Lear was Dead in The Water, but that doesn’t mean anything on its own. He wasn’t a bloody stain or a twist of skin and cartilage or anything. That would have been easier; I’ve cleaned half a dozen cockpits out by hand, done the bucket shift through human wreckage maybe a dozen more times on top of that. You zone out, and your hands keep running on automatic.

When Salt found Lear’s body, well—

Lear was still Lear.

I’m glad I couldn’t see his face.

He’s with Salt now, wrapped in a couple of silver blankets we stripped out of an emergency survival kit. Salt’s flight suit is thicker than mine or Hail’s, thick enough to handle the kind of cold that would freeze us both to death. It’ll keep Lear whole until we can send him off. Hail says NorCol doesn’t bury cons, but we’ll see to him ourselves. Jockeys have their own rituals.

Salt is around here still, humming that old tune of his across the net. Habit makes me follow along, though my helmet mikes are off. This one’s just for me. I close my eyes and let it carry me.

I don’t hear him stop.

“What would you have done?”

I almost miss it. I blink and find Salt’s heavy suit standing in the dust below me, looking up. I swallow and open my nets, but it’s a moment before I can speak.

“I got there as fast as I could. I—I just—”

He stops me short. “No. You did everything you could. The fault, if there is any, is ours, Hail’s and mine.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It has to be said, and I’m saying it. You saw it coming. Hail and I were fucking bystanders.”

Even when we were still in chain, still bolted to the low decks of a murky prison ship, I don’t think I’d ever heard him so bitter. He breathes loud enough that I can hear it, almost feel the changing pressure in my ears.

“I’m gonna wear that one a long time.” He clears his throat, and looks back up at me. “When I asked you what you would’ve done, I wasn’t talking about Lear.” He nods at the dark pod, lying in the trench it carved through the dust. “What would you have done if that Sigurd jockey had been alive when you found him?”

“Shot him.” It’s almost too easy to say.

Salt nods. “Me too.” He turns on his heel, wakes the dust around his boots. “Come on.”

I sit up. “Where are we going?”

“To find out why.”