The screen went blank. Cyn put his hand terminal down on the table with an angry click. Naomi looked up at him from behind her hair.

“Esá bitch needs sa yutak cut,” Cyn said. His face was dark with rage. “Lesson á totas like her, yeah?”

“For for?” Naomi said, shrugging. “Kill her, and another one will take her place. She’s good at what she does, but even if you did slit her throat, there’d just be someone else in the same chair saying the same things.”

Cyn shook his head. “Not like that.”

“Close by.”

“No,” he said, his chin jutting a centimeter forward. “Not like that. Alles la about big social movements y ages of history y sa? Stories they make up later so it makes sense. Not like that, not real. It’s people do things. Marco. Filipito. You. Me.”

“You say so,” Naomi said.

“Esá coyo on Mars who traded us for all the ships and told us where to find supplies? He’s not ‘Martian economic despair’ o ‘rising debt ratios’ o ‘income and access inequality.’ ” With each pretentious invented term, Cyn wagged his finger like a professor lecturing a class, and it was funny enough that Naomi chuckled. He blinked at the sound, and then smiled a little shyly. “La coyo la is just some coyo. He’s a man made a deal with a man who talked up some otras, and we did things. Who people are, it matters, yeah? Can’t replace them.”

His gaze was on her now, not a professor lecturing a class, but Cyn lecturing her. She scooped the last bite of pudding into her mouth. “Get the feeling you’re saying something,” she said around it. Cyn looked down, gathered himself. She could see the effort more than she could understand it.

“Filipito, he needs you. No sabez la, but he does. You and Marco are you and Marco, but no you take the coward’s out.”

Her heart jumped a little. He thought she was in despair, that she might give in to the dark thoughts. She wondered what brought him to the conclusion, and whether it was a mistake he was making or something he could see in her that she couldn’t. She swallowed. “You telling me not to kill myself?”

“Be a bad thing to say?”

She stood up, her soiled bowl in her hand. He rose with her, following as she headed for the recycler. The weight of her body was reassuring. There was still time. They hadn’t cut the drives yet. She could still figure her way over. “What should I do, then?”

It was Cyn’s turn to shrug. “Come with. Be Free Navy. We go where they need us, do what needs doing. Help where they need help, yeah? Already eight colony ships on target.”

“Target for what?”