I could have killed him that evening in the desert, and nobody would have ever known. I could have turned him away and never thought of him again. That was what the Councils had done, rejecting his application for citizenship so many times he had lost hope. I had invited him into the homestead instead, and only later had I learned what he could do, what he could offer, how he would help us reach our dream. I needed that bold, smiling boy now, not the wavering, doubtful man he had grown to be.

“You cannot fail us,” I said.

Malachi’s smile faded. I had said the wrong thing.

“Dag will help you,” I added quickly. “You’ll figure it out.”

Dag nodded silently. Together they crossed the chamber toward the control panel by the interior door.

I turned to the prisoner. “Against the wall.”

Henke shoved Bhattacharya up to the wall with a hard smack in the center of his chest. Henke was grinning, his teeth a white curve behind the faceplate of his helmet. Either he had overcome his doubts about our change in plans, or a chance to manhandle the captives was enough to lighten his mood.

“You’ve been lying,” I said to Bhattacharya. I didn’t raise my weapon; it was threat enough that I was holding it. The widening of Bhattacharya’s eyes, that was the flash of fear I wanted to see. “You’ve been lying all along. The next word out of your mouth is going to be the truth, or I will kill you.”

I pointed with my gun to the corpse above the airlock door.

“That was no virus,” I said. “What the fuck happened here?”

Bhattacharya and Henke looked, and Henke cursed in surprise. With three headlamps shining on it, the corpse looked smaller, pathetic somehow. No longer a person. A piece of debris.

“Answer her.” Henke pressed the muzzle of the gun into Bhattacharya’s neck. I had not told him to do that, had not particularly wanted him to, but Henke was a weapon as much as the gun in his hand. It was effective enough.

Bhattacharya cleared his throat. He was still looking at the corpse. “Can you see who she is? She looks—I think I know her.”

“Her suit says Chin,” I said.

“Oh,” he said softly. “She used to babysit me.”

Henke snorted a laugh.

“I don’t care who she was,” I said. “That is not what Zeffir-1 does to people. Was there an attack? Did SPEC Security send a team to subdue the outbreak?”

Bhattacharya started to answer, but stopped abruptly as a red light began to glow around the inner airlock door. A moment later another came on beside it, and another, slowly filling the cargo bay. The light was low, more murky than illuminating, barely enough to cast a dingy red glow over everything. A soft hum rose from somewhere in the walls.