He gathers his thoughts and puts the facts together as he knows them.

The Ragtime left Earth on schedule, stopped over at Space Station Lagos for a service, then made its way to Bloodroot’s orbit. Campion wakes up to find the AI infantilised and thirty-one passengers dead, cut up and disposed of by the ship’s bots. Someone’s artificial wolf roamed the Ragtime’s passageways, now neutralised. Fin and Salvo, counting the body parts, found two and a half humans missing. Mild friction with Campion, but Fin is used to that. Then the Decisive turns up with Uncle Larry and his Lamber daughter Joké. Then the ship kind of breaks up without warning.

They need to work on the facts of the matter, the timeline, then, when all the known players are understood, find out motive. Fin needs to know the identities of all the victims and their positions in the passenger pods, and then dive into their IFCs.

The break off of Node 7 is convenient for the killer. It distracts from investigation to something primal: survival. In survival mode, the human doesn’t default to detective work. Fin is afraid he’ll miss something in this tumult of survival. Plus, it’s space. The Brink. He might die for real. This kind of shit, Fin knows on an instinctive, molecular level, is coming his way like a fucking asteroid or heart attack or something. This is how he dies. In space. With strangers and robots and suffocation.

Static and random sentences coming from the open channel. Joké mumbling to herself.

“Nobody soothed his nightmares when he was a child.”

Who is she talking about? Fin likes the woman, but she seems… out there. But so what? So was he, according to his colleagues on Bloodroot. They thought him some kind of wunderkind from his first cases. Which is why he fucked up the last one. Hubris.

He reloads his gun and settles back down and waits near the crew lock. He crouches in Node 1 so that he can see as many directions as possible. Up, into the cupola, aft to the opening of Node 2, and fore into the crew area, the docking area and the airlocks.

Esteemed Ones,

I apologise. There are no words to express how sorry I am, and because of my mistake a life has been snuffed out.

I know this letter is abrupt, but I have reason to believe my life is in danger and I do not want to die without you knowing that—

No. It doesn’t work. It places a burden on them, a burden to listen and a burden to forgive because he might die. If they are to forgive, it must be freely. It must not be emotional blackmail, if they are vulnerable to such.