“Nope,” Maren said, wrapping her arms around herself. “I don’t think that would help anyone.”

“Good call,” Saul said, and both women swivelled to look at him. His eyes were open, and his face had regained some of its colour.

Maren felt a rush of relief. “Hey, you doing okay?” she asked, getting to her knees. “Want some water?”

“Not just yet.” Saul was watching the screens, and Maren had the impression he’d been awake for some time without them knowing.

Suriya continued down the hallways, searched in the communications and dining rooms—barely twenty feet away from where Holly and Mark lurked in the pantry—and finally tried the rec room. Maren heard the door behind her rattle a second before she saw Suriya shake the handle on the screen. Their leader then turned, seemed to think for a moment, and continued down the hallway that led to her office. She slipped inside, closed the door, and was lost from their view.

“What do you think Holly and Mark are doing?” Gin asked. “Do you think they’re tired?”

“I’d guess they’re waiting.” Maren stretched, arching her back. Everything felt sore. “I don’t know if they need to eat, but they know we need to, and that we’ll be forced out of here when we run out of water.”

Gin sighed and rubbed her palm over her face again.

She looks exhausted, Maren thought with a pang of pity.

“So we’re just going to cross our fingers and hope help comes before then?”

“That’s the plan, yeah. At least we’re a pretty important station.”

“Not quite important enough.” Gin chuckled, but it was a hollowed sound. “Remember, Central probably dispatched just about all of their emergency response teams to the early requests, back when no one knew there was a problem. How many of those teams would have made it back? Alive, I mean. Central won’t care about having a highly connected communications system. They’ll care about fortifying and protecting the planets they can still save. We’re unnecessary.”

Maren sighed. She hadn’t thought about it that way, but Gin was right. There was no point in saving a communications station that received signals from remote planets if you were preparing to let those planets fall.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

Gin shrugged, still watching the screens. “Survive as long as we can, I guess. We’ve got a gun with enough bullets to… you know… if we don’t want to be absorbed by whatever got Holly and Mark.”

“Jeeze,” Maren said.

Gin leaned her head on Maren’s shoulder, a small act of comfort in the face of certain death.

“Do you have any regrets?” Gin asked.

“Huh?”

“Like, things you wished you could have done.”

Maren thought it over briefly. There were a lot of things she’d be sad to never have the chance to do, she realised. “I never got that promotion to defence technician. And I was sort of looking forward to my leave coming up next year. I miss my home planet. I want to see trees again. Lots of trees and rain and snow and real dirt. Everything’s so dead here.” She could feel her throat choking up, so she cleared it quickly. “How about you?”