Rosalyn crushed the last bit of her sandwich in her fist and imagined the bread sailing across the garden to land in his tangle of red hair. Childish, she thought with a weak smile, but satisfying. She crammed the crust and empty soda canister into the bag and drifted toward the exit, wondering if Alexia would be all right. Hoping she would be all right. The job got to everyone eventually. Two years was the max anyone stayed, then came a mandatory rest period. Outer space was terrifying. Salvaging was one prolonged exercise in confronting your own mortality. And it was dangerous. It was a job one only survived and never enjoyed.

Someone she didn’t recognize cut off her approach to the door. A woman, short, old, with deep lines carved into her brown cheeks, drooped into the garden. Her arms were laden with a sleek tray, and on the tray was a pile of stones. Rosalyn silently made room for her to pass and then observed her going to the same bench and the stream where Roz ate her lunch every day. The woman knelt and carefully began to pile the rocks next to the bench. She stood and left without acknowledging Rosalyn, but her tread seemed lighter as she went.

Rosalyn couldn’t help it—she waited until she was alone again to approach the piled stones. Just like the older woman, she knelt, squinting to find names and dates and messages carved into the rocks. It was like a little pagan outcropping, an ancient marker, so out of place there among the cold silver and glass fixtures of the base. She reached out and brushed her fingers over one of the stones—it was still warm from the other woman’s touch.

She shivered, reading the inscriptions with her blood chilling by degrees, growing colder as she began to recognize the names.

MISATO IWASA, 2158–2269

PIERO ENDRIZZI, 2231–2269

TUVA SVERDAL, 2231–2269

RAYAN YASIN, 2241–2269

CAPTAIN EDISON ARIES, 2229–2269

“The Brigantine,” she whispered, shutting her eyes tightly. In four hours she would be hurtling through space toward these people, not just their memorial markers, but their dead bodies. Flesh turning as hard as those stones. She could only hope they had gone peacefully, and that they would be found in a deep freeze, looking as quiet and whole as if they were only sleeping. This job had to be an easy one. Simple. She just needed to prove to HQ and Josh Girdy that she wasn’t headed for a total meltdown.

It struck her as deeply morbid that Merchantia hadn’t even waited for confirmation from a salvage crew before having the stones commissioned. Well, the Brigantine had gone blue months ago, so it was a safe bet, if a sad one. Efficiency you can trust. That was the Merchantia slogan. They tended to live up to that promise.