The ship was a simple transport skiff so small that the docking clamps holding it seemed about to crush its tarnished sides in. It didn’t have an Epstein drive, so most of the hold would be taken up by the propellant mass. It would have to fly teakettle, and even then, a fair stretch of the way they’d be on the float. It was one step better than getting EVA suits and a bunch of extra air bottles, but it would do what they needed. Naomi had bought it at salvage rates, routing money from her share in the Rocinante through two anonymized accounts, one on Luna, the other on Ganymede. The final owner of record was Edward Slight Risk Abatement Cooperative, a company that had not existed before it appeared on the registration forms and that would vanish again when the ship was disposed of. The transponders would announce it as the Chetzemoka. In all, it represented about half of everything Naomi could call her own, and her name wasn’t on any of the paperwork.

It didn’t seem like enough. It seemed like too much. She didn’t know what it seemed like.

Filip waited in the bay outside the boarding gantry, and so she did too. Cyn and Karal and Miral stood far enough away to give them something like privacy. The berth was a rental space with a red-numbered counter on the wall measuring the minutes left under agreement before its ownership changed. The metal and ceramic walls had the foggy look of sealant breaking down from the constant radiation of space. The air stank of lubricant. Someone had left an old poster on the wall, the split circle of the OPA with a hemisphere of Mars and one of Earth as the circle. Not just OPA, but militant OPA.

They’d been her people, once.

The others arrived. Josie and Old Sandy. Wings, whatever his real name was. A thick-faced, sorrow-eyed woman with one missing tooth that Naomi hadn’t seen before. A shaven-headed man with livid scars webbing the dark flesh of his scalp and the limp of an unhealed foot wound. More. Each of them nodded to Filip as they passed, their expressions a mix of respect and indulgence. All of them knew him better than she did. All of them would ship with him when he left. The ache behind her breastbone would have concerned her any other time. Just now, she knew what it was.

Soft tears threatened, but she blinked them back. Bit her tongue to stop them.

“All well?” Filip asked.

She laughed, and the tightness around her heart grew harder. “Well enough. As soon as the registry updates, we can file a plan and go.”

“Good.”

“Do you have a moment?”