The accommodations were dark and spare, only a place to wait, really. Once the ship was fueled up, he would be glad to get away from here. Though he wouldn’t have imagined that he could suffer from irrational fears, he felt trapped. Even the air tasted heavy, walls closing in around him. Qalu regarded him with an anxious flutter of her head tendrils. Neither of them was listening to Bojak any longer, and the human seemed to notice as much.

“I’ll leave you to your own devices now. I took you past the hydroponics garden, but it’s worth a look inside. You can rest here or explore on your own.” Bojak waved a forelimb at them, then hurried off, maybe to join the rest of the crew.

“Garden!” Aevi said.

The Pherzul jumped from Qalu’s shoulder and raced back the way they had come. Helix followed because he had no desire to linger in this dingy space. How did anyone live in such a place indefinitely? Already he missed the fresh breeze on Tiralan, scented with the brightness of live greenery. Perhaps the garden could ameliorate this strange ache, the nostalgia for a home he had shared so briefly with the one he treasured.

“What’s amiss?” Qalu asked.

“I don’t like it here.” That was an understated expression of his inexplicable antipathy.

“Me either,” she said, surprising him. “I can’t swim and it’s hard to relax knowing that we’re under the ocean. So much water, all that pressure—”

“You’re not helping.” In all honesty, it did improve his mood to learn that he wasn’t wrestling irrational dread alone.

“Come on!” Aevi called.

“Don’t run off,” Qalu chided.

Obligingly, he quickened his step, following the little one through the musty corridors until they reached the hydroponics garden. Since he had virtual memories of the gardens on Barath, perhaps he ought to have tempered his expectations. This…was more of a lab, with workers moving about, coaxing life from exhausted plants, blazing artificial lights, and pale vines growing from storages units on the walls.

The Pherzul growled, her tail lashing as she prowled around. “It’s not pretty at all. Why did Bojak think we should see this?”

“Maybe it’s interesting compared to the rest of the settlement?” Qalu suggested.

That troubled him. Hiding here was the best free droids and AI could hope for? His own situation suggested that was the case. How long before Praxys and company decided he was a liability and left him somewhere like this? They might soon decide the plan to entrap the bounty hunter was too dangerous. Something like that happened before—

The child on Gravas Station.