Digging through the station directory, she took the better part of an hour to find the address, even knowing what she was looking for. She didn’t know what Outer Fringe Exports did, except that they were shady enough that she hadn’t wanted to work with them, and that they were competent enough that they’d known about the Martian claims disputing the salvage of the Rocinante before her crew had. Naomi found their physical address – a different berth than the one she’d been at the last time – and caught a cart.

The warehouses near the port were in a constant state of flux. The pressure of commerce and efficiency kept every space in use with as little downtime between rental agreements, loading, and unloading as could be arranged. The sign on the tempered glass door read OUTER FRINGE EXPORTS, but in a week, a day, an hour, it could have been anything.

A young man at the counter smiled up at her. He had close-cropped hair and skin several shades darker than her own. The steel-rimmed glasses could have been an affectation or an interface device. She’d never seen him before.

“Hi,” she said.

“Miss Nagata,” the man said as if they were old acquaintances. “It’s been some time. I’m sorry to say we don’t have any work that would be suited to your ship at this time.”

“Not what I’m here for,” she said. “I need to charter a ship. And I need to do it very quietly.”

The man’s expression didn’t change. “That can be an expensive problem.”

“It needs to carry a crew no larger than twenty.”

“How long would you need it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would it be hauling cargo?”

“No.”

The man’s eyes lost their focus for a moment. The glasses were an interface, then. Naomi crossed her arms.

One in a hundred, she thought, I show up with my own warship ready to carry people off Ceres. One in twenty, I know how to find someone who will. She wondered what the one-in-five plan was. What was the sure thing.

The man’s focus came back to her.

“I think we may be able to help,” he said.

Chapter Fifteen: Alex

The ride to the hospital was a thing out of a nightmare. As the transport sped through the corridors, the painkillers started to take effect. The combination of ache and sharpness in his body shifted into a deep and troubling sense of simply being wrong. Once, when they were near the emergency admitting entrance, time stuttered as his consciousness slipped away and back again. None of the medics paid him much attention.

They were all focused on Bobbie.