“Why would SPEC sabotage a passenger shuttle?” Malachi asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s completely fucking insane,” Baqir muttered, but quietly, and none of them noticed. They were too stunned. For all their weapons, their plans, their casual violence, for how little they had flinched when Zahra killed Salvatore and how eagerly they had threatened to do the same again and again, not one of them knew what to say to the revelation that somebody was targeting them as surely as they had targeted us.

Henke was insistent. “Who the fuck else could it be?”

“We don’t know SPEC doesn’t have missiles,” Dag said.

I knew perfectly well SPEC didn’t have functional space missiles, because I knew my aunt had spent days at a Councilors’ closed meeting arguing about future development of a space defense system earlier in the year. But I had no interest in sharing that knowledge, even if they would listen to me.

“They’re always watching us,” Panya said. Her voice, still soft and little-girl high, was now wet with tears. “You know they’re always watching. Adam warned us. I can’t believe they’re gone, I can’t believe—are you sure? Boudicca can’t be gone. She can’t be. Maybe she just can’t hear us?”

“They’re all dead?” Ariana said quietly, looking from Xiomara to me. The skullcap of her space suit had pressed her rainbow-colored hair into a fringe across her forehead. “All of them? What the fuck happened?”

It was only a passenger shuttle. It could withstand small collisions from space debris, malfunctions, human error. It was not built to survive an explosion from within.

“We have to go out to check,” Henke said.

“Too dangerous,” Dag replied. “There’s too much debris.”

“We have to—”

“Quiet,” Zahra said. “Just . . . be quiet. I need to think.”

In the brief pause that followed, Baqir touched my elbow, inclined his head toward the way out. But Dag was still blocking the door, and he was still watching us. I shook my head minutely: Wait.

Finally, Zahra said, “We can’t help them now. We have our mission. We have to make this ship safe for Homestead.”

It was Baqir who asked, “What’s Homestead?”

Five headlamps turned toward us.

“Shut the fuck up,” Henke said.

“No, it’s okay,” Zahra said. “We have nothing to hide. Homestead is a passenger vessel bringing the members of our family here to join us. There are three hundred people aboard, including many children.”

“Three hundred people is a family?” Xiomara asked.

And Ariana said, “Why would you bring them here?”

I couldn’t say anything at all. A sickly understanding knotted my stomach.

We only want to be left alone, Zahra had said, when Baqir had asked what they wanted. Not demands, not a ransom, not a list of political goals. They wanted to be left alone.