“How fucked are we?” Erich said.

“Don’t know,” Amos said. “First guess, there’s something hinky with the power supply. Too much noise. A bad coupler. Something that’s triggering the safety shutdown. But I’ve got to get between her hulls and take a peek.”

“I’ll help you ring the circuits,” Peaches said. Erich looked over at her, confused. “I spent a few months as an electrochemical technician,” she said.

“Well of fucking course you did,” Erich said.

“You bring a deck?” Amos asked.

“Sure,” Erich said. “Why?”

Amos pointed at the drive cone with his chin. “You can get the diagnostics running, and I can tell you what the output means.”

Erich frowned and scratched his neck thoughtfully with his tiny arm. “Sure. Figure I can do that.”

Peaches coughed once, then chuckled. “Erich? Did you ever, you know, kill anyone?”

“I run a drug empire in Baltimore,” Erich said. “Of course I’ve killed someone. Why?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just here we are, three murderers, and what’s going to save our asses if anything does is that we happen to have the skill set to repair a fusion drive.”

Erich smiled. “We are kind of well suited to this, aren’t we?”

“Well, we’d better set up some lookouts while we do it, though,” Amos said. “My plan to get out of here before trouble comes back may not work out.”

“I can have Stokes help with that too,” Peaches said. “They can’t fight, but they can watch. And I can get a few of the savvy ones to help us put the ship together if you want.”

“More the merrier,” Amos said. “Long as they don’t touch anything unless we tell them.”

“When we go, are we taking them with us?” Peaches asked.

“Yup,” Amos said.

She smirked. “Because they’re tribe?”

“Shit no. My tribe is the crew on the Roci, maybe you two, and a dead woman. I don’t actually give a shit if every damned one of ’em dies.”

“So why take them?”

One of Erich’s people called out. Another one laughed, and one of the servants tentatively joined in. Amos rubbed the raw spots on his knuckles and shrugged. “Seems like the sort of thing Holden’d do.”

Chapter Forty-one: Naomi

Naomi lifted the handles of the resistance machine over her head then let them slowly down. Sárta sat on the box of resistance gel and watched her like someone a little bit bored at a zoo. Naomi didn’t care. They didn’t talk. For every purpose but the ones that mattered most, Naomi was alone.