, vast and glorious and uncaring The slow zone felt like being in so’s mouth

Katria put her safety tether on the surface of the dru boot locked to the station Bobbie waited to follow until she’d taken a couple of aard, swaying steps And then she was also hanging upside down fro station The crate in her hand wanted to fly up like the loop of her safety harness Blood rushed into her head, filling her ears with their own distant roar as they walked—release, swing, push up, and reconnect to the station—back along until they found the stretch of plating that would becoers pointing, the Belter’s gesture for opening or deploying Bobbie nodded yes with a closed fist

Thenet was a square of woven steel cable reinforced by carbon fiber Rock hoppers and subsistence s like it since hu the near-Earth asteroids The prih She fastened it to the skin of the station, then waited for athe dru to the comes, pulling and stretching the net as they navigated around the target, placing the secondary pitons until the whole thing lay like a low, black blister on the side of the drum

The trap set at last

Katria dropped the box, and it flew up and away into the darkness, gone in an eyeblink She led the way back al boot, and then the other, and swung on her safety harness, feet to the void Bobbie did the saain, and worse to know that only one f

ailure point was keeping her alive Trade-offs There were always trade-offs

Katria slaved her hand terminal to the suit’s arm display, copied the output to Bobbie’s, and set up a loer radio connection between them The corridor where they’d set the borainy, muted colors as before Empty for now, but not forever

“Noait,” Katria said through the radio “The patrol puts their foot in our trap, or someone notices that we’re out here”

“Yeah,” Bobbie said

“Don’t worry These Laconians are just like Earthers They only think of ships and stations as inside Co up in free air”

“‘The predictable limits of a conceptual framework,’” Bobbie said A phrase from her classroom on Olympus Mons “It’s alhere to hit the enemy Whoever they turn out to be When I learned how to do things like this, ere thinking about Earthers and pirates”

Katria laughed “When I taughtof people like you Strange how the wheel turns”

The elevator passed above the orb of the alien station at the slow zone’s heart appearing like a ht Bobbie turned to look toward the docks The Rocinante was down there somewhere Her home and her ship Or Holden’s Or neither of theirs

Strange how the wheel turns

The h the corridor A pair of electrical technicians A sketchy-looking young wo over her shoulder as she walked Bobbie wondered what the story was there, but it wasn’t hers Her anxiety slowly faded into a kind of dull anticipation, and then to both at the saain and again She switched her air to the secondary bottle