“See you soon,” Rosalyn added, standing and leaving the garden at a near run. She had never bothered to read the other memorial stones, and this was why. Nobody wanted to know whom they were shoving into a body bag. Nobody wanted to know whom the people paste had really been.

Four hours. It would have to be enough time to get her head on straight.

4

As a child Rosalyn always climbed the same tree in the backyard.

There was only one tree to climb—an ancient, officially protected silver maple that anchored the house on Aberdeen more than any concrete or stone foundation. Decades before, the boughs grew heavy with snow in the wintertime, or so claimed her parents. Not anymore. The leaves now soaked up the heat like tiny, brittle solar panels.

It was a tall, tall tree, and she had learned to climb it early. Her father would stand underneath and watch, and no matter how high she climbed, no matter how little he became there on the ground, she felt his nearness. He was there to catch her, close even when far.

He didn’t feel near anymore. The Salvager 6 hummed softly as the atmosphere inside it grew warmer and the engines cycled, machine and man preparing for the journey away from the campus and into space. One last chance. Her head pounded. She wasn’t just coping with no booze anymore, but Dave Walters and no booze, as if this assignment had been set up as the ultimate, brutal test of her will.

It didn’t matter. Rosalyn was determined to prove herself, and this time there wouldn’t be any hidden flasks in her suit.

She stood in the small, empty bay that connected to the ship’s air lock through a rounded, retractable corridor. Walters was already inside Salvager 6. New Classic 2210s rock drifted down the boarding walkway toward her. Alexia Courtney preferred classical, and so did Rosalyn. At least, she thought, it wasn’t the awful synth-pop remakes Owens played. She had no idea if Griz even liked music; he never talked about much of anything.

Her pulse and temperature had started elevating since the moment she left the memorial garden. It felt safe there, but here, poised in front of the long metal tube and the ship at its end, she panicked. This was nothing new. Most salvagers got pre-mission jitters, even old pros. But this was different, her last shot, and it had to go off perfectly. Rosalyn didn’t know if she was the only one who had gotten anxious tremors even during training, when they ran through scenarios in mock ships on base. Feet on solid ground, she was still shaken to the core like a complete chickenshit. The rooms were perfect re-creations of the innards of a salvage ship, and that was enough to make her heart race out of control.