Peace, I think, as I lay with my head on his shoulder, careful of his chest, listening to him breathe. Could it look like this for me?

I can’t remember another time like it, on Factus. While the G’hals work on their takings and Silas painstakingly assesses the Charis’s damage, I limp around helping the surgeon with his supplies, watching Marti tend his garden of medicinal herbs and prized vegetables. Later, we sit down together at the scratched metal table, to cricket soup flavoured with ferocious home-grown chillies and fried greens and proteinmeal dough rolled out so thin it almost tastes like noodles. We drink tea and listen to Falco’s plans for expanding the bar and her hold on Landfall with her new-found wealth, Silas’s tales of deals-gone-awry on the satellite stations, Bui’s and Rat’s gossip from the settlements.

A rare day, all the more cherished for being transitory. Away from the surgeon’s ranch, the reality we inhabit churns on, and we will have to step back onto its path, sooner or later. So, as dark falls, and Silas and Marti scrape the dishes with sand, Peg and I help the surgeon rig up his wire transmitter, Rat turning the handle furiously to make enough extra power to receive the latest bulletin.

When it arrives on the sheet, we crowd around the scratched, grey screen, watching the text appear:

AIR FLEET COMMANDER BEATRICE ALINE DEAD IN TRAGIC WRECK

It has been reported that Air Fleet Commander Beatrice Aline perished in a wreck that took place on Factus between Drax and Landfall Five. Commander Aline was escorting two captured fugitives to justice in Landfall, when a navigational error sent her craft off course, into an area of electrical turbulence above the Air Line Road. Tragically, it seems that neither her ship nor those of her escorts were able to regain control before the resulting crash. The fugitives, it has been reported, also perished.

Accord scouts were able to recover the bodies of Commander Aline, the prisoners and her escorts from the site by nightfall on the same day.

Peg sits back with a smirk. ‘All hail the Accord. Spinning a story like a wheel in sand.’

‘“Electrical turbulence”,’ Silas reads incredulously. ‘Who’s going to believe that?’

Falco winces, rubbing her leg. ‘Accord barely have a grip on these moons. They can’t afford to look weak.’

Marti spends a minute or two flicking through the resulting correspondence on the black-market tangle. ‘Seems like most folk think it was a Seeker attack,’ he says. ‘People are saying it was Hel the Converter, reminding the Accord who really runs Factus.’

My neck prickles, and I raise a hand to make sure the mark on my chest is covered. The surgeon must have seen it when he treated me. When I glance his way, he meets my eyes, and says nothing.