“We don’t know, and that’s the point. They’re coming at us from the wrong direction and they wouldn’t have enough time to fully unload even if they didn’t have to burn time fighting us. But they should also know that we don’t have anything worth stealing right now. Pirates have spies at stations, who give them information about ships and their cargo manifests. It’s how they decide who to target. But they wouldn’t even have to be crafty to know that the only cargo we took on at End was people, since we didn’t make a secret of that. And unless they really want haverfruit concentrate, we have nothing of value.”

“They know we have nothing they want or can use and they’re coming at us anyway.”

“Yes. This is what worries me.”

Kiva nodded. “Fine. What’s the second thing?”

“One of our passengers is acting strangely,” Nubt Pinton said.

“All our passengers are rich assholes,” Kiva said. “Acting strangely is part of their so-called charm.”

Pinton smiled slightly at that. “I will take the lady’s word for that,” he said. “However, in this case, the problem is not the passenger being eccentric, but the passenger methodically casing the ship.” Pinton picked up his own tablet and sent video to the one Kiva was holding. In the video, a man was walking through the ship corridors, looking around.

“Oh my God, this man is walking, let’s kill him,” Kiva said.

“It’s not that he’s walking, it’s where he’s walking. He’s not wandering the ship randomly or generally. He’s going into areas relating to engineering, propulsion, and life support management.”

“So, only to those places?”

“No,” Pinton said. “He goes other places as well. But these are the places he’s come back to. He doesn’t come in far and he never stays long. But he comes back.”

“Why don’t you have the passengers on a fucking lockdown?” Kiva asked, setting down the tablet. “We don’t need these assholes wandering the ship anyway.”

“That was our original plan, and in fact our passengers have already been given a list of areas they are absolutely not allowed to go into.”

“Which this guy ignores.”

“No, but he’s come close. But he’s not focused, say, on Engineering directly. He’s focused on places on the ship where it might be easy to disrupt engineering systems.”

“Which brings me back to my first fucking question, Pinton.”

Pinton waggled the tablet he held in his hand. “We didn’t lock them down entirely because one of our crew recognizes this man, and we wanted to see what he might be up to.”

“Which rich asshole is he?”

“That’s just it. The crew person says he’s not a rich asshole. He’s someone who works for a rich asshole.”

“Which crew member said this?”