“It’sss okay,” Walter told her, holding her with one arm and patting her hair. Molly felt the Wadi return, crawling to her shoulder and wrap-ping itself around her neck.

“It’sss okay,” Walter said again.

It took a moment to get herself together. She felt embarrassed by the display and sat back in her chair, wiping her face. “I’m sorry,” she told Walter, looking at the wet patch of tears on his shoulder and the smear of red below.

“Don’t worry about it.” He looked back through the cargo bay. “I need to go. I want to keep an eye on them.”

Molly laughed. “If you’re worried about them looting—don’t.”

Walter looked back at her, his mouth firmly set and his eyes wide. “I need to make ssure they’re okay,” he said.

He padded aft and ran back through the galley. Molly and the Wadi stared at one another, shocked into silence and disbelief.

ѻѻѻѻ

The scene that awaited her outside was a mix of triage and refugee camp. The only serious wounds, of course, were psychological, but these were no less likely to make a victim prone than the physical variety. Molly moved among the survivors, a new flightsuit ridding her of the external stains, leaving only the other kind within her. As she looked for people to tend to, she was amazed at how many of the crewmen were already working to care for the rest, losing themselves in the ability to help another.

She approached Cat, who was spreading some of the blankets from Parsona’s crew bunks out across the forest floor. She touched her shoulder and Cat turned. The two women frowned at each other, eyes glazed over with tears. They hugged, the power in Cat’s arms squeezing out some of the painful stress in Molly’s back. The touch of another, even as the embrace with Walter had shown, gave her hope that she could get over the things she’d seen, could summit the awfulness and perhaps rappel safely down the other side.

“You did good, kiddo,” Cat whispered.

They separated and Molly looked away, rubbing at the bottom of her eyes.

“Where’s Scottie?” Molly asked. “Is he doing okay? Urg—I’m the one who told him to keep looking for—”

“Stop that.” Cat turned her around and held Molly’s shoulders. “Don’t do that. He was doing what he had to. There’s bad luck involved, you’ve gotta remember that.”

Molly nodded, but only to last thing Cat said. She bent over and grab-bed two of the blanket’s corners and helped spread it out over the dried leaves and broken twigs. Several crewmen immediately helped others sit down, each of them cradling a cup, bottle, or a mug of water. One of the crewmen—an older woman Molly remembered from the simulator room—tugged on Molly’s elbow and pointed over to a cluster of seated figures.