“I liberated one, then. I was going to get one myself, but I can’t. I’ve got nothing to connect to.”

“Could use it like a disposable,” Amos said, starting to key his configuration information. “Get you access to feeds anyway.”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, if you don’t think it does, then maybe not.”

She sighed. There were tears in her eyes and a smile on her face. “We did it. We made it safely to Luna. Just like we hoped.”

“Yeah.”

“You know what I really missed when I was in the Pit? Anything that actually meant anything. They fed me, and they kept me alive, and we had this kind of support group thing where we could talk about our childhood traumas and shit. But I couldn’t do anything that mattered. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t talk to people outside the prison. I was just being and being and being until sooner or later, I’d die and they’d put someone else in my cell.”

She leaned forward, her elbows on the workbench. She’d burned the side of her thumb on something – a soldering iron, the barrel of a gun, something – and the skin was smooth and pink and painful-looking. “I won’t go back there.”

“Peaches, there’s no there to go back to. And anyway, I’m pretty sure Chrissie knows you’re on board here. She’s not pushing the issue, so as long as we stay cool and act casual —”

Her laugh was short and bitter. “Then what? You can’t take me with you anymore, Amos. I can’t go on the Rocinante. I tried to kill Holden. I tried to kill all of you. And I did kill people. Innocent people. That’s never going away.”

“In my shop, that’s just fitting in,” Amos said. “I appreciate that seeing the crew again could leave you feeling a little antsy, but we all know what you are. What you did. Including all the shit you did to us. This isn’t new territory. We’ll talk it through. Work something out.”

“I’m just afraid that if he doesn’t back your play, they’ll send me back, and —”