Misato stared unseeing at the screen for a moment. That was a lot to process. Of all the crew in the cluster, Piero had always felt the most remote to her, closed off. Now it was obvious why. He was holding in a secret, maybe many, and trying to keep them from finding out.

“I . . . sure. Tuva’s death makes more sense now. He was protecting something big.” Misato took the tablet, squinting down at the tiny rows of code. She increased the text size and dug in, going quiet for a long time. It wasn’t awkward; Rosalyn let her work without seeming bored or impatient. In fact, she turned to the flight screen and seemed to be inspecting the way Misato had increased thruster usage while maintaining the lowest rate of fuel burn-off.

[pe_BRIT0711007@ip-72-39-

181-61 ~]$ poe.sh -a -P

Checking ports . . . . . . . . . . . [OK]

Allocating space . . . . . . . . . . [OK]

Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [OK]

[pe_BRIT0711007@ip-72-39-181-61 ~]$

She scrolled and scrolled, then pinched her forehead, wishing she had something more interesting to report. “This is pretty basic stuff. It looks like common enough code he just wanted on hand for convenience’s sake.”

“So it won’t hack Merchantia’s bank accounts? That’s a letdown.”

“No, but this is important,” Misato said, pointing to his handle. “We can use this when we get to CDAS. If he modified anything in their code, he might have left this behind. The amount of Foxfire samples we took on board seemed odd to me. Too much. He could have modified the manifests on the station to make it look like we only took the correct number of samples.”

“And it all does what?” Rosalyn let her keep the tablet, collapsing back into her chair. “He’s dead. Foxfire is loose. It doesn’t matter if we prove he took extra samples or didn’t.”

“It does, Rosalyn, it does matter.” Misato set the tablet aside and reached for the young woman’s knee, putting her hand on it lightly. “Whatever happens to Edison and me—no, listen—whatever happens, you need to show all of this to HQ and then to the Global Alliance.”

Rosalyn’s head drooped on her shoulders. “Merchantia had you guys take those samples, though. We have no idea who’s really to blame. Hell, it could be my dad. And anyway, Piero had some Beta Tech junk in his locker. Before I left for this assignment, this HR guy told me about several partnerships that were causing issues. Merchantia is linked to them, too. I don’t want to say vast corporate conspiracy but—”

“Vast corporate conspiracy,” Misato breathed. “Sounds like something out of a Dome scenario.”

“I know this is going to sound crazy, but I wish the asshole was still alive,” Rosalyn said. “I’d like to ask him a few pointed questions.”

“Wouldn’t we all . . .”