We regarded each other for a while and I thought I understood. I still left the bathroom light on when I went to bed, so as not to have to sleep in an entirely dark cabin, so I could make-believe a safe and everyday space; a place where the ghosts of my time on the medical frigate were impotent and where I could sleep in peace.

“Okay.” I turned on my heel and led him uphill, around the curve of the main deck. Burdened with luggage, he stumbled to keep pace.

“Captain?”

I didn’t look around. I didn’t know this kid, and I had no reason to care how he slept. “Look,” I said awkwardly, thinking of George—thinking he might still have been alive had he been less tired, more rested and alert—“if it helps, perhaps you can take the cabin across the hall from mine?”

Preston looked up hopefully. “Really?”

“Just don’t expect me to hold your hand every time you get scared.”

The kid gave a nervous smile. “I won’t, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” I led him to a vacant cabin on the other side of the companionway from mine. I opened the door for him and switched on the light. “I’m not doing it for you.”

He gave me a quizzical look—the look of a young man baffled by an older woman. “Then, who…?”

I stepped aside and gestured him into the room. I wanted to say I was doing it for George but, in reality, I knew I was doing it for myself, to help quell the guilt that had—since his death—begun to growl in my ear whenever I found myself alone, whenever the noises quietened and the lights dimmed.

“Just don’t make a nuisance of yourself,” I told him.

He gave me a grateful smile. “I won’t, Captain, I promise.”

He seemed sincere, but I already had misgivings about the proximity of his personal space to mine.

“See that you don’t.”

Nine: Sal Konstanz

NINE

SAL KONSTANZ

As soon as her fuel cells were charged and her holds replenished, the Trouble Dog slipped her moorings.

I was on the bridge, strapped into my command couch. Alva Clay was below, in her cabin; Preston was in his, and I assumed Nod was in its nest.

The Dog had been in constant contact with Camrose Station during the refuelling process, and both had planned the exact moment of departure down to the last second. The bay doors were already retracting as the Dog swung her nose, seeking the vacuum of empty space. The point of her bronze-coloured bow caught the sunlight, and I felt the deck shudder as she engaged her primary thrusters.