Holden’s knuckles hurt and he forced himself to relax his fists. Naomi’s voice filled the ops deck, and it was like being on the verge of passing out from dehydration and being handed a glass of water. As dire as the message was, Holden still felt every syllable untying his knots. When Naomi’s message was done, he fell back in his couch, limp as a rag. She was in trouble, but it was trouble they could fix. She was on her way back toward him.

“Thank you, Mister Patel,” Holden said. “In thanks, you may now have all my stuff. I don’t care about any of it anymore.”

“Including the coffee maker, sir?”

“Almost all my stuff.”

When Fred spoke, his voice was hard. Sharp. Unrelieved. “Mister Patel, what relief ships are in the vicinity?”

“Transponder data shows nothing, sir. The inner system’s been pretty much shut down. UN order.”

Holden rolled to his side and called up a connection to Mfume. Music blared out of the console. Mixed with the sounds filtering through the deck, it made the ops deck seem larger than it was. “Mfume!” Holden shouted, and then a few seconds later, “Mister Mfume!”

The music turned down, but not off. “Sir?”

“I need you to take a look at the flight path for the Chetzemoka. See what it’s going to take to match orbits with her.”

“What ship?” Mfume said.

“The Chetzemoka,” Holden said. “Just check the newsfeeds. It’ll be there. Let me know what you figure out as quickly as you possibly can. Like now would be good.”

“I’m on it,” Mfume said, and the music turned off both on the console and from the hatch. Holden took a deep breath, then another, then laughed. The relief wasn’t an emotion. It was too physical and profound for that. It was a state of being. It was a drug that poured invisibly through his veins. He started laughing and it turned into a moan that sounded like pain, or else pain’s aftermath.

Fred clicked his tongue against his teeth. “So. If I were to suggest that we not rendezvous with that ship?”

“I would be happy to let you and your friends off anywhere between here and there,” Holden said. “Because unless you’ve decided to turn to piracy and throw me out the airlock, that ship is where we’re going.”

“I thought as much,” Fred said. “Can we at least agree to be careful approaching it?”

Holden felt a little bubble of rage rise up in him. He wanted to shout at Fred, to punish him for taking this moment and soiling it with doubt. With the possibility that it was a trap and not Naomi coming home at last. Holden took the great glowing sense of release and tried to put it aside and his anger with it.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re right. It could be a trap.”