The sun rose a little more, the light shifting from blue to silver. Hime studied Caledonia without expression, yet her eyes revealed a bone-deep exhaustion. They were all pushing through, trying to hold their hearts and hopes together in spite of what had happened. None of them wanted to admit that the people who hadn’t made it aboard this ship might have been abandoned back in Cloudbreak.

After a long minute, Hime nodded. Drink some water. Get off that ankle as soon as possible. Let me know if anything changes.

Caledonia wanted to tell her that Amina was a survivor. Just because she hadn’t made it to the Luminous Wake didn’t mean she hadn’t escaped some other way. But the truth was there was every chance she hadn’t. Every chance that she’d been shot trying to protect them all.

And Caledonia didn’t have it in her to make empty promises.

“I will,” she said instead, smothering her distress beneath the weight of all she still had to accomplish.

As the air filled with the clanking of hammers and the throaty hiss of welding guns, Caledonia and Pisces retreated to the chamber beneath the bridge.

Pisces leaned her back to the door and released a heavy sigh as Caledonia slumped into a chair. For the first time in hours, the pain in her ankle surged and now throbbed in rhythm with her pulse.

“How did we miss this, Pi?” Caledonia asked.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing. I think there are only two possibilities.”

Caledonia had been thinking the same thing, though she was loath to admit one was just as likely as the other. “Either the bomb parts were not as conspicuous as Amina says . . .”

“Or someone made sure they got through inspection.” Pisces folded her arms across her stomach as though the thought made her ill.

“Who was in charge of crew intake?” Caledonia knew she should have the answer, but her mind was exhausted.

“Ennick.” There was a note of reluctant suspicion in Pisces’s tone.

“Ennick,” Caledonia repeated, picturing the old man with his salted hair and weathered orange scars. The man had been a Ballistic, but he’d never tried to hide that fact, and he’d fought at their side through the Battle of Cloudbreak; he’d had so many previous opportunities to betray them before now. “If it was him, he went far out of his way to establish his cover.”

Caledonia searched her mind for any clues she might have missed, any sign that he’d been working against her the entire time. But she could find none.

“Doesn’t seem likely,” Pisces admitted. “But it is possible.”

“Just as possible as the individual pieces making their way past inspection.”

“He knows about the rendezvous.” Pisces was already thinking ahead.